He also says this in his letter:

To show how deluded some people can be.

Here is an individual who wrote an almost incoherent LTTE in a small newspaper about whether incest should be legalized or not. I don't see any evidence of delusions, but he does seem quite confused and he clearly has his facts wrong about some things.

Do you know him or something?

He claims to read the Bible, but he misses the message about Lot and his daughters. He thinks incest is condemned in the Bible, but Lot and his daughters remained in God's good graces.

I suppose I can't blame him, the Bible has so many contradictions and outright passages of evil, that one can be deluded into thinking it has a moral compass.

His point is really weakly made, but what he says is that incest is the most often mentioned sexual prohibition in the bible.

I don't know, but i suspect that is true.

The bible is indeed full of contradictions and some pretty ugly passages. It is also full of some consistencies and passages of love and peace.

I guess if you have impaired reading comprehension and can only see some parts of it, you might be deluded into thinking it provides nothing for anyone.

Usury is another thing condemned in the Bible in many instances. When was the last time you saw a group of bible thumpers protesting outside a bank?

without the vaguest notion of what the realities are.

Here are some images for you. If you need more, don't hesitate to let me know. They are more than you can count.

Bible thumpers protesting outside a bank:

No one is proposing laws against usury.

One of the things they are protesting is most certainly usury. What does that have to do with laws?

This also gets my hackles up. I respond directly to your statement with facts, but you won't just concede that. You completely and utterly change the goalposts to something else.

It's ridiculous.

That was a legitimate post. cbayer scores!

Will wonders never cease.

Were there theists involved? yes. But OWS was and is a left-anarchist movement with no religious component. It certainly doesn't ban the religious from participating, it just is not in any sense a movement with any religious affiliation. Unlike for example the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's which clearly had religious organizations in prominent leadership positions.

Why, no. That's because it was irrelevant.

unlike believers, who can rarely participate in anything without telling you about how they're doing it for god, or their church.

Were they doing it because it wasthe right thing to do? Or because they were trying to score points with their invisible overlord? We may never know

There is nothing about atheism that speaks to either OWS or to capitalism.

There is, however, a nexus between certain religious social teachings and the aims of Occupy.

You've got a lot of faith in people, obviously, to think they wouldn't know how to behave in the absence of Superman or whatever.

Then there's this:

"There is, however, a nexus between certain religious social teachings and the aims of Occupy."

The above statement would be just as true if the word "religious" were deleted.

/s

don't protest banks? How narrow do your blinders have to be to be completely unaware of the pope's position on financial institutions?

Now there was a group opposed to usury, and they had no public connection to any religion. That is not to say that there weren't people of faith in the crowd, just a reiteration of the statement that you don't need religion to do good. Meanwhile, the major mouthorgans of religion side with Wall St.

There were strong, highly organized and very vocal religious people and groups involved in OWS. In some areas, they were the driving force behind much of the activity (see Los Angeles/Pomona).

You asked when religious people protested banks and I have you clear and unquestionable examples of that happening, but you still won't concede the point.

Do you not see how your beliefs, which are based on faith, are blinding you to the reality of why is really going on?

Who do you consider the major mouthorgans of religion? Gene Robinson? Al Sharpton? Jimmy Carter? Bill Moyers? William Barber?

That is just the beginning and it's only includes the christians who are leaders.

Seriously, you have just made another statement with no justification in fact.

You and David Silverman making up facts as you go along and making statements that are completely without merit are not doing your cause any good at all. Quite the contrary.

going on here. Maybe even "delusion.&quot c)

Usually in regards the bible. I get that. But a question - what are your concepts of "good"? In what context?

One obviously requires the other to an extent, imo. Some say they are two sides of one coin, heads or tails so to speak. That aside, what do you see as "good"?

Obviously there is much consensus as to what constitutes good and evil. I don't really need to define them, and I think it is disingenuous to ask me to. What you are really asking is, isn't there also good in the Bible? Yes, but those same sentiments were around before Moses. The Golden Rule, society's prohibition to murder and theft, common decency among one's neighbors. all of these were part of humanity's code. What the Bible and most other religions bring to the table, are odious laws regarding homophobia, misogyny, and slavery. Also there is something I also consider evil, and that is the belief in imaginary beings, and the laws protecting them. Where is the harm? As I said elsewhere, the denial of reality is harmful to human progress.

what you find good in the world or your life. Something other than a focus on evil, whether specifically or in general. I think you touched on it in your comment - "The Golden Rule, society's prohibition to murder and theft, common decency among one's neighbors."

I concur with those precepts - the Golden Rule, an established standard that prohibits murder and theft, and support for common decency among one's neighbors.

Thanks for your post.

Things that are good: Music, art, literature. Three things that are often censored by religion.

have some basis or reference to religion. Architecture, as well. Good pieces, all. Some recognized as great, moving expressions in our histories.

How do you know what music, art, literature, or architecture we might have had without religion? Might have been even more beautiful or expressive. We just don't know.

Despite the actual evidence that exists.

From the middle ages to the rennaisance, the church was the main keeper of wealth, thus the main patronage of the arts. Michelangelo needed the job painting the Sistine Chapel. The local carpenters union couldn't afford to have him paint their hall. Same with liturgical music. Bishops paid better.

The artists they sponsored were not allowed to express themselves freely and without constraint. I like a lot of religious music, especially Bach, but I like that heathen rock and roll better.

Fodder for grandfathers whose grandsons like anime.

meant to ridicule whatever point you were trying to make. Of course true artists will create great art regardless of their sponsorship, but they will always do even greater work when they are left to pursue their art freely.

Much harder.

One has only to look at the Tres Riches and Tres Belles Heures commissioned by Jean de Berry to realize that medieval and renaissance magnates spent huge sums on art. Royal and noble courts regularly maintained one or more official artists--Clouet, Holbein, the Master of Mary of Burgundy. etc.

it stopped being mostly about religion. Imagine that.

The period following the Council of Trent--aka the Counterreformation-- was the time when the Catholic Church exerted the greatest.control over religious art. It was also a time when portraiture flourished and still lifes and genre painting spread and took on even more importance than they had acquired in the Flemish schools. Women painters came into prominence, and feminist art was born.

Facts, Warren. They're important.

Bummer, that.

Indeed as the roman church lost its strangle hold things did open up.

just because you flunked Greek. Go for Wikipedia Studies.

Now let's see if you can take the next step, from theory to practice.

Often censored by religion?

and right-wing fundie nutjob politicians named for disgusting but frothy substances?

and prominently featured incest, at least within its royal dynasties.

Only the Chinese come close in terms of longevity. Then again, as we know from that historically accurate text, "the bible", a bunch of enslaved nomadic goat herders taught the Egyptians everything they knew about being civilized.

you read some of the best for pointers. Many are really good and at times, on point. Off the top of my head I can think of Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain. Will Rogers had some very good ones. There are many others but I think you get my drift.

Surely not for discussion purposes. It's a facile knee jerk back and forth. I guess we'd probably agree on that. I'm going to keep that in mind and avoid it.

For some reason - "a bunch of enslaved nomadic goat herders taught the Egyptians everything they knew about being civilized" - pushed a button. I didn't quite get the point, still don't.

Was it that incest occurred among both groups - the Egyptian royalty and "a bunch of goat herders"? I felt that label was simplistic and dismissive, hence my response.

Otherwise, I agree. Incest has been noted among many ruling classes over time to hold on to the familial reigns of power.

part of that fairy tale includes the "historically accurate because you can't prove it absolutely 100% didn't happen" "fact" that Moishe et al taught the Egyptians stuff like "how to store grain" and other things they were too stupid to figure out themselves.

Save for excerpts that were brought up by the priest in the passage reading during the mass and tied in to the day's homily. Otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot of rote bible education thing in my church. The focus was basically a re-enactment of the last supper.

Go into any Catholic church in the world and there will be pictures in line around the church depicting the "stations of the cross". The Catholic mass replays that 52 weeks a year, save for a few exceptions.

at some point you start actually thinking about the ludicrous bullshit being spewed.

I actually like an old high mass. It's "sung" as a back and forth in Latin. Beautiful. And long. But when I was a church goer, regular was 45 minutes.

That was Joseph, Warren, not Moses.

You just don't know your Exodus.

From what you posted, I suspect that teh rest was about public acceptance of homosexuality being a slippery slope, yes?

...as to what prompted them have even written the letter in the first place. Who the fuck just decides to write their local newspaper on the topic of incest?

And instead of evaluating where it was they themselves had gone wrong, simply assumed an epidemic of teh incests had swept into town along with that demonic rock and/or roll music.

Everything was just fine in West Pigsknuckle, Arkansas... until Kevin Bacon showed up and started dancing. Now all the kids are listening to hip hop, doing drugs, and banging their siblings. Get thee behind me, Satan!