America seems like such a backwards place sometimes

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no.





but at least we don't get collectively insane about a nipple slip in prime time...

Right now the Shi'ites are in charge in Iran, they and their sympathizers and their willing accomplices. Here is a sample of Shi'ite sanity and enlightenment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l4ISfnY5WQ

Wait for the last two minutes, if you are able.

ruveyn

I for one would like to have religious extremism added to DSM-V as a mental health disorder. Note, i do not speak of people who do not think jesus is real or belive in science over creationism/ID.

I mean hardcore US christian doomsdays republicans who want WW3 so they can say "told you so", IRA/Ulsters terrorists who fight "infidels", Iranian mullas that hand out death sentences to anyone who criticise islam and Afghani taliban-"death to america" type people.

But it would not be economically feasible to spend that much money on mental health clinics...

yes, all Americans are Christian fundies, all Arabs are Muslim fundies, and all Europeans run around naked and have group sex.

At the moment a very large percentage of mentally afflicted Americans are placed in prisons because no one wants to fund mental health properly. This very nicely defines general mental health in the country. The last nation that incarcerated the mentally ill was Stalin's USSR.

at least one statement is correct....

At the moment a very large percentage of Americans are placed in prisons period.

The Bee Gees....

Aren't they from Great Britain?

Nice.

You're saying that because something is old it's automatically invalid? What about the Kama Sutra? Is that invalid too?

My point isn't so much that you should just accept blindly that which is put before you. Certainly, critical thinking is very important... It's also important to put texts in the proper context... almost all of the kosher laws make more sense in the context of the early jews than they do now (certain ones, like the ban on pigs, make sense based on what we know about diseases and proper cleaning than we knew then...)

Overall, most mainstream churches tend to disregard the laws and commandments which just don't make sense in a modern context. I, for one, have never heard a single reading from the book of Leviticus (the book in which most of the kosher laws are found) in church, and in fact most of the "laws" that we're taught to abide by are less of a "Christian morality" (which is just a dumb term, to be honest), and more related to general common sense... "Love thy neighbor", "Judge not, lest you be judged", and other similar passages.

One thing I'm not appreciative of is the fact that, because I'm not automatically skeptical of something that's not scientific and/or falsifiable, I'm somehow "defective"... I respect that you have your own worldview, but if you push too hard, I start pushing back to protect myself...

yyYYYeah....the group sex sounds hot.....

Only if it's me and a bunch of bi-sexual women...

Five stars for clarity.

America can be separated into 3 basic geocultural locales:
1) Deliverance
2) Watchmen
3) Something by David Lynch

No, I say that the people back then had very little concept of morality, and of how the world works. Heck, if you want something really good from the ancient world, try reading for some of the Greek philosophers. But uncultivated shepherds? Why the hell do you take them so seriously? They appeal to your emotions more?

Oh, and I'm sure the author's of Kama Sutra were very good as far as sex go, but had very archaic beliefs as far as science goes.


Yes, so put the texts into proper context. Jesus was one of the many messiahs back in that time.


So what's the point of church-going?


"The problem with having an open mind is that people try to put stuff in it" - Winston Churchill

Unlike the Greek philosophers, sheperds wouldn't fit well within NAMBLA...


Do I make the claim that the Bible defines how the world works? That's the realm of the dumb s**ts within Christianity that you should really be directing your comments at, as opposed to all of Christianity. Hell, if you did that, I'd join you...

But the point is, I as a person do not make the claim that the Bible is scientific in any way, or even to be literally interpreted... I accept that the universe was created approximately 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang. I accept Darwin's concepts of evolution as being the mechanism that the human species came about. I don't dispute any of that... In fact, most of what Jesus was talking about was completely outside the realm of science altogether... more in line with philosophy... does that mean that you castigate all philosophers as such alongside christians?


The fact that people there actually accept me as a normal person? The outside world doesn't do that... In fact, outside of my church, I am a rather unwelcome person... America is, for all it's strengths, an incredibly cruel place. At first I would have agreed with you on America being a "backwards" nation based on such a fact that they can't accept that someone in their own ranks is not a materialist pig like they are, and I was considering moving to Europe, but now I see that I would not be welcome in Europe either, with all the snotty narcissism they would project in my direction merely because of my nationality...


That kind of attitude promotes hard-line extremist behaviors... on all sides of the argument... and last I checked, all wars were started by extremists (often extremists in power)... whether the reasoning was religious, political, or otherwise...