Latest Religion Talk Posts at VideoSift.com

A Simple Poll

EDD (http://religion.videosift.com/member/EDD) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:15:22 -0700

(11 comments - 247 views)
In honor of Darwin's "Origin of Species" 150 anniversary, I presume, the CNN are holding a simple poll.

http://edition.cnn.com/

Do you believe in God?

Yes 69%
No 31%

Go get there and vote. Pretty please.

_{Tip of my hat to PZ Meyers}

- EDD

Enoch finds his Gold Star!

rasch187 (http://rasch187.videosift.com) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:48:08 -0700

(33 comments - 467 views)

"And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
-Genesis 4:17

"And Dag favoured Enoch for his efforts and gave unto him a golden star."
-Gospel of Siftboticus 13:37

That's right, people, enoch has gotten his gold star. This rebel minister and former strip club DJ has sifted a lot of great obscure vids and has been a really nice guy to have around the sift. What does a rebel minister look like anyway? Something like this perhaps? Stephen used to teach comparative religion and cultural religious history, so I guess he must know. Maybe the answer can be found here.

Enoch's also a poet, some of his work can be seen here:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Whispered-Secrets-Original-Poem-by-Our-Enoch
http://www.videosift.com/video/Another-Great-Poem-by-Enoch

I love having you around, enoch - congrats on the star!

- rasch187

Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreson

EDD (http://religion.videosift.com/member/EDD) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:40:49 -0700

(17 comments - 1769 views)
by Johann Hari via The Independent

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality?

Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

The election of Obama – a black man with an anti-conservative message – as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right's view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.

When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn't compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of "Drill, baby, drill" have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right's world-view – to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation – has swollen. Now it is all they can see.

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and – at the same time – that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue that he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.

These aren't fringe phenomena: a Research 200 poll found that a majority of Republicans and Southerners say Obama wasn't born in the US, or aren't sure. A steady steam of Republican congressmen have been jabbering that Obama has "questions to answer". No amount of hard evidence – here's his birth certificate, here's a picture of his mother heavily pregnant in Hawaii, here's the announcement of his birth in the local Hawaiian paper – can pierce this conviction.

This trend has reached its apotheosis this summer with the Republican Party now claiming en masse that Obama wants to set up "death panels" to euthanise the old and disabled. Yes: Sarah Palin really has claimed – with a straight face – that Barack Obama wants to kill her baby.

You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialised country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves – and 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being "killers" – and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.

The Republicans want to defend the existing system, not least because they are given massive sums of money by the private medical firms who benefit from the deadly status quo. But they can't do so honestly: some 70 per cent of Americans say it is "immoral" to retain a medical system that doesn't cover all citizens. So they have to invent lies to make any life-saving extension of healthcare sound depraved.

A few months ago, a recent board member for several private health corporations called Betsy McCaughey reportedly noticed a clause in the proposed healthcare legislation that would pay for old people to see a doctor and write a living will. They could stipulate when (if at all) they would like care to be withdrawn. It's totally voluntary. Many people want it: I know I wouldn't want to be kept alive for a few extra months if I was only going to be in agony and unable to speak. But McCaughey started the rumour that this was a form of euthanasia, where old people would be forced to agree to death. This was then stretched to include the disabled, like Palin's youngest child, who she claimed would have to "justify" his existence. It was flatly untrue – but the right had their talking-point, Palin declared the non-existent proposals "downright evil", and they were off.

It's been amazingly successful. Now, every conversation about healthcare has to begin with a Democrat explaining at great length that, no, they are not in favour of killing the elderly – while Republicans get away with defending a status quo that kills 18,000 people a year. The hypocrisy was startling: when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she encouraged citizens there to take out living wills. Almost all the Republicans leading the charge against "death panels" have voted for living wills in the past. But the lie has done its work: a confetti of distractions has been thrown up, and support is leaking away from the plan that would save lives.

These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".

This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and that all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

It's a shame, because there are some areas in which a conservative philosophy – reminding us of the limits of grand human schemes, and advising caution – could be a useful corrective. But that's not what these so-called "conservatives" are providing: instead, they are pumping up a hysterical fantasy that serves as a thin skin covering some raw economic interests and base prejudices.

For many of the people at the top of the party, this is merely cynical manipulation. One of Bush's former advisers, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as "nuts" as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe this stuff. They are being tricked into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured – and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn't laugh; I wanted to weep.

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" – which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

Up to now, Obama has not responded well to this onslaught of unreason. He has had a two-pronged strategy: conciliate the elite economic interests, and joke about the fanatical fringe they are stirring up. He has (shamefully) assured the pharmaceutical companies that an expanded healthcare system will not use the power of government as a purchaser to bargain down drug prices, while wryly saying in public that he "doesn't want to kill Grandma". Rather than challenging these hard interests and bizarre fantasies aggressively, he has tried to flatter and soothe them.

This kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only be overruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people or the greediest constituencies. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens."

However strange it seems, the Republican Party really is spinning off into a bizarre cult who believe Barack Obama is a baby-killer plotting to build death panels for the grannies of America. Their new slogan could be – shrill, baby, shrill.

- EDD

So Here I am again..... What about Love?

NobleOne (http://religion.videosift.com/member/NobleOne) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:23:17 -0700

(25 comments - 385 views)
I have been thinking of this long and hard. Since my last post Atheism WTF? To me many things were put into perspective for me though didn't change that i believe in something that can't be expained but i have another question regarding the fake man in the sky. For all those that believe that God could be nothing but a figment of your imagination or an illusion of humanity. Then how do you explain Love? Is love nothing more the eating alot of chocolate or a chemical imbalance in the brain? We all know love unless you are a mass murder or sociopathy. I would figure that most of you have family or wife/husband and they love you if this is so then why or how? Why does Love even exist?

- NobleOne

Best Yahoo Questions Ever

rottenseed (http://douchebag.videosift.com) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:57:13 -0700

(14 comments - 955 views)
straight from here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081226174833AA5LmiA

I'm concerned that my son has a secret girlfriend?
My 17 year old son has been very secretive with me lately, recently he has started to refuse to go to church with the family and tonight when I was going through his room I found a magazine with naked men in it. He obviously has a girlfriend that he is hiding from me that brought that magazine into my home and I am afraid they are having intercourse and I am greatly concerned that he is going to get her pregnant.

What should I do about this?

* 5 months ago

Additional Details
He is not a homosexual, we have taught him from the bible and he has learned though our church that this is not in God's plan. I will not teach him about condoms, that is unacceptable, we have always taught him about abstinence and that is what God and his future wife expects from him.

I want to speak to our pastor about this but I am very afraid of what he would think we are teaching our son if he things we are allowing him to sneak a girl into his bedroom. That is clearly inappropriate and we are good parents, I am very afraid what he will think of us.

I feel really bad for what this young man is going through

- rottenseed

Doctor who performed abortions shot to death 5-31-09

JiggaJonson (http://religion.videosift.com/member/JiggaJonson) — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:01:49 -0700

(21 comments - 704 views)
RECENT UPDATE 6/2/09:Kansas prosecutors have brought murder and assault charges against the man suspected of killing Wichita physician George Tiller, whose women's clinic was a frequent target of protests against abortion.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/02/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Some interesting coverage in that story as well:
'Tiller practiced medicine for nearly 40 years. Most of his patients were grappling with pregnancies that were "fatally or catastrophically complicated by medical problems," Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and a friend, said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."

"The many women who come for late abortions, in fact, have desperate circumstances with a desired pregnancy," he said. "They want to have a baby, not an abortion."'

(CNN) -- Dr. George Tiller, whose Wichita, Kansas, women's clinic has been the target of anti-abortion protests for years, was shot and killed at his church Sunday morning, his attorneys said.
Dr. George Tiller was one of the few U.S. physicians that performed late-term abortions.

Dr. George Tiller was one of the few U.S. physicians that performed late-term abortions.

Laura Shaneyfelt, an attorney with the firm of Monnat and Spurrier, confirmed Tiller's death to CNN.

The 67-year-old doctor was one of the few U.S. physicians who still performed late-term abortions. He survived a 1993 shooting outside his clinic.

Wichita police said they were searching for a powder-blue Ford Taurus in connection with the killing, which took place outside Reformation Lutheran Church shortly after 10 a.m.

Witnesses provided a license number of the car the killer used to speed away from the church, police spokesman Gordon Bassham said.

Abortion is one of the hottest buttons in U.S. politics, with opponents arguing the practice is tantamount to the murder of an unborn child. Abortion rights supporters argue the decision to terminate a pregnancy is best left to the woman.

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which has led numerous demonstrations at Tiller's clinic, condemned the shooting as a "cowardly act."

"Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice," the group said in a statement. It offered its prayers for Tiller's family, "that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

In March, Tiller was acquitted of 19 counts of performing procedures unlawfully at his clinic. In 2008, a probe initiated by abortion opponents who petitioned state authorities to convene a grand jury ended without charges.

On its Web site, Operation Rescue refers to Tiller as a "monster" who has "been able to get away with murder." And Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who is no longer affiliated with the group, called Tiller "a mass murderer."

"We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God," Terry said in a written statement. "I am more concerned that the Obama administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder, and we still must call abortion by its proper name."

The 1993 attack on Tiller left him wounded through both arms. An ardent foe of abortion, Shelley Shannon, was convicted of attempted murder and is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for the shooting.

If Tiller was slain because of his work, he would be the fourth U.S. physician killed by abortion opponents since 1993. In addition, a nurse at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic was maimed and an off-duty police officer was killed in a 1998 bombing by Eric Rudolph, who included abortion among his list of anti-government grievances.

Rudolph admitted to that attack and three other bombings -- including the 1996 attack on the Olympic games in Atlanta, Georgia -- and is serving life in prison.

-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------

Latest Update:

Eyewitness News has confirmed the suspect in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller is in custody in the Kansas City area. Wichita police say the man was arrested near Gardner, KS at around 2:00 Sunday afternoon.

Wichita Police are hosting a news conference on the shooting at 4:00 pm today. Look for live coverage here.

Stay with Eyewitness News for further updates.

Police say Tiller's body was removed from the church at 12:30 Sunday afternoon. The FBI is involved in the investigation.

Nationwide alert issued for car and suspect description.

Further Update: Wichita residents are planning to mourn the death of Dr. George Tiller, as well as remember his triumphs, at Old Town Square tonight at 8pm. Although some in attendance may bring signs, the vigil is intended to be a peaceful gathering to show support for Tiller's family and friends.

Original link:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/
Update from local news: http://www.kwch.com/global/story.asp?s=10451609

- JiggaJonson

Scientology on Trial in France

JiggaJonson (http://religion.videosift.com/member/JiggaJonson) — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:05:15 -0700

(13 comments - 451 views)
An anonymous reader sends word that a trial has opened in Paris that could shut down Scientology in France. The organization stands accused of targeting vulnerable people for commercial gain. Scientology does not have the status of a religion there, as it does in the US, and anti-cult groups have pursued it vigorously over more than 30 years. The current case is based on complaints filed by two women in December 1998 and July 1999. Three other former members who had initially joined the complaint have withdrawn after "reaching a financial arrangement with church officials." If convicted, the seven top Scientologists in France face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of €1M. The Church of Scientology-Celebrity Centre and its Scientology Freedom Space bookshop not only face a much larger fine but also run the risk of being shut down completely.

From Slashdot http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/26/2111214&from=rss

- JiggaJonson

Atheism WTF?

NobleOne (http://religion.videosift.com/member/NobleOne) — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:19:13 -0700

(60 comments - 840 views)
So this question has been brewing in my head for awhile now and watching this video http://www.videosift.com/video/A-Jew-Christian-and-Muslim-were-walking-through-a-desert I decided to vent or ask the question. What the fuck sift? I don't mean this in the i am pissed i want to smash this jim beam bottle over your head but more like your my best friend that just fucked my ex that is a whore; now lets go get a beer. I myself am an agnostic in my belief structure. Though it seems to me that Atheism runs free range all over this site and i am not against that. I believe in the free exchange of ideas. It leaves me to just wonder WTF? and am i the only person that has any belief?

- NobleOne

The Crusade for a Christian US Military

Farhad2000 (http://farhad.videosift.com) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:20:10 -0700

(2 comments - 847 views)
An extract from "Jesus Killed Mohammed" http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

As a whole, the military is actually slightly less religious than the general population: 20 percent of the roughly 1.4 million active-duty personnel checked off a box for a 2008 Department of Defense survey that says “no religious preference,” compared with the 16.1 percent of Americans who describe themselves as “unaffiliated.” These ambivalent soldiers should not be confused with the actively irreligious, though. Only half of one percent of the military accepts the label “atheist” or “agnostic.” (Jews are even scarcer, accounting for only one servicemember in three hundred; Muslims are just one in four hundred.) Around 22 percent, meanwhile, identify themselves as affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations. But that number is misleading. It leaves out those attached to the traditional mainline denominations—about 7 percent of the military—who describe themselves as evangelical; George W. Bush, for instance, is a Methodist. Among the 19 percent of military members who are Roman Catholics, meanwhile, there is a small but vocal subset who tend politically to affiliate with conservative evangelicals. And then there is the 20 percent of the military who describe themselves simply as “Christian,” a category that encompasses both those who give God little thought and the many evangelicals who reject denominational affiliation as divisive of the Body of Christ. “I don’t like ‘religion,’” a fundamentalist evangelical major told me. “That’s what put my savior on the cross. The Pharisees.”

Within the fundamentalist front in the officer corps, the best organized group is Officers’ Christian Fellowship, with 15,000 members active at 80 percent of military bases and an annual growth rate, in recent years, of 3 percent. Founded during World War II, OCF was for most of its history concerned mainly with the spiritual lives of those who sought it out, but since 9/11 it has moved in a more militant direction. According to the group’s current executive director, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bruce L. Fister, the “global war on terror”—to which Obama has committed 17,000 new troops in Afghanistan—is “a spiritual battle of the highest magnitude.” As jihad has come to connote violence, so spiritual war has moved closer to actual conflict, “continually confronting an implacable, powerful foe who hates us and eagerly seeks to destroy us,” declares “The Source of Combat Readiness,” an OCF Scripture study prepared on the eve of the Iraq War.

But another OCF Bible study, “Mission Accomplished,” warns that victory abroad does not mean the war is won at home. “If Satan cannot succeed with threats from the outside, he will seek to destroy from within,” asserts the study, a reference to “fellow countrymen” both in biblical times and today who practice “spiritual adultery.” “Mission Accomplished” takes as its text Nehemiah 1–6, the story of the “wallbuilder” who rebuilt the fortifications around Jerusalem. An outsider might misinterpret the wall metaphor as a sign of respect for separation of church and state, but in contemporary fundamentalist thinking the story stands for just the opposite: a wall within which church and state are one. “With the wall completed the people could live an integrated life,” the study argues. “God was to be Lord of all or not Lord at all.” So it is today, “Mission Accomplished” continues, proposing that before military Christians can complete their wall, they must bring this “Lord of all” to the entire armed forces. “We will need to press ahead obediently,” the study concludes, “not allowing the opposition, all of which is spearheaded by Satan, to keep us from the mission of reclaiming territory for Christ in the military.”

- Farhad2000

Homosexuality and religion summed up

rasch187 (http://rasch187.videosift.com) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:53:47 -0700

(6 comments - 666 views)

The crappy comic sans typography is my work. Made by this guy.

- rasch187