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Taliesan

Published Letters: 1186
Editor's Choice: 20

Thursday, December 6, 2007 08:45 AM
Original article: Away in an awesome manger

Shit, you really don't see it?

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.

But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,

Crying like a fire in the sun.

Kid with gun crying - remind you of any pictures from, say, Vietnam?

Look out the saints are comin' through

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

US soldiers are coming through, and the refrain, which references America's loss of innocence.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.

Take what you have gathered from coincidence.

Leave your homes, keep off the roads, and take what belongings you have with you (IE: Evacuate.)

The empty-handed painter from your streets

Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.

The painter on your street, is dying a horrible painful death, and bleeding all over your sheets.

This sky, too, is folding under you

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

References the bombing campaign, and again the loss of innocence.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.

All your reindeer armies, are all going home.

Your armies have lost, and they are coming home.

The lover who just walked out your door

Has taken all his blankets from the floor.

The carpet, too, is moving under you

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Gee isn't this shocking.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.

Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.

Pretty self expanatory.

The vagabond who's rapping at your door

Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.

References the general poor treatment of the returning soldier.

Strike another match, go start anew

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

And the expectation that he should just get over what he had to do over in Vietnam.

Friday, December 7, 2007 01:21 AM

Hornet

Hassan Ngeze - Muslim. Leader of one of the two groups that caused the Rwandan genocide.

Jerry Robert Kajuga's religious views are unknown.

Ratko Mladić, who lead the Srebrenica Massacre, named his child after Saint Stefan, which makes him pretty clearly Christian. (An Atheist may name their kid Patrick, but not AFTER, Saint Patrick.)

And the Janjaweed are Muslim

In India, the 2002 Gujarat riots were religiously based, and led by rightwing Hindus.

Stalin, Mao, they were bad people. Religion wouldn't have stopped them being bad people. In fact, it may have just made them worse (Stalin, prior to losing his religion, considered becoming a priest.)

Friday, December 7, 2007 01:51 AM

Jon Dubya, it will come when

...religious people recognise that their beliefs can be wrong.

It is the central reason why religion cannot be open minded - it teaches that there is one universal truth and it has the answers.

Science, on the other hand, teaches that we don't have the answers, most of the stuff we think we know is wrong, and that until we can prove something we should be very careful of actually accepting it as fact.

Atheism is not a denial of the gods, it is a denial of our belief in the gods. Should the evidence mount up going against our basic assumption of there being no gods, our beliefs will mostly shift accordingly (Though whether we follow those gods is another question entirely.)

Now atheists are generally quite angry. It is because of assholes like Hornet, or like the various christianists out there who seem to think atheism equals immorality when the only movement I can think of seriously dedicated to bringing about the end of the world I can think of - the Rapturist movement - is, in fact, religious.

Morality has no basis in religion. The Bible does not tell us to not engage in slavery, it does not tell us to not engage in torture, it does not tell us to treat other races as equals.

Nor are people who aren't Christians less moral (Just look up some jail statistics for example.)

This is not to say that Christians are less moral than atheists, but rather simply that we are not moral people because someone up there decided to tell us to be moral.

We are moral because we have advanced towards empathy, towards caring about each other - without the need for an eternal punishments. We are moral because we have started to look beyond holy books to find our moral mores.

We are moral because we don't need God to be moral.

Friday, December 7, 2007 02:24 AM
Original article: The accidental heretic

Look, Ultra-Christian types

You feel threatened by a lot of things.

You feel threatened by atheists actually defending their lack of belief.

You feel threatened by scientific advances.

You feel threatened by birth control.

You feel threatened by a British comedy called "The Life of Brian."

You feel threatened by a statue of Jesus being made out of chocolate.

You feel threatened by the Jews in Israel actually pointing out the truth about the Church during WWII.

You feel threatened by role playing games.

You feel threatened by a fantasy trilogy about your religion possibly being a bad thing.

Maybe you should just stop feeling threatened and stop believing if that's how fragile your faith is.

Friday, December 7, 2007 03:49 AM

danielgrove

Tolerance needs to be on both sides before it even becomes a valid argument.

Right now we have religious people who feel nothing about claiming atheists are amoral, untrustworthy, cowardly and illogical simply because we tell the truth about our beliefs in the face of massive, opressive bigotry founded on beliefs which are not backed by any evidence by people who seek to bribe their way past the pearly gates.

We are the victims of projection, pure and simple.

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