ppatt

I am mixed on their format. Each commenter acts as if they are having their own little private audience with the "famous person" and there is little interaction. That kind of sucks. I even posted once and tried to engage someone and it's kind of like talking to a stranger on an NYC streetcorner -- first they can't believe you are doing it and second they don't respond. That's actually sad.

It got a little better when they added the feature so that commenters could apply to one another.

Still I feel like I am praying to a statue of Buddha or something because the poster never interacts with the blogger. That is very artificial.

I've comments in 3-4 blogs there over the last 6 months, most during Christmas holidays. I do appreciate the differences between there and here.

I also spent some time at http://www.mahablog.com . Barbara O'Brien (maha) is driven and brilliant (well, maybe just super-motivated) and her sidekick Moonbat is good too. She has the same burr in her saddle about religion that I do. She makes no bones about it though -- it is her site and her way or the highway. She presses people who slam a comment without engaging the substance of the points they are slamming to spit out their points or they are booted. I can't say that I disagree with her assesment of which people are unwilling to engage in sincere dialog...she'd 100% on that count. The stern demeanor and lack of patience I can do without. Mud and some others would not last 1 post there.

What bugged me though is if you embellished her points or if something triggered another thought then you remarked and it seemed slightly OT to her she'd be there right in your face. I forgot what it was but I had not been clear about something and she wrote "If you mean this you are an asshole". I was flummoxed and tried to come up with a snappy comeback that was not too hostile. She's incredibly controlling and her sense of humor is severly challenged. I replied "I vote not an asshole" then clarified. She took the fun out of it.

However, her content and discussion are a cut above most anything else I've vound intellectually speaking. Members cannot start threads there. You just have to like what she writes enough to hang. She had a series called The Wisdom of Doubt that really went after the entire fundie schtick that was incredible.

So there's all sorts of places out there. Something for everyone and every mood. You're right though, this place (as was the Maher board) is more fun.

I am also going to check out a board dsolo knows about, Rumbleville.

L8R dude.

CosmicRocker

It's not religion, it's the way religion works it's way into public policy.

I saw an interview on CNN with Huckabee.
The anchor asked abou the abstinence program in sex ed.
She pointed out that abstinence only was not an efective way to curb pregnancy (stats);
She asked if it is not wise to include contraceptive teaching too.

Huckabee completey ducked the issue - instead rambled on about morality in government.

These things matter, and if religion is used as a way to design policy - we are living in a theocracy
posted 12/24/2007 at 22:06:32

__________________

If I live to see the seven wonders
I'll make a path to the rainbow's end
I'll never live to match the beauty again
The rainbow's end
( "7 Wonders" - Tango in the Night)

ppatt

Darn, I went OT in my own thread. I will punish myself.

There was one good quote in the miles of reply to Ridley, attributed to Thomas Jefferson:

Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

I added that Jefferson must have been afraid of the Baby Jesus too.

That entire post was the backdrop to a visit to my parents, with all siblings and their kids (28 in all). The hardest part was this whole Christianity schtick which included 5 minute long blessings at the dinner table as a younger brother and brother-in-law (a Methodist minister) did some competitive praying at successive meals. The blessing started simple but each one got longer and longer, up to 5 minutes but seemed like hours. Finally I declared the winner (preacher lost), adding that size does matter in the eyes of God.

But before Christmas dinner I did notice that no woman was ever asked to give the blessing. It had become an exclusively male club. I pointed this out and preacher boy offered it to my wife, but in a sort of intimidating way and she declined.

They stopped asking me long ago.

I really do believe in live and let live but something has snapped inside me in recent years. The piety of it all makes me sick. My brother attends a fundie Presbyterian megachurch in Birmingham. Coincidentally enough, two members of that Church were scamees (is that a word) in the Borat movie. Remember the scene at the antebellum mansion dinner (something like the manners society) where there was a minister, his wife and some other people? Sorry, I sidetracked myself.

A Bush supporter, my brother refuses to talk politics, but that makes it all the worse for me, the juxtaposition of all that righteousness with support fo a psychopath. Rightly or wrongly, I take his inability to discuss as a superiority thing. I do not know what makes all fundies tick but in my brothers case he just wants to fit in. He was no rebel like me. At every turn in life he tried to figure out what a good person would do and what would get him the greatest amount of acceptance from those around him. He does have analytical skills (he's an attorney) but they are applied selectively to the extreme. I marvel at his ability to compartmentalize what to me, are contradictions of such magnitude that they could never escape notices from even the most ignorant among us.

Let's just say that on the way to adulthood he abdicated most of his chances to think for himself, instead letting the Lord to most of his talking and thinking for him.

So, not knowing what's good for me I show the family "Its a blunderful life", a takeoff on the Jimmy Steward Christmas story with similar sounding name. well, that one went over like a fart in church. Judge the humor and propriety for yourself:

It's a Blunderful Life

Well, my Mom did laugh but she was careful not to do it in front of my fundie brother. My comment on the fast-moving, widespread and sudden loss of humor was that "as soon as you let one elephant in the living room there suddenly becomes room for many more elephants".

I lamented the fact that we'd been unable to discuss politics civilly like the Kennedys who would take some issue or world even each night as dinner table conversation. My Mom snapped that "we arent the Kennedys and that she was going to turn into an elephant on the rampage in a moment if I did not lay off." I found somewhere to go and read away from the fray.

It was an interesting holiday. Something about all the solemnity and piety just gets my panties in a wad and it gets worse every year. I can tolerate this outside my family but when people whose every quirk and foible I know well start doing the holy thing by wearing the chip of faith on their shoulder something in me makes me want to knock it off.

I had that stuff crammed down my throat since the womb. In some ways I understand and agree but when it comes to the freaky, delisional things people do in the name of organized religion, I'd sooner spit on Baby Jesus than join in with a straight face.

Life can be so ironic. Amidst all this religious frenzy, before I'd left for CA I shared the results of my recent Internet research, that the Pattillos were former slave owners and that is the reason that so many blacks share ouw name. That was in response to my father having researched the family tree back to Scotland, but his version left out the slave part.


I suppose I'm a hard case.

ppatt

Good one. People here don't beat around the Bush as they do at HuffPo and I appreicate that.

Gaia

>>>> Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. <<<<

Now there's a saying, I can get behind!

I enjoyed reading your post! especially the part of leaving out women giving the blessings. Which makes Monotheism an unnatural Theology, because it supresses/denies, the sacred feminine which, in concert with the masculine, is the natural order of this planet. The masculine and feminine have to be in balance - and are in most living creatures - exept in monotheistic "teachings" and those who follow them. The Men are the "Masters of the Universe", and Women are nothing more than Servants, catering to all their needs and whims. It is so with Fundie Sects, anyway.


PS: How does one insert a smilie? I can't figure out how that works.

Environment Man

Just click on the emoticons to your right when you Reply.

ppatt

You've touched on a favorite topic of mine. Carter had a lot to say about hierarchical, male dominated religious cults in his book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. How could any thinking man with a daughter not be concerned?

There was not a single rebel or free thinker among my 3 sisters and they suffered for it with respect to self-confidence, career and self-esteem. The unspoken rule that firmly cemented the status quo was that you just don't question or discuss certain things, among them politics and religion (thus my elephant in the living room remarks). However, I never miss a chance to make up for lost time.

Much to the chagrin of my sisters, I recount a story of how I bought some black baby dolls and went around whitebread neighborhoods replacing baby Jesus in the manger scenes with black babies. I engaged 10-14 year old nephews in the Christmas parable of how Christian conservatives falsely claimed that the USPS was keeping the Madonna stamps behind the counter (like pornography !!!) so as not to offend the Muslims and the Jews, adding that a lie from Christians is still a lie. Moms cringed.

My mother got a self-image boost when she went back and finished college at 40. Then there was a short stint at selling real estate but my father freaked when he went out to a restaraunt in town and saw here there with other people.

Personally, I think that the taking of the role of spiritual leader, whether it be on the national scene or in the family always involves a certain element of not questioning the appointment and subsequent decisions in a way that intertiwnes the status quo with failth in such a way that those who question it are labeled heretics.

Within my family, I wear the label proudly.

On the other hand, I feel that there is often good done in the name of Christianity and it is just as wrong to attack them all and lump them into a single group as it is to be racist. I just know the Christians in my family. They all put their pants on one leg at a time and can sometimes be so full of their own BS that it can be a little hard to take. They start believing their own myths about themselves. There is always a fine line between "some" and "all" and an individual gives much away in the way their references to groups of people take shape.

My experience with churches is that groups of humans brought together in the name of Christ are no less susceptible to pettiness, being self-serving, hubris and bigotry than any other group. They can become even more intolerable when they go a long time believing their own BS and not being confronted with it.

Only two major religions recruit, Christianity and Islam. This whole thing about going to hell, not just if you reject Christ as your personal savior, but also if you were denied the opportunity to know him is too bitter a pill for me to swallow. In my last attempt at religion my wife and I were sequestered and shown a video by the associate minister that was freakishly cultish. An Egyptian airliner had mistakenly being shot down by US forces and a woman was lamenting that all those "poor people" were going to hell because they had never had the chance to know Jesus. I suppose that was the moder day equivalent of a Salem witch dunking. I don't think we passed.

Is there any doubt about why Christianity and Islam are now at war? The sad part is that they've done it in the name of America and the rest of us let them do it.

Having said that I can well understand what led Ghandi to make the following statement:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Environment Man

Oh? You're NEW.

ppatt

No, I was born a long time ago. Just kidding and oops, you were back on the smilie thing. Excuse me.

Environment Man

Yet you have only 17 posts. A mere neophytel A pup. Are you evolutionist or creationist? Declare yourself.