As a Freemason, I would just like to say that we have addressed the issue and you won’t be hearing anymore about this. 
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I maintain their secrecy only exists because they don’t want to admit that meeting in the back room of a bar with a bunch of other dudes to just have some drinks is a pretty fucking thing to talk about. But if you say you’re bound by a Code of Silence it’s suddenly cooler.
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I think we’ll learn pretty quickly that she just thought it would be funny to run her recent transcriptions through google translate into German, then back again, and was just reading it out to “lighten the mood,” but things got totally out of hand…
Well, I’m simply grateful that she didn’t utter “allah akbar”, lest she would have been taken out with a single shot. Freemasons is the safer way to go, no doubt.
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Oddfellows? Well, if they were in charge of government, there would be a lot more spanking and goat costumes, amirite?
PS for the Bible quoters: Look up Mathew 10, m’kay? Special attention to 10:34.
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I thank God I don’t live in the USA with ready access to humiliating treatment and also personal firearms. It seems certain I’d have plugged some self-righteous prick full of lead by this stage. *breathes deeply*
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A couple of things struck me. The chamber was loud and unorderly yet the chair only banged the gavel and called for order when the stenographer went up and started her rant - as if the thing out of order was a rant by someone other than a representative. The hub-bub in the room lessened a bit as the scene went down, but did not cease, and then returned to it’s previous level as soon as the woman was removed. Nobody seemed concerned for her or their own safety it seemed - perhaps because most did not even see or understand what was going on. It made me sad to realize that the only reason this is even news is because we have this this little bit of random C-SPAN video evidence of this woman’s thread of sanity becoming unraveled and it makes us shudder in wonder and fear.
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“I find it hard to believe” is pretty much never going to be an opening for a convincing argument.
The Pharisees didn’t like him because he was usurping their religious authority and the Romans didn’t like him because he was rocking the apple cart. Taxes don’t even need to come into it.
Whoever compiled the Bible apparently thought Paul’s opinions were quite salient commentaries on the life of Christ. Are you claiming to have a better handle on Christ’s message than the people who, ya know, founded Christianity?
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All work and no play…
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Yep, it is the End Times. Why, just in tens of million years, the Sun will expand & burn the Earth to a cinder. Be forewarned, scoffers!
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I love the amount of serious attention paid to this woman whose grasp on reality has probably been loosened, sadly, through either paranoid delusions or psychosis. I hope she gets the treatment she needs.
Psychosis can be triggered through extreme stress, and I would argue that the lawmakers, one way or another, are directly responsible for her not-so-well-being. I hope they treat her well and don’t criminalize her.
I just hope she has decent healthcare.
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You mean the folks at the first council of Nicea, in 325 AD, where they cut as much of Jesus’ actual teachings as they could, and kept all the authoritarian shit like Paul, in order to standardize Christianity into a good state religion to keep the masses in line? I think anyone who’s studied early Christianity at all, and read the Gnostic scriptures, even in translation, probably has a far better handle on Christ’s message than those guys.
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Only fools say in their hearts,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their actions are evil;
not one of them does good!
-Psalm 14:1
That’s one way of looking at it. Another (more reasonable) way of looking at it is that the gospels, both canon and apocryphal, are flawed and mutually contradictory documents authored by human beings and that just about any intent or moral can be read into them by mixing and matching those passages that support one’s intent and ignoring those that don’t.
Jesus said to turn the other cheek but he also came to bring the sword. Sure those two ideas can be reconciled but how they are reconciled comes down to one’s personal interpretation of what each of those passages mean.
The “teachings” of Jesus that were cut out in the council of Nicea were almost certainly mostly apocryphal – fictions concocted to serve some first or second century preacher’s intents rather than convey the actual spiritual message of an actual son of God.
What I was trying to convey to billding is that it’s the height of arrogance to look back at these documents from 2000 years ago and decide that you can discern God’s will for all mankind from them.
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Sounds like a great description of Paul, which is where this started.
The Gospel of Thomas never actually claims that Jesus was an actual son of god, for what it’s worth.
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Well, no, this didn’t start with Paul. This started with billding claiming authority in interpreting the gospels. And now you seem to be doing it.
It’s a great description of every document based in any way on the alleged life of Jesus Christ.
Doesn’t really matter what the Gospel of Thomas (or any other gospel or commentary) says because it’s almost certainly a fiction cooked up by yet another religious huckster.
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If I had to listen to Congress all day, I’d go batshit crazy too.
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If we can get this thread back to the Free Masons…in the early 80s I played weirdo music with a friend whose dad was a Mason. For some reason he arranged for us to play at the local Masonic Lodge - definitely the weirdest gig of my life. We played 3 or 4 of our avant garde little ditties and there would be complete silence after each one. I understand that applause is not allowed in the lodge, so, that silence was preferable to the other silence we usually encountered when we played out in the ‘normal’ world.
No worries, man. I’m not religious, and I certainly wasn’t claiming to be able to derive God’s will for all mankind from any of these documents. I just think we’d be better off if American Christians payed more attention to Jesus and less to Paul.
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