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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The story is even more interesting if you consider that It was a trap.
The trap is this: under the Roman occupation, the power of capital punishment was reserved by the Romans for themselves. All capital cases had to be referred to the Roman authorities and the sentence had to be approved before it could be carried out. This is why the Pharisees later brought Jesus to Pontius Pilate to be crucified, instead of killing him themselves. So Jesus’ enemies figured they could trap Him in a dilemma by presenting Him with a clear-cut case where the Jewish Law demanded the death penalty by public stoning. If Jesus deferred to the Romans, He discredited Himself as a Teacher of the Law. If He condoned the stoning, the Romans would consider Him an insurrectionist and put Him to death. Either way, they thought, He couldn’t win. He would either lose His credibility or His life; either way, He would be silenced.
If the story is true, he played the right hand.
You see a big problem is, There was more to Jesus than the nice soft side. He also condemned entire villages to fates worst than Sodom, for not liking his preaching. And in the end the NT,leaves us with the worst of inheritances. It creates the single most horrific and sadistic idea to come from the Abrahamic religions (although, no doubt taken from the Zorastarians)...Eternal damnation in Hell.
Sorry if that took too much magic out of the story.
Of course, I don't what He is doing the rest of the time./
Look hear Bill: what if God was one of us. Just a stranger on a bus. Trying to make Her way home. Huh, i think you may have overlooked that part of the story. You know, on earth like in heaven and everything.
And speaking of heaven on earth Bill, I kinda like your HBO show. ... especially, your rather wry (rye?) sense of political 'pop' culture. woot. A little rash sometimes, but your political instincts seem reasonable at times.
I will say, my main problem with 'judging', Bill, is the 'lest ye be judged' part. yikes. Of course a feller is gonna judge anyway Bill, you know that, who told you couldn't? Besides, the faith of no man can be conditioned by anyone but his-self. (*& don't believe a word you hear ... unless of course it's true.)
Now, comes the plaintiff, Bill, who says Jesus ain't nothing but a fairy tale. Maybe, Bill, but The greater, overwhelming, Preponderence of scientific evidence is that Jesus was, indeed, a real, live human being Who walked the face of the earth. In fact, to argue otherwise is rather silly, not mention to unreasonable. ...so, what you talking bout' son. Are you daft?
Allah is great,
bahhummingbug
ps. I don't know about 'talking snakes', but have you ever been to a 'snake handler' meeting? They talk "to" snakes ... and, I swear, it seems to work like a charm. Hard to believe, but there it is.
You are right, many wars are not overtly about religion. The priests/preachers on both sides just bless the soldiers and tell them God is on their side.
However, some wars are specifically or at least ideologically religious. I think war is mostly an economic issue, and NOT a philisophic ones. So the Crusades were wars against Islam, but perhaps to pick up some booty and strengthen the Catholic Church. Much of the recent fighting in the 'former' Yugoslavia was nationalist, but also religoius-based nationalism. We can't, of course, forget Northern Ireland, where religions are a stand-in for nationalism and imperialism.
The 30 Years War was one of Protestants against Catholics. Fascists in Eastern Europe under the Nazis were mostly Catholics - and of course, what do you think right-wing Catholics thought of Jews in those days? The war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was of Muslims against secularists. Within Iraq right now, the fight is between varieties of Muslim, with another potential fight versus Kurds, who are Sunni, but also Shiite and Zoroasterism, Bahai, etc. I.E. national identity is many times glued together with religious identity, and as a result, religion and nationalism are one - a dangerous combination by the way.
What Mahr is referring to now is the jihadist views of part of the Islamic world, and the Christian-soldier views of part of the U.S. Christians - including Bush and Palin. We certainly know the fundamentalist Jews in Israel want war against the Palestinians, and visa versa - and this way of looking at the world has now been spread by the Bush family. I.E. religion right now is becoming MORE of an issue... in case you missed that. Which is why atheism has become more aggressive in dealing with this resurgence.
Back on his ABC show, Maher had (retired) Episcopal Bishop Spong on, at least once that I remember; he's the kind of intelligent, questioning, religious adherent who wouldn't draw Maher's scorn. The episode I remember, Spong basically eviscerated one of those interchangable fundamentalist Republican cutsie-pie spokesgirls in one sentence, calling her beliefs idiotic. Mahers was pleased, as was I.
And I'm not anti-religious, anti-Christian, anti-faith, or the antiChrist; what I am is antiidiot. No, not even that; what I am against is idiots in positions where they wield power in service of their idiocy, whether that idiocy is religious, scientific, financial, managerial, or political in nature.
Furthermore, this fundamentalist nonsense is hardly the return to that "old fashioned religion" it claims to be, nor is the combination of faith with questioning any kind of new fangled heresy. The great religious figures of the past, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition which I have studied with all the depth of my required humanities option in college, were clearly heavily invested in interpreting the scriptures and the thoughts of those who preceded themselves, and would have been much more at home with Spong's current dismissal of virgin birth as nonsense than Spong's victim's ingenuous Biblical literalism warped into the service of her prejudices.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
