Since the hurricane, the NoGodBlog has appeared in a lot of the theistic Blogs and BBs. I’ve taken the liberty of reading some of these Posts.Do they congratulate us for organizing fundraising? Do they praise Atheists for helping in the relief efforts? Heck no! They LOOK for reasons to hate (P.S. God loves you).For instance, The Catholic World News Blog has entries criticizing Blair Scott for signing his letter with “In Reason”. Nothing about what Blair is going through — they just didn’t like the way he signed his letter, so the rant started. Shame on them.Come on people! Is that all you can do? Shouldn’t we be done with looking for reasons to dislike each other? If you dislike what’s being done, tell us why (we certainly will return the favor)!But if you don’t have anything concrete and relevant to say, try being nice in the face of nationwide tragedy.Oh, and by the way, The Catholic Church is the richest and most powerful entity on the planet. They’ve had 2000 years of tithing without paying taxes, inheriting Billions of dollars from billions of people, and employees who take vows of poverty. Has the Vatican (not the local diocese) done anything to help? Just asking.
vatican “Holy See”
financial statement for 2000.
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtnl?sid=7818
“2700 employed”, “net gain of 8.516 million” on an “income of 42.098 billion”. thats a very small profit claimed for that size of income and says nothing of holdings. The billions invested back into the church are considered losses. The net gain in assets should be about 40 billion
the conclusion is worth noting
GoS: Well, I’ll be damned. Linnda Caporael – http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/history/ergot.htm. Didn’t know that – apparently not an urban myth – ergot fungus.
Hmmmm….maybe it’s something in the Xtian’s water, combined w/their genes, peptides, nucleotides, or whatever they’re called…
Reluctant: yes it was from Monty Python and the holy grail but i felt it qualified as a question open to debate. ) I was steering back to religion.. or trying to.
on above link it is phtml not phtnl
how do i make my links actually link to the site noted in the link?
NotYourDaddy, I don’t think you can in this blog, it filters out HTML markup.
reluctantatheist: another interesting psychotrophic event is the genesis of the flying reindeer myth and Soma (fly Agaric) use by Siberian Shamans. A number of people also cite evidence showing that St John the Baptist was a regular user of Soma and the Book of revelations was written during psychotropic episodes.
GoS: In actuality, I’d read that John was under the influence of wormwood, and between that & his imminent demise really colored (snort) his ‘Book of Riddles’ as T. Paine so aptly titled it. Wow, you sure know alot about psychotropics. Should I worry about you? LOL.
John the Baptist. The Essenes. Now, I RESPECTED those folks. Played by their own rules (albeit they were a tad too strict). The Nazarene/Essenic sect has a new community up in Oregon, BTW. Interesting website: http://www.thenazareneway.com. Though I doubt they much resemble those stoics of yore. I checked them out when I was looking around. Strange cats.
NYD: Just tried it. Locks up w/error message. Oh, well. “What’s your favorite color?”
I have read some of the post and would like to add that those of you that think that the Catholic church is lying down and waiting to be set aside should really reconsider your position. It is true that they have stagnated here in the US due to all the bad publicity, but let me assure you that they are quite well and healthy in most of LATAM, a lot of East Asia, some parts of Europe (Ireland and Italy come to mind). Also do not forget the massive amount of influence that the Catholic church has on everything from education to finance. We also have to contend with their militant branch of wackos, those from Opus Dei, sanctioned by the former pope, and some say that the current one is a member, as they are as fanatic as those muslims who drove airplanes into the WTC. All in all, the Catholic church, with it’s image damaged here in the US is still going strong elsewhere. The US for all its size is just a secondary market to them.
SM,
What “militant wackos” are you talking about? Are you saying they are the real Opus Dei or do you mean the one portrayed inaccurately by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code?
The real opus dei. I have seen them in action, and their level of commitment is astounding. The members are required to give at least 10% of all earnings, and the richer the more you get to give. Work is the work of god, Women are to wear their hair short and use long flowing skirts, live at separate quarters, and even thought the book exagerates a little bit, (i started but could not get into the writing, tempo, or style), I have seen and talked with Opus Dei numeraries, and supernumeraries (rough translation from spanish, sorry) to know that they would in a heart beat sacrifice themselves for the cause if they where told to do so. Bear in mind that most of the people that I talked with were extremely succesful individuals with advanced degrees that are teaching in universities, leading companies, etc. Each year they have to pick up a “cause Celebre” to save, and I was one….
jimmerone: apparently I don’t get out enough. I will look this bozo up.
sm: Really? A “cause Celebre”? May I be so bold as to ask why?
& I agree w/you on the Catholic Church. It’s been in power for so many centuries, and has been the heartbeat of power for all that time, small wonder that it is capable of Machiavellian manuevers to stagger the imagination.
I would not be surprised if it had its bloody fingers in the pie in re: the attempted jumpstarting of Armageddon (at the risk of sounding like a fringe looney, the Shrub is trying to stir up Mess’o'potamia, and Iraq was Babylon, after all. GWB is either a millenialist, or being manipulated by them, IMHO).
Yes, I married into a heavily laden Opus Dei family, and some members of my family were Opus. My brother went to an opus dei college, and even then my unbelief in the catholic church specifically, and religion in general was well known. They tried every twisted tactic to get me to see it their way. They start with “What would you do with your work to help other people”… The methods are more refined than those of Torquemada, but just as effective… Economic manipulation, Social manipulation, (We will see you at church on sunday), even calling my wife for “lunch” one day, and blasting her about living with me!. They went as far as telling her that she was going to rot in hell, and that they would pay for our catholic wedding here in Boston! (I could just imagine getting married in front of father Porter, and laughing that this POS was gods representative!) That is why we live as far away from them as possible. Oh BTW my comment about Cause Celebre is not quite at the level of Mumia, but they do have to “save” Some unsuspecting individual every year, and if they find a difficult target, it only makes the doors of heaven open up an inch more for them!
sm: “it only makes the doors of heaven open up an inch more for them!”
Interesting comment. One would think the doors would then be at least the width of the Lincoln Tunnel, after all these centuries.
You must love/have loved your wife very much. I assume by the past tense you are no longer surrounded by the OD?
No. I moved far away from them, and therefore their influence. As far as Opus goes, they are fairly new, as Monsignor Escriva died I believe in the middle 60′s… He founded it in 1928, and it is rumored that he had a soft spot for Adolf. The former pope canonized him, so now they have a patron saint. Scary.
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The great thing about atheists is that most like science and history, both nonGod knowledge.
The problem to contend with is that very serious practioners of both seem to be pointing out that the Catholic Church did help quite a lot of people throughout history.
Check these out:
History of hospitals by Guenter Risse: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195055233/102-2653205-9781746?v=glance&n=283155
Histories of science:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/contribhome.php?get=heil01 by J.L. Heilbron http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15758.ctl by David Lindberg http://www.indiana.edu/~alldrp/members/grant.html by Edward Grant
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306806371/002-1759139-5236830?v=glance&n=283155 by Thomas Goldstein
You can also check out Wikipedia’s article on the Catholic Church and Opus Dei where I got this.
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