Domain: religionnewsblog.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to religionnewsblog.com.
Comments · 15
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Re:I'm Dutch.
Worse yet, XS4ALL actually very much proved in this case they stand for freedom. The original case was made against Ziggo and Xs4all asked to be joined into the case as an party with an interest in the case, where others just stood by and watched. Besides, there will still be an appeal and Xs4all has a history of taking things to the supreme court when needed (see: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13054/final-victory-xs4all-and-karin-spaink-win-scientology-battle). This is far from over yet.
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Re:POSIX operating systems are sinful
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This isn't funny anymore ...First of all the Scientology sect has a long, ugly, and above all well-documented history of harassment, intimidation, and legal chicanery. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishman_Affidavit, http://www.cesnur.org/testi/se_scientology.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karin_Spaink#Scientology, http://www.religionnewsblog.com/23160/james-orrington). The Scientology sect is held in Germany to be aimed at taking advantage of vulnerable individuals (http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2009/03/german-court-orders-berlins-anti.html). It is also in the business of selling its "religious" material, and makes strenuous efforts to keep such material from being publicly available (see e.g. their way of forcing Slasdot to remove material http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/16/1256226_F.shtml)
With legal chicanery I mean e.g. leveling a barrage of nuisance lawsuits at an opponent with the objective of bankrupting the victim by forcing him to expend ruinous sums on legal counsel, or alternatively by securing unfounded convictions against the victim where he has been unable to mount an adequate legal defense (See e.g. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/exhibg.html).
An additional form of chicanery is to drop charges against a victim who does mount an adequate defense in order to avoid unfavorable precedents from being set against the sect (see http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Gerechten/HogeRaad/Actualiteiten/Hoge+Raad+verwerpt+het+cassatieberoep+in+de+zaak+Scientology+providers+en+Spaink.htm (in Dutch)).
Of course the wave of counter-harassment and even threats (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology) goes too far. But what the Cult now pleads for is to introduce a totally ambiguous definition of "Websites created with primary purpose of inciting religious vilification" (read: "anybody who says something to the effect that the Scientology sect is a nasty, dangerous, for-profit outfit") and strip those of anonymity or even the right to exist at all. In plain text: anyone who writes anything against the Scientology cult will now be exposed to harassment lawsuits, career wrecking, and intimidation (see the Fishman affidavit in one of the links above).
The full text of the "recommendations" I reproduce below:
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation 1: The implementation of Criminal and Civil Restrictions on Religious Vilification.
Recommendation 2: Restriction on Anonymity on acts of Religious Vilification:
2.1 Websites created with primary purpose of inciting religious vilification shall be removed or their access to the Australian public restricted.
2.2 Creators of websites whose primary purpose is the incitement of religious vilification shall be prevented from concealing their identity.
Recommendation 3: Restriction on Religious Misinformation and Misrepresentation known or reasonably known to be untruthful in the Media
Recommendation 4: Include a form of Bill or Charter of Rights into the Australian Constitution, which prevents the Commonwealth from making any law, which 'directly, indirectly or incidentally' prohibits the free exercise of religion to the extent of such prohibition
What part of this looks as if it provides any safeguards against the most appalling abuse? Where are the checks and balances? Who determines what is "misinformation", or "incitement of religious vilification"? Would quoting court documents that state the Scientology sect pr
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Re:You have no say....
The alternative will be Britannica.
I always tell people to check out conservapedia.com. It was started because Wikipedia is edited by YOU and YOU are too biased to provide neutral information.
Here's a section from their page on Barack Hussein Obama
(redirected from Barack Obama)Doctors from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have stated that Obama uses techniques of mind control in his speeches and campaign symbols. For example, one speech declared, "a light will shine down from somewhere, it will light upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"[26]
Oh my God, this is terrible! Our president is using techniques of mind control on us! What does Wikipedia have on this subject? Not a thing. Because a light shone down on YOU, YOU experienced an epiphany, and YOU said to yourself, 'I have to censor Barack's Wikipedia page.'
Obama may be the first Muslim President
The argument that Obama is a Muslim is largely based on his Islamic background. It also includes:- Obama's background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.[28] [29]
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- Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam.
- Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather than the common American one.
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- Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."[42]
- Obama enjoyed a bigger increase in voter support in 2008 (compared to 2004) by Muslims than by any other voting group, including blacks;[43] "Muslim turnout in the U.S. elections reached 95 percent, the highest Muslim turnout in U.S. history."[44]>
- "President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend [Sunday or Christmas] church services since winning the White House
..., a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors."[45] - Many atheists claim that Obama is one of them, yet he displays none of the characteristics common to atheism: Obama has not expressed offense at prayer by others, he has not promoted the theory of evolution, and he has never expressed a disdain for religious belief.
Bet you didn't know he was a Muslim. But it isn't all about religion. They also get into flag pins.
Obama wore an American flag lapel pin after 9/11, but later stopped wearing it without adequate explanation.[58] Presumably it would have hurt him with anti-military campaign donors.In 2007, at critical moments in his campaign for the nomination, Obama had difficulties securing the support of anti-war activists.
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Re:Nothing random about invasions
I guess my point is to emphasize that we weren't just lied to, and we weren't just sheep to believe the lies. We were misled by guys who later decided to take the heat as liars instead of guys who were too stupid to recognize bluff from data. I guess I'd damned well be neither, but if I had to admit to the American public that a) I'm a lying politician or b) I'm a politician dumber than Saddam, - well, let's just say I can maybe see how the choice was made.
No, people were pretty much morons. Anyone who seriously considered chemical weapons to be "WMDs" was a moron. Nukes are city-killers and weapons of "mass destruction"; chems are battlefield denial weapons and terror weapons, they are terribly inefficient mass killers. And you sure as hell don't need to import them from Iraq; a bunch you can cook in your kitchen and the rest can be done in an even minimally equipped lab. The idea of going to fucking WAR because a country had them was ludicrous beyond belief.
Someone will probably again use them again for the extra frisson of terror that novelty gives, but frankly, they'd be wasting their time. Give me 20 footsoldiers and with 20 liters of nice clear flammables in a water bottle, front and back of ten rush hour subway cars, and the emergency brake and I'll give you grief and terror that would make a dinky sarin attack look pathetic. If I want a chem attack, infiltrate a few people in as truck drivers -- and believe me, the standards are low -- or simply hijack a few chlorine tankers and drive them into an elementary school. -
Re:Some Quick Thoughts....
Except where they "mistranslated" the number of the beast..... http://www.religionnewsblog.com/11134/beasts-real
- mark-devalued-to-616 -
Re:Fallacy
No, no, you mean 616 years.
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Re:Religious Objection
Okay, first "right hand" doesn't always mean "thing with 5 digits that is at the distal end of an arm." Lots of things have "right hand" sides. Like this page for instance. Also you're forgetting that 666 is from a bogus translation, and the actual writting has it as 616.
Of course overly literal and dubious translations is du rigur when it comes to religious prophesies. So I'm sure your counter argument would work against the bible thumpers. -
Re:1616
Well, the other number of the beast is 616, so it's that plus a thousand.
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Re:Fortunately...Oh, please. This ridiculous old saw about Constantine isn't even remotely credible. It has its origins with Gibbon, who has been thoroughly discredited in this instance. Christianity had just been through the worst persecution it had ever experienced, with so many martyrs made that the Coptic Church still counts its years from the accession of the emperor responsible for it, Diocletian. (They call it the Age of the Martyrs.) Some of the participants at Nicaea were missing eyes or limbs from the tortures they suffered rather than give up the faith. It's absurd to claim that these people would just roll over because an emperor told them to. It would have been contrary to everything they believed in and inconsistent with how they had behaved up to that time.
Constantine wanted order in the Church which was wracked with controversy over a particular theological issue, so he called the council. After convening it, he left the discussions up to the bishops, who ended up condemning Arius. Constantine was so uninterested in the theological determination that he was actually baptized on his deathbed by an Arian bishop, a fact that cannot be reconciled with the notion that he was responsible for the council's decision. It actually took a second council to finally put an end to the schism.
Easter wasn't invented at Nicaea. It had been celebrated since the second century at least -- probably earlier; this is just when the avaiable documentary evidence was written. Of course, it wasn't called Easter, and wouldn't be until a few hundred years later when some obscure Germanic tribes were converted. It still isn't called that in most parts of the world. It's ancient and proper name by which it was known to the Fathers at Nicaea is Pascha, the Greek adaptation of the Hebrew Pesach: Passover. "Passover" and "Easter" are the same word in the Greek Bible. (What actually was done at Nicaea relative to Pascha was that a consistent method of determining when it should fall was decided upon. Before that there were a variety of methods, and different local churches were celebrating it on different days. But they were celebrating it.)
There's no credible cultural or etymological link between "Ishtar" (whom Constantine did not worship at any point in his life) and "Easter". "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon month "Eostremonath", of obscure meaning. Bede claimed it referred to a goddess named Eostre, but he is writing generations after his people converted and not from living memory. There's no contemporary mention of this goddess at all, and modern scholars have concluded that he was just guessing and was probably wrong.
Christianity always had a distinctive organization from Judaism -- note from Acts 15 that questions were not referred to the Sanhedrin but to a Christian council, with the decision announced not by a kohan or rabbi, but by the local bishop. It grew even moreso after the destruction of the Temple in 70 and the levelling of Jerusalem in 120 when the Jewish population was scattered. It was clearly not Jewish by the time Nicaea was held, even among its Semitic adherents.
If this is your myth, you can live with it if you want, but please don't try to present it as fact. It just isn't.
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Re:here's what i did
That is, he was the Neighbor of the Beast until the Beast moved.
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Re:Father ??
Hmmm. It seems to me that instead of bleeding the beast by suing IBM, big Darl would be doing the world a favour if he did a little more bleeding the beast in the bathroom.
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Re:Hey, whose side are they on?Yeah, when have you ever heard of an amateur rocket being used for terrorism?
From the linked article:"There is no consistency as to what is acceptable in one region for the ATF that won't be acceptable somewhere else," said Wickman. "The ATF people seem, as a rule, to feel this whole idea of hobby rocketry being regulated by the (government is) a mistake and a waste of time. There's a disconnect between the ATF in Washington and the regional field offices."
What's worse, even though not much has changed about the regulations, they are subject to arbitrary interpretation in the field, said Bundick, of the National Association of Rocketry. "It's a never-ending treadmill to try to pacify the local inspector."
The Justice Department's Nowacki didn't respond to questions about the ATF's perceived inconsistency.
What you model terrorists don't seem to understand is that it doesn't matter that model rockets can't be used as weapons of terror.
What's important isn't controlling model rockets, per se; what's important is getting the American public used to a never-ending "war against terror", keeping them keyed-up, ever fearful and ever compliant.
What's important is getting the public resigned to always asking permission from the government, always being afraid that they're at risk of arrest, even for hobbies the government knows full well pose no realistic risk of harm.
And ultimately, what's important is making the people of this nation realize who is boss -- the government and its bureaucrats and its corporate owners --, and who is the servant -- the common taxpayer.
Once you realize that your hobbies "need" to be regulated to "fight terror", you'll docilely let the FBI knock on your door on behalf of the RIAA's searches, and you'll agree to submit your open source code to government inspection to make sure it doesn't "INDUCE" violation of copyright.
Once the formerly free American sheeple resign themselves to arbitrary governmental intrusions into their lives in order to further some ill-defined and ever elusive "war against terror", they'll stop squawking about- (1st) free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion;
- (4th) unreasonable searches and seizures;
- (5th) freedom from self-incrimination;
- (6th) rights to counsel and to a speedy trial
- (8th) freedom from cruel and unusual punishments
- (9th) rights retained by the people
- (10th ) or rights reserved by the States
Or as our beloved Reichsminister Ashcroft explained, to the Senate Judiciary Committee, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty ... your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and ... give ammunition to America's enemies." - (1st) free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion;
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Re:God be with you
No one's suggesting that doctors pray instead of treat
No one?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
This took all of 1 minute in google to find.
Prehaps it would have been better said no one here has suggested.
Medicine and religion have a long history of bad blood and we would probably but a lot healthier without religion. -
Toxic TreatmentsAll the worry over dangerous chemicals in your body spells one thing to various quackery groups: Market!
Make sure any program/treatment promising detoxification isn't just a come-on or quackery or worse like Scientology in drag peddling Elronics to firefighters. (Nothing wrong with a little bit of sauna, but all that Niacin can cause liver damage.)
Make sure that the wonderful treatment to rid your body of harmful dangerous chemicals isn't even more dangerous.