Damn, sounds like I was born a couple millennials too late! Spoiler Sorry, please continue with the seriousness.
Naah, you're right on time --just in the wrong place. Go visit 4Chan --it is still 2000 years behind on the rest of civilisation.
I think he wasn't happy because people have been warned before for mocking Islam, yet Christianity is free game.
That's the only thing as long as everyone keeps it clean, people have to expect everyone has a different opinion. When starting a topic like this we have to act like adults or just don't start anything to with with religion. Remember what's good for the goose is good for the gander otherwise we might as well stop freedom of speech in total. There are so many different believes out there and there is no concrete proof to prove which is a true religion. My ex wife was a Jehovah Witness and they lived according to what they believed and I remember I got called up to the army when finishing school where as all the JW's went to prison because they believed in not having another mans blood on their hands and now that takes strength which I haven't got that's for sure. You seen me slagging off religion here for a few days but that's what I believe not everyone believes what I do believe me. You might what do I believe in then well this is a huge damn galaxy, how the hell are we the only living creatures in the universe, I say impossible. There is a super being out there but not what all these religions believe in, as I said before everyone believes in different things. At least I don't swear like a trooper, smoke, drink, fornicate, hate, lust and then when its comes to Sunday pray for forgiveness only to start all the bad traits again. That's what I really hate and that's a hypocrite.
how many hundreds of innocent people did the church kill, because they believed they were witches/sorcerers, how many documents and designs did the church confiscate because they were ungodly? i am not religeous, i do believe there is life on other planets. i dont believe there is an almighty being. i beleive the big bang to be a scaled up version of what we do in nuclear reactors. i dont believe people should be slated for believing in something that doesn't exist. i dont believe that people with religion should say that a person who has no religion is going to hell. i dont believe schools should be run by religious groups, but i do believe religion should be taught as an appreciation. i believe, that no child should be taught that they belong to one religion or another, that should be upto the child, after they have had lessons about all religions, and should they wish to not be religious, that is their right. i dont believe a child should be baptised, without their consent, although both my children are, it was my ex wife who did that, my first child i wasnt at the baptism because i refused to go, the second was baptised in hospital, so i was there when it was done. i think religion should be kept out of government. people who are not religious, do still have morals. they know its not right to steal, kill etc.
Might I interject a most interesting article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bringing-the-vatican-to-j_b_571088.html
No, people have been warned not to bombard the Demotivational thread with endless "Draw Mohammed" images which, frankly, were neither funny nor novel. Since then the mods have had a discussion on this and we agree that we will allow imagery that makes fun of religions provided that they do not exceed the usual boundaries of taste and decency and are not deliberately posted to provoke members of the religion concerned. I'm not having this discussion any more, OK?
I have. I know the 'intervention' in question. I did not agree with it. I raised the issue with the other mods resulting in the above decision. I'm sorry for your loss. Now move on.
This forum really is going downhill fast, you preach free speech but would I still be a member if I were to mention that all homosexuals are dirty creatures and should be put be put to sleep as soon as it is known they are gay? Or if I was to say someone with a skin colour other than white should not be living in britain, or what about if I said everyone staying in brummyland are paedophiles? Does my right to free speech extend to all this? I don't mean any of the statements above, I am using extreme examples of 'Free Speech' to prove a point. But if someone can escape punishment for calling the pope a paedo and wish him to be killed and state that catholics are all brainwashed then surely no statement can be taboo on these forums.
People talk of stepping over proverbial lines (of behaviour), but in actual fact, there is no line - there is zone, an increasingly foggy zone. I'm a bit out of the loop, so I don't know the detail, but it doesn't matter. The mods have deliberated over a decision and have come to one that they think fits. You, and others, might think they have let something slip that they shouldn't, but they are trying to balance the rights of posters to speak freely vs the rights of other members/visitors not to be subjected to things that are needlessly offensive. I had a post pulled several years ago. I can't remember who did it, or what it was about, but I blew off at Nexxo. He explained that he would have let it go, but it was a decision of another mod. There are two key points of note here: firstly, it shows that the mods have different personal opinions, and rarely are issues so clear cut there is universal agreement; secondly, I didn't respond by extrapolating the judgement to far and moaning about similar posts that survived. So, firstly we shouldn't condemn the mods for letting this post(s?) slip, but we can voice our disagreement. And secondly, we shouldn't take it as a sign that anything goes now - it doesn't.
You just did and i doubt Nexxo would ban you for it doesn't mean its correct. Ditto others views on religion, don't like it tough, sorry dude. To be fair one of your points is addressed by many religions and the other by a UK based political party so neither are all that out their, they are stupid points of view that i doubt you personally hold but dumb none the less.
I stepped out of this thread for a little bit because it was getting a tad heated, but I think its evolved into a really interesting and legitimate discussion. I just want to add my 1p into the mix and clarify my earlier comments too. My reason for posting in this thread is because of the UK spending taxpayers money on the Pope's visit. I don't have a problem with anyone visiting the UK, providing they aren't completely off the wall, ie. wanting to commit acts of terrorism. However, if the UK government spends money on their visit, it is a subtle and tacit endorsement of that visit. That, I feel, is not appropriate in a largely secular nation which has rejected most of the tenets of the Catholic Church. My crack regarding assassination was a joke. A crude, offensive, juvenile joke, but thats all it was. My sense of humour is very dark and crude, and it can offend people sometimes. My attitude regarding humour is that you shouldn't dish out anything you aren't prepared to take back, and I can't say I'd be offended or bothered if someone joked about having me assassinated. Assassinating the Pope or indeed any Pope would change none of the things in the Catholic church which are wrong. It may be very direct and offensive to imply (thats all I did, was imply) that religion brainwashes people, but its hardly a wacky and insane view in modern Britain - as many other posters have pointed out. Even if you don't call it brainwashing, religion uses a great deal of indoctrination in its philosophy of spreading the "word". If we can call a few hundred people in a wacky cult predicting the end of the word in 7 days brainwashed, and we can called a few hundred thousand people in Scientology brainwashed, then whats to stop me (obviously theres nothing to "stop" me, I'm referring to political correctness here) referring to billions/millions in major religions as brainwashed? Its pretty hard to deny that religion depends and relies upon parental indoctrination to maintain the flock. Its definitely my view that one of the reasons that religion is dying in Western Europe is that if you take away parental indoctrination, people do not gravitate towards religion of their own accord in any significant numbers. To summarise: if you give someone a choice, they will not want to live in a system where they are told how to think, how to behave and when to f**k. As stated above, I really don't believe that its out of the bounds of free speech to joke about assassinating the Pope (or anyone else for that matter). In fact I don't think its wrong to joke about... well, anything. However, if you are a serious proponent of the view that the Pope should be assassinated, then thats where the line has been crossed. Finally, those who are religious need to accept the fact that religion bashing is an inevitable push back from a society that has rejected its ideals. One of the reasons that I do not equate joking about assassinating the Pope to assassinating gays/blacks/insert minority here is because religion is not an innocent minority. As an atheist, I find it appalling that religions, including the Pope, cast such a damning judgement on me and others because they are on their high horse. Their shocking hypocrisy and lecturing, telling everyone how to live their lives, is pretty much the kind of behaviour which is going to piss people off. If I went around to my co-workers, friends, family and cast the same kind of judgement on them as religion does on me, I think there would be some push back on me too. So religion is not a little innocent minority that harms no one, its crimes are well noted and discussed in this thread. I think the odd joke at its expense is really quite minor compared to those crimes. And really finally - I've got nothing "personal" against the Catholic church. Organised religion as a whole is a plague upon this planet in general. The reason I have highlighted the faults of the Catholic church is due to the fact that this thread is discussing the Pope's visit rather any other religion.
People have the choice whether they want to send their children to a Church school or not, I was lucky enough to go to a Roman Catholic school (am CofE myself), which is one of the best schools in my city. Taking away the Catholic element would make it just like any of the other state schools around the city which are way behind in terms of quality of education and results achieved. Religion was never forced down anyone throat and the religious element never effected the teaching of non-religious lessons, but the whole atmosphere of the school benefited from it. Maybe there is a reason why Roman Catholic and CofE (along with Jewish schools) are statistically far ahead of the contemporaries which are run on similar budgets? Sorry to rant on, it's just it annoys me when people slate off religious schools believing them to brain wash children, when if fact the ones I have seen have all been very tolerant places where freedom to have any or no believe is paramount. Back on topic, I think the popes visit is a good thing, there is plenty of hype surrounding it, and it's bound to give a boast to the local economies of the places he visits. As someone pointed out at the beginning of the discussion, he should have to the same welcome any leader of a state gets, but the tax payer shouldn't have to fund the whole cost of his touring around, last I heard the Catholic church had raised about a third of the cost so far which is a good thing, surely the rest shouldn't be that hard to find.
In addition to cmjUK's post I would like to draw your attention to the "Draw Mohammed" discussion we had some time ago. The argument in that thread basically was that people's freedom of speech could not be restricted by the possibility that other people might take offence. It was argued that this right was upheld even if the statement was meant to give offence, because the person who took offence basically chose to do so, and was free not to. I argued that this was true, but that just as someone had the right to give offence, the other had the right to judge him to be an asshole for it, and that this might influence how the first person would be socially regarded and treated in the future. If that person could live with being seen and treated like an asshole, fair enough. If he couldn't, then he might want to be a bit more diplomatic in the expression of his opinions. So, M7ck, you can say whatever you want. Now I know that you do not personally subscribe to such views and are just raising them as illustration, but yes, you can call all homosexuals dirty creatures who should be put down, and I recall for a fact that some religious members on these forums have indeed made statements to that effect. They were not banned for it. They were ridiculed by other members and their views exposed as the brainless bigoted ramblings that they were by the application of some cool hard factual and logical argument by the likes of Prestidigitwheeze and yours truly. You can also say that anyone with a skin colour other than white should not be living in Britain, and again a few members have indeed dared to venture that opinion on these forums before. Again, they were not banned. The general membership simply judged them to be assholes and treated them as such. It's the power of democracy. The moderator message on free speech on these forums is to go for it --if you can cope with the reaction. Everything you say will be challenged with no holds barred, so you better make sure you can back up your points and to develop a thick skin. Any personal insults will be stamped upon because that is not free speech but flaming. And I'm sure you bright, rational people all know where the boundaries lie. Normal service will be resumed now.
TBH this country waste millions on god knows what ( excuse the pun ) so that little bit of money's nothing really. But given this pope's views on gay's and abortion and the things he seems to pretend isn't happening like the paedophiles in the catholic church ( which is not confined only to the catholic church ) I have to say his morals are suspect to say the least.
If the pope truly is a man of religion, then shouldn't he be doing everything in his power to bring the child abusers within the catolic church to justice, and not trying to obscure the facts to aid them. How can he justify the fact that the church knew about certain offenders, and instead of defrocking them and reporting them to the police, they just relocated them and tried to sweep it under the carpet. I know this has already been mentioned, and I didn't want this thread to go down that road, but as it has I think it is appropriate to raise the questions again. If a school was to try and hide a paedophile amongst it's staff, those responsible would face the sack, maybe criminal charges and would probably never teach again. So why should a public organisation like the church, where even more trust is placed by parents, be exempt from the same reasoning? I know there are many preists who do a good job, and sometimes a damned hard one at that, but the church as a whole suffers with the whitewash we have found out about. I also think that the preachings of the modern catholic church are woefully outdated, especially in terms of homosexuality, contraception, abortion and marraige. Some of the teachings are extremely dangerous too. Contraception (specifically condoms) is one of these. The church says that we must abstain from sex out of wedlock, and that contraception is against god's will. The first point, abstaining, just isn't going to work, and never has. The second point, contraception, this is something that is especially dangerous, especially with AIDS being a global epidimic that it is, and the high birth rates in third world countries. How can any man of the cloth tell someone, in a country where AIDS is prolific, that condoms are against god's will? Why not just get them to play russian roullette instead? The end effect would be the same. As for brainwashing, I think there is an element of this within all modern religions. I remember going to sunday school as a child, and we were positively dissauded from questioning the teachers with regards to what they were telling us. I experienced the same in R.E. at school. If you challenged the teachers opinion, you were labelled as a trouble maker for doing so. A teacher is not supposed to ram their personal beliefs down the students throat, they are supposed to facilitate the discovery of new ways to consider topics. This is where we could say children are brainwashed.
I was always told from my old man who was a happy clappy that a man of god should live by faith alone so where is the faith where a foreign goverment and it's tax payers have to pay a man of god to visit another country. Sorry but I cannot get my around paying for some religious person to come into a country and me a person who works upto 60 hours a week and yes I enjoy my job, but I have to help pay for this person to come here and I do not worship him or his God. GGGRRRRRR
It has been pointed out earlier that our government invited the pope, and in doing so agreed to pay a large portion of the expenses of the visit. That's something which should be made clear, and that is what I, as a taxpayer, take exception to. There are some here who have said that in the grand scheme of things, the amount is tiny. But this really doesn't stand up when we are facing brutal cuts to public expenditure here in the UK. We are being told that our country has to become more spending aware, and that we must all be prepared to make sacrifices, and then the government decides to spend the money they are on a PR exercise (because when all is said and done, this is all it is), without any public consultation.
