Sounds ambitious but is it possible to measure religion by some sort of unit?
By saints and sinners?
By blood and martyrs?
By stupidity?
By schisms?
By wealth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_religious_organizations
I read somewhere that the Catholic church is worth $1 trillion.
They don't want you to know that so they hide it.
Mormons do very well.
Muslims can also have more than one wife.
So how about wives?
Measure religion as a whole, or adherence of an individual? The latter could be "trivially" measured in hours. The former - in adherents, so in a manner, also in hours.
Time spent per person per faith. Hmmm Some religions require more time spent per person per week than others and this is also influenced by gender and age. So each religion needs a calibration of hours per person per day by day under ideal circumstances. One could then potentially decide if an individual or group of individuals match the 'ideal'.
Yep. Pretty much that. We could call the unit god-hours, as in, hours spent on gods. :smilenod:
God hours? Hmmm Spiritual Hours i something T then you're get SHIT hours.
Can't name a unit -al-hours. It's <thing> per <thing> or <thing> with reference to <thing.> :smilenod:
Shit-hours may work for worship-per-man-hour.
This is what used to confuse me.
Christians once a week, usually on Sunday to go to the god zone.
Muslims 5 times a day, anywhere they can find.
Special work breaks for Muslims to pray.
No such thing for Christians.
When I ask a Muslim if they worship the same god as Christians, The answer is likely to be no.
Other way around applies too.
A measure of stupidity?
Both will find a way to reject the source of their faith is grounded in Judaism.
in my experience, a muslim will tell you all the abrahamic religions worship the same god. the muslims will tell you that jesus was an intermediate prophet and muhammed recieved the final revelation, and that tbe jews also believe in an incomplete faith. muslims refer to themselvez, christians, and jews as "people of the Book." sometimes the parsees are included too.
jews reject jesus as the messiah, but acknowledge that they and christians share the same god.
christians are all over the map. american evangelicals sometimes even reject catholicism as a christian faith.
I assume that Catholics are not Christians because (as a very bad former one myself) I never heard any mention of the myths and fables in the OT read out in church.
Only readings are likely to be from the prophet Isaiah.
This guy forecast the coming of "Jesus".
Only 2 snags here. He wrote this 800 years earlier and mentioned Immanuel and not Jesus.
Catholics are obsessed with the word love.
You will hear it a hundred times in a full service.
You shouldn't be surprised at all the scandal.
So how many times the word love is used might be a measure.
By my understanding love the neighbour was borrowed from the Hindu scriptures.
The number of atheists compared to the number of theists is another measure.
My favourite atheist was the Reverend Robert Taylor.
The story goes that one day he started to preach atheism from pulpit.
He was known to Darwin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(Radical)
That sounds more like statistics within a given society than a measurement of religion to be honest. For example, what does the relationship between the number of Christian fundamentalists and Atheists in the United Kingdom say about the religiousness of the former?
According to this only 49% of Britons now believe in god.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=Humanists%20UK%20is%20the%20most,said%20they%20believed%20in%20God.
Even if I'm one of the 51% who don't believe, I guess I'm still a cultural Christian, by accident of birth.
I like the music of Bach.
I like visiting medieval churches and cathedrals.
Doesn't make you "Cultural Christian" as much as "Cultural Western European/in-this-case-specifically-Germanic," in my opinion.
There is overlap there, to be sure, and a lot of it, but one would think that a cultural Christian would have a thing or two to say about Christ before Bach and architecture. 8)
Dawkins also describes himself as a cultural Christian.
You know who I mean. He plagiarises Darwin, Wallace, Hamilton.
Maybe he needs to relax a bit more. He put his stroke down to stress.
I would not describe Richard Dawkins as "culturally Christian." In my view, the good professor is, if anything, very English.
Still, there may be valid reasons for him to describe himself thusly, in which case I would agree with his reasons even if standing by my overall conclusion.
I think of it this way; many a culture have been influenced by the Roman Empire. That does not make them "Culturally Roman." Replace "Roman empire" with your religion of choice.
Of course, there are people who can claim to be "Culturally Roman," but your average Hungarian may not be one of them - just saying.
Do you have an example of Dawkins plagiarizing? (Presenting the work of others as his own, as opposed to basing his own work on prior work done by others)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7136682.stm
Did Darwin plagiarize Wallace?
Both were Englishmen who exchanged letters.
We'll never know for sure.
Anyone reading Dawkins will probably not realise he was basing so much of his work others.
Like Bill Hamilton, George Williams, George Price..
Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin.
I see the above article uses "Christianophobia".
I'd heard of Islamophobia.
How about Hinduphobia, Buddhaphobia, Pastafarianophobia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#:~:text=The%20Flying%20Spaghetti%20Monster%20(FSM,schools%20in%20the%20United%20States.
"Did Darwin plagiarize Wallace?
Both were Englishmen who exchanged letters.
We'll never know for sure."
You might. I'm sure there was no plagiarism. I think the giveaway was that the first paper presented on natural selection was jointly presented by them to the Royal Society. The other point of observation is the letters between them where Wallace asks Darwin for help to underpin his own ideas. Wallace knew what he had seen but Darwin had done the research that could hold support the idea.
"Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin."
So because some people a thieves we all are? False analogy.
darwin was reading malthus, got sick and had a fever, and the the theory of natural selection appeared to him/
wallace was also reading malthus, also got sick and had a fever, and the theory of natural selection also appeared to him./
^^^strange coincidence. when wallace wrote to darwin about the theory darwin is said to have freaked out and withdrew. it was others who persueaded him to do a joint presentation for the royal society.
so the story goes.
have you heard about the guy who stole a bunch of wallace's pricelss original bird specimens from the americas and new guinea and cut them up to sell for fishing lures that he sold on th einternet? some feathers have been recovered but the specimens themselves have been destroyed.
Quote from: billy rubin on November 19, 2023, 10:50:44 PMdarwin was reading malthus, got sick and had a fever, and the the theory of natural selection appeared to him/
wallace was also reading malthus, also got sick and had a fever, and the theory of natural selection also appeared to him./
^^^strange coincidence. when wallace wrote to darwin about the theory darwin is said to have freaked out and withdrew. it was others who persueaded him to do a joint presentation for the royal society.
so the story goes.
have you heard about the guy who stole a bunch of wallace's pricelss original bird specimens from the americas and new guinea and cut them up to sell for fishing lures that he sold on th einternet? some feathers have been recovered but the specimens themselves have been destroyed.
No, I have never heard of that one. Fishing lures??? Sure enough there are some fly tiers out there who truly believe in magic lures. I strongly suspect that the trout or other fish do not give a rats ass about the origin of the feathers.
its a weird subcult of flytiers who require the feathers of rare and extinct birds.
wallaces stuff was irreplacwable, and this shit tore them apart to sell to rich hobbyists
Apart from being evolutionary biologists, what do Darwin, Wallace and Dawkins have in common?
They have never been knighted by their country.
That's because they have challenged Christian authority.
By contrast, naturalist David Attenborough, who is a fan of all three has been twice knighted.
Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace were not evolutionary biologists though. Their fields of study gave rise to evolutionary biology.
Back in ye-olden days I suppose they were considered "naturalists" or "explorers" or something equally-broad.
By your logic Einstein was just a patent clerk.
An opinion I'll express is that religion is merely a cover for something more sinister.
The idea of one god, the almighty, attracts so much attention that people are drawn into thinking there's a trap door to a better place after death.
In its wake comes control over women and children.
Whether this was deliberate or not I'm not sure.
Quote from: zorkan on November 22, 2023, 11:53:25 AMBy your logic Einstein was just a patent clerk.
By the same token as Charles Darwin was just a geologist. ;) (I
very rarely deal in "just a-s" - Einstein was a patent clerk
too.)
Einstein was a physicist, but that does not mean that he was, say, a quantum physicist. His body of work gave rise to much of that particular field of study, to be sure, but a progenitor needs not be the first of a kind. Remember, ancient fish were
our ancestors - does that make them
human?
Charles Darwin the geologist?
More like a naturalist who was influenced by Charles Lyell and others.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/uniformitarianism-charles-lyell/
Darwin died not knowing his On the Origin of Species was correct.
Not enough tine for evolution by n/s if the world only a few million years old.
I argued about the age of the earth on the worthy christian forum before I was thrown off.
They all believe the world is not as old as science has revealed.
They argue the bible is correct to imply it was only ushered in 6,000 years ago. Excuse the pun.
How do you argue with people like this?
I failed, but why should I be surprised. If science contradicts their holy book then science is wrong.
darwin fits the bill as a geologist for his work on coral atolls and for his stratigraphic correlations in south america. the distinctions between fields of science are more recent than his time.
palaeontology is the link between biology and geology. you can cross from one to the other pretty easily
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/great-feather-heist-180968408/
this sort of thing is one of those crimes that nobody takes seriously, and so the punishment and deterrence are slight.
speaking as a systematist, if it were up to me i would cut all of this guys fingers off and make him eat them.
Quote from: zorkan on November 19, 2023, 05:20:03 PM....
Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin.
....
Rosalind Franklin didn't discover DNA, she elucidated its structure. DNA was discovered about 100 years before her work.
I realised after I posted that I should have said Franklin discovered the structure of the DNA molecule by X ray crystallography.
The story goes that as soon as she saw the image she knew it was a double helix.
Darwin the geologist?
Okay, I'll go with that. Both naturalist and geologist.
He found fossil fish on mountains.
Interesting that fossils were once considerd to be planted by god as a test of faith.
They also proved to the faithful the flood actually happened.
In reality the rivers of Mesopotamia did flood, and that's how the legend started.
Possibly some guy did build an ark to load domestic animals.
his theory of the geologic origin of tropical atolls stood for 100 years, and has only just now been revisited because of a greater understanding of marine transgression and regression
interesting man. reading on the origin of species is strrange, like watching motion picture previews of a film youve already seen, because darwin anticipates the highlights of the next 150 years of evolutionary biology in offhand remarks and brief speculations.
Quote from: billy rubin on November 25, 2023, 02:06:18 PMinteresting man. reading on the origin of species is strrange, like watching motion picture previews of a film youve already seen, because darwin anticipates the highlights of the next 150 years of evolutionary biology in offhand remarks and brief speculations.
Indeed. :smilenod:
I suppose that when one works on... Let's call it the "intellectual baggage" of an idea, one may get some intuition and foresight as to where it could and might and
must lead, or in what form it may withstand the winds of time.
Quote: There are over 450 known versions of the Bible in English alone. Here are some of the most recognized versions:
King James Version (KJV)
New International Version (NIV)
English Standard Version (ESV)
New Living Translation (NLT)
New King James Version (NKJV)
The Message (MSG)
American Standard Version (ASV)
Good News Translation (GNT)
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Contemporary English Version (CEV)
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Amplified Bible (AMP)
Christian Standard Bible (CSB)
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
New Century Version (NCV)
New English Translation (NET)
New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)
New Life Version (NLV)
New World
Do they all agree?
Not according to Bart Ehrman in his book Whose Word Is It?
With the OT written in Hebrew and the NT in Greek, there were any number of copying and translation errors.
Scribes would also doubt a passage and alter it.
Ehrman also points out the the King James was based on the worst available manuscript.
Where are the original manuscripts and why would they have been destroyed in the first place?
All fiction of course.
Different translators translate different source material differently.
There is a pattern emerging from that postulate. :smilenod:
The most widely used bible in the US is the King James Version (KJV). That one was assembled by a group of 54 English scholars at the behest of James. It was to be published in the English language so that it could be read by the common man, if the common man could read. The bible immediately preceding the KJV was written in Latin. It was Queen Elizabeth's choice as she was a Catholic while her sibling, James, was of a different mind. When she died, James inherited the throne and the power to commission a bible different from the previous Doual-Rheims bible.
The bottom line is that the KJV was written by a committee. It was first published in 1611. I suspect that the original has undergone some tweaks, or more likely, some significant changes.
There is a long list of bible predecessors..........beginning at about 500 B.C. with the Hebrew writings through the Septuagent to the new testament writings, the Latin Vulgate translations, the Alcuin, the Paris bible of about ca 1200, the Wycliffe, the Gutenberg, the Erasmus, the Luther, Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, the Geneva, the Bishops, and a few more until we arrived at the King James.
Aesop's fables were not really given much credibility in terms of theological importance. I suspect that there may be more wisdom in the Aesop's book than in the free Gideon bibles that we find, free, in U.S. motels.
Those free motel bibles though... Are they like to take, or motel property to be used for the duration of stay? Because in that latter case... Well, there may be semen, or so I understand?
Quote from: Icarus on December 20, 2023, 01:30:33 AMIt was Queen Elizabeth's choice as she was a Catholic while her sibling, James, was of a different mind.
I don't think QEI was a Catholic nor that James was her sibling.
Quote from Wiki re. Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English:
"Tyndale was accused of translation errors. Thomas More commented that searching for errors in (the first edition of) the Tyndale Bible was similar to searching for water in the sea and charged Tyndale's translation of The Obedience of a Christian Man with having about a thousand false translations. Bishop Tunstall of London declared that there were upwards of 2,000 errors in Tyndale's Bible."
the english bible mass-produced just prior to the 1611 was the 1560 geneva bible, and it remained a popular english text for a long time after the 1611 was first printed.
the 1611 used the textus receptus for a primary translation, and then an eclectic collection of available texts for tweaks. modern KJV bibles are very different from the original book authorized by king james. they are always missing large sections ofthe original, including the very important instructions to the reader, all the original cross references, and the apocrypha.
there are lots of fairly minor variant passages and vocabulary between the miscellaneous texts used to compile a modern christian bible, but the ewrrors are mostly historical typos and dont affect the meaning. not including 1 john 5:7
what results in major differences are th ehuman decisions as to which books to include in the text. nobody agrees about the canon, and so there are differences in what christians believe. the roman cathjolics pray for the dead, the protestants ignore the archangels named in the apocrypha, nobody accepts the book of enoch and its stories about the nephilim, and so on.
ive been to russian orthodox services where we all stood around and prayed for the soul of czar nicholas 2. you wont ever see that in an assembly of god.
This is where I get confused between the bible and koran:
koran: "Then it speaks in particular of the creation of man and his origin: "created man from clots of blood." He is created from a dried drop of blood which sticks to the womb: a cheap and unsophisticated substance.
But Jesus was a man who was created from water and blood.
How much blood has been spilt over whether Jesus was god, man or a god-man hybrid?
If Jesus in his infancy really brought clay models of birds to life then I can only think of him as being a god or an alien.
Would people in those days have thought UFO's were clay birds?
Oh yeah, that's right! they did believe that blood was one of them... Building blocks of life, I suppose, rather than a product of life.
I see the miracle of the birds is also in the koran.
"And ˹on Judgment Day˺ Allah will say, "O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour upon you and your mother: how I supported you with the holy spirit1 so you spoke to people in ˹your˺ infancy and adulthood. How I taught you writing, wisdom, the Torah, and the Gospel. How you moulded a bird from clay—by My Will—and breathed into it and it became a ˹real˺ bird—by My Will".
Add to that Jesus beaming up to heaven after rising from the dead adds to the idea he really could have been an alien.
The immaculate conception could be a story of an alien mating with a woman.
Am I off my rocker?
thats not an uncommon belief in the kook fringe. ive met people who believed in that.
I'm always curious as to where places like heaven and hell exist.
They imply a flat earth where heaven is above (the city of god) and hell is below in an underworld.
So religions' places of the mind would include:
Up above:
Mount Olympus - Zeus.
Mount Kailash - Shiva.
Heaven - home of the god of Abraham.
Down under:
Hell - home of the devil of Abraham?
Unclear as to where:
Paradise - land of clear running water, green meadows and virgins.
Purgatory - Catholics' waiting room.
New Jerusalem - somewhere in the 'Holy Land' or could be in North America awaiting construction.
An example of the number of adult and child abuse victims now come to light.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67749215
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_TmpEsUjW8
He was regarded as being divine.
If religion is measured in victims when something like 100 billion humans have ever lived,, then it is anyone's guess.
Ah, but did he "rape and torture," or did he perhaps "bestow them with his divine seed?"
Divine law is a matter of religious perspective. As such, you could very well do things like be a genocidal maniac from the social perspective, while at the same time being "divine."
At least he raped and tortured within his own church, and people came to him.
Ugh! Why do they do this?
Why are women more likely to be taken in?
Quote from: zorkan on January 08, 2024, 02:44:46 PMWhy are women more likely to be taken in?
Because, and I know this is shocking in the year of our LORD 2024, most men are heterosexual.
Quote from: Asmodean on January 08, 2024, 02:49:09 PMBecause, and I know this is shocking in the year of our LORD 2024, most men are heterosexual.
In London?
So how many crucified saviours were there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Sixteen_Crucified_Saviors
This book is rubbished by Christians.
They know that JC attacked orthodox Juadaism and was betrayed to the Romans to be crucified.
Many others were as well because crucifixion was the capital punishment.
Quote from: zorkan on January 08, 2024, 03:03:14 PMIn London?
I approve of what you did right there, but yes, also in London :smilenod:
They rock in Brighton.
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/23233255.census-2021-brighton-hove-gayest-city-england/
As depicted in christianity the soul has weight and the precise measurement is 21 grams.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know-general-science/story-behind-21-grams
Alternatively, you might believe the science.
"Gruesomely, Robert Stern (pathologist) points out that dead bodies lose a lot of weight over time. Minute, intercellular structures called lysosomes release enzymes that break the body down into gases and liquid. "That's why, when you have mass graves, you can get explosions because of all the gas build-up," he says."
i had a friend who experienced a human blow up at an undertakers
Quote from: billy rubin on January 11, 2024, 01:43:39 PMi had a friend who experienced a human blow up at an undertakers
The Asmo is morbidly fascinated.
A blow-up blow-up? Or more of a uncontrolled leakiness type of situation?
Please be a blowup-blowup! :smilenod:
Did he cheat Judgement Day by blowing up?
https://www.learnreligions.com/archangel-michael-weighing-souls-124002
both of ypur morbid curiodities shall be gratified
i man i worked with had a friend who was an undertaker. the business had an apattment next to the pickling room.
i have no idea why, but my friend was living there
one even ing his buddy was work ing late on a chinese gentlemen who had died alone and had not been brought in for some time. suddenly there was a noise, and a lot of very loud cursing from the pickling room.
the chinese gentleman had exceeded his working pressure and had exploded his guts all over my friends friend.
i dont recall any more details as i stopped listening about then.
besides, he had other stories, like the time they took the hearse into the drive through at the burger place
https://imgur.com/gallery/CMLdHJ6
Ouch! The picture of that right there. It ought to be next to "dirty job" in a dictionary. :smilenod:
...I did not realise that decomposing humans and such could explode-explode. Always thought they sort of swelled up and then imploded when the air-tightness of whatever cavities have you was sufficiently compromised by decomposition.
Hope that billy rubin might have answer to this:
Measure of a man's skin colour.
"The colour of human skin is determined by its melanin content, its oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin contents and the amount of endogenous or exogenous pigments such as bilirubin and carotene."
From similar parts we are told that Jesus had olive brown skin, yet Mohammed had white skin.
"...the average Judean of the time (of Jesus) would have likely had brown or black hair, honey or olive-brown skin, and brown eyes. Judean men of the time period were on average about 1.65 metres or 5 feet 5 inches in height."
Research also shows that Mohammed was 5 feet 6 inches tall.
To think I thought of Jesus as white and Mohammed as brown skinned.
Why a black Madonna?
"The term Black Madonna or Black Virgin tends to refer to statues or paintings in Western Christendom of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus, where both figures are depicted with dark skin. Examples of the Black Madonna can be found both in Catholic and Orthodox countries" when surely Mary was a young pure white virgin.
Following on from post 43:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67944614
"For Ms Ford, it has meant she has lost all faith in organised religion: "I wish we had known that it was all a farce, that it wasn't true. I was manipulated into believing that what the prophet was doing was supernatural, miracles, wonders, signs."
Why didn't they just go to Lourdes?
At least there have been some miracles there that have healed the sick.
Okay, so it's only about 70 among all the visitors over time.
Spontaneous remission could account for some.
Maybe they weren't sick at all. Misdiagnosed, perhaps.
https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/the-miracles-of-lourdes/#:~:text=While%20more%20than%207%2C000%20cases,miraculous%20was%202%20years%20old.
Mentioned on the news today, a parasite who goes by the name of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury is criticising the democratically elected government of the UK in proposing a limited number of asylum seekers go to Rwanda.
The number is about 200 which might act as deterrent to the boat people risking their lives crossing the English Channel from France.
According to Welby, this is against the judgement of god.
He lives in Lambeth Palace in London.
To the best of my knowledge he has never offered to accommodate asylum seekers there, or in his large property in France.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5433831/Archbishop-slammed-second-home-France.html
It won't deter people from crossing to any significant degree, and I suppose a religiously-minded fellow might suggest that them having made it across the border is proof that Deus Vult!
I think one can take a far more pragmatic approach; the UK is surrounded by safe countries. If as an asylum seeker (Assuming you are not like Irish or Dutch or what have you), you come by other means than pretty-much intercontinental airplane, then on an intercontinental airplane right back you go. In cases where origin is unprovable, then it's back across the last border crossed.
I'm not saying make it Ze French problem, buuut... :smilenod:
UK border as I have found many times is very strict.
Typical questions when arriving as a white person.
Show your passport.
Where have you been?
What have you been doing abroad?
How long were you there?
Open your bag.
The intense scrutiny continues while any number of non British go straight through.
Boat people bypass immigration and are picked up by lifeboats as soon as they enter British waters.
Most are muslims from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Albania.
Islamification has changed England, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Belgium beyond recognition.
Islam is the most toxic religion in the world.
Christian values are now muslim values.
Even a British Home Secretary (Suella Braverman) has described it as an invasion.
Where Napoleon and Hitler failed, UK border is breached just about every day and it appears nothing can be done.
Asylum claims are handled differently than tourism or people returning after having lived abroad, but I absolutely see what you are saying. It's not exclusively a British problem - many countries seem to either lack the political will to enforce their borders, or are led by people who welcome a degree of borderlessness.
The UK is an island nation, so at least there be water to cross. We have a very porous border with Sweden and Finland, so with minimal preparation, whoever so wished could jump in a car in Stockholm and drive all the way to Kirkenes without meeting a customs or border patrol official.
Personally, I wouldn't mind, say, mandatory ID checks at all border crossings. Those could be automated for speed and convenience - even things like license plate recognition for those who live in one country and drive to work in another could be used to ease any arising congestion.
Point I make is that any asylum seeker brings their damn religion with them.
They are not christians trying to enter a 'christian country'.
At one place I worked the muslims were allowed prayer breaks. Other people weren't.
Friday in the place I live is like being in islamic state and I avoid the town centre.
If you say anything you could be guilty of a hate crime.
In response there are ever increasing numbers of evangelical christians who spout out their message of death.
Engaging with one last year I found that passing people were on my side, but were reluctant to shout this idiot down.
I also noticed an absence of community police when there should have been several in the area.
I asked for his permit to stand on his own platform to inform the public they will burn in hell.
He replied "I don't need one".
It was confirmed by a passer by that he definitely did need a permit.
Things can only get worse.
Quote from: zorkan on January 18, 2024, 03:07:02 PMIf you say anything you could be guilty of a hate crime.
Yeah, those laws will bite the Western societies in the ass one day. It could be argued that they already do. It's easy enough not to say anything in public, as it is easy enough to cover a termite infestation with new particle board and a coat of paint. Given enough time and enough coats of paint, that's what will hold the whole house up.
You can't legislate thought. The least you can do is know about it.
QuoteI also noticed an absence of community police when there should have been several in the area.
They are busy policing the less politically-correct or politically-invisible ralies and protests. You can't very well police a religious nut or some such - that would be
hateful! (For the sake of argument, I am assuming that there is something
to police there)
If you'll pardon the expression, it's a pussy-ass fucking world we live in. Well, no, not really, but it does try to
look that way.
QuoteIt was confirmed by a passer by that he definitely did need a permit.
A member of the public peacefully (even if loudly) expressing his opinion in a public place should not require loicense.
Street preachers used to be seen and heard often in my city. Over the last 40 or 50 years our tolerance for that kind of noise has steadily diminished. Or it would seem so, I have not seen one of those annoying nut cases for a long time.
I do believe that the street preachers are sincere. They must truly believe that it is their responsibility to deliver the word of god to me and the rest of the unchurched passers by.
I have never seen one of them who was preaching other than the usual christian pablum. If a Muslim dared preach on the street, I suspect that he would be swiftly dispatched by rednecks or republicans.
Never heard of this one until today - a church with no official name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_by_Twos
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66449988
The truth is now out about The Truth.
It's lazy marketing, I suspect.
"And moving on to the next item on the agenda. We need to find a name for the church. It has to be something interesting and original and describe what we are and what we believe."
"Ooh! Ooh! I know! How about no name at all? How's that for subversion!"
Here is where somebody should have said, "Perkins, you idiot, sit down and shut up!" But in stead...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13156867/vicars-uproar-church-england-slavery-reparations.html
Vicars are up in arms, marching like the Onward Christian Soldiers they are because they might have to shell out one billion quid of their hard earned dough to black people who were the victims of slavery.
They merely point out that Africa should be so grateful that Christian missionaries went there to save them from inevitable hellfire and that it is the Africans that should be rewarding the Church of England instead.