Why I love Christians but Hate Christianity

found online by Raymond

 
From Anonymous, Guest Posting at The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

As a good evangelical, I never believed in purgatory; that is until this year when I decided that I was already living there. I don’t mean in a religious sense, but rather in the sense that I am in neither one place nor the other.

For reasons I will come to, I have all but lost my faith. But, since I have a lovely wife and good friends who are Christians, I will never really be able to walk away.

I have read a few blogs written by former Christians. Nearly all of them are written by American ex-Christians. I am from the UK, and I believe that there are a number of cultural differences between churches in the UK and America. There are many flavours of Christianity, so I can’t really generalise, but what I do know is that my experience differs from that of many of people who have lost their faith.

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The Brunch Davidians

found online by Raymond

From driftglass:

2007 was a bad year to be Beltway pundits or a Professional Reasonable Conservatives, The serial and spectacular failures of the Bush Administration were flaying all of their pretty words to confetti, and the Democrats — who were supposed to have been drive from power for 1,000 years — were suddenly back in control of Congress and setting their sights on the White House.

Leading this mad dash away from his own long record of unstinting support and praise of the Bush Administration was David Brooks, who suddenly rediscovered Edmund Burke on his way down the fire escape, across the alley and into the Emergency Both Siderist All-Occasion bunker, there to wait out the conflagration in comfort.

In that column, the early onset of Mr. Brooks’ own Republican Detachment Disorder are clearly evident here, along with his trademark sweeping ideological generalizations of people — “suburban, Midwestern and many business voters” — who Mr. Brooks has never actually met:

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Brown Shirts for Bernie

found online by Raymond

 
From Capt. Fogg at Human Voices:

By now I’m used to the trolls. I’ve been blogging for a long time but of late the most viciously personal ad hominem has come, not from the Republican Right but from the Bernie Boys. I blocked someone on another venue yesterday after I mentioned to a Bernie Bully that by hoping that a candidate Clinton would fail and thus cause the nation to fail, he was taking words out of Rush Limbaugh’s prayer book.

I don’t think I’ve seen such ugly invective since I graduated from Middle school and believe me, I’ve read some nasty stuff in my years on-line. I am lucky, says he, that he doesn’t have my address or he would kill me.

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Idicocracy 400 Years Early!

found online by Raymond

From Max’s Dad:

The President, Barack Obama in case you’d forgotten or referred to him as one of the cute nicknames he gets over the years, gave the commencement speech at Rutgers yesterday and chided the nation’s descent into dumbness, or as smart guys like him refer to it as, anti-intellectualism. The address was masterful, enlightening and totally incomprehensible to about 40-60% of the nation’s citizens, who think a pompous prank calling racist sexist xenophobic loudmouth con artist asshole is “tellin it like it is”. Thanks Obama, for keepin it 100.

How did the above happen? The sight of a crazy hypocritical grifter dope joining forces with a phony scammer lying flip flopping morally empty reality show host would have been laughed off the political screen 40 years ago. Hey Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter may not have been entertaining but they also sure as hell weren’t stupid and/or bunco artists. When did this plunge into being stupid is a plus start?

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Meghan: Clinton “Truly Evil.” Dad: “Proud to Call Her Friend”

found online by Raymond

From Jon Perr at Perrspectives:

Fox News regular and famous-for-being-famous person Meghan McCain offered conservatives a new argument for supporting Donald Trump. Likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, she told Neil Cavuto, is “truly evil.”

“But you still prefer him over Hillary Clinton?” Cavuto wondered.

“I told you, a tuna sandwich over Hillary Clinton,” McCain quipped. “Because I think Hillary Clinton is truly evil, and she’s truly a liar and she’s been responsible in my opinion for getting people killed.”

“Come on,” Cavuto replied.

“She’s Darth Vader,” McCain insisted. “I can’t trust her in any way.”

Ms. McCain would have done well to check in first with her father before trashing Secretary Clinton.

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Video Proof Sanders Supporters Threw No Chairs for 30 Seconds

found online by Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

The Democratic presidential race has been roiled by the chaos that ensued at last weekend’s Nevada Democratic Convention, where supporters of independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders disrupted the proceedings with profane heckling and, reportedly, chair-throwing. That event was followed by a barrage of threatening and harassing phone calls and text messages directed at Nevada Democratic Chairwoman Roberta Lange.

Well, according to some Bernie Sanders supporters, there is now video evidence that no chairs were thrown at the 12-hour-plus event, because they found a 30-second video of one Sanders supporter being prevented from throwing a chair that he’d lifted over his head:

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Sanders Is Wrong About The Democratic Party

found online by Raymond

 
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

“The Democratic Party is going to have to make a very, very, profound and important decision. It can do the right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change. That is the Democratic Party I want to see.

“I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Open the doors, let the people in!”

Those are the words of Bernie Sanders last Tuesday night. He, as usual, is trying to convince voters that the Democratic Party is trying to shut them out and shut them up. That the party is run by an “establishment” that wants to keep the voice of the voters silent.

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Glyphosate turns out to be kind of a boring molecule

found online by Raymond

 
From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:

Derek Lowe has a sensible article about glyphosphate, the herbicide otherwise known as Roundup. Glyphosate is scary: it’s a chemical, don’t you know, and it kills weeds, so who knows what it’s doing to your children and your cats; even scarier, some crops are being genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate, and then proteins that protect against Roundup might end up in your cornflakes.

And now some people are raving that glyphosate causes autism, because of course every chemical compound that they don’t understand causes behavioral problems that we don’t like.

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Spreading the Word

found online by Raymond

 
From Infidel753:

Richard Dawkins’s 2006 book The God Delusion is perhaps the most powerful single attack on religion ever written. Along with the writings of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others, it helped launch the New Atheist movement in the Western world, bringing a new militancy and intellectual ferocity to the struggle against religion.

But what about other places where the message is even more desperately needed?

At some point apparently around 2008 an Iraqi atheist named Bassam al-Baghdadi (who, fortunately, lives in Sweden) translated the entire book into Arabic and posted it on the internet as a downloadable PDF. By November 2014 it had been downloaded ten million times, with the number of actual readers probably being somewhat larger since downloaded files can be shared around in various ways, including to people who do not have internet access.

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South African Judge: Rape Is a Part of Black Culture

found online by Raymond

 
From The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

Racism doesn’t end when even the government says so. Despite the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the haunting demons of prejudice and racism can still walk among its citizens, especially those in positions of power.

Such is the case with South African judge Mabel Jansen who recently made headlines after her facebook comments during what appears to be an interview surfaced. Jansen’s racist mindset was on full display when she says that rape, as well as murder, is not only part of black culture, but that black people take pleasure in it.

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