Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids A group of US priests has demanded YouTube show Catholics the same respect it shows to Jews when it comes to removing sacrilegeous videos. The Confraternity of the Catholic Clergy claims that the video sharing site and general moral cesspit carries at least 40 videos showing “blasphemous sacrilege against the Most Holy …
that fuss like this only creates further contempt?
The peeing on the memorial vid I believe to be worse, because the memorial is a symbol of lives being lost during a tragic period of the worlds history - this is based on fact
People running off with a consecrated piece of bread?? - Its based upon the embodiment of the Lord Jesus Christ and his blood is wine...which is based on by rights, pure fabrication.
The whole communion thing is symbolic of your belief in a religion.
The memorial is symbolic of your respect for the dead.
As an atheist I treat with respect the memorials for all walks of life, because no life should be taken like that.
As for a piece of consecrated bread....get over it.
They picked a rubbish comparison to make really as the teen pissing on the Holocaust memorial isn't committing blasphemy, it's just being plain disrespectful of a horrific occurrence which actually happened in our collective histroy. You don't need to be Jewish to be offended by it or even believe in any religion per se. Wheras their case relies on the idea of believing that Catholicism is more than just a bunch of made up mumbo-jumbo in the first place and important enough that we should all tread lightly.
Aw, go on Monsieur Creosote, just one more wafer thin slice of his noodliness's appendage?
"A group of US priests has demanded YouTube show Catholics the same respect it shows to Jews"
I think that's exactly right, they should ignore them both quite equally when they whine about acts of sacrilege. I find acts of religious worship deeply offensive, but can I have them banned, or even removed from youtube ? No, can I fuck. If I respect your opinion that there's a great beardy bloke in the sky who grants wishes if people ask nicely and behave in a way that pleases him, despite thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, will you undertake to respect my opinion that you're deluded lunatic who should be locked up for their own safety and that of wider society ?
No ? What's that ? "I'll burn in hell with all the other believers ?" Well fuck you then.
"and the outbreak of host-jacking as documented on YouTube could mean a return to the traditional drop-on-tongue method."
I wouldn't want a Catholic priest putting his hands any where near my mouth. With a lot of folk that would be because you don't know where they've been. With Catholic priests, it's quite the opposite.
"and to fast for three hours before mass instead of the current two"
I always thought that was because you only get a tiny sip of wine, and let's face it, that much won't get you shitfaced on a full stomach, and shitfaced is about the only way you'd want to sit through the unlovely dirge that is a Catholic mass and it's attendant wank.
What a vile ceremony the Eucharist is, "eat this, it is the body Christ". Fuck you mate! I'm not putting that in my mouth, it's well past it's sell by, innit ?
just wondering.
maybe they can send the excess containers of 'host' to feed some poor country. That stuff is pretty nutricious.
also in califonia , any place serving food that has more then 25 outlets will be required to post nutrition facts. I for one wanna know how many calories are in it ...
let's hope they are not made in china ...
And if they insist on having those videos removed. fine. remove them , we'll replace them with the news broadcasts showing names and faces off the 'fallen' priests.
to punish. cause server crashes, financial meltdown etc. etc. Why are priests even worrying over this. Their all seeing god is fully aware of all the evils we do and will deal with them accordingly and in as timely a fashion as he/she/it sees fit. The same goes for allah, buddah, krishna, the flying spaghetti monster et al. These deities do not need the puny interference of mere mortals to sort out the naughty ones. I would rather succumb to the will of a god than the will of a man/woman supposedly acting on behalf of that god. Don't these religious types realise that god is god, the gaffer, boss. The omnipotent, omnipresent dealer in all that is good and evil. Remember everything is gods will from the murder of thousands of people in collapsing skyscrapers, collateral damage in Iraq and the sexual abuse of children to the birth of a new born and our ability to love.
in the words of Matt Johnson, from the somewhat prophetic song Armageddon Days:
But god didn't build himself that throne.
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome.
God doesn't belong to the yankee dollar.
God doesn't plant the bombs for hezbollah.
God doesn't even go to church.
And god won't send us down to allah to burn.
No, god will remind us what we already know.
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown.
"Put in layman’s terms, this means mistreatment of the host – or as one Vulture put it "that little biscuit” – which, after the appropriate liturgy, is transubstantiated into the body of Jesus Christ during the Catholic mass."
Erm... transubstantiated after the appropriate liturgy from the priest - Magic - isn't that basically witchcraft?
Worse still... eating the actual body of Christ - isn't that cannibalism... worse yet, it's eating your saviour! Dissolving bits of your saviour in the vat of hydrochloric acid and enzymes known as the human stomach is a holy act?
...and they complain about youtube hosting a few videos of people running away with the little biscuit?
Hmmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser
The wafer is an embodiment of Jesu Criste....so Catholics are eating a piece of a man raised from the dead i.e. cannibals and zombies. I would think as a whole one would be happy that the little tidbit was flushed....after all the Church doesn't condone cannibalism does it??
Sacrilege like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Comparing that to plain disrespect is just stupidity.
To be a free society, we need to be able to discuss anything freely without a censor deciding what we can and can't discuss. Once you start making exceptions you go down the slippery slope. Look at the UK and it's "make Internet safe for Children to read". They wouldn't dare make a public library into a Children only section, yet they try to make the internet into a Children only section!
They're just words.
"the offensive YouTube vids include footage of a host being flushed down a toilet"
was just cutting out the middle man.
Christopher Hitchens mentions something about this in his book "god is Not Great"... You've got to give the christians (and other religious communities) one thing - they provide excellent material for comedy.
Rather than showing every different type of voodoo the same respect why don't we just show them all no respect at all? I don't believe in fairy tales or the bogeyman but I am finding it harder and harder to walk the fine line where I don't upset any of different fundamentalist religious groups. If someone wants to be a cock and nick a bit of bread then that's not something that really matters in the grand scheme of things. If someone wants to piss against a monument to something that happened 60 years ago is it really going to end the world? I can't name my teddybear after one of the most popular names in the world because it might offend.
"The whole communion thing is symbolic of your belief in a religion."
Not if you are Catholic.
c.1490-1700 most of Christian Europe was in a slight quandary over this little problem which ended up causing a slight division between Catholics and everyone else resulting in lots of little reformations.
You said 'Jehovah'!!!
Stone him.
Dunno what the god-botherers are on about, ritualised cannibalism isn't something they thought up just a few hundred years ago. Folks have been at it a lot longer than that.
Anyway, all that stuff about dodgy priests being kiddie-fiddlers and the ensuing cover ups - they keep real quiet about that then they get all uppity about a few crackers and supermarket 'value' wine. Are the bikkies Kosher or they made by Muslims? (like not trashing the merkin flag which is usually made in China)
Takes the biscuit, dunnit.
How typical that the bully Catholic church (I point to its long and proud history of, um, love and tolerance (?) of other religions and viewpoints) can not withstand the slightest perceived slight, criticism, or humour at its expense. One should not have to say "grow up already" to an institution that's been around for- freaking- ever, but here we are. Such nonsense only makes it more difficult for individual priests to do real and useful good works when they have to toe such an absurd company line; I wonder how many rue the day that Peter in Rome won church doctrine control over Patrick in Ireland.
How well do the wafers hold up as coffee dunkers?
First you get down on your knees, Fiddle with your rosaries, Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Do whatever steps you want if, You have cleared them with the pontiff. Everybody say his own, Kyrie Eleison,
Doin' the Vatican Rag.
Get in line in that processional, Step into that small confessional, There, the guy who's got religion'll Tell you if your sin's original.
If it is, try playin' it safer, Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight, Time to transubstantiate!
So get down upon your knees, Fiddle with your rosaries, Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Make a cross on your abdomen, When in Rome, do like a Roman,
Ave Maria, Gee, it's good to see ya,
Gettin' ecstatic and Sorta dramatic and Doin' the Vatican Rag!
So when the memorial of the pope after his death is pissed on and a U tube vid shown, that can be removed.
Real people died in the holocaust. And that happened whether you believed in God, Satan, Nothing or the FSM. They died.
And that was why the memorial vid was taken down. Not for sacrilege but for the contempt shown for the real people who died and the real people who survived in a small way from the horror.
Same as if the War Memorial were to be pissed on and video'd: the people who died for our country had been pissed on. Not christianity.
... who I think, on theReg at least, is very under-represented, I feel it is more a matter of equal treatment. If Youtube will remove videos that are sacrilegious to the Jews, but not to the Catholic Church, that's discrimination.
You can say what you want about the Church and its practices and all, but Equal treatment means Equal, which means either they should re-post the videos removed for the Jews, or remove the videos requested by the Church.
This is a grave issue to a great many people in the world. I applaud the Priests for having the courage to speak up on it.
/Stop - because y'all should stop ragging on people for their beliefs, especially those of you who don't allow people to rag on you for yours.
RE: "Hell, before we know it it’ll be back to Latin and fish on Fridays."
I've lived in large Catholic areas and some churches still offer Mass in Latin once a week, and some people still eat fish on Fridays, but mainly during Lent. Burger King even offers specials on fish sandwiches during Lent. The US is *way* too religious.
Ok, I grant the difference between pissing on a memorial and stealing some communion bread.
HOWEVER,
If you created some you tube videos that amounted to "Allah can eat me", "God can eat me", and "Yahweh can eat me". I'll bet you they'd be pulled down for being disrespectful. The point isn't whether or not the religion is made up or not. The point is the videos are deliberate stabs of disrespect toward the Catholic church.
According to YouTube's community guidelines:
"We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity). "
Videos of people stealing the sacraments serves no purpose other than to demean or attack Catholicism, so are probably in violation of the rule.
I don't care what you think about religion - atheist, jew, buddhist, taoist, catholic, protestant, muslim, or hindu, I don't care. The point is that it's disrespectful, in poor taste, and OBVIOUSLY is intended only to inflame.
kthxbye
If Google/YouTube is going to make religious exceptions for the Jewish lobby, then it needs to make exceptions for all the other religions and remove anything THEY find "sacrilegious". Otherwise they're just another religion-pushing bunch of hypocrites who not only DO evil, but ARE evil.
Personally, I'd rather they didn't bow or give exceptions to any religion, since it's the only way to finally how how ludicrous they all are except as organizations to control people.
@Christopher Wrinn
I've never had a problem with the catholic church ragging on me for my beliefs, because the catholic church started doing so during the time of the Roman Empire and has never relented. I don't have much of a choice - I'm Pagan.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as they themselves say (and don't quote "turn the other cheek", because they themselves only apply it when it suits, and it most certainly doesn't stop them ragging on me for my beliefs.)
The catholic church in this story has shown itself, as ever, to be entirely hippocritical.
@ac 1834- Brought back the right to read mass in latin, not the requirement to.
@Christopher Wrinn - Bang on! Either they treat all religions the same, or not at all. Remove everything that every *PROPER* religion finds sacrilegious or none at all.
@sektah - "turn the other cheek" is not about letting someone do something unpleasant to you twice, it's about passive resistance and orthodox Jews hitting someone 'below' them with a back handed slap across the cheek, with the left hand (I think) because they couldn't use the other because it's unclean. You turn the other cheek to force them to use the same hand to do a forward handed slap, which won't really hurt and will make them look like a dick. Or something like that, probably not very clearly explained as I'm a bit pished.
@Joe Flynn - No, they don't. They just don't believe it.
@Anonymous Coward - if you are going to generalize what individuals who belong to the Church do to your religion, then let's turn it around in fair play. Is this a case of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black? In the time of the Roman Empire, the Church was the little player and was being tortured, set aflame alive, and fed to lions for pleasure, and even gambling, by the Roman Empire. In Ireland, St. Patrick was attacked by Druids relentlessly. Further back, the Jews have never had good relationships with their Pagan neighbors. We can go all day about this, but please, do point out where a Catholic, on Youtube, is posting videos, for instance, taking a dump in the sacrificial offering bowl to Kinich Ahau, or even something similar? This would be true "hypocrisy".
By what I said, if you find that video, you should have every right to have Youtube take the video down for being sacrilegious against your religion, if you want. I'm not stopping you.
I really don't need to debate "Turn the other cheek" or "Eye for an eye" with you, as it would do no good anyway. I've seen as much "selfless" "Turn the other cheek" in the history of Pagans as I have seen "Eye for an eye" in the history of the Church and vice versa.
The enmity between these two groups is the fault of both sides and not of innocent individuals. Can we move on now? kthx!
@Michael: "I don't care what you think about religion - atheist, jew, buddhist, taoist, catholic, protestant, muslim, or hindu, I don't care. The point is that it's disrespectful, in poor taste, and OBVIOUSLY is intended only to inflame." Amen! (teehee)
... although many religious people do confuse themselves with God, or at least act under the belief that whatever they think must be how he feels, but no.
They are not cannibals.
The correct term is "deivores", to match omnivores, carnivores and ... er, ok, vegetarians. Oops.
But anyway.
Deivorous: god-eating.
Clearly the adolescents who put the videos up intended to offend. In a civil society, no one really supports behaviour which is intended to be offensive: and only adolescents really indulge in this pointless offensiveness.
There is entire range of offensive behaviour which is considered to be criminal and perpetrators are prosecuted accordingly. Poofter bashing is one such example.
Perhaps, El Reg readers should extend the courtesy they demand be shown for themselves to other people and accept that there are minimum standards for behaviour in civil society. Just because some adolescent, or someone who has never grown beyond that, finds that hard, consider some people might think that they deserve to be beaten to a pulp, but refrain from doing so because they realise this is inappropriate behaviour.
@Christopher Wrinn
"... generalize what individuals who belong to the Church do to your religion, then let's turn it around in fair play. Is this a case of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black? In the time of the Roman Empire, the Church was the little player and was being tortured, set aflame alive, and fed to lions for pleasure, and even gambling, by the Roman Empire."
You mean of course until the roman empire became Catholic, and forced catholicism upon the whole of europe by various means... if you're going to get all historical, then let's not be so selective about the history. There was no such thing as Catholicism untill the Roman Empire - that's why it's called the Roman Catholic Church. True Hippocracy is claiming that I will go to hell for being pagan... that I am sinful, while failing to have taken proper action (or even give a meaningful apology) for priests abusing young boys. True hippocracy is telling me that I am going to hell for my beliefs, and that I am essentially the spawn of satan for what I believe, and even that I am worthy of persecutipon, while demanding that their beliefs are respected.
Sorry Christopher, but near 2 millenia of history stands against you on this one, including, but not limited to the Spanish Inquizition (and it's current "doctrine of the faith" incarnation), and religious endorsement of the Malleus Malificarum... Oh, and then there's the persecution of anybody that didn't agree with Galen for 1500 years, and the threats they made to Gallileo for stating that the earth revolves around the sun.
In the modern day, I'm different from pagans of old (in that I defend myself by the pen, not by the sword) - I'll respect those that respect me and earn it. The Catholic church however is not different in this regard - it's still disrespecting me and my beliefs.
as it's the only way of sorting this out.
transubstatiation or however you want to spell it is not metaphorical. its fact. it *actually* changes into the body of christ. so lets feed one to a believer, then rush them into an operating theatre to extract said body of christ.
extract the dna - ta da - the 2nd coming.
or its just a biscuit.
There have literally been thousands of "gods" during Man's evolution on earth. Probably tens of thousands, if we count all the rituals, talisman and flying spaghetti monsters.
None of them are true, although some have persisted through time. A few religions have grown rich and powerful. Some are based purely on hatred.
I don't care what people put on YouTube. I don't have to look at it and I don't exactly 'bump into' this stuff in my daily life, and I am online a lot.
This is just another case of one religion saying 'our god is better/bigger/more important/has better teeth than yours', yadda, yadda, yadda.
No god, never was, never will be. One day Man, as a race, will wake from this prehistoric nightmare.
Yup, some terrible stuff has been done by the catholic church, and in the name of the catholic church. Don't forget, though! Alot of great things have also been done by and in the name of the church.
Lives have been taken. Lives have been saved. Lies have been told. Truth has been shared. Knowledge and Learning has been destroyed. Knowledge and Learning have been preserved. Hope has been killed. Hope has been given.
Before we have a Holy Flame War. Let's take a deep breath.
Many religious people have cogent reasoning for their beliefs, some are basically brainwashed. Many atheists have a good logical argument for not believing, others are just rebelling/knee-jerk rejecting.
People come in all sorts. Having a given faith doesn't change the fact that we are human, and prone to doing stupid things and trying to feel OK about it afterwards. This is not what religion is about, but it how it is often used. Why haven't we figured this out? Can't we all understand that we might not all agree with each other and just DEAL WITH IT?
But, back to the article: Is a a group of rabbis requesting the takedown of a video of someone pissing on a Holocaust memorial the same as a group of priests requesting the takedown of videos showing the defamation of an object that is sacred and holy to them?
Do these videos ACTUALLY show them pocketing the lil wafers of cannibalism and then showing them being flushed down the toilet? I only ask because I actually know of stores that sells the actual wafers Catholic Priest use in church to the public. So the Priest equate pissing on a WW2 memorial for real people that lived to the same level as pissing on a sugar wafer you can buy in any religious store.
"We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity). "
So that means, by their own reasoning, every single video spouting the alleged "benefits" of any religion MUST be taken down, because religious fundimentalism, as a whole, attacks and demeans human intelligence. They attack aetheists, agnostics, and anyone else who dares to believe in a flavour of insanity which they do not share.
Multiple religious authorities attack and rape children, and then cover it all up. This is an assault on the law, and on common decency.
So, they complain that a few people wanted their Soylent Green cookie take-away instead of eat-in. Big deal. He's your god. They're your rules. You go burn in hell.
Martian Head: Because aManfromMars makes about as much sense as any other religious diatribe.
A catholic student named Webster Cook (google him) palmed a eucharist wafer in church to use to highlight a pro-catholic argument.
Angry at someone not chewing, swallowing and pooping their saviour, local catholics started calling for him to be shot in the street. Local catholic clergy refusted to condemn this until he proved beyond doubt what he was thinking when he did it (telepaths at the ready then?) and then he and his friends (who had nothing to do with it all) were suspended from university etc etc.
All kinds of behaviour that catholics will tell you are a muslim reserve. Disclaimer: Raised by Irish Protestants here.
The most blasphemout comment icon I can find.
I feel a little bad for the catholic church. As more people become enlightened, I mean educated, they lose members at a rapid rate. I wonder how long it will be before catholics are selling admission to their churches and cathedrals as the egyptions, greeks and romans do with their old temples.
I would seriously think that the Church has so much more to think about than cookies being mistreated. After all, last I checked, they don't actually control any countries of interest anymore. They have a former nazi in charge of their organization. And treating the catholic church worse than they ever treated pagans in literature has become not only acceptible, but so common that the excitement of laughing at the church has almost worn off already.
The only thing I like about the Catholic church is that they're still making an effort to recruit the same suckers that Scientology, Mormons, and other whacko cults are trying to get. So, as long as they're getting to those weak minded people first, it's at least better than the alternative.
I would respectfully suggest that if videos of people nicking biscuits are a threat to your religion then you have more serious things to attend to than bothering 'you tube'.
The comparison with the war memorial is wrong and underhand. The people represented by the memorial fought for our right to live the life we now enjoy. That includes the right to practice your religion. That wouldn't exist now if people didn't fight for it. Having said that, wasn't Hitler a catholic?
"If Youtube will remove videos that are sacrilegious to the Jews, but not to the Catholic Church, that's discrimination."
No it's not. If they removed videos BECAUSE they were sacrilegious then it would be discrimination. However, the fact that some people described the video as sacrilegious and were glad to see it gone does not mean that was the CAUSE of it's removal.
If these cross-dressing loons don't like it then why not call up the sky fairy and get him to come and do something about it? Maybe youtube is one of those "mysterious ways" in which your god seems to favour operating.
We should petition YouTube, in its own interests, to remove ALL material of a 'religious nature' from its servers? That way they could be sure not to offend anyone at all.
And us Atheists will be happy that religious dogma, lies and propaganda has one less outlet to use and one less forum to scream at each other upon.
Roll on the age of Secularism!
- A tombstone because god is dead.
@Krissie -Your history is not completely correct. For one, the term "Roman Catholic Church" has nothing to do with the "Roman Empire". The term came about after the Schism in the Catholic Church between the Eastern Catholic Church and the Western Catholic Church, the latter being centered around the bishop of Rome. The term "Roman Catholic" wasn't used until the 11th Century, as it wasn't needed until then. Before then, it was the "Catholic Church", a term generally adopted in the early 2nd century. (Rome became Catholic in the 4th century, btw.)
My point in bringing up that piece of history was not to illustrate any villification of Pagans, but rather to point out that neither side is the Victim, nor are either the Villain, here. The same 2 millenia work "against your" argument as work "against mine", depending on the perspective taken.
Again, we could go back and forth on this for days, as our comrades have been going back and forth on this for millenia. I'd be more than happy to continue a civil debate on the topic with you outside of these commentaries, if you wish.
@Darren Starr: I quote Alex Nich there. "Many religious people have cogent reasoning for their beliefs, some are basically brainwashed. Many atheists have a good logical argument for not believing, others are just rebelling/knee-jerk rejecting."
why is it that every religion( at least 99.99%) preach as one of its main objectives the following:
(not neccesarly in that order)
1. be kind to your neighbour
2. forgiveness no matter what
3 .god/gods/entity will forgive you no matter what you do
yet not single one has practiced any of it?
but i had seen the following being followed pretty thoroughly
1. forget you mate you are screwed and i am going to add to it because its fun also you do not belive in my religion so there!
2. forget you you screwed me and i will get even even when i am dead!
3. i can do it because god/gods/entity said the will forgive me so i can do what he bloody hell i want to you and yours as many times as i want o its allright!
funny how many justifications come to mind why religious nut jubs do what they do it would be very sad if it was not so funny in a way.
as for that little cracker for crying out loud its only a cracker not some magicaly transformed peice of meat that needs a grill and heap of ketchup to with it.
BTW i hate ALL religions equally
@ Alex Nich:
<< Before we have a Holy Flame War. Let's take a deep breath. >>
It's a nice idea, that - but El Reg posted this article knowing that the Holy Flame War (there's really only one: it just keeps going round and round) would flare up again straight away. Still, this is the last time I'm going to bite on one of the Register's religious trolls.
Seriously, don't people get bored going through the same old comments over and over and over again every time religion gets mentioned?
"Oooo! There's a religion article! Oooo, me first! Me first! "Religion is shit, and causes all the evil in the world, and religious people are TEH MORONEST! I hates religion, me, coz I'm a FREE THINKUN INTELLECHOOL."
All right, yeah, I know. But frankly the self-satisfied smugness of the anti-religious (as distinct from 'the atheistic') really does piss me off sometimes; based as it so often is on subjective opinion and prejudice: "religious people are insane"; "religious people are stupid"; "religious people are dangerous". Well, I'm religious myself - as you've probably guessed - but I've never had the slightest desire to impose my faith on anyone. I'm a huge fan of science, and a keen amateur astronomer. I've no desire to cause anyone harm, and I like to think, conceited though it may be, that I have a reasonable level of intelligence. I'm simply fascinated with the world around me, and I wonder how it works. Not so different from the sciencey types, in that respect, I think. If I have a difference of opinion with the atheists on science it's that I see no reason to assume that science will ever answer *all* the questions. In fact, at the risk of causing offence, I think the belief that it will is *faith*. Still, I pride myself on the fact that in debates and discussions I will fight, and *have* fought, tooth and claw for the right of atheists to live their lives without religious interference. I have the utmost respect for atheists even if I don't agree with their point of view.
Religions have no right - NO right - to impose their views and beliefs and lifestyles and standards on other people. A person MUST have the right to discover their own position on this sort of question, and NO-ONE should assume the right to steer someone else along that path. If nothing else, as adnim rightly points out, it shouldn't be necessary. Any true god would have the power to make life pretty difficult for disbelievers or the disobedient if S/He wanted to do so. The fact that such people are not, statistically, any worse off than believers indicates one of two things. Either there are no gods; or what gods there are are not the petty-minded, childish, squealing little runts that religious fanatics the world over make their own out to be, but are in harmony with the world we live in (even if we don't seem to want to try for harmony with each other). Which of those options you might prefer is your business, and no concern of mine - just as my conclusion on it is no concern of yours.
But what this *does* tell us is that whatever they might be who claim to be acting on God's behalf, what they're *not* is religious - except inasmuch as egotism is a major world faith (and I think, in Britain, we'd have to concede that it's getting close). Literalists, fanatics, and the like insult their gods with their every oppressive and abusive act. They assume that their God would have no power to look after Himself or do His own dirty work. Yet, still, it's the 'religious' as a whole who get the blanket condemnation and abuse - regardless of what those 'religious' people actually believe.
I'm told by various anti-religionists (mostly parroting Dawkins) that religious people demand disproportionate respect for their faith. I disagree. I for one have no problem with people challenging my religion - but I reserve the right to form an opinion on them based on what they say and how they say it. I think some amongst the religious love to play the martyr card because there's nothing makes people feel good about themselves quite like victimhood. But this isn't exclusive to any one religion - nor even to religion as a concept. Ask an angry anti-religionist why they hate religion and they'll usually cite religion's terrible persecutions of the non-religious. We all love being hard-done-to. Look at me, here: I'm ranting about this precisely because I feel like I'm being put upon by nasty anti-religionists. And really, what the hell does it matter what a bunch of people on a comments page on some tabloid website think about religion?
The crux of really effective victimhood is having someone to hate. For religion, you just pick someone who believes something you don't, or doesn't believe something you do, and go to town on them. Pay no attention to details like What Someone Actually Believes - after all, the version you've got in your head is probably much more effective for rationalising that hatred than the reality. And I know from experience that people don't like to do too much thinking when religion's on the table: it's much simpler just to go with established prejudices. Like, for example, the common idea that all religious people are basically Fundamentalist Christians who, if you don't fight them now, will soon have YOUR kids learning six-day creation instead of science. That's a popular prejudice: a lot of the anti-religionists LOVE that one. So try being a religious person who believes something entirely *different*, or even a more normal Christian who doesn't hold with such literalist ideas, and see how far you get in discussions with such people. You'll still be an idiot: the difference is you're now a *lying* idiot for trying to misrepresent your beliefs.
The truth is that bigotry is bigotry, whether wielded by believer or non-believer.
The AC who posted "religion=comedy" at 16:57 is a case in point. The poster professes a hatred for all religion, on the basis that "99.99%" of religions preach certain beliefs. Where did that stat come from? Answer: straight out of the AC's head. But it's enough: it's enough to rationalise that pre-existing hatred, and it frees the AC from the need to evaluate his or her attitudes. But in fact, the problem I have isn't that people hate religion. Really, it's not. I don't *care* if you hate religion. But religion is a fact of life, and quite frankly I don't think it's going away any time soon. I just think that, probably, the anti-religious might find they fare a bit better against the *real* fanatics - the truly dangerous ones armed with guns and bombs and votes - if they turned down the contrast on their worldview a little and accepted that this situation isn't quite as black-and-white as they tend to make out. Until they can do that, then however strident their protests they're just another group of blinkered zealots.
Not a single person has practiced those 3 principals (which are NOT constant across religion, just Christianity)? Not one? Oh come on. Nearly everybody recognizes Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama as people who live/d and act/ed with unspeakable love, kindness, and forgiveness.
I know a many religious people who work really, really hard at doing just that. Many of us are working at it, but haven't gotten there, yet. Many religious people are 'invisbile' because they don't wear vestments or foam at the mouth with zealotry. In most churches and sacred groves that I have seen, the majority of members are not part of this foaming-at-the-mouth group. Alot of deeply religious people are far MORE offended by that zealotry than by the most hateful/angry remarks made by atheists. We know that our faith and beliefs will be mis-judged by the example of hate-mongering zealots, not by our best sides but by our worst moments. Hypocrisy happens, but alot of people are trying.
As a Catholic? I don't like seeing the Host defamed. The body of the Lord is not muscle cells; it is the greater whole of the spiritual belief, power, and Love that made Jesus not a man but the Messiah.
Is it theft? Yes, absolutely. The host is given away for use in a specific manner and no other. To take it for another reason violates the understood contract - that's got precedent and applies to many non-religious things. But should anyone be killed or such for doing so? NO! Sad to see people call for violence on account of someone who was so against it. Happens alot. Tragic, every time. Even jail seems a bit over the top. Maybe a day's community service? Should the videos be taken down? I don't believe in censorship. Just because youtube took one video down, does not mean more should be taken down.
I agree - remove catholic bashing videos, I have no problem with this;
but a proviso - As a non-christian and we outnumber the followers of the jewish prophet by millions and all the mumbo-jumbo in obscure languages and 'elevated statues in society' stuff is offensive.
I would like to see all non-fact videos and images of this secretive, closed society or 'religion' removed as well.
That's only fair isn't it?
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