Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

T R E 4 5 O N

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Open Thread

Monday Open Thread

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Looks like we can use an open thread!

Someone posted a link to this in a post last night.  Titled God in therapy, or something like that.  I will probably go to hell for it, but I think this is really funny.  Religion is some weird shit.

Monday Open Thread 1

* Is that phrase the best thing we got from George W?

Totally open thread.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  5. 5.

    mapanghimagsik

    It is odd, and few religions don’t come out weird under that treatment.

    Funny how the one they’ll quibble about the most is the sex part

  8. 8.

    StringOnAStick

    I’m not a Christian mainly because I find the current incarnation of prosperity gospel and right wing churches intolerable; my Southern Baptist sister who refuses to acknowledge the existence of my Jewish husband simply because he’s Jewish is where I really walked 100% away.  I have friends who are mainline Protestants and I respect their beliefs, just as I expect them to leave me out of it.

    This cartoon is dead on accurate.  I would add that the symbol of a world religion being the torture device Jesus died on is really creepy when you see it as that.

  9. 9.

    cope

    @StringOnAStick: I think it was Lenny Bruce who had a line about “…if Christ had been born and killed in 20th Century U.S., the symbol of Christianity would be an electric chair”.

  10. 10.

    noncarborundum

    @StringOnAStick: As Lenny Bruce once said, if Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, people would be going around today wearing little electric chairs.

    ETA: missed by that much.

  11. 11.

    No One of Consequence

    @WaterGirl: In response to your question in the post:

    Well, “Now watch this drive.” is less cross-applicable and has less of a broader AnyHuman aspect.

    “Now that was some weird shit.”

    Most humans I know/have known could use that phrase multiple times a day and be pretty justified. From a subjective experience standpoint at least.

    Most humans I don’t know don’t pay that much attention. And some of the ones I DO know.

    -NOoC

  12. 12.

    karen gail

    Well, I thought it was funny!

    I got kicked out of summer bible camp (my grandmother thought it would be a great way for me to make friends) for asking inappropriate questions along with asking why “they” were the only ones who were going to heaven.

    “Men create gods in their own image” makes more sense than anything given that most religions have god as “male” and rarely ever mention that god could be female. And from my viewpoint those who create gods are not only weird but twisted.

  15. 15.

    StringOnAStick

    Whoever brought “Manchurian cantaloupe” to the conversation earlier has earned my praise!

  17. 17.

    CaseyL

    I know genuinely good people who love their religion, so I hesitate to say exactly what I think about it. Not just Christianity, and not just monotheism. All of it.

    To me, organized religion is a way of outsourcing your conscience: you have to trust the entities/institutions directing your moral/ethical decisions. And I just can’t do that.

    People who are benevolent, caring, compassionate, etc., I believe would be that way no matter what faith, if any, they professed. Meanwhile, the rotters – the fundamentalists, the faith healers, the prosperity gospelers, the zealot fanatics in general – all their religion gives them is a Get Out of Jail Free card, to be as awful as they can be, serenely sure God will forgive them their atrocities on their death beds.​

  19. 19.

    Frances

    Excuse me,  but immaculate conception was Mary. (I think her parents didn’t enjoy that particular act.) Jesus was miraculous conception. (Please don’t ask about the Y chromosome.)

  21. 21.

    Geo Wilcox

    @karen gail: I got in so much trouble in Catholic school in 4th grade for asking “If there were no people, would there be a god?” Straight to the principle’s office, parents called, the whole nine yards of bull shit. That’s when I knew they were full of it. Of course it helped that I read a comparative religion book laying around my house the previous summer break… after I’d read the whole encyclopedia.

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @CaseyL: I always wanted morality to work based on some rational axiomatic system. The thing is, every one I’ve ever heard of seems to lead to something abhorrent, unless it’s obviously got a thumb on the scale to rig it against abhorrence, and then why do you need the system in the first place? Interpret the utility function or whatever rigidly enough and you can make it behave like one of those evil computers that they kept finding running planetary societies on Sixties Star Trek. Quick, tell it a logical contradiction and make smoke come out!

    With regard to Christianity specifically, I actually get a little mad on behalf of Jesus. These bozos keep using his death as some kind of anti-Hell talisman while ignoring everything he said you were supposed to do.

  25. 25.

    Beisbol Hooligan

    @StringOnAStick: I would add that the symbol of a world religion being the torture device Jesus died on is really creepy when you see it as that.

    The pastor at my church (UCC, like the good RevRick) once gave a sermon on that very subject.

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Frances:

     Jesus was miraculous conception. (Please don’t ask about the Y chromosome.)

    ” ‘Conceived by the Holy Spirit’ in the words of the Apostles’ Creed. So the Holy Spirit contributed the Y chromosome.” – obvious response that I won’t claim to believe

  29. 29.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    My favorite back and forth on this is with an old friend (I’ve known her since she was 15 and used to proof some of her work over the years) who’s a prof at Univ of Helsinki who did her graduate work on the late Bronze Age Levant:

    Me:

    I’m really upset that we never got the FEMA reeducation camps for conservative white Christians that Obama promised us. This Bronze Age tribal goatherd apocalyptic death cult cannot wither away fast enough for me.

    Her:

    Strictly speaking, Christianity is an Iron Age apocalyptic death cult that grew out of an older Bronze Age goatherd tradition.

    Accuracy in offhand slurs is important.

    But strictly speaking Christianity is a Roman era apocalyptic death cult that grew out of Persian era apocalyptic death cults which grew out of Iron Age goatherd traditions that may contain some echoes of older Bronze Age tribal religions..

  31. 31.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Geo Wilcox: My sainted Dad was a minister, a pastor, a genuinely good guy.

    He and my mom screwed up my Christian beliefs by letting me read whatever the hell I wanted to.

  32. 32.

    lowtechcyclist

    Here in southern Maryland, it’s the coldest Memorial Day that I can remember. Gray and chilly.  I bet there’s no bikinis on the beach at Ocean City today.

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl:

    I assumed that Mary was who was being referred to.  Who do you think “god” was referring to?

    The Immaculate Conception, for those that believe in it, was the conception of Mary, not of Jesus.  As Roman Catholic doctrine sees it, she had to be born without sin to be a suitable vessel for the Christ child.  So according to their doctrine, Mary was conceived and born without the taint of original sin.

  34. 34.

    JoyceH

    @Professor Bigfoot: Another PK here. Even as a child, my biggest bafflement about standard Christianity was the depiction of heaven where everyone sat around praising the almighty – forever. Even then I thought, “what kind of all powerful and all knowing god would WANT that? Wouldn’t it be boring?” These days I think it sounds like a Trump cabinet meeting.

  35. 35.

    CaseyL

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I struggle with this, too.  Obviously I have a value system: where did it come from?  You can really get into the weeds trying to figure out why you hold the values you hold.

    What is rational, anyway?  Is it rational to maximize the well-being of oneself, one’s family, one’s community, if that means exploiting and killing off living things who are not part of one’s community?  Is it rational to do just the opposite, even if that makes you an easy target for someone who does follow a self-maximalization credo?

    Where and how do you draw the line between providing for yourself/your community and leaving enough for everyone else?

    Oh, and define “everyone else”: just humans?  Just mammals? Every little thing that lives?…. how about the “every little things” that spread disease?

    I think utilitarianism comes closest to my value system: The greatest good for the greatest number.  But my “greatest number” isn’t limited to humans.  There are bound to be conflicts.  How to resolve those is a life’s work.

  38. 38.

    prostratedragon

    @JoyceH:  Ok, so that’s at least 3 of us. I was also a largely free-range reader, and we certainly did not engage in many Jesus-y conversations around the house. Folks respected science and scientists.

  39. 39.

    CaseyL

    @JoyceH: ​

    The similarities between the kind of deity Trumpies worship and the Trump Administration are not accidental.

    They worship – really, truly worship – Trump and his gang of thugs precisely because of those similarities.

  41. 41.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JoyceH:

    Even as a child, my biggest bafflement about standard Christianity was the depiction of heaven where everyone sat around praising the almighty – forever.

    Maybe it’s just that I’ve attended too many funerals of members of my wife’s (fundie) family, but the preachers have tended to go on and on about the deceased being up there in heaven, seeing all their old friends, eating whatever they want…it sounds like they wind up in a well-to-do suburb where everyone’s nicey-nice to each other.

  42. 42.

    CaseyL

    @JoyceH:

    @lowtechcyclist:

    The depiction of Heaven as a place where you are re-united with all the companion animals you’ve had is one that never fails to touch and amuse me.

    On the one hand, that’s an idea of Heaven that I could get behind, since I want all animals to go to Paradise when they die.

    On the other hand, pets can be territorial, jealous, and possessive of their humans.  Picturing all of my kitties waiting for me… growling and swatting at one another.  Will I spend eternity refereeing cat fights?

  43. 43.

    AWOL

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Pure Death Cult. Beyond redemption. See European history, especially 1933-1945, but also Inquisition, The; Crusades, The; Colonialism and Forced Conversion; Feudalism; Slavery; Coughlin, Father; Nimmo, Brandon; millions of sexually abused and murdered children; and worst of all, the Father Brown Mysteries.

  45. 45.

    WTFGhost

    If you’ve never seen Lucifer, it’s a humorous reverse-Columbo sendup of the God of Abraham. It’s not *quite* as strange as the above sounds – it involves taking the mythology, and making it into a real family, where Lucifer is constantly furious that God abandoned him, what a *lousy* dad, one little revolt, and *bam* you’re condemned to rule in hell for all eternity.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @lowtechcyclist: Wow, I grew up catholic, went to catholic grade school, and the way I learned it was that Mary and Joseph never did the deed and it was Jesus who was immaculately conceived.

    I wonder if the nuns had that wrong?  Or if I learned it wrong.  I will have to check with my sisters.

  49. 49.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl:

    Oh, yes: cats are very good at behaving like they’re expected to :)​

    (If I could be surrounded by my kitties, all of us happy to be in one another’s company, that really would be Heaven.)

  50. 50.

    WTFGhost

    @lowtechcyclist: Not just *nice*, but genuinely *caring*. Imagine suburbia where Trayvon Martin was suddenly partnered with two, three, four, nearly a dozen suburbanites, saying “we gcoons stick together” with the “c” as silent, as Zimmerman made it, and Zimmerman goes to jail for armed menacing.

    “WTF, when did you people start caring?” he asks as he’s hauled off by a couple white cops, who respond by saying “racists don’t do too good in our jails, BOY – you might want to adjust your attitude, ‘fore you get properly spanked.”

  52. 52.

    WTFGhost

    @WaterGirl: Mary and Joseph didn’t have sex before the birth of Jesus – otherwise, Jesus might have just been a plain old person. Only a virgin could give birth miraculously.

    The immaculate conception was Mary’s conception without original sin, so she could bear Jesus. This is an assumption, and a use of papal infallibility, and doesn’t make a huge, huge, amount of sense, theologically speaking. I’m not saying it *can’t* be sensible – I’m saying that, your basic rules of theology, don’t make a birth in a sinless vessel more pure than one in a sinful vessel. The perfect clay pot can be baked in a cracked kiln, after all!

    The nuns probably had the facts right, but the idea that Mary had to be sinless is an odd one, and a bit advanced for grade school. Sure, kids will nod, and say they understand, but they won’t. (I’m not dissing kids – adults will nod and say they understand, but they generally won’t, either – and I include myself, remember, *I* don’t see why Mary had to be pure.)

    However, Jesus had a mom, and brothers, who came to speak to him. Those brothers were not the product of God and Mary; they were the fruit of marriage, and conceived the same way as everyone else. So the idea of Mary being “ever virgin” (as she’s referred to in at least part of the Catholic mass I last attended) is crazy-ass idiocy, I’m sorry to say. There’s direct biblical contradiction for it.

    ED: One reason for the confusion is that the phrase “immaculate conception” were purportedly spoken to a young woman who wouldn’t know WTF they meant. That led to the invocation of Papal Infallibility (yes, he has to turn it on, and it immediately turns off when he’s done), to decree that Mary’s birth without original sin was the “immaculate conception.”  Mary had said “I am the immaculate conception”, hence, the pope’s interference.

  53. 53.

    WTFGhost

    @M31: I had a strange moment in which I thought a woman was referring to her *parts* as a “taint” which really freaked me out.

    Do you know how hard it is to ask an innocent question like “WTF is a taint?” in a way that sounds appropriately macho, as you prepare your defense for the (ahem) flower (and bush, if you will) of womanhood, while simultaneously not seeming at all embarrassed?

  54. 54.

    Eunicecycle

    @WTFGhost: Catholics explain the “ever virgin” part by saying Joseph was a lot older than she was and was more of a protector. When the Bible spoke of his “brothers and sisters” they were other relatives. Not that I buy that.

  55. 55.

    MagdaInBlack

    @WaterGirl: Did you wear an Immaculate Medal? I know I did, for years.

    “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

  56. 56.

    karen gail

    Every time I hear someone mention that the gospels all agree on what happened I wonder; after all the “dates” are supposed to be years after the crucifixion yet all these “witnesses” remember perfectly what happened? Investigators will tell you that if a crowd of people see something everyone will remember things differently.
    This was one of my questions that got me banned from attending any bible classes at Grandparents church; the teachers don’t like it when you question and not just take on faith when it comes to religion. I got out of even going to church with them after the guy sitting next to me died and fell on top of me. Someone said he was going to heaven, I said he was touching me before he died he should go to hell.

  57. 57.

    karen gail

    Ever notice that Mary is simply a vessel for child and for the most part not considered much more?

  58. 58.

    Xavier

    My definition of religion is a system of beliefs that requires adherents to believe at least one or two preposterous things.

  60. 60.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @WTFGhost:

    Another good read along those lines is:

    Lamb:The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

    by Christopher Lamb

  62. 62.

    Miss Bianca

    @StringOnAStick:

    I remember my confirmation teacher making that same point about the cross being a torture symbol that we wore around our necks. Creeped me out at the time and it still does, come to think of it.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Xavier:

    My definition of religion is a system of beliefs that requires adherents to believe at least one or two preposterous things.

     

    Not bad. I ask far more of people than that.

  65. 65.

    Ryan

    I always preferred “fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

  66. 66.

    David Collier-Brown

    @Princess: I’m a high-church Anglican and found it funny.

    Of course, Anglicans are famous for making fun of ourselves.  After all, Jesus said it best: “Here I am a nice Jewish boy, and they want me to become one-third of a Roman god! What’s with these people, anyway?”  (:-))

  77. 77.

    RevRick

    @Princess: @Nukular Biskits: @MagdaInBlack: @WaterGirl:

    I suppose I should weigh in here, so…

    I laughed at the cartoon, because it’s ridiculous. Then I sighed at the cartoon, because it’s ridiculous. But before I explain why, I feel the need for an aside.

    The word religion comes from the Latin ligare, which means to tie or bind, and from which we get the word ligament. Religion is supposed to tie us together in community. If it fails to do that, then it’s, as the apostle Paul put it in his letter to the Philippians, “shit.” (3:8).

    For me, any religion that cannot laugh at itself is at its heart anti life. There’s a great story in the Jewish Midrash about rabbis arguing about a particular point of the Law, and one rabbi insists, “Even if a voice from heaven says you’re right, I will stick to my position!” At which point there is heard laughter in heaven, and God exclaims with delight, “My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me!” The story reminds us that God is not some humorless prig nor is God some porcelain doll who would shatter if not handled with the utmost delicacy.

    I would add that what else is the basis of all humor other than a sense of the ridiculous? I love telling dad jokes at the beginning of my sermons, because I believe that the Good News is, in fact, good news.

    Anyway, I sighed at the cartoon, because it implicitly assumes all Christians subscribe to this garbage. Fundamentalists may insist that this cartoon is true. I would say it portrays a monster god. It also reflects an imposition of Platonic thought on Christian belief.

    Most mainline Protestant preachers and most Catholics priests would agree that the story of Noah and the ark falls into the category of myth, as does all the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In no way is the Bible to be considered a history or science book. It often deals with real people, but its main concern is wrestling with the reality of what is and what ought to be and experiences with God. The Bible is about comfort, challenge and correction, because life is hard and our awareness of our own mortality makes it harder.

    I will add one thing. A fundamental tenet of my Reformed Church (Calvinist)  tradition is that since God is sovereign no prince nor priest nor thrall may claim sovereignty over what you believe or don’t believe. Liberty of conscience is what makes us human.

    I could say more, but you don’t need a theological treatise from me.

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @Geo Wilcox:

    Mom sent me to a Catholic all boys technical high school. We were/are not Catholic. After freshman year I told her I would NEVER, EVER go back. Not for $100 bills – lots of them, not for gold bars, not if I had to run away and live on the street. I told her if I am forced go back, just for humanity I will wear boots the first 10 days so I can kick VP father Schaffer in the crotch. Repeatedly. Every day. For being such an over the top pompous arrogant dick. And wearing a dress. OK a priest’s robe, but still. He was the only priest in the entire school that made it look like a dress. Amazingly she got the message.

  80. 80.

    RevRick

    @Ruckus: What can I say? Shitty religious leaders happen, just as they happen in every human institution. What matters is how that institution responds. Does it try to make shitty leaders less likely or does it coddle them?

  82. 82.

    Quiltingfool

    @RevRick:

    Most mainline Protestant preachers and most Catholics priests would agree that the story of Noah and the ark falls into the category of myth, as does all the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In no way is the Bible to be considered a history or science book.

    Thank you for this!  I studied lots of geology courses in college, and the insistence of fundamentalist Christians that Earth is only 6000 years old, or the entire world was flooded and other geological nonsense really irritated me.  I so wanted to tell them that the purpose of the Bible was not as a science textbook, but to show God’s relationship with humans and His plan for us.  I just bit my tongue.

    And another thing:  I despise that stupid Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky.  I wouldn’t shed a tear if that structure burnt to the ground (no lives hurt).

  83. 83.

    Eunicecycle

     

    @Quiltingfool: funny thing is, the park flooded a few years ago in the bad floods KY has been having lately. And they asked for federal funds to fix it! Not sure if they got the funds or not.

  85. 85.

    zhena gogolia

    @RevRick: That’s great!

    ETA: I get tired of the prevalent idea that Christians sit around and talk about heaven all day. Our ministers never talk about what it’s going to be like up on the fluffy clouds with the angels playing golden harps. I don’t think I’d stick around very long if they did.

  89. 89.

    Spider-Dan

    @WaterGirl: Although I will occasionally reference “putting food on your family,” my favorite Bushism that I use all the time unironically – often enough to be a personal motto – is “The key is to keep expectations low.”

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