Z
Variable Constant
First Google link to the Spanish Inquisition
It started with prejudice, based on religion and misconceptions. It devolved into very materialistic and human motivations. Sadly, it was still done under the banner of Christianity.
Was Martinez a Christian? Certainly, he thought so - yet, it seems, at first, the Pope and Cardinal(s?) weren't so sure it was the Christian thing to do.
The psychology of the thing would be fascinating to study. How far did each person go before flatly denying their own Christianity? Indeed, what warped beliefs allowed them to remain Christian in their own minds?
Of course, this is a biased source as well, but what source isn't in some way biased?
It started with prejudice, based on religion and misconceptions. It devolved into very materialistic and human motivations. Sadly, it was still done under the banner of Christianity.
Was Martinez a Christian? Certainly, he thought so - yet, it seems, at first, the Pope and Cardinal(s?) weren't so sure it was the Christian thing to do.
The psychology of the thing would be fascinating to study. How far did each person go before flatly denying their own Christianity? Indeed, what warped beliefs allowed them to remain Christian in their own minds?
Of course, this is a biased source as well, but what source isn't in some way biased?
zaayrdragon said:
Funny that you should talk about weird beliefs when your own are so, unnn, how shall I say--out of touch with reality as we know it.
Actually, I find your beliefs not as modern as you constantly claim. In fact, I find the vast majority of them rather ridiculous. If they are not ridiculous then I challenge you to convince us that they are not.
Modern Religion????
Bide the Wiccan Laws we must
In perfect Love and Perfect Trust.
Remark
Cool up to this point until you read the rest and see just what kind of drivel you have to bide by.
Live and let live,
Remark
Nothing wrong here.
However, this one goes contrary to zaayrdragon's constant imediate and savage insulting of anyone on this board who might contradict him.
Fairly take and fairly give
Remark
Nothing wrong here.
So far so good.
Evil Spirts
Cast the Circle thrice about
To keep the evil spirits out.
Remark:
Now we are entering the absurd.
Powerful spirit creatures have a phobia with circles?
Especially if a puny human traces it three times.
Maybe the number three is what really scares them s**tless?
Spells
To bind the spell every time
Let the spell be spake in rhyme.
Remark:
Childish isn't it?
If it doesn't rhyme then it won't work.
Never mind that spoken rhymes are merely sound waves.
Speaking
Soft of eye and light of touch,
Speak little, listen much.
Good advice.
Unfortunately this one doesn't quite sit right with zay since his tongue is perpetually flapping.
The Moon
Deosil go by the waxing moon,
Chanting out the Witches' Rune.
Remark
If the moon is waning then you should spontaneously burst out in a mysterious chanting.
But better do it in a docile way or else.
There seems to be an OCD among Wiccans in reference to the moon.
Perhaps a bit of basic astronomy might be the cure?
Widdershins go by the waning-moon,
Chanting out the baneful rune.
Remark:
Wait until the moonis waning.
Otherwise don't travel.
Imagine everyone going by that one.
The Lady
When the lady's moon is new.
Kiss the hand to her, times two.
Remark
Whoever the lady is or might be you better get puckered for some serious kissing of hand whenever the moon is new.
Make that two pecks. Anything else is disastrous.
Never mind that all the moon is really doing is merely orbiting and reflecting sunlight from different angles and that a kiss is merely contact of the epidermis.
When the moon rides at her peak,
Then your heart's desire seek.
Remark
The moon again! Sigh!
Don't try to satisfy a desire until the moon rides on its peak.
If you don't and fail it was your fault for not listening.
The Wnd
Heed the North wind's mighty gale,
Lock the door and drop the sail. = Now he is either it is talking to sailors or else you better have a sail available to drop.
A better explanation is that the writer ran out of rhyming ideas and what better than sail to go with gale?
When the wind comes from the South,
Love will kiss thee on the mouth.=
Remark
In other words if the wind blows from the South you can expect love. The question is what the hell does atmospheric convection currents have to do with human amorous behavior?
When the wind blows from the West,
Departed souls will have no rest. =
Remark
In other words the departed souls are at the mercy of the wind! Wanna know how your recently-dead relatives are doing, check the weather.
When the wind blows from the East,
Remark
Expect the new and set the feast.
Remark
I wonder how many people did this only to find that the day went by uneventfully?
Wood
Nine woods in the cauldron go,
Burn them fast and burn them slow.
Remark:
Superstition with numbers again.
What does burning a piece of timber in a fire have to do with anything except producing heat and fumes?
Jinxed
Elder be the Lady's tree,
Burn it not or cursed you'll be.
When the Wheel begins to turn,
Let the Beltane fires burn.
Remark
So now you better not burn a certain type of tree or you will be jinxed
Satan
When the Wheel has turned to Yule,
Light the logs and Horned one rules. =
Remark
So now Satan's rule depends on who lights a log!
Heed ye Flower, Bush and Tree,
By the Lady, blessed be.
Remark
Who this Lady is I don't know but she sure seems to have a lot of clout.
knowledge
When the rippling waters go,
Cast a stone and truth you'll know.
Remark
Don't study. All you have to do to know anything or gain knowledge is find a rippling stream and cast a stone in it.
Relationships
When ye have a true need,
Hearken not to other's greed.
With a fool no season spend,
Lest ye be counted as his friend.
Remark
Good advice but nothing that can't be known by mere common sense.
Effects on others
Merry meet and merry part,
Bright the cheeks and warm the heart.
Remark
Good advice.
Again something that Zay refuses to abide by.
Maybe he understands that brightening the cheeks and warming the heart means purposefully seeking to anger people via slamming.
Numbers
Mind the Threefold Law you should,
Three times bad and three times good.
Remark
This is bull ◊◊◊◊.
A mere superstitious reliance on numerology.
Misfortune?
When misfortune is enow,
Wear the blue star on thy brow.
Remark:
Don't seek solutions. Just wear something on your brow.
More bull ◊◊◊◊
Love
True is love ever be,
Lest thy lover's false to thee.
Remark:
common sense can tell you that
Final advice
Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill:
"An' Harm ye none, do as you will."
Which eight?
Actually, there aren't eight suitable ones in the whole rede.
That is if words are meant as advices.
As to harming no one, that is OK.
Z
Variable Constant
Just as some Christians follow only the Golden Rule, while others follow the Apostle's Crede (is that the right term), etc. some Wiccans follow the short Rede (8 words) while others follow this long poetic one.
I follow the short Rede.
Certainly not all the rest - and the nice thing is, there is no hard-fast law under Wicca that we MUST follow.
Generalizing again, Rad? I'm not surprised. That's certainly what bigots do.
I follow the short Rede.
Certainly not all the rest - and the nice thing is, there is no hard-fast law under Wicca that we MUST follow.
Generalizing again, Rad? I'm not surprised. That's certainly what bigots do.
Z
Variable Constant
BTW, what source did you get THIS particular Rede from? I'm not even vaguely familiar with most of it. It's not what I teach, nor what I learned.
Like any faith, there are denominations under Wicca as well. I don't practice skyclad, nor do I summon 'spirits', nor do I rhyme during ritual.
On an off-guess, I'd guess this were either a Gardnerian derivation of the Rede, or one of the Golden Dawn interpretations.
There are numerous schools of thought in Wicca, but the united core is the 8-word Rede.
Quit trying to attribute the practices of one denomination on the members of other denominations. Fool.
Like any faith, there are denominations under Wicca as well. I don't practice skyclad, nor do I summon 'spirits', nor do I rhyme during ritual.
On an off-guess, I'd guess this were either a Gardnerian derivation of the Rede, or one of the Golden Dawn interpretations.
There are numerous schools of thought in Wicca, but the united core is the 8-word Rede.
Quit trying to attribute the practices of one denomination on the members of other denominations. Fool.
zaayrdragon said:
I can and will pick your other Rede apart, if indeed there is another, as easily as I did this one.
But for now you are safe.
Anyway-- answer my challenge.
Prove to me that your beliefs are not ridiculous.
Otherwise i suggest that you shut up or put up.
BTW
The Wiccan Credo which I posted here is the longer version as opposed to the Rede which consists of a few lines.
So much for your attempted effort at evasion via dishonesty.
Z
Variable Constant
Ignorant fool - What you posted was the Long-Form Wiccan Rede, sometimes referred to as the Wiccan Credo, attributed to Doreen Valiente, whose mentor was Gerald Gardner.
The Wiccan Rede is the 8-word statement at the very end of Valiente's Credo, but preceeds (precedes?) it by a long stretch. The 'Long-Form' is not a universal Wiccan belief, any more than apostolic (sp?) succession is a universal Christian belief. The Correllian Tradition uses the 8-word Rede.
So much for your attempt at casting doubts via dishonesty and ignorance.
zaayrdragon said:
Your constant name-calling only demonstrates that you have not been thoroughly civilized. Or maybe that you were once civilized but that your filthy Wiccan religion screwed up your mind so that now you are a veritable savage.
I don't claim expertise in your degraded demonic religion.
In fact, I am proud to be ignorant in that area since it proves I haven't been contaminated as you have been. So you honor and compliment me by calling me ignorant.
As to other names, sigh, I hope you understand that to me you are like one of those frogs in revelation. You know, the ones that croak unclean expressions. Yep. So as far as I am concerned, you can disgorge and regurgitate to your heart's content. Now and then I might deign to notice you and might even flick you a fly. So don't give up yet.
BTW
Maybe you should try one of your silly mind-control magic spells to see if you can force me to curse and get banned, I mean, seeing that your insults are getting you nowhere?
dmarker said:
Stalin trained as a catholic priest and later decided he didn't like it much. He then claimed he'd always been an atheist really and was only pretending to be catholic in early life.
I can't see how you can equate his brutality and evil with anything religious in the way you could with, say, Hitler.
Z
Variable Constant
And with this outrageous post, Gentle Reader, I return to you. The idiot, bigot, and liar has again demonstrated his bigotry, idiocy, and lies. Not to mention his outright hypocrisy. His penchant for name-calling is demonstrated to be false or at least without basis. His form of slander (libel?) is purely emotional in nature, whereas my name-calling, no less wrong for what it is, is based solely on his own demonstrated failings. He has proven himself the idiot, bigot, and liar.
Note, Gentle Reader, his complete inability to answer questions put to him, his tactic of attempting to lay false claims about my own faith, his further claims that he is open-minded and non-judgemental, followed almost immediately by such drivel as calling the Wiccan religion filthy. He demonstrates a willful ignorance by referring to non-existant mind-control spells.
Lacking in education, general knowledge, logic, or reason, the subject resorts entirely to appeals to emotion and misdirection and lies. One can pity the damaged nature of the subject's mentality. We can clearly see what years of brainwashing and self-delusion can do to the mental state of this individual. No one is perfect, myself least of all; yet recognition of the imperfect mental state is at least a step in the right direction. The subject here cannot even admit his mental state is imperfect.
For those unfamiliar with Radrook, observe how he demonstrates his ignorance and unfamiliarity, both with his own 'faith' and that of others; his inability to reason, do research, apply logic, or think clearly; his resorting to insults and slander (libel); and, finally, the completely hypocritical nature of his posts.
Gentle Reader, I leave it in your capable hands.
Z
Variable Constant
Hoo boy, I didn't even notice that Rad dropped this bomb. He doesn't believe the basic tenant of Christianity, then? Yet he believes the Bible is the inerrant Word of God??
He'll only get away with this, if he denies the Gospels and instead points out the concept that earlier NT books referred to the Spirit Christ and that the Resurrection (or is that two S's??) occured in the Spirit realm, long before anything occured in the NT. OR if he finally agrees that Christ was merely a mortal Jewish itinerate priest (Yeshua ben Yosef) whose teachings got stretched out of hand.
Any other interpretation would be a heluva stretch...
Well, except there is some dispute over the use of 'virgin'. Maybe that's his logical loophole.
Anyway, Gentle Reader, let's sit back now and see which hole Rad pops through. (Please, no gambling. Yes, you in the back.)
He'll only get away with this, if he denies the Gospels and instead points out the concept that earlier NT books referred to the Spirit Christ and that the Resurrection (or is that two S's??) occured in the Spirit realm, long before anything occured in the NT. OR if he finally agrees that Christ was merely a mortal Jewish itinerate priest (Yeshua ben Yosef) whose teachings got stretched out of hand.
Any other interpretation would be a heluva stretch...
Well, except there is some dispute over the use of 'virgin'. Maybe that's his logical loophole.
Anyway, Gentle Reader, let's sit back now and see which hole Rad pops through. (Please, no gambling. Yes, you in the back.)
thaiboxerken
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2001
- Messages
- 34,530
Could you please not refer to people in the forum as "Gentle Readers"? I'm not gentle.
You are correct, however, Rad is obviously a liar and a bigot. He is just plain stupid to say that the bible is the inerrant word of his god, yet claim that parts of it are not true (not a virgin Mary).
You are correct, however, Rad is obviously a liar and a bigot. He is just plain stupid to say that the bible is the inerrant word of his god, yet claim that parts of it are not true (not a virgin Mary).
Z
Variable Constant
I think I explained my use of 'Gentle Readers' in another post, but since that's two opinions against G.R., I'll switch to something less unclear.
The part of "Gentle Readers" will now be played by the "Audience". The part of "George Moorehouse" will now be played by "Sylvia Platt."
The part of "Gentle Readers" will now be played by the "Audience". The part of "George Moorehouse" will now be played by "Sylvia Platt."
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
zaayrdragon said:
... And they make really cool spacecraft popular with smugglers and the Rebellion.
Sorry, couldn't resist
Radrook said:
Here the subject displays his unfortunate adherence to the "White Man's Burden", further underscoring his previously demonstrated bigotry. This suggests a lack of either breadth or depth in the subject's experiences, perhaps exacerbated by the subject's initially narrow ideology.
neutrino_cannon
Master Poster
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2002
- Messages
- 2,574
zaayrdragon said:
An incomplete list to an interesting question:
This site was one of my primary resources, straightdope still rocks!
The USSR, under various leaders not just stalin, is quoted there as having killed 62 million. Joseph stalin responsable for 43 million of those. 35 million for the People's Republic of China (still violently a-religious, just look what they did to all those Falun-Gong folks) with chairman Mao accounting for 38 million deaths, some pre-revolutionary.
That's 97 million for those of you not keeping score.
The issue become clouded from there, do we count Nazi Germany as atheist? How curious it is that a case is commonly made (incorrectly in my view) for evil atheism at work in Nazi Germany when an easier argument can be made for the soviets with a far higher body count.
I guess there's something about a violation of Goodwin's Law that holds the contentious spellbound like a moth before flame.
Anyway, where was I?
Ah yes, so we'll be generous and give the atheists Hitler and Nazi Germany's 21 million, Even though It's probably eroneous to do so. I'll also award the atheists the 2 million from Pol Pot's assorted killings, though the numbers at straightdope probably don't include those caused by Mr. Sbauv's fetish for landmines.
I would normally not include most of the other regimes mentioned in the article, since they were secular and not atheist, but since we're trying to uncover the untold millions killed by the Evils of Atheism (tm), we'd better be careful and cover all the bases.
We'll even add suspected genocides by regimes that are only slightly definable as atheist 3.5 for pre-revolutionary Chinese Communists, 1.7 for Vietnam, 1.7 "suspected" (whatever that means) for North Vietnam (hopefully I'm not counting the same bodies twice here!) 1.1 for Yugoslavia, 1.6 million for Poland, and what the heck, we'll use the upper estimate of 3 million for democide in Mexico 1900-1920. For good measure, we'll even add the famines that China experienced during the Great Leap Forward at 20 million, just because we know that those evil atheist scum had those people killed deliberatly.
That's 154.6 million right there, and just from that, we can learn a number of valuble lessons:
1) Government's killing their own people kill far more people than wars do.
2) Putting scary, insane people in positions of power is an exceptionally poor idea.
3) Killing that can be (loosely, most would argue) attributed to atheism is very nice and easy to calculate, since evil atheists prefer clean and efficient methods of dispatching their victims and generally keep good records.
Somehow, this site counts 200 million. They must have counted wars or something.
Now, for the number of people killed by christians (and if a True Christian (tm) ever killed anyone, it was because
a) the other person was an evil satanist/atheist or Jew, and therefore deserved it.
or
b) They weren't a True Christian (tm) and their tally ought to added to the atheists score!)
I'll have to dig a bit deeper. For some reason, the Christians are not nearly as neat about keeping records of the exact number of people massacred. The total for Christians therefore, is from a large number of atrocities. I'm having trouble finding the exact number of people killed in each case, so if somebody could fill in the blanks as far as numbers go and correct those that are off by say a few million helpless souls (pocket change), here's my list of Christin atrocities:
1- Assorted Inquisitions: roughly 10 million killed. Don't know if this includes Albigensian Inquisition which itself is notable.
2- Religious wars in France 1562-1598: Roughly 3 million people killed.
3-Number of people killed by the Lord's Resistence Army: unknown, probably less than 1 million. (sic Executive Outcomes on them I say!)
4-Assorted Witch hunting under both protestants and catholics: I dunno, millions?
5-Christian Crusades in the Middle East: Several Million killed, crusaders and otherwise. I can't find a condensed number.
6-Assorted atrocities and wars during the conversion of Europe: I saw a figure (just siting there, not really terribly substantiated) at 9 million.
7-Assorted (this word is becoming overused, and I'm no longer the least bit hungery) killings of Bogdan Chmielnicki: less than a million killed.
8-Thiry Years War: Hotly debated, I'll go with the 10 million estimate.
9-Combat between Muslims and Christians throughout Africa: Lots, cumulatively. Probably in the millions, though we're talking several incidents here, so the adding is hard.
10-Catholics vs. Protestants in Ireland. Less than a million (and therefore "insignificant").
11-Various killings and masacres of native American peoples during the colonization of North, South America and Carribean islands: Tens of millions just for North America, more for south America. The west indies peoples were in several cases totally wiped out.
12-Slaves who perished in the Americas prior to the aboliton of Slave trade: Early in the history of slavery in North america, it was actually cheaper to import new slaves than to invest in ways to keep your current batch of slaves from dying off. I find this incredible, especially considering the number of slaves who must have died in transit.
I consider this addition to the list to be just, the slavers were to a man Christian, and their religion was certainly used to justify the practice. This is a list of killings commited by Christians, and these were killings (justified by religion no less) commited by Christians. I aknowlege that Christians were largely responsable for the abolition of slavery in the US and elsewhere (esp. Quakers), so don't make me another statistic to this list, I'm trying to keep definitions as loose as possible here: 10-30 million, depending on which estimate you use.
13-Killings associated with the founding of Mormonism: Less than a million, a drop in the bucket.
14-Colonial governments killing of people in places other than North America (yeah, I did divide it that way, so sue me): Millions, the numbers are harder to find.
15-Christian vigilantes in the Phillipines: another drop in the bucket, numbers unkown at this time, but probably only a few thousand.
17-Extermination of the Tasmanians. This I feel deserves a special place, even if it could be considered a part of item 14. The native Tasmanians never had a chance, being the least technologically advanced people of the 20th century. Not only were they decimated by disease and firearms, but they were killed I]to a man![/I] Final body count: About three to five thousand. Insignificant in this context, of course.
18-Various killings of the Jews not applicable to above categories: Clearly, this is hard to pin down. It usually involved mobs killing a few hundred people, so there are probably a few thousand deaths in this category, though it could easily be more. One site counted more than a hundred Jewish communities wiped out.
That's what I can think of. It's hard to compare numbers, since I'm having trouble finding solid ones for the Christians and I'm fairly certain I'm missing a great number of atrocities, so any help would be appreciated. I'll start a new thread.
Could I please have the award for "most long-winded answer to a question not specific to the thread"?