M27Holts,
ALL holy books are. No question there in my mind. What I do idly wonder is, did the authors deliberately put stupid, incredible events in there along the lines of the atrocities against spelling, grammar, and sense one finds in Nigerian Prince emails and similar scams? As in, ‘Welp, if they’re STILL reading after that ignorance, they’ll certainly believe that some random dude found gold tablets no one else ever saw and translated them using some rocks in a hat!’
I suspect that LRon did: he was a fairly successful writer who surely knew that sf readers tend to be above average in inquisitiveness. I posit that he put a bunch of crazy in his to weed out those who might ask embarrassing questions.
Mind you, I don’t care enough to actually plunge into the various holy word-cesspools to make my point.
OtterBe, I do believe exactly what you have just said. I worked at Miami airport, and there were some pink dressed religious people trying to get the attention of passers by, very rudely to my surprise, but that was their cue… If being rude and still paying attention to what they want from you… Then you are game for whatever we want. I even asked them this strategy, and they would not answer and turn away from me. I’ve seen this behaviour of only concentrating on the weak in many other circumstances now. So sad most people are really really gullible
@OtterBe.
You do sometimes wonder, don’t you? It’s hard to credit that people really believed that e.g. Baby Jesus tamed dragons (non-canonical gospel). You’ve got to suspect that these apocrypha were removed at a later date for being just too unbelievable (“We’ll keep the bits about walking on water, people will go for that, but dragons are pushing it”).
But ignorant people believe truly astounding things. When you find out that even educated people genuinely believed that Barnacle Geese hatched from barnacles, you realise than in ignorance, people can believe anything.
I suspect that the truly weird parts of e.g. the Bible and Koran were genuinely believed by the authors at the time, and only subsequently kept in the cynical way you suspect.
I totally agree with you about Hubbard. That was an exercise in cynicism from the start – although the man himself supposedly genuinely held some odd beliefs.
I too used to wonder why anyone would be able to give the slightest amount of credibility to the nonsense in the Bible and similar rantings. Then I watched Fox news, and followed Donald Trump and his big lies. And Scientology and Goop of course. Insanity has not faded out of style. Shockingly incoherent ideas are still bubbling forth and the suckers are hungry for it. BTW don’t get a Covid immunization because it will alter your DNA and make you magnetic and insert tracking nanobots.
@Jesus F Iscariot
Why on earth would I need a COVID jab? My tinfoil hat already protects me from the signals beamed from 5G that cause you to exhibit the symptoms of this fake disease.
You forgot another thing that the vaccination does: It makes you immensely gullible so that you will bend to the will of the Lizard Overlords.
Jesus F,
Dang it: I must’ve gotten the wrong shot. It would have been sweet to discard my toolpack and just stick screwdrivers & wrenches to my body before I climb up to whatever roof I’m on that day.
Just double-checked: the Pfizer shots didn’t magnetize me.
note: you don’t need a tinfoil hat: just turn a large potato chip bag inside out & don it. The foil-lined ones block cell signals. [this comes in handy if one wishes to attend demonstrations without giving up one’s info to the cell-tower spoofers being used nowadays]
Belief in QAnon conspiracy and Icke stuff makes people do crazy things, even to their own children. At this time, QAnon belief is probably more harmful than the moderate parts of any religion.
I read an op-ed from the Los Angeles Times this morning, discussing religious opposition to COVID vaccine. Canadian history professor. Traces it back to charismatic revivals in the mid 1730s that hung on as the nation grew and maintained themselves in opposition to the educated church. He paints it as a not entirely bad thing, as these communities helped break us away from the Church of England and thus helped with the break with England, and in the following century were often on the right side on slavery.
But as you say, it’s a terribly toxic mix with what he calls the “increasingly nihilistic themes of the far right.”
I am on day 7 of a 10 day prison sentence. Double jabbed (AZ) and very fit. The covid variant I contracted on my sons stag doo in Blackpool has taken away my sense of taste and smell and made my lungs feel like I have spent a lifetime smoking capstan fullstrength…without the jabs I reckon I may have been hospitalised…unfit, unjabbed persons beware…
Rob Barnett: Ah, Capstan Full Strength! I remember them well, they very nearly lined your breathing tubes with soot! I believe they were very popular with long distance truckers.
Yeah. Went names in my confuddled state. Just wondering what use I can put my loss of smell in making the most of the situation…We don’t have a septic tank, because now would be a good time to clean it…
Apparently, my paternal grandad was a 100 a day smoker (not unusual – pre war) If the 88mm shell hadn’t pierced his firefly’s armour and possibly turned him into strawberry jam. It is still doubtful he would have survived another 20 years to witness my birth, both his brothers died of heart attacks before the age of 40..both smoked less than him…
M27Holts/Rob Barnett: You seem to have had good luck in the random lottery of genetics, as you have lived well past the age of forty! May you get well soon.
Author: In panel 3, is that genuine Arabic script, or just an artistic impression?
The mystery of SARS-covid19 is taking all my thinking power at the moment. How can people be demonstrating all the classic symptoms of the viral inspection and yet prove negative with a PCR test? How?
“However, it is possible to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but not have enough virus in your body to be detected by the test. For example, this may happen if you recently became infected but you don’t have symptoms, yet; or it could happen if you’ve had COVID-19 for more than a week before being tested.”
Maybe the vaccination you had has reduced your viral load? In any case, good luck to you.
I’m pretty sure no-one on this web site will be praying for you. 😉 But we wish you the best.
Pray? No,but you could all sacrifice a large beef steak inmy honour. I like mine all pink and juicy (with blood oozing out) with blue cheese sauce and beefeater chips….
However, be assured I am notpraying for your speedy recovery as hard as I can notpray. I am even notputting money in the local church’s collection box, just to reinforce the power of notpraying.
And if you fail to recover, it will be your own fault for being descended from Adam & Eve, not my fault for my not notpraying hard enough.
SOG. How many words for Salad are there in Vegan? And are all meat related words considered profanity? I suppose like the yanks to call somebody a faggot is a gross insult? Just askin…
The German author Harry Rowohlt once wrote: “Ever since a Turkish snack bar operator in St. Pauli explained Islam to me at four in the morning, I am able to lavishly explain Islam …
“Islam works like this: “Mohammed had no refrigerator, was scared of dames, and after two beers he was dead drunk. There you have all of Islam.”
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
March 11, 2011
The Koran is man made horseshit?
M27Holts,
ALL holy books are. No question there in my mind. What I do idly wonder is, did the authors deliberately put stupid, incredible events in there along the lines of the atrocities against spelling, grammar, and sense one finds in Nigerian Prince emails and similar scams? As in, ‘Welp, if they’re STILL reading after that ignorance, they’ll certainly believe that some random dude found gold tablets no one else ever saw and translated them using some rocks in a hat!’
I suspect that LRon did: he was a fairly successful writer who surely knew that sf readers tend to be above average in inquisitiveness. I posit that he put a bunch of crazy in his to weed out those who might ask embarrassing questions.
Mind you, I don’t care enough to actually plunge into the various holy word-cesspools to make my point.
OtterBe, I do believe exactly what you have just said. I worked at Miami airport, and there were some pink dressed religious people trying to get the attention of passers by, very rudely to my surprise, but that was their cue… If being rude and still paying attention to what they want from you… Then you are game for whatever we want. I even asked them this strategy, and they would not answer and turn away from me. I’ve seen this behaviour of only concentrating on the weak in many other circumstances now. So sad most people are really really gullible
@OtterBe.
You do sometimes wonder, don’t you? It’s hard to credit that people really believed that e.g. Baby Jesus tamed dragons (non-canonical gospel). You’ve got to suspect that these apocrypha were removed at a later date for being just too unbelievable (“We’ll keep the bits about walking on water, people will go for that, but dragons are pushing it”).
But ignorant people believe truly astounding things. When you find out that even educated people genuinely believed that Barnacle Geese hatched from barnacles, you realise than in ignorance, people can believe anything.
I suspect that the truly weird parts of e.g. the Bible and Koran were genuinely believed by the authors at the time, and only subsequently kept in the cynical way you suspect.
I totally agree with you about Hubbard. That was an exercise in cynicism from the start – although the man himself supposedly genuinely held some odd beliefs.
Speaking of beautiful sound, “sunni” in my language, Tamil means “penis”, an often used expletive. Tamil Sunni Muslims pronounce it as “sunny”.
Does anyone have a more standard translation of Mo’s favourite text?
I too used to wonder why anyone would be able to give the slightest amount of credibility to the nonsense in the Bible and similar rantings. Then I watched Fox news, and followed Donald Trump and his big lies. And Scientology and Goop of course. Insanity has not faded out of style. Shockingly incoherent ideas are still bubbling forth and the suckers are hungry for it. BTW don’t get a Covid immunization because it will alter your DNA and make you magnetic and insert tracking nanobots.
@Jesus F Iscariot
Why on earth would I need a COVID jab? My tinfoil hat already protects me from the signals beamed from 5G that cause you to exhibit the symptoms of this fake disease.
You forgot another thing that the vaccination does: It makes you immensely gullible so that you will bend to the will of the Lizard Overlords.
Jesus F,
Dang it: I must’ve gotten the wrong shot. It would have been sweet to discard my toolpack and just stick screwdrivers & wrenches to my body before I climb up to whatever roof I’m on that day.
Just double-checked: the Pfizer shots didn’t magnetize me.
note: you don’t need a tinfoil hat: just turn a large potato chip bag inside out & don it. The foil-lined ones block cell signals. [this comes in handy if one wishes to attend demonstrations without giving up one’s info to the cell-tower spoofers being used nowadays]
There’s chips and there’s chips.
Just remember not to turn yourself inside-out.
Shortcuts protection. Grounded pitchfork too!
I would rather listen to Shakespeare in the original Klingon, thank you.
Belief in QAnon conspiracy and Icke stuff makes people do crazy things, even to their own children. At this time, QAnon belief is probably more harmful than the moderate parts of any religion.
Father kills his kids because they have lizard DNA:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/12/california-matthew-coleman-children-killed
Mother kills her kids to prevent them from being “tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their lives”:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-17/mother-unraveled-in-depression-qanon-style-conspiracies-in-months-before-she-killed-3-kids
Timeline of QAnon inspired violence:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline
I read an op-ed from the Los Angeles Times this morning, discussing religious opposition to COVID vaccine. Canadian history professor. Traces it back to charismatic revivals in the mid 1730s that hung on as the nation grew and maintained themselves in opposition to the educated church. He paints it as a not entirely bad thing, as these communities helped break us away from the Church of England and thus helped with the break with England, and in the following century were often on the right side on slavery.
But as you say, it’s a terribly toxic mix with what he calls the “increasingly nihilistic themes of the far right.”
I am on day 7 of a 10 day prison sentence. Double jabbed (AZ) and very fit. The covid variant I contracted on my sons stag doo in Blackpool has taken away my sense of taste and smell and made my lungs feel like I have spent a lifetime smoking capstan fullstrength…without the jabs I reckon I may have been hospitalised…unfit, unjabbed persons beware…
Rob Barnett: Ah, Capstan Full Strength! I remember them well, they very nearly lined your breathing tubes with soot! I believe they were very popular with long distance truckers.
Rob, I hope you’re symptoms don’t get any worse, and that it goes away soon. If you’re able, keep us apprised of how you’re doing.
Yeah. Went names in my confuddled state. Just wondering what use I can put my loss of smell in making the most of the situation…We don’t have a septic tank, because now would be a good time to clean it…
Apparently, my paternal grandad was a 100 a day smoker (not unusual – pre war) If the 88mm shell hadn’t pierced his firefly’s armour and possibly turned him into strawberry jam. It is still doubtful he would have survived another 20 years to witness my birth, both his brothers died of heart attacks before the age of 40..both smoked less than him…
M27Holts/Rob Barnett: You seem to have had good luck in the random lottery of genetics, as you have lived well past the age of forty! May you get well soon.
Author: In panel 3, is that genuine Arabic script, or just an artistic impression?
It’s 7:178 from the Koran.
Author: Thank you.
Well done, Author! Allah leads people astray. And apparently the Judeo-Christian god creates evil, as asserted in Isaiah 45:7, where it says this:
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”
The mystery of SARS-covid19 is taking all my thinking power at the moment. How can people be demonstrating all the classic symptoms of the viral inspection and yet prove negative with a PCR test? How?
I meant infection…
M27Holts, this web site: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/21462-covid-19-and-pcr-testing says, about PCR tests:
“However, it is possible to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but not have enough virus in your body to be detected by the test. For example, this may happen if you recently became infected but you don’t have symptoms, yet; or it could happen if you’ve had COVID-19 for more than a week before being tested.”
Maybe the vaccination you had has reduced your viral load? In any case, good luck to you.
I’m pretty sure no-one on this web site will be praying for you. 😉 But we wish you the best.
Laripu: “I’m pretty sure no-one on this web site will be praying for you.”
Amen to that!
If/when M27Holts does get better, that will prove the benefits of not praying for him.
Pray? No,but you could all sacrifice a large beef steak inmy honour. I like mine all pink and juicy (with blood oozing out) with blue cheese sauce and beefeater chips….
M27Holts: Sorry, but NO! I am vegan.
However, be assured I am notpraying for your speedy recovery as hard as I can notpray. I am even notputting money in the local church’s collection box, just to reinforce the power of notpraying.
And if you fail to recover, it will be your own fault for being descended from Adam & Eve, not my fault for my not notpraying hard enough.
Faith is a virtue. The wackier the stuff you believe, the more virtuous you are.
SOG. How many words for Salad are there in Vegan? And are all meat related words considered profanity? I suppose like the yanks to call somebody a faggot is a gross insult? Just askin…
Anyway at midnight tonight…Freedom…only loss of taste and a bit of congestion to cough up is my only concern at the present…
The German author Harry Rowohlt once wrote: “Ever since a Turkish snack bar operator in St. Pauli explained Islam to me at four in the morning, I am able to lavishly explain Islam …
“Islam works like this: “Mohammed had no refrigerator, was scared of dames, and after two beers he was dead drunk. There you have all of Islam.”
See “Pooh’s Corner II” (ISBN 3 251 00370 4).