Religious fundies want to impose standards they themselves don't meet.

[arbusto_baboso]

Yeah, I know this will be obvious to most DUers. But bear with me, as this is a slightly new wrinkle.

An avid LTTE writer in one of my local papers wrote a diatribe some months back about how he thought it was unfair of people to call opposition to "Obamacare" unchristian. He said that despite Jesus commanding us to take care of one another, especially the poor, that christians didn't want to be forced by their government to do so.

Somewhat later, this same idiot wrote another letter bemoaning the decreasing role of religion in our society, citing the overturn of Prop 8 by the courts.

So, basically, he wants christians to dictate to everyone what they are able to do in their personal lives based on his religion, but he doesn't want to be accountable to living up to his own religion's standards.

And when it's pointed out to him, he doesn't see any problem with his own hypocrisy.

This is the face of the teabaggers, folks (almost ALL of whom are fundies).

[RagAss]

1. Deranged Slapdicks !

[RKP5637]

2. Yep, Tea Party, Inc. Funded by the wealthy to cause hatred, bigotry, irrationality and

instability to bring America down so they can rule... and a good example you posted of the irrational delusional fools pursuing the agenda and working to break the back of what's left of America.

[Pathwalker]

3. Don't call them hypocites. Call them FRAUDS.

The word has a nastier tinge that makes them recoil. :evilgrin:

[upi402]

4. they want to control, yet not be accountable

...sounds like the definition of sick and dysfunctional.

[arbusto_baboso]

10. Yes. Bordering on sociopathic.

[Wounded Bear]

5. Paradox has always been a strong religious tool...

It's all about the ambiguity and the unspoken dilemmas.

:shrug:

[blondeatlast]

6. Sadly, they can't process hypocrisy in their Pavlovian brains.

It means absolutely nothing to them. Null. Void.

The concept just stops at the ears.

[NMMNG]

7. What's worse...

They want the government to force others to abide by the tenets of their religion (Prop8, bans on abortion) yet they scream about the "nanny state" when that same government makes them do the same (government funded health care, aid to poor people, etc). They're hypocrites of the lowest breed. They want to use their "religious beliefs" not as a guide for their own lives, but as a weapon against others.

[DainBramaged]

8. He isn't a Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but a poser

and a fraud who's taken what is written in the Bible and twisted it to meet his personal standards of hate (well, most of the Right wingers do).


Think Fred Phelps and his family. God does not mention the word 'fags' or anything even close (unless it's figs which are edible too) anywhere in the Bible, but that is his personal interpretation....

[arbusto_baboso]

12. But he's pretty representative of fundamentalists.

And to ask them, THEY are the true christians.

[DainBramaged]

15. I bet Jesus would have something to say about that!

These are the same people who celebrate wealth over compassion. The only neighbors they help are the ones who'll pay.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. ...

http://mt0.google.com/vt/data=LtgX-e3f8ctI3U5dJtbt7EJ1ZfRneYme,qRtiQNqg-5zsSsRna226QZcOpjl6lglSw7wurmRwHfN206yrRQUM_h_NdJXa2pA464-clyPsa4b_iG-tbAKlYbI

[Liberal Insights]

20. what entitles YOU to judge who's "Christian"

As wrong as I believe fundies to be, we have no more right to declaire they are not "Christians" as they have to say the same of us. They claim, just as we do, to believe in "Christ".
What I believe is more productive is to show that despite their claiming to follow Jesus of Nazareth, the way they act and speak shows that their TRUE LEADER isn't Jesus of Nazareth, but "St. Paul" of Tarsus. HE was as Conservative as Jesus was Liberal, as I show at http://liberalslikechrist.org/Paulvsall.html .

[trotsky]

21. But is he a true Scotsman? n/t

[BlueJazz]

9. Yep..Teabaggers are just Republicans with idiotic hats.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. repuke/tbagger/fundie have been synonyms for hypocrite for as long as I can remember.

[ixion]

13. Religious fanatics are delusional by definition

so you can't really apply the concepts of logic to their thought patterns. There are none, only a few fractured fairy tales.

[WingDinger]

16. If we continue to care about our fellow man, they will have to murder all of us.

Those same dumbasses want to avail themselves of 2nd amm. remedies, with Rambo Jesus slaying right and left.

And yes, the religious wnat to run society, and hold out food and shelter, unless we Kowtow.

[DainBramaged]

18. HAHAHAHA

Have a great life.

[DeSwiss]

19. K&R

Religion makes no sense. It never did. Anyone who has an open-mind and who has http://www.archive.org/stream/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft#page/n3/mode/2up">studied it can rationally confirm this. But then it was never intended to make sense -- only to give people "answers" -- when it could. But over time we've come to understand more and more that those answers are hardly ever applicable to our modern-day lives, and in fact are quite often antithetical to it.

Because one day we finally peeked behind the curtain, only to see a man. A small man really. A man pushing buttons and pulling levers, using his catch-phrases and verses and incantations -- with its rituals, bluster, theatrics and pyrotechnics. All in an effort to scare us and control us emotionally. But this technique is now on the wane. So religion has been forced to turn up the volume. It mostly just screams at us now. Because it still has only sophistry to offer us. More and more people have come to realize this and are turning away. So religion's volume is cranked up a little more.

But this is why religion evokes so much passion from people, because that is all it ever had to offer to begin with. Religion was always a place of succor to assuage our fears and to nurture our hopes. Fears and hopes that we've since learned are ruled by the laws of nature and our own decisions and choices. And not the rules, the punishments or the favors coming from tyrannical gods.

[Igel]

22. You're right.

The problem is that it shows a deep lack of understanding of the purpose of ideals and of private and public virtue and the idea compelling virtue.

An ideal is pretty much by definition something that its holder fails to lives up to. Therefore, let's dispose of all ideals. The Democratic Party can't live up to its platform? Disband the party because it's populated by a bunch of lying hypocrites. Kid brought up in a racist household still lets slip some atavistic thought? He might as well join the Klan.

Life doesn't work that way. The good thing about most ideals is that regardless of how badly we live up to them, they're defensible and constitute a goal to strive for. The alternative is to be utterly satisfied with one's self--and then instead of setting the bar high or you can just sit at the bar until your liver gives out. No diff.

This has to relate to the concepts of public and private virtue. If the reason for the HCR is to be good Xians, I'd have to say that's rather repugnant to the first amendment and much Democratic rhetoric. There's no sane reason for trying to say that the Obama HCR is related to Xianity in the least--the attempts to link the two smack of demogoguery and manipulation. Having a president or cabinet officials try to demogogue or manipulate the electorate is rather anathema to the very idea of an enlightened democracy. "Do as I say, I know better--the best dialog is when you repeat what I say, the best dissent is, 'Yes, sir!'"

However, if all virtue is required by law, and the law constitutes the sum total of required virtue, then we've reduced morality to a set of perfect laws and yielded our morality to a group of politicians and legislators. It's reduced--by governmental fiat--an individual faith, a group of individuals, to a collective, corporate faith, in which obedience is required, conformity enforced, and only the group matters. Invariably, the "group" winds up being dictated to or is abhorrent on its own. You get the perfect secular religion--whatever your creed, you serve the same Moloch. (Which is what I figure has largely happened--the same impulses to morality, to enforce morality, to harshly condemn the imperfect and be self-righteous, to be overly self-deprecating and attempt to make up for one's unworthiness are all human qualities, not Xian or Hindu or Muslim qualities, so you'd expect them to show up among the saintly secular, as well. They do show up, of course, and have the same kind of vile stench in jeans and a t-shirt or in a business suit as they do in chasuble or observed occupying the minbar.)

Note, however, a crucial difference between Prop 8 and the HCR. Prop 8 is a restriction on government, not a requirement imposed on non-state actors. The private consequences from the secular sacrament dubbed "marriage," which all the intellectual consistency that "secular sacrament" would hint at. The HCR is a requirement imposed on non-state actors to compel action. Both have government sanction and use of force to require certain behaviors as possible outcomes. The letter writer's consistency is in saying the state shouldn't force behaviors. One doesn't have necessarily have to be against government-sanctioned gay marriage or the HCR to make this argument any more than somebody for them can't make the argument. It comes down to the idea of private vs. public virtue, and to what extent either is to be imposed by state force and sanction.

In another time the writer might well have referred to "freedom of conscience." It used to be a big deal. Not so much, now. Utilitarianism seems to have triumphed, but that, I think, is the wrong conclusion. Rather, only the right-thinking consciences deserve freedom in a Truly Free Society (tm).