Christian Evangelism isn't a Political Party

[guacamole]

A complete misrepresentation of my view as usual, from a guy who (I suspect) is fine with:
- Torture
- Drone strikes that cause civilian causalities
- War
- Killing animals for meat
- The death penalty
- Gay and trans people lacking human rights
Edit:
- People not having healthcare if they can't afford it
- Homelessness
- Poor people not having food, education or anything else if they don't have enough money to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps
- Police shooting unarmed black people in the streets

Everybody's okay with killing somebody. Most people here prolly shouldn't uh... throw stones.

[Adrift]

Do we expect people who are atheist to hold to Christian morals?

Christians regularly paint atheists as the worst sorts of people - with absolutely no foundation for any type of moral code - and yet the moment an atheist is honest enough to actually express a real opinion on something we get people running around with their hair on fire - for expressing the exact kind of view the stereotype holds that he would posses.

I think everyone needs to take a breather.
This is getting embarrassing.

I don't know many Christians who paint atheists as the worst sorts of people. I certainly don't, and neither does Leon, nor do most others here. In fact, I know plenty of atheists who I think are much better people than some who claim to be Christian.

[rogue06]

Al Franken... Now there's a recognized expert in Christan theology and biblical exegesis.

Apparently on the front page of today's Sunday edition the Washington Post is touting Franken as "the perfect senator for the Trump era" who "may be having a breakout moment as a political star."

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Yeah the same guy who talked about how much cocaine he and some of the other writers for Saturday Night Live used to do in order to get the show done and how he used to lie about it because "that was just a funny lie that I liked to tell."

And then there was his trip to Bob Jones University (a place that is a legitimate target for satire) with an actor pretending to be his son where he tried to get them to bend their rules for some major donations as he recounted in his book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Unfortunately for Franken they didn't budge but he seemed unperturbed by the failure and summed it up as "A good honest day's work done, lying to God-fearing people. We'd sleep well tonight." Kind of an ironic remark considering the title of his book.

And then there was the time, according to a 1995 New York Times Magazine article entitled "Comedy Isn't Funny: Saturday Night Live At Twenty--How The Show That Transformed TV Became A Grim Joke," that while discussing a skit for Saturday Night Live about 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney during the 1994-1995 season, Franken suddenly proposed a skit where he suggested that he drugs and rapes CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl.

In the New York Magazine article, dated March 13, 1995, entitled "Comedy Isn't Funny: Saturday Night Live At Twenty--How The Show That Transformed TV Became A Grim Joke" Franken veers off of a discussion of a skit involving Andy Rooney, and proposes a skit involving the drugging and rape of Lesley Stahl.

Franken: And, "I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley's passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her." Or, "That's why you never see Lesley until February." Or, "When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her."

Real comedy gold there Back in 2008 he actually chuckled about it while "apologizing" for it while running for Senate in 2008 on Minnesota Public Radio:

"Uh, this was a brainstorming session at SNL and you know I said something [snickers]

Talk about your War on Women.

[Adrift]

Everybody's okay with killing somebody. Most people here prolly shouldn't uh... throw stones.

Mmm, yes. Because killing animals for meat is just like killing infants.

[rogue06]

Do we expect people who are atheist to hold to Christian morals?

AFAICT, no society, Christian-based or otherwise, condones the killing of infants as a matter of convenience.

[guacamole]

Mmm, yes. Because killing animals for meat is just like killing infants.

Killin' animals?

[Mountain Man]

And this from a guy who has no problem with murdering infants.

A complete misrepresentation of my view...

You're a big, fat liar. Your own words condemn you.

I equate [killing children several weeks old with abortion] because to me it is the same. What does it matter whether the fetus is outside the womb or inside when it is killed? To me that makes no moral difference.

As for your laundry list of ethical issues, I'm OK with some of them all of the time, I'm against others all of the time, and the rest depend on circumstances.

[One Bad Pig]

You're a big, fat liar. Your own words condemn you.

He has an easy out on this one. He doesn't consider it murder.

[Tassman]

But see, no one denies that someone somewhere within the Christian West abandoned their children. We're all familiar with that image of the baby in the basket sitting on the steps of a church, or in front of an orphanage. It certainly wasn't approved of by the church or society, as you attempted to frame it earlier as happening within the Christian West on a grand scale, with absolute impunity, and with the most frigid indifference.

"During the Middle Ages, exposure was a prevalent practice due to overpopulation and the large numbers of illegitimate births. During the Renaissance in Italy, the abandonment rate was in excess of 50 percent of all babies. In seventeenth-century China, Jesuit missionaries reported that thousands of infants, mostly female, were deposited in the streets. In 1741 Thomas Coram, a retired sea captain, was so disturbed by the sight of infant corpses lying in the gutters and rotting on dung heaps that he opened Foundling Hospital in England to "suppress the inhuman custom of exposing new-born infants to perish in the streets" Langer, William L. "Infanticide: A Historical Survey."

http://www.deathreference.com/Ho-Ka/Infanticide.html

I think it's reasonable to refer to this level of exposure and abandonment of infants as being on a "grand scale", don't you?

[Mountain Man]

He has an easy out on this one. He doesn't consider it murder.

It doesn't matter what he personally considers it. It is not legal to kill an infant which makes it murder by definition. Therefore, Dimbulb is in favor of murdering infants. It's not a misrepresentation of his position at all.

[Meh Gerbil]

You're a big, fat liar.

The really fat liars are the worst!

[One Bad Pig]

It doesn't matter what he personally considers it. It is not legal to kill an infant which makes it murder by definition. Therefore, Dimbulb is in favor of murdering infants. It's not a misrepresentation of his position at all.

I'm referring to your allegation of lying.

[Adrift]

"During the Middle Ages, exposure was a prevalent practice due to overpopulation and the large numbers of illegitimate births. During the Renaissance in Italy, the abandonment rate was in excess of 50 percent of all babies. In seventeenth-century China, Jesuit missionaries reported that thousands of infants, mostly female, were deposited in the streets. In 1741 Thomas Coram, a retired sea captain, was so disturbed by the sight of infant corpses lying in the gutters and rotting on dung heaps that he opened Foundling Hospital in England to "suppress the inhuman custom of exposing new-born infants to perish in the streets" Langer, William L. "Infanticide: A Historical Survey."

http://www.deathreference.com/Ho-Ka/Infanticide.html

I think it's reasonable to refer to this level of exposure and abandonment of infants as being on a "grand scale", don't you?

Oh, no. If it's true, I would most certainly consider that a grand scale...for Italy. Still not something approved by the church, or likely Western society at large. By the way, you're not really citing your source correctly again. While it's obviously easy to type into Google "Middle Ages", and "Infanticide", and then copy/paste whatever comes up, if you want people to take you seriously at least tell us who the source of your cite was. In this case, it's not Langer, as you've sort of made it appear. Langer only stated the last part in quotes, "suppress the inhuman custom of exposing new-born infants to perish in the streets". The whole paragraph is actually written by Diane R. Moran, a clinical psychologist, not a historian, who wrote it for a volume of something called the "Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying" (2003). How much she's pulling from Langer's 1974 paper, I have no idea. The whole thing? The thing about Renaisasance Italy? Missionaries in China? English Foundling Hospitals? I'm thinking it's probably just the last bit about Foundling Hospitals. Concerning Italy, as mentioned previously, there were overestimates of the number of actual deaths of infants caused by infanticide that should have been attributed to SIDS, and as already pointed out, abandonment did not necessarily equal infanticide. Since Moran doesn't make clear where she's getting these percentages for Renaissance era Italy, I think it's wise for people to take it with a bit of salt.

[Mountain Man]

I'm referring to your allegation of lying.

He falsely accused me of misrepresenting his position.

[Sparko]

There's a lot of anti-rich pro-poor themes in Jesus' message. He seems to be to the left of Marx in the sense that he doesn't merely think the rich are terrible, he literally thinks they are going to hell.

Er, I would have said those labels are the exact opposites.

I think it's very difficult to judge Jesus' political views on moral issues. He hung out with prostitutes, and social outcasts. Yes there are verses that imply that they and others should change their lives, but those are not strongly emphasized. It's hard to say, I think, how Jesus would rule today on 'moral issues' if you teleported him into the present.

Economic issues are easy. Jesus would be all for programs to help the poor, sick, needy, downtrodden etc. He'd be as lefty-left as they come.

He would be for each person helping their neighbor and the church being responsible with the donations to do the same. He never once encouraged paying taxes to the government to feed the poor. or that the government should start programs to help the poor or any such thing. Conservative Christians are not against helping the poor either. We believe it is our duty. We don't believe that entails giving our money to the government and expecting the government to do our jobs for us. they are very inefficient and wasteful. We believe in helping the poor directly, one on one, and in pooling our money in our church's to provide assistance to people like food and shelter. That is how Jesus helped the poor. directly.