I also think many religions are sexist.

I’d say that people like Hitler and Stalin saw themselves as leaders trying to make things better for people like themselves…for people who obeyed their rules and orders…for people who helped keep them in power…for people who went along with implementing their evil programs…for people who did not speak out about the atrocities being committed in their countries.

I guess I find it hard to believe that such leaders saw themselves as heroic. But then again…you tell a lie long enough–you may begin to believe it yourself.

As with your Aunt there were many good Catholics in the 60′s and 70′s who risked their freedom and their lives to help their fellow human beings. Making fun of religious precepts is too easy a sport, that fails to notice some who motivated by their beliefs, can truly be heroic. Life and humanity are too complex to ever judge by absolutes.

While I have a set of ethical and moral values I try to live up to, even the most despicable of humans hew to beliefs which they think make them more enlightened. Hitler and Stalin didn’t wake up in the morning thinking “how much evil can I do today,” I’m willing to bet they each saw themselves as taking part in heroic struggles to better the world.

As much as the fundies drive me nuts I never cease to be gladly amazed at how many times the faithful of all stripes can transcend the dogma of their ‘leaders’ and perform honorably and charitably. My aunt is a very faithful Catholic and I often was disheartened to see this intelligent, good hearted person constrained by her devotion in ways that degraded her potential and quality of life.

During the 70′s when the US support/complicity for the war in El Salvador was reaching it’s peak and refugees were coming into the US in an undocumented status there was a underground within the Church in America that gave them aid and helped them to resettle in safety. An underground railroad sort of thing. It was real grassroots stuff, families being driven to a church, housed with a parishioner for a few days and another parishioner would them to another church in another city or state with a few dollars and new clothes.

The Church hierarchy was not in support of these activities and the a parish that participated had to watch their backs both regarding the government and their own church leaders.

My aunt was a busy little bee at that time and happy as a clam with her church volunteerism. I came to find out later, very circuitously and in guarded language that her small, just-barely-getting-by-parish was involved in the effort to help the refugee brethren from El Salvador. I was reassured that of course, all of ‘their’ refugees were legal because Father and the parish would never do anything illegal. I didn’t ask why we were kind of whispering as we discussed the good works of the parish.

“Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters”

Apparently when you die, any music you write becomes exactly what you’d expect a talented woman who has a love of late romantic piano works to write.

If Beethoven is rolling over, I hope he’s telling Tchaikovsky the news.

Gyges,

Yeah. I know if I were God, I’d not be pleased with the quality trend in worship music.

one, The United States of Europe are not doing all that bad: http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/11/united-states-of-europe.html

two: this is the typical backwards looking rhetoric both sides of the gutter are prone to in these childish rants.

Time for them both to join those in the front seat looking out the wind shield into the future: http://ecocosmology.blogspot.com/2009/11/death-resurrection-of-memetics.html

God’s got to be pissed, he somehow he went from Bach (the whole frickin’ family, not just J.S.) to… Axel Apers.
***************

I am sure that Martin Luther is rolling over as well as Beethoven.

God’s got to be pissed, he somehow he went from Bach (the whole frickin’ family, not just J.S.) to… Axel Apers.

http://www.isleofran.org/swf/ayeaye.htm

I was intrigued, so I listened a little longer and then realized that I was listening to a christian radio station being hijacked by a secularist I knew where it was going so I changed it to mariachi music which was much easier on the nerves. So, you see I do understand the Rabbis words. They ring true, to believe one value sets up a reaction to another set of circumstances in this case however bris this may be.

I hope you don’t mind if I use the term incremental infidel. That’s comedy gold.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/21533805/detail.html

With all due respect … what a crock!

In Re Fort Hood

From the NYT:

Update | 6:04 p.m. According to a post on The Austin American-Statesman’s Blotter blog:

Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, said the senator had been told that Malik Nadal Hasan, who has been identified as a the shooting suspect at Fort Hood, was upset about his upcoming deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.
____

Well imagine that? Someone doesn’t want to fight for Bush and Cheney’s checkbook and went nuts. Who woulda thunk it?

Read the whole article here:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/reports-of-mass-shooting-at-fort-hood/?hp

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/fort-hood-shootings-7-dea_n_347366.html

This will be happening a lot more often and not just at military bases. It’ll be interesting to see what motivated these guys.

Enjoy your front row seat for the startling panorama of the end of civilization.

good read thanks. Madison was a remarkable man. I learned more in that short passage than all the press on this from both sides in the last 20 years.

Voice of Edward G. Robinson: “Myeah see? Myeah.”

James Madison, Detached Memoranda
ca. 1817W. & M. Q., 3d ser., 3:554–60 1946

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions64.html