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Knights Templar Sue the Pope
pdragon04 writes "According to The Register, "the Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France..."." I wonder what a holy grail goes for with 700 years of compound interest.
The real Templars were disbanded in the early 14th century. These claimants are nothing more than another bunch of modern wannabes (founded in 1804). They have no legal standing to sue. And since the only immortal survivor of the templar persecution died in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," I somehow doubt they're going to be able to find anyone who was an actual victim to join their lawsuit.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I mean, presumably there's more than one Knight Templar. Shouldn't it be 'Knights Templar sue the Pope'? Unless there's only one of them left...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm thinking that 700 years might be a bit past the statute of limitations...
I wonder what a holy grail goes for with 700 years of compound interest.
I'm much more interested in how you make up for the lives & civilizations your organization destroyed.
I'm not saying this is true but Newsweek/MSNBC ran a story on pagan relics stored beneath the Vatican. I've also read and heard that many Native American (both North & South) relics and documents were shipped back to the Vatican to be stored under it so they could study heathenism and combat it. This was after their owners were either converted or burned/shot.
I would think that the Catholic church could at least (as a sign of good faith) return these to their descendants or at the very least release them to a museum with all the information they have on it so that the rest of us can gain insight to their culture & religion. Of course, if this were true, I don't think the museum donations would be worth the black eye.
"the Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France..."
The funny thing is that the Vatican probably has billions in capital at its disposal. I always got a kick out of the pope ruling a small nation-state in Europe (with its own currency, mind you) telling me to be more like Jesus. The same Jesus who said in Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Or what Luke said (12:23)
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Or John 3:17
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
The funny thing is I could go on all day finding quotes from most major religions ... Like Buddha or Gandhi, I'm a huge fan of this Jesus guy. It's 99% of the people who purport to follow him that manage to genuinely fuck up the world.
My work here is dung.
Uh...wow? Maybe they can join forces with the RIAA?
Sorry, it's the best I can do. This story is...I'm just...wow...
Palm trees and 8
They'll have enough trouble trying to prove that they are the rightful heirs of the Knights Templar...Trying to get money from the church on top of that? And why not sue France? They got a huge chunk of change as well.
Not even close to being the first time someone has tried this, and it never goes anywhere. The dream of the Templars wealth keeps it going, but in reality there is no wealth to claim, no one with the right to claim it, and no one to claim it from.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Or EuroDisney, as the case may be.
I think the traffic to the register is being redirected to the onion!
I think this may be the most surreal headline I've seen all year.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
If that works, then the middle east Muslims will also be able to sue for wrongful invasion by the Catholics and the knights templar. This could be fun.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So, assuming this suceeds ... can the native americans sue europe for defiling their land, and ruining their culture? I mean, if europe hadn't sent over all those rejects, the native americans would rule the (un)known world...
Or, maybe they could just sue the USA for making them look silly - I mean, those native headdresses don't look silly to people who are native - just everyone else.
If the Knights Templars are so holy, shouldn't they swear obedience to the Pope or something just as jesuits do?
IMO this is nothing more than a greedy grand-grandchild wanting his inheritance money. Next!
They go back and *actually* liberate the Holy Land, and *then* the Pope has to pay them all the golden doubloons in Christendom.
10% bonus doubloons for finding the True Cross. On second thoughts, 10% bonus for each True Cross found.
Heck, I'll even chip in a squadron of Turcopoles and some Genoese arbalesters.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
So now you don't have to.
I fail to see how this is nerdy, but I do appreciate the humor of someone suing the pope.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Liar!! I've seen national treasure 1 AND 2. C'mon, you're just part of the order, trying to keep all of the other rightful heirs from becoming really rich and buying nice cars.
Well, It *IS* The Register but lets play along. What's the Statute of limitations on this kind of stuff? Surely it must be shorter than 700 years. ... and it's not like the common man today believes they were a bunch of hedonistic Baphomet worshippers anyway.
But, beware: this lawsuit cannot pass beyond the courts of Spain, for it is effing ridiculous.
From what I have read, the current organization bears little if any connection to any historical one.
But with the way that the RCC deals out settlements, why not pull the lever?
Rumba > Bure
The Pantheon, in Rome, was built as a temple to the Roman gods, but was taken over by the Catholic church in 609 AD. It's time to return it to its original purpose, and restore the statutes of Mars, Venus, Apollo, Jupiter, and Diana.
Was The Register hijacked by The Onion or something?... Surreal...
If the Holy See doesn't comply, the warrior knights, renowned for liberating the Holy Land, will deploy that most fearsome of weapons: the Holy Hand Grenade offe Antioch.
May the best Godwin!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
In a related formal complain, The Templars also called the Church on its trolling and demanded compensation for all the flames.
The funny thing is that the Vatican probably has billions in capital at its disposal. I always got a kick out of the pope ruling a small nation-state in Europe (with its own currency, mind you) telling me to be more like Jesus.
Actually, the Vatican made a loss last tax year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7501486.stm
And this would be the same Jesus who said:
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. Sounds like a charitable guy.
This deserves the Monty Python Foot.
Ni!
I'm predicting their next suit will probably be a wrongful death suit against a certain Altaïr ibn La-Ahad.
I'm much more interested in how you make up for the lives & civilizations your organization destroyed
Hey, I'm all down with the Catholic church coughing up the New World assets as soon as the Islamic world reverts the middle east to the Roman Christian states they were before hand Islamic expansion.
This is my sig.
As standing with The Register's excellent reputation these days, the article is short on details and what exactly "restoring their good name" means. Here's something that might make more sense:
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=8360
What the Templars want is the lifting of the ban on the order itself by the catholic church. Follow the money on this one. The templars appear to be a charitable organization now, but even 700 years later, c'mon, if you said you were a templar, the first two stupid questions you'd expect from an ignorant person are "weren't they all burned at the stake for crimes a long time ago", and "so where's the grail?"
Obviously the Templars want some legitimacy, and this is the first step. If the church basically lifts the ban, they can also probably get financial and political support from the Vatican, which is huge. By getting legitimacy, they stop having to answer the same stupid questions and can go back to doing good works "in the name of God and with the pope's blessing," if that's the type of thing that floats your boat, and people will start taking them more seriously. Right now I bet no one in the world takes them seriously, but if they win this, since this will be a pretty visible thing if the Pope does what he asks, it will catapult the group into the world spotlight.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Good grief. TFA has references to the Holy Grail, "most fearsome of weapons", a French King, Spain, homosexual Knights, heresy, etc., and I only count 1 Monty Python joke so far...
...and I want to sue the whole of Europe for damages.
No sig today...
But who's going to represent The Cathars?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
How about Sir Roger Moore? He's a Knight, and is famous for playing Simon Templar.
The Templars had better watch out! No one expects THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Jesus sues Romans. "Imagine the what would have happened if I wasn't the Son of God? I could have died for real!"
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Congratulations! You have discovered the secret of Instant +5 Insightful here in our happy community:
"Blah blah [vapid knee-jerk complaining about vapid knee-jerk complaining and slashdot groupthink] blah blah," followed by a suggestion of patenting it.
True story.
Y'know that one where a wealthy man has about as much trouble getting into heaven as a camel through the eye of a needle..?
http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/oct_2006/pagan_graves_in_vatican_basement.html
To be fair, you completely misrepresent this article that you linked. The aforementioned "pagan relics stored beneath the Vatican" is nothing more than a new archeological site. It's not some cache of pagan artifacts gathered from past crusades/missions or some such.
If you read the article you'll see that it is a ancient Roman necropolis that was discovered recently, quite by accident*, during the construction of a new parking garage for the Vatican. It even has the rather tongue-in-cheek name "Necropolis of the Parking Garage" ("Necropoli dell'Autoparco").
The fact the burial customs used were clearly non-christian/Catholic, is the only reason why the site is labeled as a Pagan site. Also, it is dated to around 23 B.C.-14 A.D, which dates it just before Christianity as a whole.
The Vatican even plans to open the site to the public. This quote best sums up how the Vatican feels on the matter:
(* This kind of stuff happens all the time in Rome. It just so happens that the Vatican isn't in the habit of digging so deep.)
Then they have a legitimate claim to calling themselves Templars.
Most suits for medieval atrocities would face a number of hurdles, e.g.:
These 'Templars' seem to be able to overcome 1 because, according to Catholic doctrine, the current Pope is the direct successor of an unbroken line going back to St. Peter. They seem able to overcome 2 because the Pope is not sovereign in Spain. Overcoming 3 and 4, though, seems unlikely.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Y'know... I've never really liked it when people use the word "ye" to mean "you"... it means "the". And it's actually supposed to be pronounced that way, too... The letter 'y' in that place replaces a thorn, and started doing so with the introduction of moving type. It does so because the French-made printing presses didn't have that letter in their character set, because it's of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Latin, and so the letter Y was used in its place. Over time, the letter simply fell out of use in the English alphabet, and was replaced with the combonation "th", which had started appearing about 100 years earlier.
Off topic, I know. But *shrugs*
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
For a second I thought this was on "The Onion" - The Register is giving "The onion" a run for their money :)
Talk about reparations!
to get money out of the Church. And it involves the M word. *queue funny posts guessing what the M word is*
They can send in the lawyers! All of them. Heck, America will contribute to that effort.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
to claim to be Knights Templar as, say, the Knights of Columbus. Big deal.
On the other hand, their having been "disbanded" (in the words of an early poster) by the Church and Crown way back when is pretty questionable. After all, DeMolay was given the opportunity to avoid burning if only he would give away brothers of the order. He refused. The logical conclusion is that there were still people to give away.
The most likely (and historically supported) outcome is that they were driven underground. What happened to them after that? I doubt very much that they became a church in Spain.
Well, if you throw in, Microsoft is evil, that works pretty good too. I wonder if you could ever get a +10 for working Bush/Cheney/Microsoft/USA/Catholics/US Government" all into a single coherent sentence.
Of course, to be fair, on the flipside, if slashdot were conservative, we could just as easily get the same mod points for Obama/MoveOn/Barbara Streisand/etc....
In the defense of liberals, I was actually permanently banned from freerepublic because I dared to suggest that we should lower the guards on the borders because its bad for business to have so many cops around.
This is my sig.
No, it could be either, depending on context. Use as a pronoun was far more common. Don't let the overuse in fantasy novels and faux-archaic bar signs fool you.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ye
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)
As long as we're applying reason to the Bible, why not acknowledge it as nothing more than a book of bronze age mythology and treat it as such?
Because a bronze age book of mythology can be happily ignored (unless you're a history buff), whereas this book is more than just a collection of crusty stories. It's the seed of a global manipulation which has resulted in more dead/dying/suffering people than any other con I can think of off the top of my head. As much as I frown at myself for doing so, I tend to conclude, "If you decide to stop thinking, then you get to live and die miserably." It's painful to watch, but people get what they deserve. You just need to give them lots of self-destruct room so they don't drag you down with them.
I live in a city with more churches per capita than anywhere else I've seen. You literally cannot walk a hundred meters without passing a cult-house. The creepy singing can be heard on Sundays rising all across the city, and when I acknowledge it, it scares me to the core because you just know how little it would take for these so-called peace-loving people to turn on a dime and become torch-wielding killers at the whim of their controllers. I love Slashdot for keeping me sane on days like that, when I am struck cold by the realization that most of the people around me I consider friendly neighbors might as well be from that Body Snatchers movie.
-FL
Jesus said that to defend Mary's nice gesture to him; Judas said "we should sell that ointment and give to the poor" but Jesus was basically saying "it's ok to spend money to do something nice for someone. You can take care of the poor later."
This was shortly before his death, and he was about to go to the garden of Gethsemane to suffer for the sins of the world. Kind of more important than taking care of the poor.
So there's no need to insult Jesus by taking his comment out of context.
Well, the Medes and then Persians were Indo-European people, somewhat related to the Scythians (and occasionally allied with them), who overran the by-then semitic Neo-Assyrian empire and generally Messopotamia.
So, you know, the semitic arabs were there first. In a way, the Muslim conquest was just taking back a place that was theirs in the first place.
Or was it? Wait, even those weren't the first ones there. The original Sumerian people and language of Messopotamia weren't semitic at all, but something quite different, and were there some thousands of years before Aramaic took over. Yep, that's right. Fast-forward a millennium or two, and suddenly the whole damned place speaks Aramaic, a semitic language, although they keep Sumerian as a church and literary language. (The same as the Catholic Church would do with Latin much later.) But otherwise, by now Sumerian was a dead language. Pining for the fjords, and all that. The oldest civilization on Earth had been displaced by something else.
So I guess someone should call themselves the descendants of Sumerians and sue for a couple of millenia worth of compound interest, for their lost lands and whatnot ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Psst. This is old news. 1300 AD called; they want their story back.
use Trial By Combat... Two Priests Enter (the Knights Templar had all taken Holy Orders, after all), One Priest Leaves! It would settle the matter in a manner appropriate to the standing of the suit - which would be plate armor and greatswords...
Yes and no. "Ye" was a second person pronoun for quite a long time in English besides being sloppy typography for "the". The King James Bible seems to use "ye" in both ways.
are the true Knights Templar, and that we have hidden the treasures of the world beneath a highly recognizable public building (no, not that one).
Claims about us secretly directing the destiny of nations and peoples are greatly exaggerated, though. I've been in fifteen years and still only get to oversee Botswana.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
It's here in Valencia, has been for quite some time now.
Free viewing mornings/afternoons (they charge to go up the tower but not to see the grail).
No sig today...
It appears that the Grail is in Valencia, Spain. I thought I'd previously read that it had been in France until the French Revolution, but that was a wooden cup, and the one in Valencia is agate.
so far in this thread I've read that "native american headdresses look silly to everyone" and that "everyone who attends church worships money"...-1 point for /.'s
is Windows?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
"Let me get this straight. You think that your church, one of the richest, most powerful citystates in the world, has unfairly slandered you knights who were running around the continent beating heathens to a pulp with bared steel? And your plan is to sue them? .... Good luck with that."
If the Vatican folds on this, does this mean they are deeming a Pope fallable? Then what happens? Does the Vatican implode?
My great great great ... grandmother was burned on a stake because she was considered a witch for making fire with ice and leaves. I bet I could sue the Vatican for that, too!
The British-US legal tradition relies strongly on living witnesses. Even material evidence has to have a directly witnessed chain-of-control to believable (remember doubt created in the Simpson trial). Crimes committed during World War II are just about to pass out of the realm of US legality as the last living witnesses are dying. Once in rare while a court may recognize one level of hearsay, but no deeper.
Ditto for much civil laws: Dead people cant own property and will it to a future-reanimated frozen-corpse. The dead can create trusts to hold and control property for a limited amount of limited time period, usually not much longer than any currently living person.
So you can view living society as kind of a time-ship. Legalities extend backwards and forwards in time in the minds of those currently alive, but not much further beyond that. Then they become the realm of history or science fiction.
Can someone sue them for genocide in the African continent too? Seeing how they must know that AIDS is common there and that it's deadly they still keep insisting that condoms are forbidden. The only thing that can save lives is forbidden.
Yeah, they keep preaching abstinence but that's like trying to forbid good food. It's possible to get by without it but most people wont.
Not that I think that it will ever happen. And now I'm probably on the vaticans "going to hell"-list too.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Case in point: the most important Catholic theologian for the first 1200 years of Western Church history, Saint Augustine, was black.
St Augustine was not black, at least certainly not in the sense one thinks of today. He was a Berber.
He was African, yes, but African != Black, especially North African.
http://clightnirish.wordpress.com/
According to the Chinon Parchment, officially released 2007 by the Vatican, Pope Clement V secretly absolved the order in 1308 so these claims should have been made against the descendants of Philip IV. More info: http://www.inrebus.com/chinon.php
The great proof that liberals are patriotic is that they don't really like Babs either.
This is my sig.
"Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen."
The the pope just might have to shit in the woods.
On second thoughts, 10% bonus for each True Cross found.
Now there's a bottomless pit of percentages, considering the number of Holy Foreskins that have been found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Foreskin
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Yeah yeah, Assassin's Creed.. played it, beat it.
You know, if you really wanted to crash the system via an excess of processes it would be a lot simpler to just write:
It'd be a lot more likely to work, too, since most people don't have NASM installed.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
...can the native americans sue europe for defiling their land, and ruining their culture?
If they can then the next step will be Britain suing the US for return of the land that was "stolen" by that well known "terrorist" gang lead by George Washington. This may lead to the US government declaring itself a terrorist organization by its own laws and promptly disappearing in a puff of logic.
The pope should purposefully lose this case establishing precedent then sue Rome and all lions on the planet. Of this would lead to Israel suing Egypt, Iraq(Babylon), and the whole of Europe. The Aztec descendants would sue Spain. I don't know who the Mayans would sue.
This is true you can see the privately published, not publicy published history here. http://www.divineknights.org/
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
I'm a Knight, a member of the Knights Pimplar. Blackhead regiment.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
They have no need for the Churches Hoarded Wealth
Read the actual history here http://www.divineknights.org/
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
I call bullshit. The Vatican gets at least 0.5% of Italy's tax revenue through the Otto per mille, a way to publicly finance religion in Italy. Through that channel alone, the Vatican got one billion euros (not dollars) last year. That's one tax, for each year, in one country, and that's even a legitimate channel; illegal channels include tax breaks on commercial activities operated by the church, which are granted by my country's government, headed by a "legitimate businessman", in spite of European rules, and financing of religious private schools, forbidden as explicitly as possible by the Constitution of Italy, article 33, which however politicians use as toilet paper; In case you did not know how schools work in Italy, private schools are basically diploma mills for stupid or lazy sons of rich people who can't handle public school, where your professor can flunk you without fear of making the school lose its money.
Read on about cardinal Marcinkus and the IOR to know more about the greed of the Vatican.
... and, by the way, Harvard university's budget is in the range of billions of dollars [pdf], 2.6 in 2005 to be precise.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
In practice it does: you cannot convict someone who is dead!
A new book, Processus contra Templarios, was published by the Vatican's Secret Archive on Oct 25 (07), and promises to restore the reputation of the Templars, whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314. The book ...
http://www.scrinium.org/scrinium/Opere.php?idProgetto=3&idOpera=20&idLingua=2
I am not saying that they are gunna get paid nor do I think that they are looking to get paid "We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order."
I find the whole thing very interesting. I am a big fan of real history being brought to the forfront in our apathetic, distracted TV culture.
for what their Viking ancestors did to my Scottish ancestors.[/satire]
IIRC, it was Thomas Aquinas who wrote that cannibals cannot have a soul, because they cannot resurrect in the Final Judgement. The argument goes that one resurrects when the decomposed parts of the body come together again, but since the cannibal's body is composed of parts of bodies of other people, a cannibal cannot resurrect in the Final Judgement, therefore he cannot have a soul.
How can you say such thing?! Next you'll be telling me that Prince Michael of Sealand is just another scam artist!
I am a Catholic and I admire the the Knights Templar. But this is retarded. There is no way to assess the value of damages and what an organization does within its own walls is its business. As for any rights issues, we can't apply principles and laws we have today to events that took place hundreds of years ago.
Otherwise I'd sue the Democcrat party for the policies of FDR!
Because if it does I'm converting to Catharism and suing the all living shit out of the Vatican and the French state for the Albigensian Crusade. I should be able to claim most of southern France!
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
The the KT are not suing the pope. And if they decide to sue, it would be the Vatican. The current pope has no responsibility in this. Legally or ethically. The person who wrote this entry is spinning Catholic hate and doesnt seem to understand the issue or the Catholic church.
Owning fixed items, like gold, oil, or holy grails is speculation, not investing. As such, it does not pay any interest.
Only debts (bonds) and businesses (stocks) pay interest.
It is absolutely meaningless to refer to the compound interest from an non-interest-bearing item like the grail.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Well, I a M.Mason and a G.'.D.'. and I know personaly people in Knights Templars. For sure there's a modern organization, nothing related with some comic movies. I guess the notice is more related to pope just to remove some old words "not currently in use", like many vatican rules. For example, they don't tell anymore in public to burn women, gipsyes, homossexuals (priests not included LOL), etc, despiste what they do. It's a political act despiste anything else. Next time pope will recognize Ozzy Osbourne as a fictional character only, devoted to the the church and family.
Information technology means all information.
If the church says you're a heretic, then you're a heretic. The very idea is dogmatic so the same problem that makes it unjust (that there's really no defense against a heresy charge) also makes it "correct." If the church had the lawful authority to seize assets in ancient times, then how can it be wrong?
That's just life in medieval times. It was what it was, and you can't go back and fix it unless you have a time machine.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Deconverted Catholics should be able to sue for all the bad advice they were given( birth control, afterlife promises, god in general).
It could work since its Mental abuse as much as being touched is Sexual abuse 8^)
RationalWiki FAQ for the Newly Deconverted
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Well, as I live in Spain and I watched Spain's TV news today, it looks like these "templars" just want recognition from the Pope. They haven't sued The Vatican or the Catholic Church. They have sued Benedict XVI as legal succesor of Clemente V, as he was the one who suspended them. They told reporters that getting monetary compensation from The Vatican is quite utopic and they were not finally looking for that. They just want the Catholic Church to realize how unfair they were to them.
Having said that, I believe they're going nowhere... If we suddenly started whining about all historic injustices we find in history books, judges wouldn't have time to take care of present ones.
So, George W. Bush, I, as citizen of the Spanish Empire and direct successor of Christopher Columbus I demand you give me back Florida, Louisiana (Sarcossy already agreed), Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and crush one and for all Cuba's communist regime (they'd never be there if you Americans had not supported Batista) so I can conquer them again in the name of the Holy Church of Tourism Money and Capitalism. You Southern Americans better move out 'cause I'm coming!!!!
Thank you for nothing :)
Seriously, I once thought that dragging up some dubious ownership link after a world war and 50-60 years was ridiculous, now this puts that to shame by an order of magnitude.
I mean seriously. The church kicked their great great ... great grandfathers ass, and he was a kickass Knight Templar, and now this lot wants to have a big sook and cry about it? I mean really, what would a Knight Templar have to say about that? I dare say this new lot would get driven through by the original members just for the principle of it.
Stop crying Emo Templar.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Partially true. Some of the quoting I've seen from atheists is disingenuous -- sort of a hit job on the Bible. This is usually pretty obvious. Other choices of text simply reflect the varying relative importance of particular passages to different readers. When other readers disagree about what is key, they tend to argue about context. Alas, in a book that size, nearly any quote is going to be out of context.
Hitler --> 20-30 Million
Stalin --> 13 Million
Xtians --> 3-9 Million
3rd place is not a really great spot to be in for the "love thy neighbor" religion is it?
zosxavius photography
I found the "goodluckwiththat" tag on this story quite amusing considering that the day the slaughter of the Knights Templar occurred was Friday the 13th and many attribute this fact as the source of the superstition that it is an unlucky day.
To say with any certainty that it's THE Grail would be very very hard.
For starters, it was dated as coming frome the time period because the relevant part of the object resembled other objects from that time period. So why would this particular object be the Grail? We cannot tell.
The provenance of the relic, as with almost all relics, is suitably misty and the earliest records we have of the thing date well after the death of Jesus.
And of course, Jesus himself is not proven to be a historical person. All records about Jesus are from decades after his death and there is some doubt as to wether the earlier records are actual records, instead of tales talking about a mythical person. Worse there are a lot of records not there which we could reasonably expect to have, had Jesus been a historical person. What does it mean that an object is the Grail if Jesus may not have existed in the first place?
By which I'm not saying that the object isn't interesting, but there is no actual proof that it is the Grail. Even if it's clearly the best matching candidate, it could still be a fake. If there are four candidates, that doesn't mean that three of them are fake, it means that at least three of them are fake. So it could still be a fake, a very good one, probably an actual object from the correct time period, but fake in that it never had any relation to Jesus.
But the tinfoil hat is protecting you just fine, right?
No. Thinking protects me. A nice side benefit is that it also means I get to come up with my own jokes and far more useful insights than, well. . .
The other brand of snatched bodies aren't the ones who sing the same hymns over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. No. The other brand of snatched body is the sort which repeats the same daft joke over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. It's the same general affliction.
-FL
The Vatican Reply is reported to be "Take back Jerusalem and we'll talk"
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
In order of appearance:
I live in Spain... I want to sue Rome for invading us.
I live in Spain... I want to sue the Moors for invading us.
I live in Spain... I want to sue the French for invading us.
Mr Miles, get back inside the Animus!!
# I'm perfect-ally pleasant and I often like to proslytize, /#
With shaking of my limbs and rapid counterswiv'ling of my eyes,
In short, when there's a talk about the subjects theological,
My zealotry and pedantry combine to make me comical.
George puts his elite legal skills to good use in the recently announced Broken Sword 5.
It is rumored that he will use a clown's red nose and theatrical grease paint in a comedic fashion, in one of the most hilarious courtroom scenes you will ever see.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
if they get anything more than an apology african americans are old a country!
So, waddayahthink, should we all buy cases of Red Mars and leave copies sitting around at their nearest gathering spots? Sounds like a plan to me.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Yes, Native American tribes fought each other. Yes, they sometimes killed each other. But what it means when you say that they "fought over territory" is very different indeed from what it means when modern countries go to war. There is no part of that phrase that means what you evidently think it means.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.