[*isteve]

Prove that part!

If there is life after death, they wont be dead. If there isnt, they won't know. QED

[*isteve]

You do realize my entire post was also?

CW

Yep.

Hence my closing shot.

[Ratmagiclady]

If there is life after death, they wont be dead. If there isnt, they won't know. QED

Don't shoot doggies! That's what I say. Life after death doesn't mean nobody died.

[*isteve]

Don't shoot doggies! That's what I say. Life after death doesn't mean nobody died.

Hey, at least doggies go to heaven . Unlike cats!

[Ratmagiclady]

Hey, at least doggies go to heaven . Unlike cats!

Cats go where they like.

[*isteve]

Cats go where they like.

Usually next to the fire.....

[Phil1]

No minarets in Switzerland? How shameful. Let's count all the christian churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia again please.

[Gooshin]

No minarets in Switzerland? How shameful. Let's count all the christian churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia again please.

excellent argument! bravo!

:ugh:

[Blue]

No minarets in Switzerland? How shameful. Let's count all the christian churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia again please.

When you get there to take the census on them, be sure to inform their State Department as to what you are there for!

[Ratmagiclady]

No minarets in Switzerland? How shameful. Let's count all the christian churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia again please.

It's so, but look at the Vatican complain about Christians in India while lobbying for the denying of Hindu temples and Diwali parades in Rome. (usually at the last minute to be sure to waste a lot of planning, in the latter case.)

How about the Eastern Orthodox fighting tooth and nail to keep Greeks' worship of their ancestral Gods *criminalized?* (Yes, actually criminalized. Really.) Or in the former Soviet Union, come to think of it, taking their newfound 'religious freedom' and trying to use it to finish what the Commies started to even-more-aggressively try to obliterate all that Finno-Ugric samanism...

Or some folks in Afghanistan descended of Alexander's armies who may actually be best off not mentioned...

Does anyone know of the massacre of 'animists' (by 'both sides') in the Sudan we otherwise heard so much about? (Hint. A third of the population of Darfur.)

The Roma people in 'former Yugoslavia?'

Forget about aboriginal peoples, from the Amazon to Wisconsin to Java... (Right?)

Or... How about the Pentecostal 'witch hunts' in Africa that are both denied and then reimported into churches like Sarah Palin's?

There some moral superiority here that I haven't detected?

[Jasvox]

Swiss have voted.

Swiss ban mosque minarets in surprise vote - Yahoo! News

Hey, it's their country, they can decorate it however they want.

Jason

[Smirf]

I predict sky rocketing sales on the Swiss flag in certain regions of the world.

[ombreus]

Well I grow up in comunistic country.. where even *another thinking* was out of law. You were able to have religion, problem was, than you cant have better work, your children will dont have good schools etc. Profesors were doing cleaners and retards who were *just good comunist* were teaching in schools...People were shooted on frontiers when they want to emigrate and much more not nice things.. even in Europe *other countries* have real fear of russia... so they act like*we dont see anything*....after some time we finaly won fight for democracy, we were free to dress as we want(jeans were not allowed before, listeing to music from west, was not allowed, even hair cut was problem-not only punk ones..) we were free to have a job as we want, we can study and beleive to what we want.. after some time another religion come and those people start wanting this and that, star saying that our womans who dress like they want are whores, and all who dont have*right* religion and right view are not worth to live...I have few friends who are muslims, also jews.. but they take their religion like *ok its our, and we dont care about yours or what others do*, we drink together, we eat bacons and we have fun. but shame is, that just part of religius think like this and can live together like this.

Europe is diferent as other world in thinking. After time I spend in USA I dont think that this is country of freedom.. I almost fight with some rednecks cause I made some jokes about Bush and about their laws(read it: they just hit and kick me few times)... I like living in country where I can piss on bible, shit on koran, make fun from comunist, nazi or even usa, where woman can dress in realy short skirts and where I just dont need to care about my safety with loaded gun under my pillow...

Do you remember that cartoon jokes about koran from NL?? TBH every single man from Europe who disagree with that jokes should leave Europe. For someone its holy book, for someone its just funny book with boring stories etc.. kust this is enought why not to allow minarets or churches or whatever.

So there is no islamophobia or whatever, there are some who just dont know how to behave in free country.

ps. sry for my bad english.

[Wheatfield]

... I like living in country where I can piss on bible, shit on koran, make fun from comunist, nazi or even usa, where woman can dress in realy short skirts and where I just dont need to care about my safety with loaded gun under my pillow...

You'd love it in Canada.
Making fun of Americans is like a rite of passage for us.
Of course some of us never really grow up and become like the cute and useless little dog who you just know loves you unconditionally, but still pees on the floor.

[Ratmagiclady]

You'd love it in Canada.
Making fun of Americans is like a rite of passage for us.

Hey, here, too.

I've often wondered about the possibility of being a 'Professional American' if we end up emigrating. (It'd be primarily cause my sweetie's areas of expertise involve ecosystems that cross the border, but we're pretty weary of our civil rights being treated as a political football all the time. ) I've probably got enough material to do some stand-up or something.

Anyway, Ombreus, one of the problems we have with American culture is a tendency for some to compare everything they do to some ideas of 'behind the Iron Curtain:'

Personally, I think there's a lot of unresolved cultural trauma left over in America from the Cold War: The 'Godless Commies' were the big bogeyman who might rain random apocalyptic death on everyone. Situations like that are bound to make people kind of superstitious, really. Don't act like 'them' even when it means not getting ripped off on health care or this or that, all someone would have to say was 'That could make you....Socialist' to stop anything from happening if they liked. 'Don't be 'Godless' or the Commies'll getcha...

When the constant threat of those nukes went away, there wasn't really a resolution to all those fears. They just got transferred off the nuclear weapons, for many, to 'Godlessness' itself... substituting this apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist 'spiritual warfare' and 'culture war' for ...Cold War.

Instead of it being 'You'll get nuked if you don't please an angry God,' now it's the angry God himself who will do the 'nuking' if people aren't pious enough, seems to be the dynamic.

It's where we get the Orwellian idea from some that 'Freedom of religion means freedom to obey mine, not to actually be free *from* others' religions, so you can practice your own.'

Also the idea that Bush, who claimed to speak to his God while bungling Iraq by 'believing' all he had to do was topple Saddam and there'd be democracy and parades of rose petals... could do no wrong, despite his clear idiocy and often smirking mean-spiritedness... Also why they've been trying to paint Obama as the 'Antichrist' since before he took office.

Case of apocalyptus interruptus, I guess.

You can see it in the cultural developments of all that apocalyptic literature based on the peculiar mythology about 'raptures' and 'tribulations' that developed in American evangelicalism...

Also, they're even remaking 'Red Dawn,' which is a film from the 80's which basically constituted a fantasy about the 'Godless Commies' actually turning up in a way that ordinary Americans could *do* something about it. (This was actually a very appealing fantasy for those tired of living pretty helplessly under The Bomb. Maybe even at 'Ground Zero,' which was a Cold War term before it was attached to 9/11. Pretty powerful psychological connections existed there to invoke that idea of total destruction anywhere or everywhere.)

In that light, the remake could possibly even be a positive development, in that maybe it means people are looking to resolve that old cultural trauma I'm postulating here.

(I mean, who am I kidding, it's probably going to be laden with right-wing propaganda, but it beats 'Left Behind.' )