Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

All religion is transactional, Commercial transactions. They’re selling a product that you can’t use until you die and that you can’t possess and that you can’t see. They want your money and your obedience with the promise of good times in the afterlife and the destruction of the people that you don’t like. Nothing exemplifies this like Christianity, especially Catholicism through the 1800s. TV preachers and the religious right is modern day Christianity. Thoroughly and completely transactional. They couldn’t answer the question Jesus Christ posed according to Luke. “Who is my neighbor.”

 

Well, I'll just say my faith has given me a "center" that has helped me focus on how I want to live my life, how to be a better person, "do unto others" if you will. Understanding the "why are we here" type stuff and wanting to make the world a better place. But it pretty much ends at the tip of my fingers. While I hope my life serves as a positive influence on others, I don't try and "root out" those who may have a negative influence on me. To each their own. I realize other people have other beliefs and that's great - whatever works.

 

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson

 

They's them that can (for whatever reason), and them that can't. Yab's a can ... why, I don't know, but that's how things go.

 

It's not about that. It's the hypocrisy. He plays the anti-Semitism card all the time (almost always unwarranted) and is openly hateful toward Muslims and Christians. It's bullshit.

Also, Thomas Jefferson owned and fucked his slaves. Forgive me for not turning to him for wisdom.

 

Organized religion is the epitome of hypocrisy.

 

It was just the way it had always been.

 

I’m equally disdainful of all religion. The saving Grace of Judaism, compare to Christianity and Islam, is that Jews actively don’t want anyone else to be Jewish. Additionally, being Jewish isn’t a prerequisite for entry into Heaven or an afterlife. Jewish people were chosen by God to live life a certain way and in a certain place. If you aren’t Jewish, you don’t have to live that way but eternal peace, or whatever, is not foreclosed by the fact you are not Jewish. So an absence of proselytizing and a liberal afterlife define the most significant distinction between religions. This is also one reason Christians have mercilessly hunted and killed Jews. Christians need you to believe they are right and eternal life is conditioned on being a Christian. If everyone just led a good life and had eternal peace why be a Christian. And therefore why give your money and your children over to them.

 

What Paul said Jesus really meant was that if you only believed Jesus was God, then You didn’t have to follow the rules for being Jewish. And if you were a Pagan, belief in Jesus was the only way to enter into The Kingdom. Paul was trying to convert. Jesus was trying to save. Which is why most Christians don’t follow Jesus but follow Paul

 

In This Small New Jersey Town, Sukkahs Pop Up in Unlikely Places - Alma


By Chloe Sarbib (I am not Chloe)

If you were to walk around Princeton, New Jersey this week, you might notice that the town has a few new features. Entering Palmer Square, you would spot the blue-and-white shell of a hexagonal structure across from some picnic tables; in the shadow of the Trinity Church, seasonal gourds tucked into stacked boxes would invite you to admire them. These whimsical sites have appeared throughout the city, and no two are alike. But, as a nice man at the Princeton YWCA asked me and Alma editor Molly Tolsky when we popped in to use the bathroom, what are they.

I told him that they are sukkahs. “What-kahs?” he said. So I explained: Sukkahs are erected for the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot. According to My Jewish Learning, they are temporary dwellings that “represent the huts in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt.” These transient shelters generally must have three walls and a roof, and be sturdy enough to withstand an “ordinary wind.” During the holiday, per the Sukkah Village website, “the goal is to spend as much time as possible in the sukkah, at the very least eating all meals” there. “Some people even sleep in the sukkah.” (I didn’t say it quite so well to YWCA man, but still, he seemed satisfied.)

 

I swear I keep seeing tiny little sprouts of hope that the choke-hold the far right has on so much of our lives is beginning to loosen. Take for instance a majority of Southern Baptist leaders are apparently too liberal for a conversative group's tastes. And by "too liberal" what I mean is "they want to allow investigators to get to the bottom of systematic sexual abuse." Remember, the side allowing this is the majority. A good sign, no?

https://www.tennessean.com/story/ne...mittee-members-resign-waiver-vote/6054752001/