Clipmarks | debbyski's 'religion' clips

McCain - Another Repub Panderer

Thu, 22 May 2008 22:58:39 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Just like the majority of his republican collegues, McCain just doesn't get it (though in all fairness, too many Dems also jump on this particular wagon). BTW, I'm still waiting for anyone to explain how this will "ruin" marriage. Any takers?

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Ellen Challenges John McCain On Gay Marriage: "You're No Different Than I Am"

WASHINGTON — Republican John McCain says same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into legal agreements for insurance and other purposes, but he opposes gay marriage and believes in "the unique status of marriage between and man and a woman."

McCain, who also opposes an amendment to the Constitution to ban same-sex unions, said people should be encouraged to enter into legal agreements, particularly for insurance and other areas where decisions need to be made.

DeGeneres needled McCain on the issue, arguing that she and the senator from Arizona aren't different.

"We are all the same people, all of us. You're no different than I am. Our love is the same," she said. "When someone says, 'You can have a contract, and you'll still have insurance, and you'll get all that,' it sounds to me like saying, 'Well, you can sit there, you just can't sit there.'

Tags: homophobia, religion, bigotry

Things Americans don't like to talk about

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:36:06 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Read the whole article, it is illuminating to say the least. I thought this passage said it best:

"

If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they'll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America.... They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different Way. You see, they love America the way a 4-year-old loves her Mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups.

To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world."

Clip Source: dneiwert.blogspot.com

One of the oddities of the emerging media meta-narrative about Jeremiah Wright is the way it is now readily assumed by the broad range of talking heads that Wright's recent comments have only proven the charge that he is deeply "anti-American," embodied in the endlessly repeated "God damn America" sound bite.

But it's also apparent that the larger context in which Wright condemns American behavior -- the reason he shouts "God damn America" -- in fact reflects hard historical realities that Americans, and the American media especially, really don't want to talk about, let alone confront the present-day consequences thereof.

And doing so, evidently, is now proof of being "anti-American."

-- The genocide committed against Native Americans.
-- Slavery.
-- The "lynching era" and Jim Crow.
-- Sundown towns.
-- The forced incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

Tags: history, truth, wright, religion, obama, politics, america

Will the Clash of Faiths Go on Forever?

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:15:45 GMT

clipped by: Rasmus
clipper's remarks: Religious conflict rages on, despite claims we live in a "secular age" -- two authors explore the clash of beliefs.

This article reviews:

Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe by Benjamin J. Kaplan

God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

religious zealotry is out of control and ought to be reined in. The question is how to do it. On one side of the debate are the hards, those militant atheists who argue that the problem is not so much religious discord as religion itself, an idea that has given rise to repeated horrors not because it is misapplied or misunderstood but because it is false and therefore a poor guide to reality. Bad theories lead to bad outcomes, which is why the best way to deal with theism is to do to it what Copernicus did to Ptolemy, or Darwin to Lamarck -- finish it off as quickly as possible so the world can move on.

On the other side are the softs, those nice ecumenicists who contend that

Religion is

tolerable as long as it's not used as a justification to harass thy neighbor or condemn him to hell over minute theological differences.

Kaplan's version of how people got along in between the era's great battles and confrontations is not unimportant.

Tags: divided by faith, religion, zealotry, clash of faiths, ecumenism, religious tolerance, religious intolerance, christendom, islam, history of relgions

The Challenge Of Finding Peace

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:09:24 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Peace.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The challenge of finding peace in Lourdes

Lourdes is a massive Roman Catholic pilgrimage site

So, when I arrived at my very tired-looking hotel, which appeared to be perfumed by the socks of last season's pilgrims and saw its lobby, packed full of gaudy Virgin Mary memorabilia, you will forgive me when the words "Good God!" escaped my lips, and not in any laudatory way.

Surely the "magic of Lourdes"

had to be more than this.

"It is a constant balancing act between faith and science for me," he said.

I met a young Austrian woman who told me she was seriously ill.

"I have come to ask Him to look after me,"

"I need to get better. I need the miracle."

I told one of the visiting British priests

how uncomfortable I felt witnessing such scenes of despair.

Father Bob

threw back his head and laughed.

Don't you worry

Peggy's not come for a miracle. She has just come to find peace."

I sat quietly for a while before the shrine

Before I left I lit a candle for the sick Austrian woman.

You just never know.

Tags: peace, faith, religion, science

The Ascendancy of Barack Obama in Small Town America

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:25:23 GMT

clipped by: schreibe
clipper's remarks: Why is "Small Town" so much like "Small Minded". For all of their old time religion, they sure don't know how to walk the walk when it comes to the most important parts of the bible. What's the matter with Kansas anyway! Or any other small town or small town paper that deals out this kind of stuff! I hope to hell this crap will lead directly to an Obama victory!

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Ascendancy of Barack Obama in Small Town America

For those of you wondering how the Obama ascendancy is playing out in Small Town America, I offer you this column from the Independent, a weekly newspaper published on the East End of Long Island

This article has caused quite a stir in East Hampton and beyond. So much so that the paper has pulled it from their website and Murphy, a regular antagonist of the Democratic Party, both locally and nationally, and the Clintons in particular, has replaced it with a brief apology.

please read what the local Republicans in my home town are thinking, and publishing, about Senator Obama. This is, quite clearly, not to be believed.

Tags: politics, racism, religion

Americhristians, Scary as Hell

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:04:56 GMT

clipped by: schreibe
clipper's remarks: OK ... all you Americhristians......stand up and make a fool of yourselves, and this country one more time!

Clip Source: mosquito.newsvine.com

Americhristians, Scary as Hell

Americhristian (n), a-mer-i-christ-i-an: a politically active, fanatically religious man or woman

The reason I have felt the need to make up a new word is because the old word “Christian” has become so ridiculously polluted that it no longer carries anything more than a sentimental and overly ambiguous meaning. Christianity has been killed, and a political monster that is slowly devouring the inhabitants of this planet has replaced it. For some reason, in Europe (where I live) the term Christian has become synonymous with “fanatical racist Bush follower”. Scary huh?

In essence, I believe the main reason behind anti-Americanism, and people in general finding “Americans” alternatively “Christians” so abusing is the fact that the Americhristians have high jacked the terms for their own twisted needs. How dare you let them kidnap your morality and dignity?

if you won’t accept my term then let’s just call them what they are. Idiots.

Tags: politics, religion

God isn't the problem, it's the followers that kill me!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:49:25 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: Ross Douthat raises a very valid criticism of Christopher Htichens' book God is Not Great.

Most people attacking religion in books are going after God. I think this is a waste of time, normally promoted by personal grudges and emotional baggage. As a general rule, scientists should never try to prove a negative statement.

On the other hand, if Hitchens hasn't answered Douthat's question, allow me to offer my ten cents in the following response:

Clip Source: www.claremont.org

A review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens

The book has been written with two main purposes in mind: to show that all religions are false, and to prove that their effects are near-universally pernicious.

He succeeds in demonstrating that many faiths are frauds and many prophets have been fakers, that believers commit all sorts of terrible crimes and that Buddhists are no more pacific than Southern Baptists, and that the Bible is neither a work of academic history nor a biology textbook. Then again, I was convinced of these points already, and hoped that Hitchens would pick a fight on more contested territory, such as the origin and nature of spiritual experience, which seems a more likely source for man's persistent religiosity

But like most apologists for atheism, he evinces little interest in the topic of religion as it is actually lived, preferring to stick to the safer ground of putting the godly in the dock

Tags: god, atheism, hitchens, religion, evil, right, left, prayer, faith, miracles

Canadian imam to launch hunger strike to protest domestic violence by Muslim men

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 13:09:01 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Syed Soharwardy, deploring the fact that Muslims use religion as an excuse for perpetrating violence against family members, plans a hunger strike. He intends to call attention to the problem of domestic violence in Muslim families.

Clip Source: canadianpress.google.com

Go to Google News

Calgary imam says Islam, family violence don't mix; goes on hunger strike

CALGARY - An imam from Alberta was planning to go on a weekend hunger strike to bring attention to domestic violence and how it is completely against the teachings of Islam.

Any violence involving families is "absolutely un-Islamic," Syed Soharwardy of the Calgary Islamic Centre said Friday.

The imam's comments came after the death earlier this month of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, Ont., who reportedly had a long-standing dispute with her family over her apparent reluctance to wear the traditional Muslim headscarf, the hijab.

Her father, who has not yet entered a plea, has been charged with her murder.

Soharwardy, who is also national president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said family violence plagues every group in society, but it seems that faith is only used as an excuse when it comes to Muslims.

Tags: religion, islam, family, domestic_violence, gender, canada, violence

Fascist Christ - Todd Rundgren Lays It Out - Turn It UP!

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 05:59:19 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: "Fascist Christ come to the rescue." "Let's get fundamental about this strange philosophy in which god and man are enemies. In which there is no serenity unless you happen to believe precisely what they want you to believe, and no diversity."

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: fascism, old, time, religion, rundgren, christ

Quote And Prayer

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:55:47 GMT

clipped by: DouglasDirk
clipper's remarks: The prayer and quote says it all!

Clip Source: www.rawfoodinfo.com

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.

Tags: prayer, god, jesus, religion, spirituality, love

Bible turned into a club

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:35:12 GMT

clipped by: DouglasDirk
clipper's remarks: This is so true! It is the 21st Century and Biblical scholars cannot find any direct references to "homosexuality" in the Bible. The term was introduced into the Bible in the 19th Century and is incorrect!

Clip Source: christianglbtrights.blogspot.com

"Make no mistake, every drop of blood shed by GLBT people either through suicide, bashing, or murder, are on the hands of all those religious leaders, their followers, and their allies who spew forth their ignorance, prejudice, and hate against GLBT people and their relationships! These wolves in sheep’s clothing take the Bible, God’s love letter to His children, and selectively and perversely use it as a club to condemn others, and deny GLBT people full inclusion in the Church and in society.

Tags: gay, lesbian, glbt, religion, hate, bigotry, god, jesus

The Mantra - Hope for a change!

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:29:27 GMT

clipped by: DouglasDirk
clipper's remarks: Pray that the bigotry and misconception regarding gay Christians changes! So All May Be As One!

Clip Source: christianglbtrights.blogspot.com

The mantra that being Gay is equivalent to being immoral, and is against the will of God, has been spewed so often in and from most churches, and is believed by most clergy and church-goers within the institutional Church, that one can not only believe that lie, but one can feel free to hawk his/her "Christian" credentials by affirming his/her disdain for homosexuality; so many professing Christians can justify to others their homophobia by appealing to the fact that they are "Bible-believing Christians."

Tags: gay, lesbian, glbt, religion, god, jesus, homophobia

God vs the Bible

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 03:35:43 GMT

clipped by: Oortcloud
clipper's remarks: There is far to much knowledge at this site to do more than clip a few points that will be made. There is a lot of great information to be found here. As I've said before, no one can prove or disprove "a god" or "a creator", but we have ample evidence to show that the bible god is complete fiction.

Clip Source: www.godvsthebible.com

Summary: The Bible has many harsh critics. The most notable among them is God.

How even the most remedial knowledge of science that every child should know is enough to completely discredit the Bible. Evolution is the least of the Bible's problems.

How the Bible contradicts itself on even the most fundamental of theological issues, from the divinity of Christ to the proper path of salvation.

How the Bible glorfies certain acts of rape, genocide, slavery, bigotry and other cruelties.

The true history of "Hell" and what your church doesn't want you to know.

How the power of reason, God's greatest gift to us, fosters a deeper and healthier spirituality than could ever be possible through faith.

Tags: religion, mythology, bible, god, jesus, theology

God Of Love/ All The People

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:09:16 GMT

clipped by: DouglasDirk
clipper's remarks: UCC - The church of acceptance for all persons. They do not discriminate against. They reflect God's pure love and the essence of the True God!

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: united church of christ, faith, god, jesus, religion, video, song

Theocracy? Is This Good for America?

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:56:42 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Click on the link and view the embedded video to gain an awareness of the total wackiness of these people. Make no mistake about it, these people are intent on making this a Christian Nation. And if your "brand" of Christianity doesn't conform with what they deem appropriate you're as much on the outside as any non-believer. Maybe those depicted in the video are not of the Fred Phelps ilk, they are much more of a danger because of their numbers and organizational influence in politics.

You've been warned!

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Theocracy Now!

On October 20 and 21st, I attended the Value Voters Summit, a massive gathering hosted by the Colorado-based Christian right mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, and its Washington lobbying arm, the Family Research Council. With the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani leading in the race for the Republican nomination and the threat of another Clinton presidency looming, the stakes for the Christian right were high.

At the Summit, I witnessed all of the major Republican presidential candidates compete for the affection of so-called value voters. Rudy Giuliani, the current frontrunner, sought to assuage movement leaders' concerns about his multiple marriages, pro-choice politics, and penchant for cross-dressing. Mitt Romney pledged to fight for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, hoping his newfound conservatism would somehow lessen evangelical resentment of his Mormon faith.

Tags: theocracy, religion, theism, politics