Slashdot Mirror
Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament
earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."
I'm glad that he's paying attention to this ridiculous bill by showing how daft the implications of it would be. Hopefully, along with Rowan Atkinson's recent attack, the bill will be defeated
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Well, okay... But first you have to challenge any christian to turn water into wine without any special apparatus.
Most "Jedi" are simply making a statement that belief in the force is no more rational than belief in any other religion.
The jedi religion is just as real as any other, IMO, except perhaps better written.
godalmighty, there should be a sense of humor test for mods.
what Christian has ever claimed that they could turn water into wine?
there are a lot less rational things than Christianity.
You have to realise that the British don't take anything too seriously, especially politics and religion.
In the US, I suspect a politician making light of religion in this way would upset a lot of people in The Bible Belt.
what are you? a christian? let's see you pray and make one single thing happen.
Okay, did anybody actually read the article? Did anybody bother to check the background?
Or did people not even think that he was making a satarical attack against the new bill that Labour are seeking to impose?
I read it, and then instantly saw the humour in it. Or did no one else think to read between the lines.
Again, the slashdot community attempt to do the javelin and 100m sprint events together.
Honestly not sure if you're joking- but if not then it raises an all important point that one person's religsion is another person's wackiness. Wicca is a serious religion for many people, but is still viewed as 'wacky' by a large part of the US population. Whatever you think you know about Wicca, people who are serious Wiccans deserve the same protections that you do as whatever you are.
Not really.
It's entirely different to claim to believe in Jedi and to claim to BE a Jedi. According to the books I've read and the movies, a Jedi is capable of performing these actions. They all have their "talents" but to be a Jedi you have to be able to manipulate the force in some tangible and demonstrable way.
The water to wine thing doesn't hold. It's not a commonly held dogma (leaving backwoods ministers from crazyville out) that Christians are given controllable powers. If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
Never confuse volume with power.
Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion. That includes jedi, sith, scientologist, whatever. The bill is very loosely worded as to what could be considered stirring up hatred. "Yoda was an arsehole, it all Jedi should be done away with" might qualify.
So this is a smart guy using satire to ridicule the bill in a fairly subtle way. So yes, I suppose you could say that it does give insight into the type of people who get voted in.
And in case anyone is wondering about the obsequious thanks to Jack Cunningham in the speech, it is traditional to thank your predecessor in your first speech to the commons.
We'll have a Jedi Senator years before we'll have an atheist one.
Fish-out-of-thin-air guy wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew.
Perhaps he was voted in by an electorate who believes he would do a good job of representing the people regardless of his peronal beliefs (no matter how unconventional).
Perhaps he was voted in by an electorate who are concerned about the bill outlawing 'incitement to relgious hatred' that is about to pass through the commons and runs a risk of making various forms of satire and free speech (including your post) potentially illegal.
In any case, we now how cllr's from the BNP, I would rather see a self-proclaimed 'Jedi' in parliment than a nazi-wannabe.
You may be joking, but if your not...
What if I stood up in Parliment (if an MP) and said I followed the ideals of Hobbits of Middle Earth, and that that was my religious belief.
I mean, that's just something made up in a book...
(kinda like the bible)
That wouldn't make it an insult to be on par with something made up for a movie. That would be something of an elevation.
But as far as I'm concerned, ALL religion is made up and it's merely a matter of how long ago and how many people actually believe it presently that marks it as valid or invalid. As early as the age of 10, I realized that all of these other "dead religions" (AKA mythologies) were just as important to those who followed them 'back then' as contemporary religion is today.
I amaze myself even now to wonder if a 10 year old can realize this, then surely anyone should be able to. And from that I moved on to query that since all the others are "invalid" then what makes the "valid" ones different? "Nothing" I concluded.
In short, anyone who is religious is a fool.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
"I see you have constructed a new lightsaber." -- Darth Vader in ROTJ wielding Luke's new lightsaber. Luke lost Annakin's old lightsaber because it was still being held by the arm that fell onto Bespin in ESB.
You have bad logic. You say that since false prophets exist, you can't believe there were true ones.
No, I say that there has been so many certified false prophets, and so few reasons to believe accounts of events that took place 2000 years ago (formally chronicled in writing 300 years after the facts, on top of that) that there are precious few reasons to believe the few great prophets of the past have any more credibility.
It's like in a court of law, you can condemn someone solely on indirect evidences, if they overwhelmingly converge towards accusing the defendent. You don't necessarily have to have real evidences to form a judgement.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
no, I actually completely agree with him. There's no such thing as the force, and there never will be :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Sure, a 10 year old can realize this, assuming they've not already been indoctrinated by then. When you were ten you hadn't been brainwashed by religion. If you had been you'd probably still be.
There's no such thing as the force, and there never will be
And, this is different from other religions how?
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
So, basically, you base your appraisal of Christianity on the fact that there are and have been people who do it badly. That's kind of sad. How about: I've seen bad software, so I'm not going to use computers. Or: I've seen bad countries, so I'm not going to live in one. Or: I've seen moldy food, so I'm going to starve myself. hmm?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
No, this is slashdot. The majority (or at least the vocal/mod majority) seems to be fairly negative towards Christians and Christian ideas. Witness any of the articles that even broach the topic of evolution, and how many posts are modded up for being anti-creationist and how many are modded down for pointing out that evolution is a theory, not a fact, etc.
Without getting into an argument about it, I just wanted to point out that it's unlikely you'll be modded down for what you said. The only time I've ever been modded Flamebait was for a sarcastic comment pointing out that you can believe in Creation AND microevolution at the same time. If it were all about the power of entrenched religions, I'd not have been modded flamebait, but instead Insightful, just because I defended Creationism.
Just a thought
Guys with a talent for oration, performing magic tricks on a scene, with accomplices in wheelchairs suddenly rising up when the guy touches their foreheads and shouting "miracle", subjugating their audiences and usually asking for money at the end, are called crooks. They are called prophets by the followers, yet they're crooks. History is rife with them.
There were also numerous madmen starting cults and preaching this and that, sometimes asking followers to commit mass suicide, or dress in plain white robes to go beg in airport terminals. Those are usually not considered prophets either, apart by their followers. They're madmen. There has been plenty of them too.
Crooks and madmen don't go to crook-and-madmen school. They just are.
Now, ignoring whatever faith you may have in him, based solely on a neutral reading of the scriptures, even considering most accounts of his life are paraboles and not actual fact, what honestly makes you think Jesus wasn't either a crook or a madman? honestly? I can't see much difference myself, try as I might (and believe me, I tried)...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
Thomas did ask for proof, yes, and he got his proof. But Jesus castigated also him for it. Daring to ask for proof was seen as a much weaker for of faith than belief without seeing.
Such a philosophy goes a long way towards explaining the current climate in the US.
Download my free songs!
Just like the other religionists waited, right?
L Ron Hubbard didn't wait thousands of years to start his psycho religion, and now that religion has half the fucktards in Hollywood dumping their money into it. With such a proven track record, why should the Jedi nerds wait thousands of years to start theirs?
This goes along with my cow manure theory of religion. When it's really fresh, it's not much good for anything. But after sufficient ripening time it does have a certain usefulness as fertilizer. And after a couple of thousand years, it's good for research into the state of the human intellect in the past.
I know, it's still just BS, Mr. Smartypants.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have mod points, but I've got to respond to this troll or poor deluded soul.. I'm not sure which.
What's sad is seeing people who still believe in hokey old religions that don't make any sense, and they do it without proof.
Heck, if god came down in a burning chariot, and said Follow Me, well, I'd know which side I'd put my money on THEN.
Oh, but religion is worthless without faith, you say. Bull. Why should WE believe, when the people that were THERE had to be shown miracles and such in order to believe? That's not belief, that's just being proven there's someone that can do extraordinary things, or is a real slick huckster.
Well, you just send me every cent you have. No? Why don't you have faith that I will pay back all of your money if you send it to me? I can get AT LEAST 12 people to tell you how trustworthy I am.
You know, people used to worship the sun and moon, ancestors, the spirits of animals and ideas. Would you just call them superstitious primitives? They had just as ardent a belief as you do. The ones who worshipped the sun, the moon, the wind, and their ancestors at least had something concrete to worship, whereas you just have the word of people who existed a couple thousand years ago and wrote letters and ran a despised religion out of basements and catacombs.
Intellectual children, the superstitious, the desperate, or the confused. Those are the kinds of people that believe in a god.
Answer: Never. Or when the U.S. changes over to proportional representation, whichever comes first.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Please show me where it says in the bible that God caused life to appear out of nowhere. Please show me where the bible references TIME at all after those first seven days, when God was creating humans, plants, and animals. There is no indication whatsoever that God snapped his fingers and life suddenly appeared. By believing in this man-invented concept of creationism, you are claiming to understand how your god did these things and how long it took him.
Your catagorical disbelief of evolution (as opposed to specific objections, like irregularities in the evidence) is not supported by the world around us, and it is not supported by the very book you claim to follow. It is illogical, irrational, extremely arrogant, and is modded flamebait for very good reason.
As for the "it's just a theory" horseshit, well, if you haven't figured out how worthless that statement is by now, you really are beyond all reason. Things like eletricity and gravity and relativity and nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are all theories, and have all field very real, practical results. Evolution, too, has shown itself to be real as best it can, but no one can prove it to be absolutely, unquestionably true any more than they could prove that an electrons are real by picking one up and showing it to me.
But you go ahead and keep believing that electrons aren't real because you can't observe them directly. Just try not to get hit by a bolt of lightning...
Money didn't save the Jews from the Germans, or the Russians, or the Spanish, or the French... Or any of the other peoples who turned on the Jews in order to steal their money. The real "Force" is going with the tao of the universe to survive the downturns. There the Jews have claim to some power: staying power.
--
make install -not war
If it's a double-bladed lightsaber, are both ends "the business end"?
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
I once heard a story about a pastor who asked the members of his board of elders to drink poison to prove they have faith.
The pastor and all the elders died except one.
When asked why he didn't drink with the others he said "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Luke 4:12".
The problem is not a lack of "super powers" but a lack of understanding of the Bible.
When Christians don't understand what the Bible teaches they are bound to do stupid things "in the name of God".
Jesus said:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.' " -Matthew 7:21-23
There's no such thing as the force, and there never will be
I happen to disagree with you. Try taking some Kung Fu classes, you'll soon enough learn otherwise. Better yet, try Tai Chi or Qigong.
Look, I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I'm really getting tired of the logic here: I don't understand it, so I will attribute it to God.
If you don't know how something happened, why is a common course of action to give credit to a god for something good happening, when it would be far easier and simpler to just admit you don't know.
I mean, really.... you don't hear many cancer victims blaming Satan for their illness, so why the other way around?
There are further problems with claims such as you state can happen. The biggest that comes to mind is that you are very careful to use sufficiently ambiguous language so that any demand for emperical testing of a miracle can be headed off. Whatever the cause of an alleged miracle, there is going to be a physical manifestation, and that manifestation ought to be measurable, but you put so much wiggle room in, and it almost seems the reason is to stave off that sort of analysis.
The second has to do with the notion of faith itself. Christians aren't the only people who claim miracles. Many adherents of other faiths also claim that their deities (or other spirits and the like) can also produce supernatural feats. Is it your view that God gives non-Christians a helping hand to, or are the only legitimate miracles those that occur to Christians?
It isn't so much that some people discount claims, but rather that in analyzing any claim, the measure ought to be how extraordinary from every day physical interactions the claim is. If you have an extraordinary claim, then you ought to be prepared to provide extraordinary evidence. No claim, not even one made by scientists, ought to be immune from this. Now, in some cases, an extraordinary claim does have extraordinary evidence, in which case skepticism must be put aside, even if only on the basis of current evidence (with the realization that further evidence may change the situation substantially).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Using supernatural explanations isn't exactly new. It's very old. The problem has always been (and this has accelerated in the last half millennium) that such explanations can suffer rather nasty fates when some more mundane explanation is brought to bear. Science isn't the enemy of religion, but it sure is the enemy of superstition, and from what I've seen, miracles tend to be as much (if not more) in the superstitious vein than the religious.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Actually, all Christian....make that most all monotheistic religions believe God to be an extra-terrestrial.
If God created the world, he must not be native to it, thus he is by definition an extra-terrestrial intelligence. To say he isn't is to say he is terrestrial, negating the argument that he created the world.
yep, sounds like the president ofthe US
My new blog
he Big Bang, quantum physics, embryology, string theory... I'd argue that they all meet the criteria for mystical phenomena.
And you would argue out of ignorance. All of those theories are based on observation and founded in mathematics. The concept of 'chi' has no such foundation, and has not stood up to observation.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
So, in other words, the effect is there, but since there is a scientific explination for it, for some reason we can't call it chi anymore?
However, your belief does not explain reikki. Maybe reikki doesn't work, but to those who believe it does, and there are a lot of them, your personal belief doesn't hold water.
Not commenting on Reikki, but this is a non-argument.
You're effectively saying that since one person thinks one thing is true and one person thinks it's false, the second person doesn't think the thing is true. To say it another way, you're claiming that if one person, anywhere, disagrees with you, to them, you're wrong.
I don't think you spent very much time thinking about this. Saying you don't believe in Chi is like you saying "I don't believe in love". If you have never experienced it, you won't believe in it, or have any hope of really understanding it. If you have experienced it, you don't need convincing.
Sure, doctors and scientists might be able to describe it in bland chemical and physical terms, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And when you do, you are missing most of the point.
Chinese Medicine is no less strigent of a science and based on thousands of years of observation, and trial and error, with a quarter of the world's population! It's creation was dependent on careful observation.
But to refute your position that it has "not stood up to observation", I'll point you to 127 scientific medical publications on the topic, most of which would seem to support these theories:
ReferencesI'm amused that you think a foundation of mathematics is a magic bullet; that somehow math magically makes hypotheses true. String theory is indeed based heavily on math, but it is far from achieving a conscensus in the scientific community on its "truth". In fact, there's plenty of debate on whether or not it even qualifies as science!
The only reason why "pure" mathematics is "true" is because we believe it is true. Think about it.
... [finite observations]... etc therefore f(x) = x * 2. As you can easily see, it's possible for such generalizations to fail.
...
I suggest you think about it. Mathematical proof are proofs of logic and are inherently self-consistent. They are therefor about as 'true' as anything can be in this world. While mathematics doesn't necessarily have to reflect reality as we see (and measure) it, it just so happens that in many cases it does. If mathematics *didn't* serve as a useful tool to describe physical processes and observed phenomena, we wouldn't be communicating through the interaction of about 500 devices right now, none of which would be even possible to conceive of, let alone construct, without mathematics.
This is how science works:
f(1) = 2, f(2) = 4, f(3) = 6, f(4) = 8,
Your understanding of how science works is misguided. To use your (limited) analogy, it is more like:
We observe 2, 4, 6, 8
We postulate, f(x)=2x, x=1, 2,
We predict: f(5)=10, f(6)=12, f(7)=14
We measure again: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16
We conclude theory is ok for x=5 and look for physical reasons why it falls off, and attempt to refine the theory.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack