A man of leisure living in the present, waiting for the future.
I’d rather have unpleasant itching than possibility of eternal torture.
I read an amazing story about some pagan dude who invited the missionaries at his door in and calmly explained to them that he was descended from those people exclusively so none of their rules applies to him and what they considered sins were fine. They didn’t know what to say and just left. Sadly, it seems to have disappeared from the internet.
There are references to other humans outside the garden of Eden, implying that humans descended from them are immune to original sin.
1 Khomeini = creation of 40 million religious extremists? (The approximate population of Iran just after the Islamic revolution there.)
Although, it can be a difficult problem for people quantizing such things to even classify what counts as extremism.
Interesting question. Out of curiosity I tried googling to see if anyone has done an analysis of historical cycles of religious extremism and didn’t find any hits; if you find anything I’d be interested.
Do we need a standardized unit of religious extremism to calculate this? If so, I propose the Khomeini.
I think of it as a purity test. If one is willing to accept obviously absurd and contradictory material without evidence, (they call this faith,) it means they are just the sort of uncritical person that’s likely to go with the program without pushing back. It’s like how the Nigerian prince e-mail scammers intentionally include grammatical and spelling errors, because the people who overlook that and reply anyway are far more likely to be successfully scammed.
Each religion has a slightly different flavor of absurdity. They all rely on indoctrination and a lack of critical thought to persist. They all have the capacity to become extremist and frequently do. It’s only a matter of time until the men who claim to speak for god(s) say their god(s) want violence.
While extremism isn’t limited to Abrahamic religions, the story of Abraham, the one they all have in common, is a pretty fucked up story. The moral is: if you hear voices that tell you to kill your son, you should do it without question because that’s definitely God testing you. That’s a dangerous lesson to teach children, some of whom will grow up to be schizophrenic.
What’s wrong with, “the prostitute?” Doesn’t seem like it belongs with the other undesirable categories.
Who knew the revolution would be this easy?
Getting abs like that is many things, easy isn’t one of them. Takes a lot of work both in the gym and in the kitchen.
I thought we only assumed spherical cows.
Rise up, sodarians! The only thing you have to lose is your pop.