I have to admit, when I saw "Since this is Sunday" from dbphoenix, I thought he was going to lead with "I think I'll get off the computer and go out and get some fresh air, maybe meet another human being or something."
I actually thought he'd say .. "since it's Sunday it's the same as the other 6 days of the week so I'll just post all day". Maybe he's an agoraphobic which would explain staying inside all the time.
Pat Robertson wants you to know that genocidal acts in the Bible aren’t like violence in the Quran — the former, you see, were sanctioned by God, whereas the latter was commanded “by Allah.” Answering a 700 Club viewer’s question about how she could explain that God’s ordering of genocide in the Old Testament was different than violent injunctions contained in the Quran, Robertson replied that it was all very simple. “How can you say it’s not like the other? The other is in the name of Allah,” Robertson said. Robertson is no stranger to Islamophobic rhetoric. He isn’t even sure that Islam merits the status of a religion, having declared that the “demonic” creed is “more an economic and political system with a religious veneer.” LUKE BRINKER
In further news the self proclaimed non anti christian d b pheonix (we know what the db stands for) quoted Pat Robertson on his non anti Christian thread because he is a not leftist.
Suppose you actually do have an angel over your shoulder telling you the right thing to do. That angel probably wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. A recent study in Science aimed at uncovering how we experience morality in our everyday lives suggests that religious people are no more moral—or immoral—than nonreligious people. Whether or not we believe that divine precepts give us guidance, our behavior is remarkably similar. The fact that atheists are apparently as moral as believers will be counterintuitive to some. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov famously worries, “But what will become of men then…without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?” In late 2007, when Mitt Romney was still uncertain whether he could win the GOP presidential primary, he made a speech on religion to reassure a leery electorate. His Mormon faith was no reason to reject his candidacy, he argued. What really mattered was that he was religious, and thus had the same moral beliefs as other religious people. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom,” he said, insinuating that a free but godless people might form an unruly mob. Later in the speech, he added, “Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.” Yet Dmitri Karamazov and Mitt Romney are likely wrong. People who don’t fear that justice will be meted out in an afterlife are apparently no more vicious, cruel, or licentious than a believer. The current study breaks new ground in a few different ways. Perhaps most importantly, previous psychological studies of moral responses relied on observations in laboratory settings. This study, however, uses a method that allows researchers to escape the lab and catch glimpses of how participants think about morality as they go about their lives. Researchers using the method, known as “ecological momentary assessment,” periodically contact participants to report their feelings. In this study, over 1200 people were texted five times a day over the course of three days. The texts asked if they’d committed, experienced, or heard moral or immoral acts in the previous hour. If a participant answered yes, there were follow-up questions that prompted him or her to describe the event and some of his or her reactions to it. The researchers collected over 13,000 responses, almost 4000 of which described a moral or immoral event. The acts ranged from the mundane to the unexpected: Assisted a tourist with directions because he looked lost. At work, someone stole my partner’s nice balsamic vinegar while he was off shift and most likely took it home with them. Hired someone to kill a muskrat that’s ultimately not causing any harm. “There have been hundreds of morality studies, and the vast majority have involved presenting people with hypothetical scenarios or dilemmas and directly asking them to make moral judgments,” wrote Jesse Graham, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California, in an email to The Daily Beast. “This has told us a lot, but it hasn’t told us much about how morality plays out in daily life. This study’s use of smartphone technology allows for a more ecologically valid picture of what kinds of moral events and situations people actually encounter outside the lab.” Daniel Wisneski, a collaborator on the study and Assistant Professor at St. Peter’s University, said that “heightened ecological validity was a goal of the study.” He added that “the method is not a better method, but complementary to other methods.” Eric Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at University of California at Riverside who maintains a blog on the philosophy of psychology, wrote in an email, “Since the literature on moral cognition has so far been dominated by laboratory studies and online surveys, with relatively few studies of moral behavior sampled in everyday contexts, I think it’s exciting to see researchers expanding their methodology in this direction.” The main notable difference between religious and nonreligious people was that while both groups reported experiencing similar moral emotions, such as shame and gratitude, religious people described their feelings were somewhat more intense. But there is reason to be cautious about the results. The study relies on the participants in the study to self-report honestly and accurately, and participants might be embarrassed to reveal immoral acts. People also have a tendency to overestimate how moral they have been. Schwitzgebel believes that there are inherent problems with self-reported studies, but they can offer valuable research nonetheless. “It’s a matter of weighing concerns about the inaccuracy of self-report against concerns about how representative laboratory behavior is of behavior in non-laboratory contexts,” he said. Wisneski agreed that the concern about self-reporting is a “valid critique” of his study. He observed, however, that many participants report committing immoral acts such as adultery, which is encouraging (at least as far as the accuracy of the study is concerned). The study did not limit itself to comparing views of religious and nonreligious people. It also compared the views of people with different political ideologies. According to one recently proposed psychological theory, the Moral Foundations Theory, there are several different grounds for finding an act moral or immoral. One act may be considered immoral because it harms someone. Another act, however, may be considered immoral not because it is harmful but because it evinces disloyalty. Previous laboratory experiments using the Moral Foundations Theory framework had shown that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral foundations. For example, conservatives are more likely to cite acts that exhibit respect for authority as moral, while liberals are more likely to consider acts that exhibit fairness as moral. The current study confirmed these differences between liberals and conservatives outside the laboratory, but not to a striking degree. “Moral Foundations Theory found some support in theoretically predicted directions, but this was dwarfed by a huge amount of overlap between liberals and conservatives,” said Wisneski. “If we watch Fox or MSNBC, we might think that liberals are from Mars, conservatives are from Venus. But there are far more similarities.” The researchers deliberately refrained from defining “moral” and “immoral” for study participants. Leaving the definition of “morality” open enabled the researchers to see the variety of acts that some people considered moral or immoral. “There’s always the tradeoff between the clarity of telling participants exactly what you’re looking for, and the risk of missing important aspects of their moral lives,” said Graham. “For instance, if I think morality is fundamentally about fairness and justice, and define it as such for participants, then I will get a more precise and specific set of moral events from them, but I will miss a lot of what they find morally good or bad.” There’s some reason, though, to think most people were pretty much on the same moral page. All the moral and immoral acts that participants texted to researchers were each independently rated by several judges who did not know the purpose of the study nor anything about the participants. There was a remarkable level of agreement. The judges in aggregate differed from the participant in their opinion of the morality of an act less than 1 percent of the time. In all, Schwitzgebel thinks that this study has been an important step forward in empirical research of morality. “In studying as complex a phenomenon as moral and immoral behavior, one wants to employ a wide variety of different methods with their various complementary advantages and disadvantages. There’s not going to be any one single perfect method,” he said. “So it’s terrific to see the literature expanding in new methodological directions like this.” Elizabeth Picciuto
"The researchers deliberately refrained from defining “moral” and “immoral” for study participants. Leaving the definition of “morality” open enabled the researchers to see the variety of acts that some people considered moral or immoral." So when the leftist dudes went out and hooked up at a homo bar they really had nothing to feel immoral about. Thus, no need to report. lol
Art Show With Barbie And Ken As The Virgin Mary And Jesus Outrages Bishops Religion News Service | By JOSEPHINE MCKENNA Posted: 09/24/2014 5:07 pm EDT Updated: 09/24/2014 5:59 pm EDT ROME (RNS) Barbie has had a number of careers in her 55 years — flight attendant, veterinarian, astronaut, even president. Her latest role, however, is raising eyebrows. Italy’s Catholic bishops are furious about controversial artistic depictions of the popular Barbie and Ken dolls as the Virgin Mary and a crucified Jesus Christ and other saints. Two Argentinian artists, Marianela Perelli and Pool Paolini, produced 33 dolls of various religious figures for a show named “Barbie, The Plastic Religion,” which opens in Buenos Aires on Oct. 11.
A recent Pew study found that white American evangelical Christians think they experience more discrimination than blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, atheists or Jews. Really? Christianity is the majority religion in the U.S. Many kinds of legally ensconced religious privileges are on the rise including the right to woo converts in public grade schools, speculate in real estate tax-free, repair religious facilities with public dollars, or opt out of civil rights laws and civic responsibilities that otherwise apply to all. By contrast atheists are less electable than even philanderers, weed smokers or gays; Hispanics and Muslims are being told to leave; Jews get accused of everything from secret economic cabals to destroying America’s military; and unarmed black youth continue to die at the hands of vigilantes. Given the reality of other people’s lives, a widespread evangelical perception of their group as mass victims reveals a lack of empathy that should give thoughtful believers reason to cringe. And indeed, Alan Nobel, managing editor of Christ and Pop Culture, and a professor at Oklahoma Baptist University, wrote a thoughtful, pained analysis this summer of what he called “evangelical persecution complex.” Nobel contrasted the privileged position of American Christians with the real and serious persecution Christian minorities experience under ISIS, for example, and he examined the ways in which victimization can become a part of Christian identity and culture to the detriment of Christians and outsiders alike. What he neglected to spell out clearly was the extent to which the Bible itself sets up this problem. Christianity, born in the harsh desert cultures of the Middle East, got its start by defining itself in opposition to both Judaism and the surrounding pagan religions of the Roman empire. Consequently, from the get-go teachings emerged that helped believers deal with the inevitable conflict by both predicting and glorifying suffering at the hands of outsiders. Indeed, persecution was framed as making believers more righteous, more like their suffering savior. Long before the Catholic Church made saints out of martyrs, a myriad of texts encouraged believers to embrace suffering or persecution, or even to bring it on. . . . As any squabbling pair of siblings can tell you, claiming to be a victim is powerful stuff, even if you actually struck first. He started it! yells one kid. No, she started it! yells the other. Parental resolve waivers in the face of uncertainty, and both kids get an exasperated lecture. When I was in college, I had a friend who grew up in a rough, low-income neighborhood. One day we were talking about car accidents and he said, “My father told me that if you ever get in an accident, you should immediately get out and start yelling at the other driver. Even if it was your fault, it will put them on the defensive and keep them from making wild claims. And maybe the police will believe you.” Amoral, perhaps but brilliant. If claiming to be a victim is powerful, believing you are a victim is far more so, again regardless of the actual facts—which, at any rate, we all are prone to interpret through a self-serving lens. Have you ever noticed that when your friends tell you about conflict with co-workers or lovers, you almost always feel like they were wronged? What are the odds, really? Seeing ourselves and our tribe as innocent victims draws sympathy and support and protects self- esteem. But at a price. Because when we cultivate the sense that we have been wronged, we can’t see the wrong that we ourselves are doing. We also give up our power to make things better. If people keep being mean to us through no fault of our own, we’re helpless as well as victims, at least in our own minds. You can’t fix what you can’t see. In the case of Christianity, the theology of persecution serves to give the faithful hope. It inspires persistence in the face of hardship, including the many hardships that life brings all of us through no fault of our own. But it has also blinded generations of believers to the possibility that sometimes the hardships they face are due not to their faith or outsiders hating Jesus, but to the fact that they hit first. And sometimes the bewildering hostility they perceive may simply be something the theology of persecution has set them up to expect, whether it is there or not. VALERIE TARICO
leftist projection taken to a new level. Lets take those last few paragraphs and insert the following... _____________ and remove theology and put in victimology. If claiming to be a victim is powerful, believing you are a victim is far more so, again regardless of the actual facts—which, at any rate, we all are prone to interpret through a self-serving lens. Have you ever noticed that when your friends tell you about conflict with co-workers or lovers, you almost always feel like they were wronged? What are the odds, really? Seeing ourselves and our tribe as innocent victims draws sympathy and support and protects self- esteem. But at a price. Because when we cultivate the sense that we have been wronged, we can’t see the wrong that we ourselves are doing. We also give up our power to make things better. If people keep being mean to us through no fault of our own, we’re helpless as well as victims, at least in our own minds. You can’t fix what you can’t see. In the case of _______________, the victimology of persecution serves to give the faithful hope. It inspires persistence in the face of hardship, including the many hardships that life brings all of us through no fault of our own. But it has also blinded generations of believers to the possibility that sometimes the hardships they face are due not to their ____________ or outsiders hating them, but to the fact that they hit first. And sometimes the bewildering hostility they perceive may simply be something the victimology of persecution has set them up to expect, whether it is there or not.