Tuesday, June 30, 2015

the rich push N-1 fairy tales because they cost nothing...,


NYTimes |  Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.
The Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision landed like some sort of culminating body blow onto this beleaguered climate. Rod Dreher, author of the truly outstanding book “How Dante Can Save Your Life,” wrote an essay in Time in which he argued that it was time for Christians to strategically retreat into their own communities, where they could keep “the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness.”

He continued: “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.”

Most Christian commentary has opted for another strategy: fight on. Several contributors to a symposium in the journal First Things about the court’s Obergefell decision last week called the ruling the Roe v. Wade of marriage. It must be resisted and resisted again. Robert P. George, probably the most brilliant social conservative theorist in the country, argued that just as Lincoln persistently rejected the Dred Scott decision, so “we must reject and resist an egregious act of judicial usurpation.”

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

33 comments:

Vic78 said...

Dusty ain't playing. Easily one of the baddest YouTubers out.

ken said...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Of course once we remove the idea of a Creator, is the rest really true?

To be fair to Dusty when he said:

Dusty Smith

April 27 · Edited ·

I love how shocked CNN is that black people are violently looting in Baltimore right now. Black people using a tragedy as an excuse to steal shit? Who could have possibly predicted such a thing?

https://www.facebook.com/cultofdusty/posts/10204942542857202

He isn't really going to be one of those, we can accept his apology because he's not a hypocrite like conservative Christians are.

He's sorry you took it the wrong way:

Okay. So clearly I am not going to win this one. I honestly was not trying to be racist. I saw myself as giving black people the same criticisms that I have given everyone else, and doing it with the same irreverent style I would use on any other group. But I will admit defeat and unequivocally state that I do not believe your race makes your inferior in anyway, and if what I said spread that message in anyway I apologize for it and distance myself from it as much as I can. It sincerely hurts me to have anyone think I am racist even in the slightest. That is as far from my character as can be. Clearly what I said was incredibly poorly written and I should have taken more care to clarify what I meant. I would remove the original post but that would be dishonest. I said it and I own up to it. I did not live up to the standard that I try to hold myself to, and I regret it.

It sad, because it makes it more difficult for all the other good evangelical atheist.

ken said...

Sorry I meant to say we should be able to accept his apology because he isn't a hypocrite.

CNu said...

But what about the Brooks op/ed and associated torrent of 1400+ comments...,

ken said...

Are those people in your circle of validity like Dusty here is?

Has this type of request impressed you with the televangelist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHxbEGk25QA



Maybe its for a good cause....

Vic78 said...

David Brooks never admits to being wrong about anything. Just about every commenter tells him he's full of shit and he goes on to his next column like nothing happened. Dusty at least pays attention to commenters.

ken said...

Now if you wanted to latch on to a better atheist who can curse and cus, I might recommend this guy, rather than the guy selected here whose desire is to make the state our new god. I still disagree with his ideas about religion, but he at least he isn't going infringe on my way of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJhAE85NGE&feature=youtu.be

Vic78 said...

What's your problem with the video up now?

CNu said...

uh.., I had never seen Dusty until this morning when I searched post-christian america on youtube - and found his blunt disregard for tard amusing. Brook's impotent and futile pandering - as if they're the rational salt of the earth instead of the brutal, non-empathetic, exceptionally suggestible authoritarian automata that their pastoral handlers know them to be - is amusing. His cause is, of course, utterly lost. Given the evangelical absence of an institutional infrastructure, there's nothing to channel tard energies as there is with the Roman Catholic church, and even with its advantages, the Pope has a steep uphill climb ahead of him given tard activism within Roman Caholicism.

CNu said...

Brooks is like a clumsy sunfish dropped into a shark feeding frenzy:If social conservatives really want to remain relevant, I would suggest
two strategies. First, drop the religion. In an increasingly educated
and scientifically reasoned world, the idea of blind faith in a
divisional and punitive hocus pocus is becoming increasingly
ludicrous- and besides, morality precedes religion. In other words, we
don't *need* religion to live a life with morals. So quit insisting
that it does. Second, drop Republicanism. Tying the current brand of
social conservatism to the Republican party is a display of hypocrisy on
such a absurd level that to accept it as a moral political compass one
would either be a fool or, for lack of a better term, a hack. In tying
yourself to the GOP, you have wrongly channeled your energies (as David
Brooks suggests) into personal issues (that are, btw, the opposite of
small government) while failing to address the much larger and pertinent
societal problems such as greed, wealth inequality, poverty, wage
slavery, cronyism and corruption. Did you ever wonder why Republican
politicians never address these issues, but choose instead to focus on
sexuality? You might want to give that some thought. So while David
Brooks is definitely on the right track in his criticism of social
conservatives, he doesn't go far enough in explaining what needs to be
done. Acting like the Salvation Army may be a start, but doing good
deeds while proselytizing religion and endorsing Republicanism will win
you few loyal friends.

CNu said...

So much rich booty in those comments:The Supreme Court ruling is just a punctuation mark in a process that
has been going on for decades if not centuries, dating back to the
beginning of the Enlightenment. It marks the end of the ability of
fundamentalists of all kinds to maintain through law what they could not
sustain through community.

Perhaps this is a Post-Christian era,
but more importantly it is a post-fundamentalist era. That is, it is
post both Christian and Scientific Fundamentalism. We are beginning to
realize that there is no “them”, there is only “us”. We are in the
process of gaining a new understanding of what it means to be human. We
are going to a need a new concept of the spirituality and the sacred
that does not rely on dogma and doctrine. For an excellent starting
point see: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/spirit...

ken said...

I couldn't get to the article, do you have to login or something--sorry can't find the page you requested is what it said.

CNu said...

https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/spiritualise-revitalising-spirituality-to-address-21st-century-challenges/

Dale Asberry said...

I watched a few more videos and had some chuckles at the tards' expense

BigDonOne said...

BD likes this N-1 Art - Pope portrait made from colored condom 'pixels'.... http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/milwaukee-artist-debuts-pope-benedict-condom-portrait-article-1.1296818

ken said...

Is that a question, this guy is extremely infantile in his arguments. Spend trillions of dollars on wars yet close are children's schools, have empty houses and have people who can't afford to live in a house. And having no earthly idea what a good solution is he sits there with his angry face and says it the Christian's fault..


He talks of fairy tales as if somehow he has some great smoking gun he is going to present us that should have us all agree, yep he's right, its a fairy tale.


He says he can't have a reasonable logical debate with Christians, I am sure he can't, I suspect a couple of points and this guy ends up cussing and cursing at the very top of his lungs and its the fault of the person he is having a reasonable debate with.



We only get to see him trash what someone else beliefs, to finally find out if his complaints are viable we need him to explain his fact and evidence of his beliefs. We won't get that from him, the last time he did this he was mocked and had to change his beliefs.


In fact that's why Christians should change there's, because he assumes they are as ignorant as he is and since he was told what to believe without knowing what he believed for years and years and when people mocked him he changed what he believed, to something else that has a lot of evidence.


He has no ability to tell us what the weighty evidence to put him over the top was because stating evidence might inform us of the facts he now builds his house on. He knew Christianity wasn't it anymore because he figured out who wrote the Bible, and who put it together. He also knows because of the history of Jesus, whatever we were supposed to understand from that, who really knows.


He ends up trying to convert us by telling us about his conversion experience. He became educated, the more you know the less you believe he says. He assumes Christians believe the way they do because they haven't researched, they are uneducated, when they finally do the work and investigation and are able to know all the knowledge he knows, then they will believe what he believes.


All it turns out to be is a loud mouthed ignorant boy projecting the ignorance he has on Christians hoping they are as insecure as he was and still is, and will change their beliefs to what others look at as the more intelligent belief.

Vic78 said...

I watched a bunch one Sunday last year. If he didn't like you, he went in.

ken said...

Dale I fully understand why this is enjoyable to you, and I in no way want to squelch any of the intellectual development you receive from it. I am happy for you. Vik just asked what I had a problem with, but I don't want that decrease any of the enlightenment your receive from it.

ken said...

I read the link and the download, and I get the idea of post God we need to still figure out our non material selves and what it is to be human. The problem I have with this and anthropology is that it all comes from the perspective that it is settled that there is no God. Take for instance anthropology sees a form of worship and interprets, the leaders must have installed this because they wanted to get this or that result. And much of the time that is true.


However, if let's say the assumption of the anthropologist is we know God exist and communicated with man, we knew hunter and gatherers knew God, and worshiped Him and had relationship with Him, the anthropologist would be interpreting why the people deviated from the true worship of God. What made x society have less religious rituals and what made y society have more rituals when at one time the seekers of God had communion with God with no rituals. It would be a whole different way of interpretation. We would be looking at when the society cast off the seeking of the Spiritual and replaced it with material and when leaders desired power over people rather than relation to God.


Today this article starts out, politicians can't do anything, and they listed various liberal agendas that can't get addressed, and then they turned to talk of spiritual matters much the same way anthropologist figured other civilizations did before them: how can we engineer a spiritual experience to get our motivate people the way we want. And with the same assumptions the anthropologist have, i.e. the option of the idea there may be a God is completely off the table.


Instead of figuring out what happened to us, and why can't we accomplish anything now, when before we used to be able to unite and build so much? We want to plug ahead maintaining our same assumptions and beliefs, knowing they are right, even though somehow we know we are in the wrong place. We now want to look at the immaterial part of ourselves not even stopping and thinking and wondering about where would something like that come from. I guess it was an ok read it clearly points to the fact we're missing something, but like the rest one of the options, of what we're possibly missing can't be God, because we are already so sure there is none.

Dale Asberry said...

I'd like to hear your thoughts on why you think this is enjoyable to me.

Dale Asberry said...

N-1 Art? I'm not thinking so... which Pope was this, again?

CNu said...

I'd be very interested to know the answer to that one too. Cause youtube channel and t-shirts notwithstanding, I bet you this Dusty character doesn't have a storefront church from which he fleeces atheist true believers. In fact, I'm not aware of any atheist collective security clubs of any consequence, I don't think they give much thought to evangelization and collectivization, matter fact, like folks involved with science, there's scant little memetic competition going on anywhere for any qualified hearts and minds.

BigDonOne said...

It's in the link BD has conveniently provided above....
"A portrait of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI that is made out of 17,000 condoms"

Hard-hitting irony since condoms would not exist if the Catholic Church had anything to say about it....
BD was curious what, if anything, was done to preserve the rubber so doesn't rot & crumble in ~5 years...

CNu said...

What made x society have less religious rituals and what made y society
have more rituals when at one time the seekers of God had communion
with God with no rituals.


Jaynes explained all of that a looooong time ago. http://subrealism.blogspot.com/search?q=julian+jaynes

And with the same assumptions the anthropologist have, i.e. the option
of the idea there may be a God is completely off the table.


It's not a question of "assumption". It's a question of neurological differences in which one group experiences powerful emotions of faith all the way to auditory hallucinations of non-human intelligence. The other group has none of these experiences in common with the first.

Dale Asberry said...

I know which Pope it was, lol. That was for you and the importance of distinguishing which one.


Since Benedict XVI was such a significant proponent of the Humane Vitae and the Evangelium Vitae, the hard-hitting irony hits even harder. Hence, the artist is making true art here as it is a political and religious statement.

BigDonOne said...

Regardless N-1 is N-1, it's all mythology. The Pope puts on his pants one leg at a time,...

Dale Asberry said...

Lol, but the artist nor the art is N-1. SMH.

Vic78 said...

He stated that he's using the techniques that worked on him. Have you ever tried to put yourself in someone else's shoes?

ken said...

I think that was a pretty interesting admission to me. "I was mocked so much I didn't want to be mocked anymore", so he claims he looked at the evidence and it crushed him. To me, here would be the unwinding of some of this crushing evidence of not only Christians are wrong, but any belief that there is a God is a fairy tale. He is an atheist now after all, aggressive as he says; and yet as of yet after doing some searching not able to find him talking about the evidence.


I don't believe he has found any great evidence, I don't believe he had much knowledge of the faith he said he had before, and I think he is too insecure to put any more beliefs or what he thinks the facts are now to be mocked again.

ken said...

I was just understanding what you just said to me, his arguments were clear [to you], and how you enjoyed the delivery. And then you went on to explain the thrust of his arguments. I took what you said and your depth you have shown otherwise and had an understanding why you enjoyed this. Nothing more than that.

ken said...

Dusty's wife had a similar crash in 2011 also,

http://adrielhampton.tumblr.com/post/2693990738/reigny



It's kinda like the 2013 incident, that poor guy must have thought it was deja vu, its just bad luck after the 2011 incident that the car didn't have collision for the 2013 incident, talk about a patch of bad luck. You can see the 2013 crash story on the "cult of Dusty car crash" I linked to earlier. Its great his following was able to send him money and help him out.

ken said...

Jaynes created an explanation by first and foremost believing there is not a God, now after we got that straight let's explain what these experiences were. Again its the same thing, what if there really is a Creator, which at our present time, is still a very viable possibility, and what if the Creator did and does communicate will to its creation. The explanations and interpretations of the same ancient evidence uncovered would be totally different than the explanations and currently now the solutions we are presented today.


The difference if it was assumed there was a Creator would be the earliest were close to the Creator and as we progressed we would be looking at why civilizations (mainly hunter and gatherers) which at one time had communion with a Creator and egalitarian societies drifted away from the creator, embracing ritual and hierarchy. As they drifted further from there relation with the Creator God, so too came more hierarchy and less egalitarianism. Our initial assumption if God exists or not makes for totally different interpretations. Clearly if God exists, its why there is religion, its why man seek the Spiritual. We would be looking at the relation between ritual and hierarchy and if there was a correlation how civilizations related to God.


We only get one assumptive perspective out of the two viable possibilities.

TheMCT said...

Well yes I always enjoy a good mocking, but I consider myself a Christian
and don't believe in what most of them are spewing, one of my major conflicts
is in the world creation, the Bible says six days and for some twisted reason
mankind believes it's referring to 24 hour clock, strange that a being that is
the beginning and the end would need to reference its existence with something
not in creation yet (as in the Sun and the moon and of course earth and all the
other physical principals that make it all work). OK so I strangely believe in
a mixture of creation and evolution, things kind of work out right for us if
you consider God's day equals say a billion or so of our years, of course the
last day of rest puts things in a different perspective as in was he resting
from creation only and still doing things to directly influence us? So where
are we in the 7 billion year experiment the King James version puts us
somewhere between end of 6 and beginning of 7, since our current day perception
of time was unknown who knows how long Adam survived before the second human
came out of the Abyss and supposedly he named it "woman" sounds kind
of funny to me this is quite some time before nibbling the apple of knowledge
and knowing that this other creature is sort of like a man but different and
will lead to your downfall one day. The real spelling is WOE-MAN.

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