[ WAY OT ] - Another Waco waiting to happen?

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 2:05 pm

Have any of you seen the southpark mormon episode !

it's hilarious, until you realise it is pretty close to the truth

http://www.i4m.com/think/southpark/

Smith: [in bed inside a shack] And please bless Mother and Father, and please keep our bellies full of yum-yums and luscious goodies. [a flash of light and a glowing orb carroms around the room] AAAHH! [the orb turns into an angel] Oh my gosh!

Angel: I am Moroni. I am a Native American.

Smith: A... [looks at the camera] Native American? [looks at Moroni] But your skin is white.

Moroni: Yes. Long ago all Native American were white. We all came to America from Jerusalem. And while we were here we were visited by Christ.

Smith: [looks at the camera] Jesus live here in America?

Moroni: Yes. Eventually, my people were all killed by the other tribe of Israel, and as punishment, God turned their skin red. These are the Native Americans you know today. [Smith looks at the camera dumbstruck]

dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb!

http://www.rickross.com/reference/mormon/mormon134.html

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 2:16 am

conny wrote:
Powerful men wanting to have plenty of sex partners is in my mind just an other form of abuse and surpression and egoism and conservatism.

// C

Well, honestly for me I aspire to having more than one woman. It was one of my "criteria" back when I was single and looking for a girlfriend; she had to be bi-sexual.

Why the fuck not? My girlfriend and I are both cool with the idea. We haven't gone and picked up a woman yet, but we've talked about it. If we were to allow the third person to move in with us, who's to say it's egoism on my part, or conservatism for that matter? It's consent between all adults, so how is it abusive, or supression? Where do you get conservative from? My mom's a conservative catholic and she really hates the idea of my girlfriend and I in a menage a trois... I think it's more "left" than "right" to practice alternative lifestyles, is it not?

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 5:42 am

I like Montrealbreaks. He has very intelligent things to contribute to the forum, and I hope that he has lot's of beautiful children, with two or more loving wives.
We need more educated, diverse, free thinkers on this planet.

I'm plenty happy with my girlfriend, and I really wouldn't change a thing. I would go so far as to arguee that a gaggle of third generation Montreal-imbreakers would most likely contribute more to society than a bunch of "perfectly healthy" mormons, Jehova's wittnesses, or Fundamental Latterday Saints.

One of my ex-girlfriends was a "disfellowed" Jehovas wittness... that girl was freaky...

I'm telling you, these are all just FUCKING cults. Very sick people, ruled by very very very sick people. I think the government should seriously interfere.

When I was living with this girl I became very informed about the emerging subcutures of young adults that escaped or were banished from their communities.
Most often not before they were abused by the heads of their community.

It is often told to these children that even if they are raped, it is there fault, and that this not only prohibits them from going to heaven, but if they report the incident, they stand a certainty of expulsion from their community (like that is a bad thing.)

The confusing part for me is that such abhorrent infringements of civil being
are part of the US's rational for interfering with Muslim civilization, and yet we continue to let such activities happen here in our own community.

Anyway, my ex-girlfriend's upbringing in waspy middle america suburbia was too freaky for even the likes of this old school veteran of the pre-gentrificatio,n Lower- east-side of manhattan. She's probably in a polygamous relationship right now (for all I know,) and after all the shit she's been through she deserves it. Hopefully, one day, Montrealbreaks, you will be too.

conny · Post by **conny** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 10:05 am

montrealbreaks wrote:
conny wrote:
Powerful men wanting to have plenty of sex partners is in my mind just an other form of abuse and surpression and egoism and conservatism.

// C
It's consent between all adults, so how is it abusive, or supression? Where do you get conservative from? ... I think it's more "left" than "right" to practice alternative lifestyles, is it not?

Sorry, I was too unclear. I totally agree on what you say here. What I was trying to target is the "institution" of polygami in sects and cultures where it's a privilege for the man only and most so for the rich and powerful ones. That's where it gets conservative - expressing and preserving power, welth, influence and keeping a social order where there will be fewer women left for the unlucky onses (opression).

What people do in a free, twosided agreement is anyther thing and as you said, mostly more left then right when being a free and/or altenative thing.

// C

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 3:03 pm

LOFA wrote:I like Montrealbreaks.

I like you too LOFA.

Hope your Ex is doing OK. Dominating religion for kids is a great way to bring up an athiest. I saw a documentary on former Amish kids once, and it was f'ed up.

One of the principal tenets of the Amish belief system is that you cannot accept baptism as an infant - it's an adult's decision. In line with this, Amish kids are allowed to leave the home after 14, and join the "english" (ie modern US) society. They can come back whenever they want, and join the church. HOWEVER, once they join and are baptized, then they're obligated to stay - if they leave after they've been baptized, they're shunned.

ANYWAYS, while these kids are free to leave, they are totally unprepared for modern life. My analogy is this: If you take a spring, the harder you compress it the further it will shoot off in a random direction when it finally slips your grasp. The kids are springs, and the compression is religion.

So, many of these kids immediately embraced everything previously forbidden to them; from jobs, education and cars to video games to booze, smokes, crystal meth and unprotected sex. The kids in the documentary couldn't differentiate between what was good about the modern world and what was bad, because all their lives they were told it was all bad.

For me, I think religion should be a choice made as a young adult, not something you're brought up in as you're raised. Then, it's a genuine acceptance of what you believe, rather than a lifetime of indoctrination.

That said, I don't plan on having kids, so I can blather as much as I please without consequence!

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:17 pm

I don't think religion is a choice... I did not 'convert' to Buddhism, I just found out where I belong. But then the R-word explains that nicely..!

-Paws

conny · Post by **conny** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 11:36 pm

Buddhism - I tend to think I might belong there...

Is it right to say that in buddhism there is no "God" or does not have to be?
You may very well pratice zen without believing in a God?
There is one-ness etc but no namned God?

I read a buddhist stor that I like, some thing along this:
A monk was on the way to a monastry, it was cold, he found a cabbin with a stove but nothing to make fire with.
The next day, an other monk (or master) came and asked him why he hadn't lit a fire.
- Nothing to burn.
- What about the Buddha statue over there, it's made of wood, isn't it?

// C

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:02 am

I talk about God sometimes but it's not a personal God, and it's not a creating God or a God who's active in this world, either. It's certainly not the God you know from your vaguely Christian scandinavian upbringing

When I say that I am a Buddhist, it's a bit of a stretch, though, as I have only studied few actual Buddhist texts - most of my knowledge comes from book that (people claiming to be!) Buddhists have written.

The basic Buddhist (and Hindu) world view as I've understood it is that everything is one and all divisions and conditionality is illusional. Our neurotic attachment to illusions and impermanent things make us go around and around the wheel of reincarnations chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow until we, through practising meditation and right lifestyle etc etc, realise the futility of this, see the true nature of things and free ourselves from the loop.

And no, you don't have to believe in reincarnation. I just find that it makes so many things easier to understand...

Buddhism is an incredibly fractured religion though - there are more schools than you can shake a stick at - from the very plain and simple (but deep) Zen buddhism to extremely elaborate Tibetan and Indian systems of millions of different aspects of the Buddha and long complicated mantras and such. They're all both alike and very different.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the section on Buddhism in this summary of a book that was alas never finished Four Reasons Why You Don't Exist, by the late James Higgo.

Also, this site had some nice pages.

-Paws

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:54 am

noisetonepause wrote: It's certainly not the God you know from your vaguely Christian scandinavian upbringing

You said that with a wink, so it's accepted. You may be right, but I had nearly no religious pointers from my parents or relatives.
OK, I had to use oil crayons in school to draw the history of Christ.

I instead became engaged in a hindu/meditation kind of movement in the 70's, which I abounded when I should give up my name... Felt like my integrity was as stake.
You could also say my ego still sticked to some unimportant things, but I still think there is and should be a wealthy cooperation between the individual and the "all things are the same"-point of view.

- Paws

// C

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:59 am

Is there anyone here who is religious? Or has everyone already seen the light and abandoned the synthetic salvation of the institutions of their youth?

Be good to hear from someone passionately religious. the world is boring when everyone is sitting on the fence (agnostic).

Thoughful Atheists here?

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:06 am

I learned that "religion" means "being re-united with the origins", or simply "coming home" or "longing/striving to get home".
Or you could say: "Back to basics."
Or "Forward to the fundaments"!
Which makes sense, IMHO, as part of the "human condition".

// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:18 am

noisetonepause wrote:Four Reasons Why You Don't Exist, by the late James Higgo.

Thanks, interesting.

But I don't buy Higgo's view:

All of the competing interpretations [of quantum physics] still force us to abandon one or more cherished idea: time, locality, identity.

Questioning - yes.
Abandon - no.
Because these qualities "exist" - in our minds, language, culture, history, perception, you name it.

It's like saying "Love it chemistry/hormones" or "We are basicly atoms" or "The world concists mostly of emptiness" or "Music is just frequencies and amplitudes shifting over time".

We "know" that it is not so.

The (maybe only) great thing about Christianity is that "God" come to think of that the best thing to do was to send himself as a human being to share our conditions, when nothing else helped.

I think that was a strategy against dogma and reductionism.

// C

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:27 am

Personally I look upon Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion, but that's just my point of view.

http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/ covers the precepts and the eightfold path.

I find that Buddhism needs re-telling to the modern individual, especially if they arent an Indian. Some of the iconography represents mental states that are still common to us .. but we would use different iconography.
A knowledge of Jungian archetypes is helpful

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:42 am

I like this:
"There is no thinker behind the thought" (Walpola Rahula, quoted by Higgo)

// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:53 am

My former girlfriend was in northen India some 20 years ago (well, time does not exist...), guess she was in Kashmire, and it was time for a muslim ceremony where men walked the streets hurting themselves whith stones banged to their heads, in remembererance of a martyr.
The buddhists in the town where watching, and they where unhappy, some of them cried.
You might think that buddhists would not "react", they are "detached", but they did and that makes me "happy" in a way.

A german writer that fled to Sweden wrote something like: "For every one martyr, there will be two new victims in the next war".
That's very true, IMHO.

And I think buddhism has no martyrs.

// C