She is probably part of the radical christian right wanting to shut down the government and enact biblical law
Canât be any worse than the current bunch.
Jesus hasnât said much for the last 2000 years or so.
Shouldnât he have a blog or something to help us understand what he wants?
Edit: never mind, I see heâs on the twitters, @jesus.
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Fair enough, though religious folks seem to have an uncanny ability to read their own desires into religious texts regardless of the actual content or wording of those texts.
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Your beliefs donât really matter in this case. I donât believe in Superman but I know that Kryptonite can kill him.
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I am certainly interested in this little tidbit, I find this a fascinating rule.
Youâre right that lack of belief does not necessarily mean lack of knowledge.
On the other claw, these Intartubes donât really need more atheists who have never studied theology parading their lack of knowledge as though it were insightful revelation. Thereâs really no hole to be filled there! I found cowens willingness to admit he might, just possibly, be wrong extremely refreshing, as well as intellectually above all reproach.
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Itâs entirely possible that congresscritters have learned to remain calm in the face of angry, agitated, sometimes delusional or senile, people, for basically the same reason that psych nurses have: because they work with lots of them.
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I knew next to nothing about the Masons at the time and was told that was (one of) the rules. It was a large hall we played in and there were quite a few people there, so it made it extra strange when we finished each song and looked out at the completely silent audience. Like I said, our brand of musical weirdness didnât go over too well in middle Ohio at the time anyway but Iâm pretty sure we werenât told the âno applause thingâ to save our feelings. The dad was always pressuring his son to join but being a post-punk commie weirdo there wasnât much chance of that.
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hmmm
Thereâs a white-haired man talking to the stenographer and nodding his head prior to her getting up and going to the podium. I wonder if he was involved.
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They do insomuch as they limit my knowledge of the subject matter. For instance, if this had been about kryptonite killing Superman I would have said:
Kryptonite doesnât seem to kill Superman, only weaken him. Many villains seem to think it will kill him (or weaken him to the point where they could kill him), but I donât think we have ever seen any evidence that it would actually kill him.
But, then again, I tend to only watch the animate series, so what do I know.
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I donât believe that. I mean, how many times has it actually happened? Not counting elseworlds or imaginary stories? 
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I agree, it would have been neat if they said that. But the fact that they donât is kind of the point.
The text is trying to paint the Jewish authorities as inept and unenlightened. Naturally theyâre busy âmarvelingâ because they donât understand Jesus or his message. Theyâre too stuck in their spiritually bankrupt ways. They expect Jesus to act like they would in his situation, and when he doesnât they canât understand why.
The point of such depictions is to reinforce in the Christian reader the hypocrisy of the priests who would try to tell others what to believe and how to worship by authority of their social status and high positions, rather than by the morality and rectitude of their actions and the examples they set. In a way, Jesus (or rather the author of Mark) is admonishing Christians not to act that way themselves.
In fact, a great deal of the gospel of Mark is concerned with giving examples of how NOT to act - of whom NOT to resemble, or to NOT take as an example. Even the Twelve Disciples are shown in this light - they repeatedly fail to understand Jesus, repeatedly behaving like buffoons and defying his teachings out of either ignorance, fear, laziness, or tradition. They constantly miss the point of his stories, they constantly go against his wishes, and in stark contrast to our modern day reverence for them, theyâre actually intended to be examples of Jesusâ worst followers - believers in name only, who have entirely the wrong understandings and the wrong priorities and the wrong behaviors and make the wrong choices.
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Yeah weâre still around (Iâm a 25 year member). Thereâs about 1.3 million of us in the US at the moment.
Most of us just laugh this stuff off. This recent [xkcd][1] got passed around in fun, mostly with the notion that if we actually ran stuff, weâd do a better job.
American Masons are very proud of the members who helped found this country.
PGT
[1]: http://xkcd.com/1274/ âxkcdâ
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the man really knew how to live, eh?
Sounds much like the Michelle Bachmann interview on the 8th of October:
Iâm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in Godâs end times history. Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand.
â Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
The question remains, why hasnât anyone called for the psychiatric evaluation of Michelle Bachmann yet?
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âReligion was created to keep the poor from killing the rich.â
â Napoleon Bonaparte (attributed)
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I watched the video closely as well, and the thing I noticed is how deliberate she was in her actions. Sheâs sitting at the little stenography doohicky exchanging a word here and there with one man standing just to her right, and with the woman helping her get unraveled from the doohickeyâs wiring (hard to tell what with the CSPAN videoâs quality). She stands, walks behind her chair to screen right and glances up at the podium like sheâs checking to see if the coast is clearâŚbut she doesnât creep or stalk (which would have been clearly out of place and noticeable by the throng of politicos around her), eventually walking straight to the mic, checks that itâs on, finds it is not, turns it on, and begins her descent into crazytown.
Having never spent time with someone who has any mental disorders (to my knowledge, that is), it freaks me out that sheâs so deliberate, cautiousâŚfreaky!
So was mine. Itâs not such a scary group when you know one or two personally. (Pretty much how it works for every minority group.)
B-b-but Joel Osteen and and the propsperity gospel said that God wants me to be rich! I mean, isnât it clear that Matthew 19:24 (âAgain I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.â) obviously a reference to a tiny gate in Jerusalem and not a sewing needle?
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