Parallels to MT.net?

 

 

I figured he was involved with the drones.

 

Didn't Trump post this?!

And then there's this:

 

I’m sure the Israelis will feel restrained by the courts of countries that were so successful in stopping their operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
It’ll be a new kinder, gentler Mossad that just wants to help you explain what you were up to and why you’re still allowed to draw breath.

 

We can hope....

 

Gotta hand it to Israel and Mossad. They are the masters of "**** around and find out" retaliation.

 

Serious question: Is it your perception that Christians are, in 2024, a persecuted group in the US?

 

I’ll bite -
“Persecuted” is, at best, hyperbole. Christians are the American, white, cis-hetero males of religion. So, they are held in disdain by progressives and are seemingly responsible for everything that makes this country such an oppressive, fascistic hell-hole.
They are also about 70% of the population, which makes real persecution difficult.

 

World-wide, absolutely. Persecuted to extinction in Africa and the Middle East.

Mild hyperbole alert:
In America they're the straight, white male of religion. Make fun of them, deride them, question their IQ....it's all OK. It's the opposite of special treatment. You're at the bottom of the pack, and get no special favors for job hires or college acceptance. I guess not being hunted, raped and killed like in Africa is some small consolation.

 

TRUMP IS A DICTATOR!

 

It is interesting that you mention IQ, specifically, in the context of religion in America.

There have been a number of studies and papers over the years which explore the relationship between religiosity and cognitive ability. Universally, religious adherents exhibit measurably poorer performance in cognitive tasks, particularly those with conflict between intuitive and logical processes.

Some light reading:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals...017.02191/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23921675/
https://www.bps.org.uk/research-dige...erage-atheists


Personally, I have found it very interesting to observe over the past few decades a shift towards religion (protestant Christianity, specifically) among members of my own peer group. That is, people whom I have known since high school or earlier, and who come from a diverse array of backgrounds, but were not raised in church-going families.

My good friend Jon, Diane the goth-adjacent chick I had a crush on when we were kids, Caroline whom I dated briefly years ago, Liz who was always sort of quiet and shy, I could keep going here... Many, many Gen-Xers whom I would have described as "nonreligious" years ago are now quite outspoken about their conversion to Christianity and their participation in the church.

I can find no external commonality to this. No pattern.

 

Don't the protestants allow lesbos? Vagina is a helluva drug.

Didn't you visit church with the nurse too? That would ultimately lead to conversion for many males.

 

 

My wife of nearly 43 years passed away suddenly in September. I'm pretty much lost without her. She looked after my granddaughter three or so days a week, and a wile back, she had started going to the Episcopalian church my son attends, which is about three hours from our home. ( I always thought the Episcopalians were the ones with the snakes...) She "enjoyed" (certainly not the right word) the mass, and the people in the congregation. She was "getting into it" (again, not the right wording). It made her happy. I attended mass there a few times when my granddaughter was actively involved. Once, I watched her sing in the children's choir. She was awesome. She was about five at the time, and the next youngest child was almost ten. Everyone at the mass knew her, and came up and told how well she had sung. They seemed genuinely proud she was part of the congregation. I also went up for her baptism. She was the only person getting baptized, and was the center of attention. Everyone, old and young, greeted her as their newest "saint". I didn't meet a single person I did not like.

I believe Judaeo/Christian folks are a better class of people in that they believe they will be held accountable for their misdeeds in an afterlife. Joe, maybe that explains the shift towards religion--they're just nicer people

What I can't explain is why my wife didn't suggest we start attending a church near our house. I was raised Roman Catholic, and was an alter boy when the mass was in Latin, but I hadn't been a regular church goer for quite some time. I have to admit women in the clergy (besides nuns) scared me. The leader of that Episcopalian church we went to was a "mother". When she was consecrating the host, a little voice inside me started yelling "Run, Tony. Run".

The reason I brought up my wife in this thread is that I have had a few of my friends separately suggest I should start going to church in order to find myself another wife unit. Each one seemed to think I could find a "good" woman at their church.

I may give that a shot first, instead of going right to buying a Ukrainian gal from the internet.

 

^^ My condolences!

 

Sorry to hear about your loss. I recommend trying to meet a future partner while doing regular activities, shopping, working out, exercising etc or church.

 

First off, condolences on losing your wife. I know I'd be more than lost without mine, as ours is a solid partnership.

As to religion, I was reminded of something someone said in one of the classes I had to take after a DUI. Along the lines of "you need to believe in something bigger than yourself in order to find happiness." Not necessarily God, but something bigger, more important. I believe that one of the reasons the "greatest generation" did so well after the war, is because they were part of something bigger. Everyone in the entire country was involved, and that instills an essential sense of pride in accomplishment. I see that missing in a lot of the disaffected younger people.

 

Condolences mxdad. I remember our past conversations where you were off to Peru and other parts of the world with your significant other. Clearly you two were a pair, and in love. We lost three out of our four parents in the last three years--my dad this year--and I find myself realizing that much of how I am is because of my dad.

Catholicism--current pope notwithstanding--seems to be resurgent. The most-cited reason is that it provides a base of belief that doesn't waver, and doesn't change over time. In the last five years we've seen social norms twisted in knots, where down is up and right is wrong. If we're left to decide our own norms (what is right/wrong) on a daily basis, there really are no norms at all. Believe it or not, that's another reason why people are responding to conservative politics.

As for the IQ "studies", academic types need to justify their own existence, all the better if they can use a little confirmation bias while doing it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...l-hoax/572212/

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/14/11760...iously-thought

https://theweek.com/science/rise-of-...udulent-papers

https://theconversation.com/paper-mi...ournals-230124

 

Your powers of recollection are impressive.


Yes, Julia and I attended a few services at a tiny and very traditional (by US southern Baptist standards) church near Jacksonville, NC, and then later a gigantic megachurch in Chicago (The Moody Church), and finally a small neighborhood congregation which met in the auditorium of a local public elementary school and was the "home church" of a south-African couple with whom she had attended college in San Luis Obispo, and who now resided fairly nearby my present location. We also had Christmas dinner at their home, which was a wonderful culinary treat.

I excluded that experience earlier, as she was raised in the church from an early age and remained active in it, rather than being converted later as an adult.


And, during that time, I actually did try to convert myself.


I independently attended Sunday services at a variety of different churches of various denominations, to see if I could somehow "fit in" to that environment. Nothing clicked. Every place I went was some variation of what I remember from childhood; a social gathering in which people recited song lyrics (or merely clapped while listening to actual talented musicians perform) and then put money into a basket, before listening to a motivational speaker attempt to re-frame for a contemporary audience a collection of stories written in a time when the predominant view was that the sun revolved around the earth, and use them as a conduit for explaining why we should all feel pretty good about ourselves.


In the end, I just could not find a way to make myself believe in any of it.


Now, I absolutely do understand and respect the "community" aspect of the present-day Christian church in the US. It provides a forum for gathering as a collective around a shared set of beliefs and ideas, engenders a network of social and emotional support for those in need, and basically just attempts to re-create that sense of belonging in a collective towards a shared goal which was the default system of organization during the countless millennia in which humans were a pre-industrial agrarian species.