Straying ever further from the topic..... Well, actually there is... There are lots of Christian religions - religions that (I think) all believe in the Holy Trinity - but vary in so many other ways. But it doesn't matter - they are all fair game if they stray from acceptable norms, are intolerant, political or divisive... ...and the Landover Baptist Church, is the perfect vehicle for parody.
Technically they are denominations, not religions - schisms of the same branch, as opposed to branches of their own. Sorry, pet peeve of mine.
Nevertheless this website is pure gold, in the fact that it's one of the best troll magnets in the world.
Only because it sets the craziness level at a similar level people would expect the more nutjob religions to go ^^ The real scary thing isn't that it's over the top, but i can really see people actually believing it, and that truly scares me!
I'm pretty sure this is very dark satire. The one thing that leads me to believe this is the gun section: the stereotype is "fathers bringing in their boy to buy his first rifle", not a handgun. In addition, hunters never shop for armor piercing ammo. Trust me, this is satire. Just very very good satire .
Well considering most people buy a rifle in the US and not a pistol, this stereotype is hardly wrong. If a father and a son walk into a gun store and shop for a shotgun/rifle (especially a .22), it's normal. Father buys kid a pistol, it raises eyebrows, due to the back ground check and 5 day wait. And while military AP rounds aren't available to the public, there are rounds that are tailored to hunting in heavy brush. The design difference is minimal, as are the ballistics. Granted, you won't find that in a .223, but in a .338 lupa and above, it raises an eyebrow. Get to a .375 h&h -> .416 rigby it's all in the AP performance range; even wearing level IV armour won't help...even with ballistic plates...at short ranges you will get penetration. and there is no check, no wait. Just an ID over 18 and cash. So not to far off base.
lol I like how the bb admin has unsaved trash titles under anyone who disagrees.. some baptists groups are known for judging people though- have to say.. surprised they put on the forums what they talk about behind closed doors I call shens though.. these guys are way over the top and know way too much about video games to be legit
You know it's good satire when, on page 3 of this thread, after multiple people have already pointed out that the whole thing is a joke, we still have people posting to point out that they don't think it's real. -monkey
A few passing observations: 1. The reason people "couldn't be arsed" to notice this was satire is because it was frighteningly good satire. Church of the SubGenius wants you to know it is satire from the outset. The LBC want to pass as long as they can just to heighten the hilarity. They like nothing more than to skewer well-meaning outrage on the fork of folly. 2. Ten minutes of reading will show that Christians are taken in by that site, too. They, too, profess outrage before figuring it out. Few of us have never been exposed to Christianity. The reason people are taken in by LBC is because its language sounds eerily familiar. 3. Actually, Bible-based religions are relatively diverse. There are Liberation Theologists who believe the Bible is synonymous with socialism (though this might prove a disquieting revelation for the future corpse of Oral Roberts). There are those who feel it is the ultimate endorsement of supply side economics. There are those who worship Jesus, Yazidis who worship Lucifer (as an emissary of God, not a naughty funster) and at least one religion in Iraq that teaches its followers to pray to John the Baptist. 4. I am an agnostic who finds nearly all forms of religion fascinating. Each has its own argument and emphasis. Each seems to imply a universe that is slightly different, which I find disquieting, amusing and humbling. Try it: Read a few pages from any religious text, find something you disagree with and ask yourself, what if this were literally true? Then try to imagine the universe that might exist if it were. Then imagine the conditions under which you would have agreed. Orthodoxy of thought can become mundane without creative deviation.
I can not agree with any religion if only because it's presentation of black/white really puts me off. Funnily enough I still find religion fascinating and that the people who blindly preach and follow it utterly detestable. I still have a certain attraction to Buddhism, that of which I may never be able to comprehend. Perhaps it's the idea of personal liberation? Or perhaps it's the fact that dedication and the whole religion is composed of only individuals who decide to follow? Or maybe that it's simply less complicated and is focused not on glory but rather on modesty.
An example of my method: Certain medieval Christians claimed to believe that if you had sex, even within wedlock and for purposes of procreation, but you enjoyed it, you were going to hell. What if that were literally true? Imagine the drugs that would be confected to dull people's pleasure centers and make them go numb while somehow being able to perform. Imagine the manuals that might exist: "Safe and Pleasure-Free Procreation," "Children without Eternal Suffering," "What to Do if You Actually Enjoyed It" and "Deadly Wet Dreams" (since the sleeper's degree of pleasure can't be recalled and might remain secretly damning long after she or he wakes). Magazines and videos that extinguished the sex drive would be sold as fervently as pornography is today. They would contain pictorials of leprous ninety-year-old hydrocephalic parasitic twins eating, and people would be glad to peruse them for quick relief. After all, what's a moment of joy compared to an eternity of torment? Another possibility: Hell would prove unavoidable without surgical alteration at birth. Yet because artificial insemination would be seen as unnatural, only condemned criminals and those guilty of sins that couldn't be redeemed would be allowed to procreate. Their offspring would be raised by Heaven-bound citizens with doll-smooth pelvises. Still another possibility: Since damnation would be a literal fact rather than a threat to bargain against, perhaps humankind would conclude hell was unavoidable. In which case, human life itself would be devoted entirely to selfish physical pleasure to compensate for what followed. Carnal interruptions would take place everywhere -- in Parliament among bored speakers, in abandoned churches (since there would be no point in worship), at restaurants where sitting parties noticed a server standing at a particular angle, constantly at laundromats or anywhere else people would otherwise be bored. The acts that would take place can't be mentioned here, yet our alternate world wouldn't even pay attention, let alone, care, unless it pleased them to do so. Or, alternately: Mankind would be utterly absorbed in the search for ways to numb the soul, to replace sentience with the lack of it, or to find some way to permanently alter the "etheric being's" ability to feel through some advanced form of surat shabd yoga. Do human vegetables manage to avoid hell because they are incapable of thought and, therefore, belief? If so, then perhaps damned surgeons would ensure that sentient fetuses would never again develop -- and there the world would end.
Shabing, you are talking about the doctrine rather than its interpretation. What people perceive however is people living according to their interpretation of the doctrine, and that's pretty broad (and often pretty far away from the doctrine). Presti..., you are talking from an almost cartoonishly simplified and distorted impression of the middle ages. I'd say there weren't any more true believers than there are now (looking at all people did at that times), and they sure knew how to have fun. Yemerich, LMAO!
This is a sub forum of their forum. "Straight 4 Jesus! (Back Door Christians) At LBC, we will cure your perversion of choice (even if we have to stone you)." I think I might actually join to have some fun. Or this gem, lol http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=18794
"Cartoonishly simplified and distorted," as in this previous post by you?: And you, my friend, are so busy being the Ultimate Skeptic of Skepticism that you're missing the fun entirely. The idea re damnation in the middle ages came from one of my favorite books by historian, novelist and expert Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis: Allegory of Love. Lewis was explaining the many reasons for the emergence of chivalry and the ascent of the religion of love. Even Lewis was not of the opinion that life in the middle ages was delightful (comparatively speaking) for Western Europeans of any religious persuasion. His (and my) point was not to take a consensus of Christian thought in the middle ages but to explore the ramifications of one particular tendency of thought. Then, too, you must be able to distinguish between (i) historical discussions of religious thought in a given era and (ii) creative extrapolations on an almost random religious tenet or piece of dogma: In the former case, the point is to try to understand how a very particular group of people thought and lived. In the latter case, the point is to provoke one's imagination through the contemplation of odd or supposedly impermissible ideas. In the first case, one should try to avoid imposing slanted interpretations of religious thought (e.g., exaggerating the social injustices of a sect with whose beliefs one disagrees strenuously). In the second, one should decontextualize the idea and treat it ahistorically: as a malleable abstraction. Hence the fun of creating a world based on the Byzantine use of numbers and symmetry. Imagine a post-science world that applied Byzantine methodology to commerce and other interactions involving participation and selection. Imagine the kinds of predetermined music and architecture that would be generated by numerical/structural interpretations of the Trinity, as well as "perfect" numbers. Do you really see my transposition of Byzantine culture as inherently anti-Byzantine? A bit of background: I happened to know a lot of science fiction writers growing up. Some of said writer friends were staunchly anti-religious, but my best friend was an esoteric Christian given to reading G.K. Chesterton, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. John of the Cross and even Gurdjieff and Rudolph Steiner. He and I used to discuss religious philosophy critically when we weren't riffing on ideas. The point of our breakfast-table brainstorming was to create or distort worlds imaginatively, not define the world we experienced in real life. The method remains close to what I do in writing music and fiction today: to process source material in ways that make it virtually unrecognizable. If you're still looking for "raging," "mindless" and "misled" "Christian bashers" to correct, then choose your adversaries more carefully and try to avoid shooting yourself in the eye. Apply your standards for particularity and nondiscrimination to your own argument as well as those of your enemies. In terms of your choice of religion, I am not your enemy. I have never found religious people particularly objectionable. What I do find objectionable are your generalizations about non-believers. Re this thread: I also object to the aggressive strategies of the pseudo-religious right in North America, who use the angry and the dispossessed to enforce an agenda that actually harms them as surely as the Taliban are the tools of certain millionaires. In both cases, religion becomes an excuse for inhumane politics, just as many would argue that belief in reincarnation became, among other things, an excuse for the mortal caste system in India that reinforced the birth advantages of wealthy Rajas. These are not criticisms of religion itself but of the ways religion is used politically by those who covet wealth and power. Hence people's hilarity at the LBC: Its satirists are targeting religion in the service of political intolerance, not religion itself. Their degraded revisions of Christianity parody those that are employed in the ongoing and real political attacks of the pseudo-religious right, and in its rationalizations of inhumane policy. The LBC is not mocking American Christians per se. After all, a lot of liberals are Christians, too (as someone with your interest in avoiding stereotypes has surely noticed).
I find that karx is more being a cynic and not really truly understanding the great satire that this website has created. Sadly Christianity isn't a bad or ignorant religion it's just that the self-righteous extremists perpetuate the stereotype and the idea that ALL followers of Christianity are raving lunatics. Or they have the idea that EVERY Christian is simple. Same goes for the "every Muslim is a terrorist", this website isn't to insult the regular followers, just to poke fun at how religion just goes from one extreme to another.
Yes, self-righteous extremists tend to perpetuate stereotypes (however nuanced), and that is to be avoided. But the Great Secular Humanist Threat to Modern Christians is wholly mythical, whereas the Holy Crusades and every post-Constantine attack on non-Christians is a matter of recorded history. That is why people who struggle to be free of pseudo-Christian suppression sometimes say thoughtless things about religion: Resistance often becomes too reflexive. Christians are not being discriminated against when Darwinism is taught in the classroom. It is pseudo-Christian control freaks who discriminate against science teachers by attempting to deny them the right to teach only credited theories and credible textbooks. There were practical reasons for the Descartian split, but there were ethical ones as well: Dogma, overt, covert or hidden, is to be avoided in the scientific context. Disciplines must be independent, and literal-minded censures of blasphemy must not be used to compromise those disciplines, let alone, to manipulate, alter and replace scientific texts. Besides which, there is such a thing as a pro-Darwinist Christian. Hence the reflexive outrage of certain early posts in this thread, and their emphasis on the aggressive manipulations of powerful pseudo-religious extremists in the States and their attempt to marginalize democracy -- as opposed to the conversational intolerance of irritable atheists and agnostics who are simply tired of being hunted. Here's the irony: In the literal sense, Karl isn't "being a skeptic" at all. Rather, he's mirroring the doubting emotional tone of people who take skeptical positions. In terms of actual usage, he's the opposite of a skeptic. To give you an idea of what I mean, here's the definition of skepticism from Merriam-Webster (which you can google yourself). Pay particular attention to 2 and 3, considering the nature of our topic: In other words, Karl is pithing 2 and 3 of their meaning in this context while using the tone (but not the intention) of 1 to advance his anti-anti-religious position.
Prestidigitweeze i always find your posts fascinating and your use of language makes me realise how limited my use of language is. Back to the topic i find it strange that it tends to be the 'anti-religious' who like to ram their ideas down the throats of everyone else, not the other way around.
Really, i don't remember an atheist coming door to door to ask i've heard the word of Dawkins... Generalisations best avoided no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses
