christ-on-a-stick

Amos, I have to say that this cracked me up: That is quite the vivid analogy. I still want to know what you're smoking up there.... I know you deny it but COME ON MAN!!!! (FWIW I actually made sense of your post this time!)

Hi Amie~ That's a good question and to be honest I am not sure. It's possible that I would feel "disappointment" although I would certainly never reject or mistreat my child for thinking differently than me. Just as I do now, I respect the right of everyone to their own beliefs even if I do not respect the beliefs themselves. Does that makes sense?

Ojuice5001: Ack - disgustimento - what exactly is the message there?!?!? It's BAD to think things through! Not only that but since supposedly omnimax God is in control of when you die, he's intentionally killing you off before you've had a chance to make up your mind!!! I swear it boggles my mind that people actually think this way... and they are allowed to drive cars and operate heavy machinery

Rhea & scombrid - yep, I was oh-so-lucky-enough to attend exactly those types of weekend "retreats" many times throughout my early teen years. Unfortunately I wasn't as rational and clearheaded as you guys and I got sucked in BIGTIME. It embarasses me now.

Rhea

Heh, heh, well they took my pint of Mad Dog away the first night. What's a stone-straight party-head who is used to multiple consecutive sleepless days with minimal nutrition to do besides actually pay attention for once? I guess you could say I was "in shape" for such an attempt. Heh, "endurance training" and all... Maybe they'd-a been more successful if they had let me keep my Mad Dog.

scombrid

I think I avoided being sucked in because the group hosting the event that I attended was a splentor group from my home church so I went in with a skeptical mind. Additionally, the man pressuring me the most was someone that I had worked for off the books using heavy equipment (not legal for a minor) with no work permit. He gipped me a few hours wages once and I wasn't about to take advice regarding my immortal soul from him. He was and still is a smuck hypocrit. Add to that, I went to Episcopal and Catholic schools, both of which look very derisively at cultish fundamentalists. I had been primed against their particular techniques before I went. I just went because my friend said it would be cool. I had also been to Sunday school with him and had a terrible impression of the authority figures at his church being dumn as a box of rocks, far below the Episcopalian and Catholic clergy.

I was scoping out chicks the whole time. The alter call spoiled the mood.

Anti-Creedance Front

Too bad they don't have signatures in here, because if they did, I'd have my group's website listed. We are an interfaith coalition against fundamentalism and evangelism. Our website is at http://www.blocka.net/AFF and my e-mail is smithaa99@uww.edu I think it would fair very well on campuses, I have found a lot of people interested in it, but reluctant to take up the banner. We'd be butting heads with Campus Crusade for Christ and other extremist propaganda spewers. Actually, most people don't like it it seems because it isn't wholly atheist, or wholly pagan, it's everyone united together. Look at it this way: Nobody's ever won a war without allies. And this is going to be a long and treacherous one, so we need all the help we can get.

We also want to bring people of different faiths together, so they can learn to accept their differences as most have done with gender, race, disability, etc etc. There are no grassroots groups that I know of actively fighting fundamentalism. On the other hand, the fundies have trained hordes of youth to be shock troops for their self-righteous and xenophobic cause. They have gone unchecked for far too long.

Oh, by the way, the term "soul harvesting" scares the living daylights out of me. That term sounds so... umm... evil. *hint hint*

Amos

Thanks Anti-Creedance Front and if it helps you any I'll try to show you why it is evil. Understand first that a Beatific Vision is possible, and if that is true, a forged version of it must conceivable be possible. So indeed, "soul harvesting" should scare you.

The Beatific Vision itself is a description of the transformation moment when we meet God face to face and this is the convergence fo the twain in Hardy's poem called the "Convergence of the Twain."

In protestant trickery a small version of this vision is extracted and this is what sends them into the up/down-repent/rebel-love/hate mode that urges them to convert the world around them (with the appetite of a wolf and slyness of a fox, I might add). It can/will cause permanent delusion in the mind of the believer and is called the sin against the HS because of this. The spread of this psychotic perversion should have no rights in a nation where sanity must prevail.

Debbie T

And this differs from Catholic trickery, how?

Amos

Sorry Debbie, I did not mean to arouse you.

In Catholicism salvation comes as a "thief in the night" and there is no trickery in that. Add to this that we can't even have one eye asquint towards this event and that very well means that the clergy is not allowed to talk about this . . . lest we are on the lookout for this "second coming of Christ."

The "shepherd-sheep" image is ideal for this and the Cathechism oulines the arena wherein this melodrama takes place. Infallibility makes reference to the imputation of an arbitrary stream of consciousness against which sheep must stray to be found by the "good [night] shepherd" (thief) which is not the "day-shepherd" that leads the sheep hither and thither-- which is obvious or he would be able to lead the entire flock into heaven.

Things go wrong only when wolves that are dressed in sheeps clothing (so called christians) enter the flock and cast their evil spells upon gullible Catholics with the various forms of trickery discussed in this thread. Lets face reality here and admid that evangelists love to get their hands on Catholics because they are not so called "saved" and are always very responsive to their cunning persuasions because they have never been exposed to it before.

Debbie T

Where's the difference again?

Amos

I think you're still asleep.

Fiach

Catholicism is almost rational at times. It says you are responsible for the sins you commit. But you can get most of them forgiven by confession and penance. Any leftover you can burn off in Purgatory. That almost makes sense. Almost.

Evangelism/Fundamentalism makes no sense. You have done a lot of naughty things. So you go to a "revival". They have a very emotional ritual. The preacher preaches in a sing-song, with very emotive expressions, even cryiing and laughing, grimacing and smiling. He works the gullible flock into a dissociative state. They enter a trance, arms up in the air higher than the French army in 1940. Their eyes close, head extends back looking up. They mumble gibberish (glossolalia), may hallucinate God/Jesus visually or auditorily, experience flushing, rapid heart beat, feelings equivalent to orgasm, sometimes with pelvic thrusting motions, and in males a bulge in the pants from an erection. In the most extreme then fall to the floor jerking, thrashing, and groaning.

After the dissociative, hallucinatory, semi-orgasmic, motor jerking phase they burn out and are very exhausted. But the very exhaustion seems a relief from the tight, stiff, stressful state they had been in. In this new relaxed state of affective and motor exhaustion they seem to be very susceptible to suggestion.

The Flim-flam artist says "come forward and accept Jesus into your heart', they come forward like the Zombies in the Movie "Night of the Living Dead." Of course, they are emotionally purged, physically exhausted and post-orgasmic. They are ready to accept Cthulhu, Hastur the Unspeakable, and Yog-Sothoth trinity.

They are told their sins are erased and they are saved no matter what. No penance is needed, no time in purgatory or Hell. Fundamentalism is a license to sin. This may be the reason why fundies are vastly over-represented proportionately among violent convicted felons in US Prisons. They can do bad things but they are saved. The only down side is getting caught by the constable and the Lord Justice saying "guilty".

So there are three kinds of morality each represented disproportionately in prison (see study aired by John Patrick Murphy of Colorado Springs.)

Atheists have no atonement for wrongs done. We have to live with our guilt until we die. So we try to avoid bad actions for which we carry lifelong. Thus atheists 5-8% of US population are 0.01% of the prison population. Most prisons have no Atheists.

Catholics are about proportional to their 25% of the population in prison. They do have some accounting for sins (penance and purgatory, and Hell for mortal sins.)

Fundies who are 40-49% of Americans are the vast majority of violent convicts. Why? They have no personal standards for morality. If they do something bad all they need to do is get saved again, and it wipes the slate clean. But the police will still arrest them for murder, robbery, rape.

Disclaimer: Atheists and Fundies are from different educational groups and socio-economic groups. Atheists are generally at one end of the spectrum with fundies at the lower end.

Fiach