kimmy

I foresaw this: "I am a prophet; sendeth me thine currency." -Kimmy 4:20

The real reason this is in the news is because it gave Fox News a chance to run the "Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs!" fiction they're peddling. If somebody draws a Movember Moustache on Jesus in Sheboygan, you'll hear about it on Fox News. -k

Hilarious... after a full year of hype building Cain Velasquez up to be this unstoppable fighting machine built out of microchips and tortillas... his reign as champion lasts a grand total of 64 seconds. The biggest flop since Gigli. Junior Dos Santos is like a surgeon. -k

hmmm. If you run a business and you treat prospective customers like crap, word might get around. But I am sure that our humble baker will become the new folk-heroine of Fox Nation. They will help her out buy deluging her with orders for cakes with little halos and pictures of Tim Tebow and captions that read "Jesus Hates Dykes". -k

Unlike most MLW members, guys like Herman Cain have advisors who help keep them informed about what's going on in the world and help them come up with plausible-sounding positions on questions like this. Unlike most MLW members, learning this stuff is a full-time job for these candidates. This was not some obscure policy-wonk type question. This is asking a guy who wants to be commander in chief what the troops he wants to command were doing while he was campaigning. -k

If Sarah Palin's inability to articulate "The Bush Doctrine" was bad, Herman Cain's inability to recall what American troops were doing this summer can only be called an unmitigated disaster. I feel bad for laughing at this; a kinder person would feel pity for him. Hopefully some more ass-grabbing victims will come forward and distract people from this debacle. The happiest man in America right now must be Rick Perry, because he's no longer the dumbest guy in the race. Give it up, pizza-man. It's down to Mitt and Newt. -k

I think the word you're looking for is "hippocracy"... government by hippos. -k

Easily found with a little googling, Shady. Last time you talked about your religious beliefs, I thought you denied being in the "Christian right" because you weren't Christian. Has that changed recently? edit: "Who cares. I'm not Christian. I don't care what Christ would approve of." -Shady -k

"How can I trust you if you don't pray?" -Newt Gingrich. "How can I trust you if you profess belief in an absolute morality given by a divine creator then break your divine creator's laws repeatedly?" -kimmy

yeahbaby!! -k

That's an excellent idea, and I'm all for it. I'm interested in reading more, or perhaps seeing the videos, if you could point me in the right direction. I'm envisioning a picture of Pat Robertson's face with an X over it and the caption "Christians: We're not all scumbags!" I have often wondered why Christians are silent when scumbags perform scumbaggery in the name of Christ; perhaps this campaign will show that they are not content to be silent. Based on my beliefs? No, based on my knowledge of the New Testament. While I admit I am no theologian, I know enough about the guy that Christianity is named after to know that not all answers to the question "WWJD?" are equally valid. You know that yourself, and had no qualms about pointing out that Jesus would not perform physical violence upon Fred Phelps. I think we can discern that there are right and wrong answers to the question "WWJD?" through the examples provided in the gospels, and one needn't be a Christian to point out some of the obvious wrong answers going around. If somebody asks themselves "what can I do about the problem of homosexuality?" and the answer they come up with is "get on a plane to Uganda, hold a hate-rally, and support the kill-the-fags law the locals are looking at" I think there are only two conclusions you can draw. Either they didn't ask "WWJD?" at all, or they have a deeply wrecked understanding of Christ. That's not what Jesus would do. I know it, you know it, Dick knows it, Shady knows it. Anybody vaguely familiar with Christ knows it. Lou Engle ought to know it, since he runs a ministry, but he did that anyway. So, I read that thousands of Christians went to Lou Engle's anti-Muslim, anti-gay rally in Detroit this weekend. Think they asked themselves whether Jesus would have gone? It's patently obvious that my claim that Jesus would express profound disgust at the Lou Engles and Fred Phelps of the world was just my opinion, but I think it's a very solid one that I doubt anyone here would disagree with. If any Christian does disagree with it, I'd have to question whether they've actually read the New Testament. I'm not holding them to my standards, I'm holding them to Jesus' standards. If they're not happy with those standards, perhaps they ought to re-evaluate whether they're really Christians. -k

Not really. We can't ask him in person (although Herman Cain can) and we've never met him, so all we can really go on is what has been written about him. That's all the information we have to answer that question. That's why it's not a rhetorical question. I did clarify that I was speaking figuratively and that he would "smack the shit out of them" using words, not physical violence. And based on what we know of his beliefs, I think there's no doubt that he would have nothing less than a stinging rebuke for a Fred Phelps or Lou Engle. Does anybody actually disagree? If people wish to proclaim their righteousness, their righteousness will come under scrutiny. I'm pretty sure that Jesus said something to that effect in his biography, and I'm also pretty sure that he told admonished people to not go about proclaiming their righteousness in the first place. I've not pushed atheist beliefs on anyone in this thread; on the contrary I've suggested that Christians ought to live up to their own beliefs. -k

Ok, so... based on what we know about Jesus, do you believe that building a 100 foot long, 20 foot high salt-water exotic fish aquarium in the foyer of your megachurch is something Jesus would approve of? -k

And I'm not proselytizing, I'm asking why some Christians don't act like they've read anything about the guy their religion is named after. -k

If they choose to do so, then faith is on the table for discussion. You can't go around saying "Jesus would want this, Jesus would want that, vote for me and send me money so that I can do what Jesus would want" and then turn around and say "Hey, stop persecuting me for my faith!" when people ask whether it's really what Jesus would want. I'm not telling anybody what they should believe. But if people want to make their faith a public issue, they can't complain when people talk about their faith. -k

"Pierce Hawk"?? I said Hawkeye Pierce. Regardless, the point was to illustrate that contrary to what you said earlier, speculating as to how a character would handle a situation is a hypothetical exercise that does not require that the character being discussed be a historical figure. During the Bush years I recall more than once reading people writing about how America would be different if Jed Bartlet were president. The people were well aware that Jed Bartlet was a fictional character. The characteristics of both are well documented in the literature through which we know these characters. A rhetorical question is one to which the answer is obvious, like "Is the Pope Catholic?" If Christians are called on to follow Christ's example, then WWJD? is more than a rhetorical question, it's a guiding principle. His book provides a set of core principles that should allow people to answer the question WWJD when they're faced with decisions. -k

I will agree to that once Christians agree to not use their faith as a justification for their political positions and to rally other Christians to support them. If James Dobson is going to use his organization to tell his followers that God will stop blessing America if Obama wins the next election, it's entirely reasonable to ask what Jesus would think about that. If Mitt and Newt are going to tell us that their faith makes them more qualified to lead the United States, then it's entirely reasonable to ask whether their positions are actually in line with that faith. -k

So I was just reading that Herman Cain is now proclaiming that God told him to run for President. For those of you keeping score at home, that now makes 3. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman. I assume Herman's revelation that God wanted him to run is a response to the less-than-godly allegations that he's a serial ass-grabber. -k

Speculating how the guy described in the New Testament would respond to Lou Engle or Fred Phelps (or indeed much of present-day "Christian Right" politics) is a hypothetical question (and an easy one) that requires no belief in the divinity of Jesus or the historical accuracy of the bible, just a knowledge of the description we have in the Bible. You haven't (and you can't) argue otherwise. Not sure what the real issue is here; you seem bent by the idea that non-Christians might have opinions about Christian scripture. Maybe it seems presumptuous or something. Well, we live in nations where everybody-- Christian and non-Christian a like-- has plenty of exposure to Christian theology, and it's not hard to spot instances where the practice doesn't line up with the theory. -k

haha, no. Christians who ask "WWJD?" are speculating as to how Jesus would handle a situation based on what they've read about him in a book, which is an exercise that could just as easily performed for any other literary character, real or fictional. Such speculation in no way requires a belief in the historical existence of the character, just an understanding of the character as expressed in the literature. You've made a logical error. -k

Not at all. Asking what Jesus would do in a situation is no different from asking what Tom Sawyer or Dirty Harry Callahan or Hawkeye Pierce would do: take a character with well-known traits and use that understanding of the character to extrapolate how that character would respond to a given situation. The only difference is, deciding how Tom Sawyer would handle a situation isn't a matter of theological importance to anyone. -k

I don't think those things are really comparable. Cain released a bad commercial... he's made some off-the-cuff remarks that were not well thought out. Perry had total brain-lock in response to a pretty straightforward question that he really ought to have been prepared for. -k

Whether Jesus was the son of god, a normal man who was a respected teacher, a composite figure based on a number of historical figures, or a completely fictional fabrication doesn't matter. The Bible is certainly real, and it is the "policy platform" which Christians have committed themselves. Whether Jesus was the son of god or not, the policy platform is there in black and white. I'm pointing out that a prominent, loud minority of Christians aren't following their own "policy platform". They act nothing like that guy described in the New Testament taught. Some self-proclaimed Christians conduct their affairs in a way contrary to what the guy who is supposed to be at the center of their belief system taught them to act. While I personally don't believe Jesus to have been the son of god, people who do believe that had ought to act like they believe it. -k

ASSAULT AND LOOTING AT OCCUPY THE TEMPLE JERUSALEM -k