gregjohn wrote:
> I never said the view of the cartoon wasn't a real or popular viewpoint. I'll go
> out on a limb and say it could be a fairly accurate assessment of too many of
> those who have cash to spend on TV shows.   But realize that a sarcastic
> student of the Theology of the Cross could make the same cartoon, just with
> labels other than "Christian" and "Atheist".
> 
True, but.. frankly, I would say that its a "lot" easier to keep the 
"atheist" part and just tack on any other religion in place of the 
former. And, you seem to miss my point. Its not the, "popular viewpoint 
of those who have cash to spend on TV shows.", its the popular view 
"period". If anything, the ones with neither cash to spend, nor a TV to 
spend it on, are, if anything, worse, since they are far more insular, 
less exposed to alternate views, and ***far*** more likely to subscribe 
to the "literal truth", of what ever sub-cult of their religion they 
happen to follow in their home town. The problem isn't what labels are 
used, the problem is that if you put 100 random people in a room, 70 of 
them will match the "Christian" or "Muslim", or what ever, in the cartoon.

> Suppose you're driving down a road and see, at the same time, a speed limit sign
> saying "40 MPH", a family of ducks, and a bunch of first-graders crossing the
> road. Do you say, "I know that this sign is the accurate portrayal of the will
> of the Mayor, therefore I can be assured he wants me to drive under 40 MPH
> whenever I wish."  You plow through the ducks and kids at 39.99 MPH.  You only
> looked at the law as an excuse to be an a-- and advance your own self
> interests. You didn't turn over a few pages in the handbook and see the law
> that says, "Oh yeah, don't run over kids and ducks, either."   THAT is how the
> Religious Right misuses the law of God.
> 
Sigh.. The problem is.. Well, this isn't wrong, its, as one person 
phrased it, "Not even wrong". I.e., to be wrong, you at least have to be 
in the same ball park as the truth. They hand pick all the bits they 
"want" to be true, ignore all the parts they don't like, then shape 
theology to what "they" want. So do you. Your world view just happens to 
be more sane and humane than theirs is. See.. Lets take the whole Sodom 
and Gomorrah thing, since that came up recently, when someone asked, 
"What exactly what it they did there, which wasn't the same?" You might 
opt to assume that the visiting angels where just treated really rudely. 
Why, because the OT God might have smited two cities off the face of the 
earth for something as dumb as clipping your toenails in public. It 
isn't necessary to "read" or "imagine" anything else into it. You 
"might" look a little harder and decide that these people where like 
hippies, or something, and God didn't like their sexual freedom, pot 
smoking, drinking, and general excess. That is also a legitimate 
interpretation. But, the right, and everyone their "interpretation" was 
derived from had to take the "literal" wording, and reinterpret it into 
a pretzel, so that they could shoehorn on some other statements, made in 
  Leviticus, and turn those into a bit of a pretzel too, to get, "They 
where having gay butt sex." While trying to find something on the 
subject, I came across one of their "explanations". The entire thing 
was, "Well, the Hebrew word blah means this, but we know it didn't mean 
it in this case, and such and such a line could read to say this, but we 
can conclude that it didn't, because, well, it would screw up our 
conclusion, and so other bit *could be* read as saying this other thing, 
but, of course, that wouldn't fit what we want it to say, therefor the 
only *logical* conclusion is that they where punished for the Gay stuff!"

Your version is, as I said, more humane, but you are doing the same 
thing. Jesus does something **completely** insane, like punishing a tree 
for not bearing fruit and its allegory, which is only meant to show such 
and such, not what "should" be done, or how you "should" act of 
something/someone doesn't obey you. Yeah, you talked about slavery once 
in a while, but its just morality lessons, and your are "supposed to 
ignore" the fact that he opted to use slaves as an example, instead of 
someone else. And so on.

I would much rather have you as a neighbor, than the wacko that did the 
other right wing version of apologetics, but, neither of you is basing 
your "morality" on religion. You are basing your religion on morality. 
Which is why *you* would avoid running over the ducks and children, 
while *they* would quite happily run them over, if they happened to also 
see a sign saying, "God hates jaywalkers! BSticus 4:54", just before 
spotting them. Their morality is that compassion is for those that 
"conform", and the greatest compassion you can show for those that don't 
is to either a) convert them, or b) save someone else from them. They 
really don't "get" the concept at all. To them, as an example, the death 
of half of someone's family in a plane crash is, "Gods way of saying you 
shouldn't have run a lot of abortion clinics.", while, if the same 
over-weight plane had been carrying 20 right wingers, it would be, 
"God's will that they where in heaven, and a horrible tragedy." Empathy, 
compassion, sanity, are all foreign concepts to people deep in the 
throws of the belief that saving souls, converting heathens, and 
absolute obedience to arbitrary authority lie at the "center" of moral 
thought. Piety replaces everything human for these people, and is 
believed, by not just the 10-15% on the far right, to be more important 
than anything else, but also 60% of the "moderates". And, the joke is, 
piety is no more "definable" without resorting to human arguments, human 
derived morality, and human compassion and decency, than it was during 
the age of Plato and Aristotle. Its a nonsense word, like tacking 
"freedom" onto "fries", rather than "french" in order to somehow 
"change" what the "fries" are. It doesn't change what is being 
described, or how you make it, it just applies a meaningless label to 
it, in an attempt to make an emotional appeal to it being "different" in 
some qualitative sense.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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