Mocking religion

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plebian

Re: Mocking religion

Post by plebian » Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:54 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:36 am
Stephanie wrote:
Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:52 pm
(As an aside, I suspect anyone interested in influencing the views of children and teenagers would be better on YouTube or Instagram).
Considering the stereotype of the rebellious nature of teenagers, maybe mocking their parents' religion is an effective way to convince them.
But do it on Tic Tok or all you'll be getting is boomer millennials.

plebian

Re: Mocking religion

Post by plebian » Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:59 am

warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
...
There are many religious beliefs that lead to bad things, such as whatever the inquisition had mobilized to torture and subjugate Mexicans, or the bible passages that were used to justify slavery. But it's the content of those beliefs that need to be challenged, not the fact that they are "religious" in nature (in scare quotes because what this is precisely anyway is a whole different can of worms)...
How do you argue against "the Bible says it's fine and that's infallible so fluff off"?

plebian

Re: Mocking religion

Post by plebian » Wed Dec 08, 2021 11:13 am

Fishnut wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:58 am
warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
One of the reasons why the early Christian community spread so effectively in the 2nd and 3rd centuries Roman Empire was not because they were proselytising more effectively, but because their code of ethics made them care for the unfortunate. Roman Christians cared for sick neighbours, something unheard of at the time, and importantly they didn't kill off any of their children if they couldn't afford them (infanticide was common and accepted practice in the empire).
This reminded me of something I mentioned in the zoom chat that sparked this thread but haven't mentioned here, Tom Holland's book Dominion is about the impact of Christianity in shaping the western world. In a video interview he explained that part of the inspiration for the book was when he was writing his books on ancient Greece and Rome the moral and ethical underpinnings of those cultures were so different to our own that they were hard to explain to modern audiences. He realised that they're so alien to us as Christian morality has permeated our world so completely we don't even recognise it as Christian any more which was the genesis of the book. It's a really interesting and provocative book. I'm about halfway through but I want to read it again already.
That's one perspective, another that I've read would be that these are obvious rules to live with each other in harmony. Ignoring the old testament (yeah yeah Jesus wipes it out but not really) the fuzzy wuzzy "be good to one another" is kinda obvious. Christianity stole the good ones and pretended they made them up. They also have some f.cked up ethics, somebody is gonna have to explain to me how proxy atonement makes any logical or ethical sense, and what the ever living funk "original sin" is or how it could be relevant. Many priests and believers have tried and it still sounds like mental m.st.rbation by people in love with the smell of their own farts.

Rome and Classical Greece were somewhat well organised but barbarous societies based on hyper toxic masculinity. The ethics by which they loved could, even contemporaneously, be criticised as not being beneficial to the wellbeing of the populace.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by warumich » Wed Dec 08, 2021 3:27 pm

plebian wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:59 am
warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
...
There are many religious beliefs that lead to bad things, such as whatever the inquisition had mobilized to torture and subjugate Mexicans, or the bible passages that were used to justify slavery. But it's the content of those beliefs that need to be challenged, not the fact that they are "religious" in nature (in scare quotes because what this is precisely anyway is a whole different can of worms)...
How do you argue against "the Bible says it's fine and that's infallible so fluff off"?
plebian wrote:
Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:20 pm
I (don't) look forward to a future where there aren't communities that look out for the weak and powerless in the way that the religious ones did.
The people who volunteer for this kinda thing will still be available, unless you're saying the only reason people volunteer is to selfishly protect their souls, which I doubt heavily.
You see, what irritates me is the juxtaposition of "if it's negative, it's the religion at fault" with "if it's good, it's human nature". They are both human nature rather than things we can blame / praise religion for. We as human beings do really sh.tty things to each other, and we're also enormously compassionate. Religion gets used as rhetorical support for both. But by this I mean religion per se, not any particular religion or religious doctrine. Clearly some involve beliefs that I very much disagree with and that in my view lead to adverse outcomes. So I never said that you cannot argue against the Bible; what you cannot do is say "this is a religious belief, therefore it needs to be resisted". Resist what the belief teaches, not the fact that it is a belief. Hope that clears things up
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by Trinucleus » Wed Dec 08, 2021 4:52 pm

plebian wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:59 am
warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
...
There are many religious beliefs that lead to bad things, such as whatever the inquisition had mobilized to torture and subjugate Mexicans, or the bible passages that were used to justify slavery. But it's the content of those beliefs that need to be challenged, not the fact that they are "religious" in nature (in scare quotes because what this is precisely anyway is a whole different can of worms)...
How do you argue against "the Bible says it's fine and that's infallible so fluff off"?
You can try: the bible also says.......

Eating shellfish is an abomination
You shouldn't wear mixed materials
Don't talk to a woman who is menstruating
You can own a slave provided they're from a neighbouring country
Etc.

And if you don't accept them, you're cherry picking the bits of the bible you agree with

plebian

Re: Mocking religion

Post by plebian » Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:15 pm

warumich wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 3:27 pm
plebian wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:59 am
warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
...
There are many religious beliefs that lead to bad things, such as whatever the inquisition had mobilized to torture and subjugate Mexicans, or the bible passages that were used to justify slavery. But it's the content of those beliefs that need to be challenged, not the fact that they are "religious" in nature (in scare quotes because what this is precisely anyway is a whole different can of worms)...
How do you argue against "the Bible says it's fine and that's infallible so fluff off"?
plebian wrote:
Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:20 pm
I (don't) look forward to a future where there aren't communities that look out for the weak and powerless in the way that the religious ones did.
The people who volunteer for this kinda thing will still be available, unless you're saying the only reason people volunteer is to selfishly protect their souls, which I doubt heavily.
You see, what irritates me is the juxtaposition of "if it's negative, it's the religion at fault" with "if it's good, it's human nature". They are both human nature rather than things we can blame / praise religion for. We as human beings do really sh.tty things to each other, and we're also enormously compassionate. Religion gets used as rhetorical support for both. But by this I mean religion per se, not any particular religion or religious doctrine. Clearly some involve beliefs that I very much disagree with and that in my view lead to adverse outcomes. So I never said that you cannot argue against the Bible; what you cannot do is say "this is a religious belief, therefore it needs to be resisted". Resist what the belief teaches, not the fact that it is a belief. Hope that clears things up
Well we disagree on that point then. Religious belief is necessarily insufficiently evidenced, else faith wouldn't be required.

I think believing in something without evidence is dangerous a priori. Can you explain why I cannot say it? To bang on the oppressed drum, the majority of versions of Christianity are AT BEST still debating whether I deserve human rights. Based on unevidenced preposterous ideas.

No sir, I will not accept that I can't ridicule the sh.t out of these oppressive organisations.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by warumich » Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:31 pm

plebian wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:15 pm
Well we disagree on that point then. Religious belief is necessarily insufficiently evidenced, else faith wouldn't be required.
We clearly do. On an individual level, science is insufficiently evidenced too*. I have never seen direct evidence for most of the scientific things I believe, as this is only usually available to those experts working on that particular topic. What I am left with is trust that those who do have the evidence, have given me the correct information. That's before we even get to the question of what exactly is proper evidence and what isn't, and what criteria we use to decide what proper evidence is, and what evidence we have for the validity of those criteria and so on... I've written about the bootstrap model upthread, it's not a trivial problem that can just be handwaved away with the badsciencer conviction that we're all rational and others are idiots.

At the end all we have, in areas outside of our immediate expertise, is the trust in experts**, which is by and large good enough; but others will trust other sources; it makes them wrong (as far as I can make out), but not irrational.



* There is also the tricky philosophical issue of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, but whatevs.

** Talking about which, I can assure you that even you won't automatically accept an expert in an area where are already convinced on something; so instead you chose to trust the non-expert. Because if you did this discussion is over right now: I have written a book on science and religion. That makes you wrong, but not irrational, so I have no beef with this. But who is an expert and who isn't, and how do we judge that? Things are damn sight more complicated when you step up from sweeping statements about evidence or science and into the swampy territory of whose evidence and whose science we need to believe in.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by warumich » Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:48 pm

plebian wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:15 pm
No sir, I will not accept that I can't ridicule the sh.t out of these oppressive organisations.
By the way, the other things that irritates me is the assumption that religious beliefs by nature of being religious beliefs lead to oppressive organisations - this is true of many of the different flavours of Christianity, no contest from me here, but it's not a result of something being religious per se, it just happens to be how these particular organisations work. Judging every religion by the example of only those we have produced in Western Europe is a pretty narrow minded approach to this.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by tom p » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:02 pm

warumich wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:31 pm
plebian wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:15 pm
Well we disagree on that point then. Religious belief is necessarily insufficiently evidenced, else faith wouldn't be required.
We clearly do. On an individual level, science is insufficiently evidenced too*. I have never seen direct evidence for most of the scientific things I believe, as this is only usually available to those experts working on that particular topic. What I am left with is trust that those who do have the evidence, have given me the correct information. That's before we even get to the question of what exactly is proper evidence and what isn't, and what criteria we use to decide what proper evidence is, and what evidence we have for the validity of those criteria and so on... I've written about the bootstrap model upthread, it's not a trivial problem that can just be handwaved away with the badsciencer conviction that we're all rational and others are idiots.

At the end all we have, in areas outside of our immediate expertise, is the trust in experts**, which is by and large good enough; but others will trust other sources; it makes them wrong (as far as I can make out), but not irrational.



* There is also the tricky philosophical issue of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, but whatevs.

** Talking about which, I can assure you that even you won't automatically accept an expert in an area where are already convinced on something; so instead you chose to trust the non-expert. Because if you did this discussion is over right now: I have written a book on science and religion. That makes you wrong, but not irrational, so I have no beef with this. But who is an expert and who isn't, and how do we judge that? Things are damn sight more complicated when you step up from sweeping statements about evidence or science and into the swampy territory of whose evidence and whose science we need to believe in.
The difference is that for the basics you will have seen the evidence (things like gravity - bet you did experiments on dropping things and seeing the rate of acceleration in school) and if you really wanted to, you could find ways to recreate other experiments based on the published literature & you could find prima facie evidence for yourself (even if you would have to work bl..dy hard to build your own large hardon collider).
Sure, you take it on trust, because life's too short to recreate every experiment ever, but you could & the scientists tell you how they found these things out.

plebian

Re: Mocking religion

Post by plebian » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:07 pm

Trinucleus wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 4:52 pm
plebian wrote:
Wed Dec 08, 2021 10:59 am
warumich wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 9:46 am
...
There are many religious beliefs that lead to bad things, such as whatever the inquisition had mobilized to torture and subjugate Mexicans, or the bible passages that were used to justify slavery. But it's the content of those beliefs that need to be challenged, not the fact that they are "religious" in nature (in scare quotes because what this is precisely anyway is a whole different can of worms)...
How do you argue against "the Bible says it's fine and that's infallible so fluff off"?
You can try: the bible also says.......

Eating shellfish is an abomination
You shouldn't wear mixed materials
Don't talk to a woman who is menstruating
You can own a slave provided they're from a neighbouring country
Etc.

And if you don't accept them, you're cherry picking the bits of the bible you agree with
There isn't 1 Christian doctrine, there's 2 billion.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by Millennie Al » Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:13 am

warumich wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:48 pm
By the way, the other things that irritates me is the assumption that religious beliefs by nature of being religious beliefs lead to oppressive organisations - this is true of many of the different flavours of Christianity, no contest from me here, but it's not a result of something being religious per se, it just happens to be how these particular organisations work. Judging every religion by the example of only those we have produced in Western Europe is a pretty narrow minded approach to this.
It depends to some extent on how you look at it, but religious beliefs do cause oppression. Imagine you are contemplating how to choose which plant to eat. One method is to choose a plant at random. This can fairly be described as a method that kills people, as there are so many toxic plants. You could object that the method sometimes chooses perfectly fine edible plants, so the method is not at fault, but realistically it is. It has to answer for all its results.

Similarly with religion. Since the essence of religion is belief without regard to evidence, this sometimes leads to oppression and sometimes doesn't, depending on the particular beliefs. It is fair to say that it is the religion that leads to the oppression because it is a defective method of choosing what to do.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by warumich » Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:39 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:13 am
warumich wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:48 pm
By the way, the other things that irritates me is the assumption that religious beliefs by nature of being religious beliefs lead to oppressive organisations - this is true of many of the different flavours of Christianity, no contest from me here, but it's not a result of something being religious per se, it just happens to be how these particular organisations work. Judging every religion by the example of only those we have produced in Western Europe is a pretty narrow minded approach to this.
It depends to some extent on how you look at it, but religious beliefs do cause oppression. Imagine you are contemplating how to choose which plant to eat. One method is to choose a plant at random. This can fairly be described as a method that kills people, as there are so many toxic plants. You could object that the method sometimes chooses perfectly fine edible plants, so the method is not at fault, but realistically it is. It has to answer for all its results.

Similarly with religion. Since the essence of religion is belief without regard to evidence, this sometimes leads to oppression and sometimes doesn't, depending on the particular beliefs. It is fair to say that it is the religion that leads to the oppression because it is a defective method of choosing what to do.

Is it the "belief without evidence" that leads to oppression though. You can also have beliefs with evidence that lead to oppression. I don't see the logic that necessarily connects them here. In general, social policy is not prescribed by evidence on its own, translating "facts" into policy always involves making moral or ethical decisions. Now if you manage to find an obvious and uncontestable way of deriving moral decision making from scientific fact you're doing a much better job than all moral philosophers from the past 300 years put together. Most attempts at doing so end up with sh.t like eugenics (which btw was decidedly atheist and science/fact based, at least as far as its proponents saw it). Or as the old philosophical cliche has it, you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is".

And there is still the wider issue on what precisely counts as good evidence which is kind of being ignored here, despite my attempts to bring this up. First of all it is absolutely not the case that the essence of religion is about believing things without evidence* (as a general thing, of course here or there you'll encounter that, but again you can't judge all of religion by the yardstick of the craziest Pentecostals). You may not think the evidence they do produce is any good (and just to make sure it's understood, I agree with that), but this is a different issue which brings up a whole new can of worms.


* and that is a fact, at least as close to a fact as you can get in comparative social science - though this can be disputed as I just argued that evidence and fact are not matters of black and white, maybe particularly so in my field, but I can guarantee that absolutely no-one who actually studies religion as a social phenomenon professionally would agree with that.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Dec 10, 2021 5:29 pm

Fwiw I'm in the process of writing a blog about the history of the use of biology as a means of oppression, for all of women, ethnic minorities, gay people and trans people. It requires me to do a fair amount of reading first (Angela Saini is a fabulous writer), hence why it's taking a long time. But the arguments we see right now about how transphobes just want everyone to believe in biology is the same refrain we hear about gay people being an abomination because biologically they aren't f.cking for babies and about black people being biologically less intelligent and about women being biologically incapable of thinking hard enough to deserve the vote.

All of those positions were based on the premise of using biology, science, evidence, to back up what they wanted to believe. It's taken decades of research to push back on that, but even now there are a lot of old, debunked theories out there which are still believed by a lot of people and used to oppress. Now, I'm sure that all of you goodly people would distance yourselves from the biological basis of sexism and racism and homophobia, though there are plenty of transphobes here who like to use the same recycled oppressive science-based arguments as were used for bigotries which are now unfashionable. But if a lot of the forum members here were able to post on a science forum in the 1920s, a fair f.cking lot of you would agree that eugenics was great and we should be looking to improve the human race through careful breeding.

Because science.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by shpalman » Fri Dec 10, 2021 5:52 pm

But it's almost as if science has moved on a lot in the past 100 years and debunked those ideas... using science.

Similarly there might well be mainstream ideas we all have now which would be considered abhorrent or ignorant to a reasonably progressive person in 100 years' time.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Dec 10, 2021 5:58 pm

Well yes. But plenty of people are choosing to use biology as a means of oppression right now. Just like plenty of people are choosing to use religion as a means of oppression right now. And yes, science has moved on in some cases, but so have a lot of religions as well.

However, that doesn't detract from the b.llsh.t argument that religion is inherently oppressive because it's based on a lack of evidence.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Dec 10, 2021 6:01 pm

Of course, there are occasions when those who wish to oppress use both religion and science to make their arguments.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/12/10/pete ... -revealed/
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by bjn » Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:42 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Dec 10, 2021 6:01 pm
Of course, there are occasions when those who wish to oppress use both religion and science to make their arguments.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/12/10/pete ... -revealed/
Thiel continues to live below my estimation of him. Does he advocate for free speech for flat earthers and other equally junk knowledge as race science?

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by shpalman » Sat Dec 11, 2021 9:53 am

Here's a topic for discussion, then. How would you define "progress" in morality, biology, or religion? And what factors drive it in each case? How do you even know when you're going forwards and not backwards?

ETA: I'm mainly interested in roughly contemporary mainstream versions of each, not an argument about what "science" was like 500 years ago or what some hypothetical religion might be like in some part of the world which none of us have any experience with.
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by shpalman » Sat Dec 11, 2021 4:10 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by tenchboy » Sat Dec 11, 2021 4:46 pm

re the comments, wasn't the 'the red santa suit was invented by coca cola' story myth busted?
If you want me Steve, just Snapchat me yeah? You know how to Snapchap me doncha Steve? You just...

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Dec 12, 2021 5:01 am

warumich wrote:
Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:39 pm
Is it the "belief without evidence" that leads to oppression though. You can also have beliefs with evidence that lead to oppression. I don't see the logic that necessarily connects them here.
Yes. In the same way that knowledge of medicine saves lives, while ignorance costs lives. It's quite possible to use medical knowledge to come up with more effective ways to kill people - as has been done for the sake of capital punishment. And it's possible that medical ignorance could save lives, for example if someone tries to poison people but uses an ineffective poison out of ignorance. But in general the relationship holds.
Similarly for religion and oppression. Without religion, you can certainly have oppression, but that is intentional oppression perpetrated in the knowledge that that is what is happening. Religion allows more oppression which is not intended as oppression, but follows from the false beliefs encouraged by religion.
it is absolutely not the case that the essence of religion is about believing things without evidence*

* and that is a fact, at least as close to a fact as you can get in comparative social science - though this can be disputed as I just argued that evidence and fact are not matters of black and white, maybe particularly so in my field, but I can guarantee that absolutely no-one who actually studies religion as a social phenomenon professionally would agree with that.
If you mean that "religion" has been given a specific technical meaning within a particular field, I would not be surprised, but also consider it irrelevant. Many fields take ordinary words and give them special meanings. But if you mean that religion as people normally refer to it does not mean belief without regard to evidence (which is not quite the same thing as without evidence), then I would very much disagree and would like to see your definition of religion.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Dec 12, 2021 5:11 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Dec 10, 2021 5:29 pm
All of those positions were based on the premise of using biology, science, evidence, to back up what they wanted to believe.
I would characterise that as a religious approach - starting with the conclusion and trying to force the evidence to fit it.
It's taken decades of research to push back on that, but even now there are a lot of old, debunked theories out there which are still believed by a lot of people and used to oppress. Now, I'm sure that all of you goodly people would distance yourselves from the biological basis of sexism and racism and homophobia, though there are plenty of transphobes here who like to use the same recycled oppressive science-based arguments as were used for bigotries which are now unfashionable. But if a lot of the forum members here were able to post on a science forum in the 1920s, a fair f.cking lot of you would agree that eugenics was great and we should be looking to improve the human race through careful breeding.

Because science.
Science is not about being right - it is about changing your beliefs to fit the evidence. Science doesn't make you infallible, nor does it claim to.

There's an excellent example illustrating science which appears in conjunction with Covid: the usefulness of ivermectin. Science means we consider it, run proper trials, and then believe the results. If we find later trials conflict with earlier ones, we may change our beliefs when we find out why they differ. In contrast to science, we see people who believe that ivermectin works and cannot be dissuaded regardless of evidence. They may run some form of trial, but it's not a genuine attempt to discover the truth - it's an attempt to prove that they were already right.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by shpalman » Sun Dec 12, 2021 8:07 am

Spanish bishop who married author of satanic erotica is stripped of powers

"ok guys I don't want to be a bishop anymore"
"yeah well we'll stop you being a bishop, how do you like that?"
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Re: Mocking religion

Post by tom p » Sun Dec 12, 2021 12:09 pm

tenchboy wrote:
Sat Dec 11, 2021 4:46 pm
re the comments, wasn't the 'the red santa suit was invented by coca cola' story myth busted?
Sinterklaas (the dutch father christmas, who comes on 6 Dec and who the name santa claus is clearly a corruption of) is pictured in books going at least as far as the victorians as wearing red robes with white trimmings, like the bishop that he is.

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Re: Mocking religion

Post by Trinucleus » Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:59 pm


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