New Rule: If you blame Rita or Katrina on a deity, or say it is God's will

..because of the sinners/lesbians/gays/blacks you are a fucking retard and are banned FORTHWITH from public speaking, and must immediately relinquish any public posts you hold.

You must also report, IMMEDIATELY to a mental institution of OUR choosing (no faith-based bullshit here, pal) and receive regular, repeated electro-shock therapy to your gonads until such time as you learn to PERMANENTLY SHUT THE FUCK UP and get a grip on reality.

No. Scratch that, we're just going to zap you in the pills. Alot. Really alot.

Normally I'm a big fan of free-speech, but when you open your piehole and spew out non-sensical, religious bile, you make us ALL look bad, after all, you live in the same country that we do, and the rest of us know that it was Mother Nature that fucked-up the Deep South, not that invisible cloud-being you've been worshipping all these years.

You see, if there WAS a God those people would have been saved, all of them. (Well at least the ones that didn't spend their entire lives trying to fuck each other over for a lousy buck, those ones are called 'republicans'.)But you know that there isn't really a God don't you? At least not like the one you talk about. You know, the God that hates women, and darkies, and ESPECIALLY fags...THAT God doesn't exist, does He?

Nope.

'Cos when the REAL God finally gets down here, you'd best be wearing some REALLY fast Nikes, 'cos you're going to be doing a whole heck of a lot of running...you, and Falwell, and Robertson, and the rest of you holier-than-thou bullshit artists are going to be in for a REALLY big surprise when the Big Cahuna gets down here...

Oh, and He's going to want to know where all that money you raised in His name went...And you REALLY don't want to fuck with His auditors...

have very much misinterpreted His Will and he is mad at them for not voting democrat.

In our enlightened age, we don't torture people just because they're mentally ill.

We torture them because they're Iraqi. Get it right.

"Goddess Is Coming and She Is Pissed."

When She gets here, I don't think even the fastest Nikes will save the Fundamentalists: one of the reasons this bumper sticker often makes them soil themselves in fear and fury -- in a manner of speaking, a funda-mental reaction.

I think that bumpersticker is shallow and silly. It may function as some sort counterpoint, but... an illogical one.

a standard Fundamentalist slogan: "Jesus Is Coming and He Is Angry" -- not just a bumpersticker but a huge banner often displayed in Fundamentalist churches and sometimes even across their entryways, especially during revivals.

It's simply a weak one because it is self-contradictory.

require doctrinal conformity, especially in something so picayune as a bumper sticker.

I assume your point is that Pagans generally believe the universe is the (infinite) physical body of the Goddess: "in the beginning was the Mother and she gave birth" -- and that therefore there can never be such separation as would permit the statement, "Goddess Is Coming." Agreed; the metaphysically accurate statement would be "Goddess Is Manifesting" -- but that would undermine the parody.

In rural life especially, function dictates form: therefore -- just as the scent from bundles of dog-hair is used to falsely suggest the close proximity of dogs and thereby frighten bear, deer and elk away from vegetable gardens -- so parody may be misleading if the misrepresentation is vital to fulfillment of the parody's purpose. Nor is parody bound by any poetic mandate of truth. Indeed parody often includes deliberate deception: the Goddess as "Fair Ellender"; the God as "John Barleycorn" -- smirks and chuckles at the Inquisition's expense. The Fundamentalist Christians targeted by "Goddess Is Coming" would never in a million years recognize -- much less understand -- the metaphysical distortion that makes the parody work.

Nevertheless the freedom to take (and allow) such liberties is directly proportional to the extent one is secure in one's own vision. The rural environment facilitates the spirit quest to an extent urbanites cannot fathom. Thus for many rural pagans today -- especially in genuinely wild places like the Pacific Northwest -- the universe as the body of the Goddess is not merely a matter of belief but of certain knowledge. People of knowledge have no need for doctrine -- and even less need for the oppressive (and self-oppressing) activity of enforcing doctrinal conformity.

Part of such wisdom is surely Taliesin's: "I know the star knowledge from before the worlds were born." But the corollary is Lao Tzu's: "If he does not laugh loudly, then it is not yet the true Tao."

Your effort at explaining the difference between my square approach and the dynamic value of the bumper sticker was really well done.

(I still think the meaning under the 'Goddess is coming...' metaphor could be expressed more universally - iow, with appeal beyond those who have an above-the-mean knowledge of Goddess worshiping religions!) :)

" People of knowledge have no need for doctrine -- and even less need for the oppressive (and self-oppressing) activity of enforcing doctrinal conformity."


btw-- where does one draw the line b/w "Mother Nature" and "invisible cloud being"? :evilgrin: (see above)