I'm guessing the response will go something like this. Note: I'm sorry man, as that's really shitty that he's choosing to take it to the level he is. I hope he realizes his mistake, but those people so often don't. That's just like a Democrat to take their ball and go home when they can't logically argue a point. I gave you every opportunity to convince me you weren't just another half-educated liberal sheep voting for Obama because you have student loan debts but instead you just attacked a good man who will do good by this country in four years. And then you played the Jew victim card when I made a logical argument about Hitler. No cousin, you don't get to fire me, you're no Donald Trump, I QUIT!
Who? Anyway: "divided the country" is code for "got minorities and women to vote". 60 years ago they were "rabble rousers". Anyone who tells the screwed they're screwed is "dividing the country". Rosa Parks "divided the country", Martin Luther King, etc etc etc.
I know what it's code for, I just find it amusing to point out how ridiculous it is, because LOW HANGING FRUIT IS STILL TASTY.
That's DOCTOR PRESIDENT Obama. I've seen Hitler's birth certificate and there are pixels so who knows where he was born? I've yet to see Mister Doctor Williams' birth certificate. Have you? Or: "So wait, you'd vote for Mister Doctor Williams despite the fact that he might not have been born in America????"
So then two threads happened. Here's one: I refuse to dignify that with a response. Here's the other: He hasn't seen fit to respond to that yet.
In the meantime, a callback to a better time: the 2008 election. My cousin sent me an email when the Reverend Jeremiah Wright stuff hit and blah blah he eventually said this: My response: For some reason he didn't respond to that.
This kinda makes me wish I hadn't banned my mom from sending crazy political emails to me. Most of it was forwarded and not original material, but it resulted in a dramatic blowout after the third time I fact-checked one and told her to stop sending them to me. She angrily called my dad and accused him of sending me to a liberal brainwashing college and threatened that he better not do the same thing with my brother when he goes off to university. He tried to explain what critical thinking was to her and her response was, "WELL I DON'T EVEN READ THOSE THINGS VERY CLOSELY ANYWAY I JUST FORWARD THEM ON."
Talked with my dad and step-mother tonight for the first time in a couple months. I ended up listening to their sermon on politics for a large part of our conversation. Unlike the conversation with my brother, tonight I had the wherewithal to just sit and listen, and boy did I learn alot. I've seen alot of this stuff in chain emails and pictures they've sent, but tonight I was able to (and interested to) hear them express these opinions strictly in words of their own choosing. Stuff I learned: Obama is going to change the laws and become "some sort of King for the rest of his life." He won't be serving a "third term", or running for re-election, so to speak (because apparently such a concept will no longer apply), but he's going to make it so he can stay in office, forever. At this point an upcoming new American revolution is all but inevitable (they expect it to happen within their lifetime). When this revolution happens their hope is that I'll have a plan in place for my wife and I to get to their house (he and my step mother live in the deep south) and take refuge there on their property (apparently they own enough guns so that they can have "one at every window and every door"). It would be best if I learned how to shoot a gun as soon as possible. In the next couple years 50% of our paychecks will be going towards the, migration, integration and support of foreign nationals (mostly unemployed Mexicans). Obama has been (and will continue) selling off government land to China in exchange for debt forgiveness from all the money he has decided to borrow from them. They sincerely believe this stuff. Apparently they're aware enough to preface most of their raving with "You probably think I'm crazy for thinking this, but...", but rather than believe there's a genuine reason someone would think they're crazy for believing this stuff, they just attribute any disbelief to my (and anybody else's) lack of education and knowledge about these issues -- and beg me to inform myself of these issues before casting judgement.
In order to have a gun at every window, they're going to need to hire some extra hands. Might I suggest some mexican immigrants? On a more reasonable note: the "____ is going to appoint themselves king" thing comes up in everyone's second term by the crazies on the other side. Because they don't seem to understand that if you declare yourself King without amending the constitution, the Military rolls up and corrects your ass.
Reminds me of seeing my cousin today. He's a relatively intelligent guy but he's so caught up in the right-wing echo chamber that he just doesn't have a clue.
I got another venue for posting at conservatives on Facebook. (Well, two, but they're very similar and both so delightful, but I'm not trolling my friend's wall nearly as hard as my acquaintance's wall.) It's so delicious. At one point someone was all "Romans 13, now shut up and stone the gays"* and I was all "Luke, you homophobic motherfucker, Christ has fulfilled the law and you are no longer bound by the Old Testament" and then it devolved from there and I was so happy. * Not an actual quote
But... isn't that not what it says? I heard that Jesus specifically says somewhere that he is not here to change or remove the laws of the Torah, merely that the path to fulfilling them lies in him. shift6, gift us some of your knowledge on this.
There's something about changing/removing/fulfulling... there's gotta be, otherwise Christians would have to keep kosher. Pinging shift6!
There's a far more appropriate verse to respond with: "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" > Jesus picks up A Rounded Rock. > Jesus hefts A Rounded Rock, preparing to throw it. > Jesus throws A Rounded Rock. > ....... > ....... > ....... > You are hit by A Rounded Rock. You are gay!
I started writing a response until it all started feeling very familiar and I realized I'd already written most of this in the Chick Fil A thread. So instead I'll just quote myself.
Or you could just close the Bible and bean them in the head with it. If those wizards actually gave a shit about any part of the Bible that didn't appear to confirm their hateful worldview they'd have changed their ways the first hundred thousand times someone pointed that out to them.
It's not that you're no longer bound. It's that modern American Christians bulk ignore Leviticus. We pull that one quote out to talk about The Gays, but completely ignore all the stuff about when rape is permissible, death sentences for being mean to your parents, death sentences for adultery, etc. It's a book that we've pretty much set aside as interesting as a study, but useless as a day to day living guide in the modern era. The funny part is that I was trying to find a reference from the Church on it, and what I found was a mess of Priests trying to decide why people had trouble reading the book, and never coming up with "because like, 30% of it is completely contrary to what is considered socially acceptable in modern culture" and instead thinking it's because some of the ceremony bits are hard to understand. My usual throw back to "A man shall not lay with another man" is to insist they follow all of Leviticus or none of it, and stop cherry picking. Demand the Death Penalty for gay sex as your banner, or shut the fuck up about that book.
I stand corrected! Thank you. See, it takes asking the heathens to get some decent biblical scholarship, I swear. I wasn't trying to convince the person I was arguing with. I was having fun and possibly talking to the people reading, some of whom might not be obnoxious hateful shitbirds.
I know, I know. It's my fault for being in this thread in the first place but honestly "bean them in the head" is my mental reaction to most of what I read here.
Oh oh new one! "Studies indicate evangelical Christians are poorly endowed." And then link to a dressed up url from a seemingly legit site that pops a goatse. Discussions about dick size are straight male catnip, he'll have no choice but to click it. Afterwards he'll be like "wtf I am mad" and you can be like "omg i am so sorry it's working fine for me try the link again" with a fake quote and get him twice, and then follow up by suggesting he has a virus and needs to install an antivirus program. Which, depending on how evil you feel, can either be one of those malware AV programs or another goatse masquerading as a link to an antivirus site. This assumes that the individual in question is your standard evangelical. Evolved versions may be capable of recognizing a simple url trick.
I concur with Aeon! Goatse is the best of all possible endings to the exchange with Elyscape's cousin. How would he even be able to describe what happened when he wants to complain to his fellow believers?
So here's the thing about the Mosaic Law. It is big. Really big. I mean you think it's a long walk down to the chemist, but that's just peanuts compared to the Law. There are actually three parts of the Law: the decalogue (Ten Commandments), the religious law, and the civic law. This is not controversial among non-idiotic scholars (Jewish, Christian, whatever) because there's a clear line dividing the latter two; for example, how the incense is to be burnt at the temple vs. dealing with mold in your house. And the ten commandments is largely a kind of easy to remember "summary" of the spirit of the whole. You will note it does not include punishments (as ancient covenants did) nor does it go into minutiae about specific situations. It just says hey Bob, here's a pretty good general summary of how this theocracy is going to work: put Jehovah first and don't be a dick to others. Jesus did one main thing with respect to the Mosaic Law according to general Christian scholarship (glossing over systematic denominational vagaries): upheld the Law completely so as to be proven righteous in the eyes of Jehovah and worthy to bear the sins of the world on the cross providing salvation for all. This then fulfilled the purpose for which the Law was originally given, thus meeting the humankind-side of the contractual/covenental aspect and rendering it complete. This then, in a sense, required God to fulfill His side of the bargain in the Law. Now obviously this fulfillment has to do with the spiritual aspects of the Law: the sacrifices, the Holy Temple, the called-out people, etc. But Jesus did not (for instance) personally impact the requirement to present leprosy before the priests for public health reasons* nor did He personally adjudicate a spiritual payment allowing people to eat shellfish. Those were civic aspects (note the terminology use in civic passages are things like "ceremonially unclean" rather than "abomination", "sin", "sacrifice", etc) of the Law which in the view of most scholars do not apply today. Ultra-orthodox Jews still follow them as do some Christian sects (Seventh-day Adventists = Sabbath, for example) but by and large not really. So this is why Jesus fulfilled the Law but says it doesn't pass away. The Mosaic Law still represents the covenant Jehovah made with mankind, specifically Ancient Israel, concerning His own righteousness and although Jesus has fulfilled the mankind-side of it, God has not yet fully fulfilled His side of it (by restoring Israel to the promised land, a kingdom and Davidic dynasty forever, etc). Paul expands on this by saying that the Law taught mankind our inability to meet God's demands and illustrated the greatness of the sacrifice Jesus made in fulfilling those demands then paying for our failures (sins) through his Mosaic Law foreshadowed-and-typed sacrificial death on the cross. Also, in their haste to mock the Mosaic Law, modern people like to grossly distort what it says. For instance, rape is not permissible nor is there a death sentence for being mean to one's parents. That said, the civic aspects of it are largely tied to the culture in which they were practiced (Semitic tribes 3400 years ago) not to mention the linguistic changes since then, while the spiritual aspects were tied directly to the foreshadowing of Jesus' spiritual ministry; so basically my view is that 99% of the most vocal people on both sides of the topic are fucking ignorant. I hope that all makes sense. There is really so much information and it's late and I'm a shitty writer so apologies for the stream of consciousness data dump. *Leviticus 13-14 essentially says that there was government provided health care in Ancient Israel. And don't get me started on the financial and business rules it contains. Most of myy Christian friends don't much cotton to those parts of the Law. Then I tell then Moses married a black woman. They more or less know not to get me started now because unlike godless commie fag junkie liberals, I'm a Christian who knows the Book I claim to follow. Funny that.
Have you pointed out to him that one of the benefits of legalising pot is that it acts as a relaxant, so when the gays come for the buttsex with him, he can enjoy it more? See - liberal voters think of everything!
While interesting, the problem people have with this sort of thing is very simple: none of this is taught in any US Church, nor put in forwards on copies of bibles or anything else. So what we actually wind up with is people reading plain English saying we should stone Gay people to death. I'd be all for an annotated bible that points out the agreed upon interpretations and fixes the mistranslations, but until that point my stance is 100% "If you quote Leviticus at me about the gays, we're going down the very clear list of death penalties in that book and measuring your life until you go the fuck away" Don't get me wrong: I was raised Christian and love the Jesus-y bits. But I have little tolerance for hundreds of years later everyone still going "well, Abomination is actually mistranslated" without it ever actually being fixed while people run around using the mistranslated passages to get their hate on in flagrant disregard for the entire message of the New Testament.
