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Gnarly Gnu

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Sorry Nev, I don't agree. For a teenage boy there can be no greater reason to attend school. Having a goddess on the teaching staff cuts absenteeism by half, and they might accidentally learn something in the other classes...

 

 

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When I was 16 and in TAFE, there was a very attractive teacher in her 30's who wore the shortest skirts I'd ever seen.

Our Fourth Form English teacher always wore loose unbuttoned blouses and no bra, the lucky few would get called up the front for a discussion of their work including me - but I never ended up one of her wombats as a few of the others did.

 

 

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Actually Turbs, that isn't an anti-religious stream. It is a criticism of church hierarchy and of the lack of integrity that has become ingrained in those church systems. The actual religion is 'ho hum' to me. BUT the bad behaviour of some LEADERS and practicioners is simply unacceptable. Please accept that many of us athiests are not particularly anti-religious. In fact we are more religiously tolerant than most who practice 'religiosity'.[/quoteThat related to Bex's version of the replies I was getting.

 

Not all churches lack integrity, and only some parts of the Catholic Church had these despicable people and or covered up.

 

What annoys me most is that even though we are discussing belief in God vs non-belief in God, and in the research I did for this thread we got back 30,000 years, there are still people who are fixated on the Christian religions with all their obvious failings, and can't get any further than that.

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The government quite often commissions reports from the top experts in the field and then proceeds to either totally ignore the findings if they don't align with their ideology, or cherry-picks bits and pieces which then gives sub-optimal results or even worse results than before.Henry tax reform, Gonski education reform, Garnaut climate change papers, the list goes on and on. Meanwhile Tony and Joe trash wind farms and "suggest" that they cause negative health effects when an existing 25 reports say they don't. Face it, governments don't listen to advice, unless it comes from sources closely aligned with their own ideological stance.

All of that is part of the process, and I've mentioned before that the Parliamentary precinct has about 2,000 people working in it on non-sitting days and swells to around 4,000 on sitting days.

 

This is the 44th Parliament, but the Press seem to have the impression that you wouldn't know who they were talking about if they called it that, so they call it the Abbott Parliament and you prove the right by thinking the person named makes all the decisions.

 

However, what I originally suggested was an oversight in the background to catch all the out of date and inappropriate leaks of our taxpayer funds.

 

Billions of dollars go down the tubes in the base-load on things/structures/groups we don't need or want, and the outgoing flow of money just continues on. The speed of the political process means that Parliamentarians are looking ahead, not behind, and the harvest of our money just grows and we pay more and more taxes.

 

 

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Turbs said...

 

"What annoys me most is that even though we are discussing belief in God vs non-belief in God, and in the research I did for this thread we got back 30,000 years, there are still people who are fixated on the Christian religions with all their obvious failings, and can't get any further than that."

 

I don't think this thread has a fixation about ANY one brand of religion. Fortunately many contributors have broadened the scope to include quite a number of other brands of religion. If they hadn't, the thread would have dried up ages ago. Thanks for your contribution to that. But nice to hear that you agree about "all their obvious failings"!

 

Please note that I have not tarred the whole of the Catholic (or any other) church with the same brush. Especially I have no wish to shake anybody's personal faiths. My personal objection to 'religion' is that it inevitably becomes a power and control system (which is fertile ground for bad behaviour by those protected within it). Then major damage eventuates when a big bunch of people use religion to get together and try to use their group power to damage other people's lives. The end result is everything from 'religious' wars right down to individual discrimination and bullying. For instance, all governments seem to 'bless our troops' going into a war, as if they are calling up the god to condone, approve and assist the terrible things about to be inflicted.

 

Although I am an atheist, I don't have a problem with people who choose to believe in a god, so long as they don't try to force anything on anyone or use it against anyone. The actual spiritual connection that an individual aligns themself with, is personal stuff for each of us to decide and to follow. This might be called a religious belief if it involves a supernatural entity. I personally don't think that a god would really need a bunch of human beings to organise his (selected) subjects. Which is what religions seem to set out to do. Pretty sure it would only take a wave of his/her wand to make that happen if it was what they wanted. I do enjoy a 'no blame' debate which might help me to evolve my own spiritual concepts, and I try to keep an open mind so I don't miss any gems of wisdom that apply to me. Interesting stuff. even after 2300 posts.

 

 

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Good post nomad.

 

What Jesus Christ was teaching, before Saul turned on the PR, was what his Nasoreans believed in, which had none of the power/controlling/demanding aspects of some of the Christian sects. What the Nasoreans had in common with even more ancient religions, including the teachings of the Virachochas in South America was a belief in looking after other people and leaving the world a better place.

 

 

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Good post nomad.What Jesus Christ was teaching, before Saul turned on the PR, was what his Nasoreans believed in, which had none of the power/controlling/demanding aspects of some of the Christian sects. What the Nasoreans had in common with even more ancient religions, including the teachings of the Virachochas in South America was a belief in looking after other people and leaving the world a better place.

If religion just concentrated on that now - ie looking after other people and leaving the world a better place - no one would have a problem with it. Mind you, the current pope seems to have that attitude, but when he spoke out about climate change and inequality, the republicans in the US government told him to mind his own business and stick to religion.

 

 

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....... the republicans in the US government told him to mind his own business and stick to religion.

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself." Harry S Truman (alleged, and probably a paraphrasing of the similar verified quote about Congress by Mark Twain)

 

It's a bit rich for Republicans to tell someone to butt out and stick to religion.

 

 

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I'm finding the whole catholic thing quite amusing at the moment. By some fluke of voting (perhaps everyone picked him as being someone that no-one else would vote for) they've ended up with a pope who actually cares about real world issues like poverty, inequality, and the environment, instead of an ivory-tower bible scholar who wants everyone to stop masturbating or being gay. This of course is making traditional catholics very confused as it's a total departure from the norm. It's also p*ssing off the reactionary right who believe that big business has the god-given right to increase the wealth of the wealthy and that god gave us the environment to plunder. Go Franky boy!

 

 

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I'm finding the whole catholic thing quite amusing at the moment. By some fluke of voting (perhaps everyone picked him as being someone that no-one else would vote for) they've ended up with a pope who actually cares about real world issues like poverty, inequality, and the environment, instead of an ivory-tower bible scholar who wants everyone to stop masturbating or being gay. This of course is making traditional catholics very confused as it's a total departure from the norm. It's also p*ssing off the reactionary right who believe that big business has the god-given right to increase the wealth of the wealthy and that god gave us the environment to plunder. Go Franky boy!

There was a letter in a paper the other day from a reader who was surprised that that pope had no faith in God to control the temperature of the planet the he created.

 

 

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I'm finding the whole catholic thing quite amusing at the moment. By some fluke of voting (perhaps everyone picked him as being someone that no-one else would vote for) they've ended up with a pope who actually cares about real world issues like poverty, inequality, and the environment, instead of an ivory-tower bible scholar who wants everyone to stop masturbating or being gay. This of course is making traditional catholics very confused as it's a total departure from the norm. It's also p*ssing off the reactionary right who believe that big business has the god-given right to increase the wealth of the wealthy and that god gave us the environment to plunder. Go Franky boy!

The pope is just marketing, trying to suck people back in to the church. He is pretty good at it too.

 

If he was sincere, he would piss off all the Vatican wealth and actually use it to do good, Instead, they use it to pay lawyers to cover up pedophilia. Its disgusting and I cant believe people are actually falling for this rubbish.

 

EDIT. Just a thought. I now rank the pope as the worlds biggest hypocrite. Up there I had idiots like Bob Geldof, Mel Gibson and Russel Brand etc. People who should just learn to shut their gob.

 

 

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There was a letter in a paper the other day from a reader who was surprised that that pope had no faith in God to control the temperature of the planet the he created.

People cause GW (allegedly) yet the Pope is anti contraceptive. Bit of a quandary for them.

 

 

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People cause GW (allegedly).........

Not consciously or maliciously, but yes it and many other things are almost certainly a consequence of 7 billion prodigious resource consumers, polluters, and their industrial support base.

 

The problem is that humans generally don't like accepting any adverse consequences of their actions (particularly when they're unintentional) and will tend to strenuously deny them. That's especially true if they perceive that doing anything about it will adversely affect their lifestyle in the slightest. It's also true if the facts conflict with pre-conceived beliefs (eg, God or some other mysterious entity will look after it, so I'll just sit back on my *rse and do nothing). My wife sees this all the time in her medical practice. When told some home truths, they end up getting quite grumpy about it, start making more excuses, then just continue denying it because it's not convenient for them to make changes. Recognise the cycle?

 

When the consequences of our actions are good, we of course suddenly want to "own" them and tell the world. At least the Pope for once - possibly the first time ever in the history of his Church - seems to realise this.

 

 

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At least he seems like a good old fella who actually is prepared to care for the poor and mean it. He doesn't live the high style like the others . He's upsetting a lot of people I don't think much of, so he's OK by me.

 

He realises what the church has done, and if anyone will get some well needed change it's this bloke. I like him even though I don't share his faith.. Nev

 

 

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What everyone REALLY wants to know about the Census religion question is : How many Jedi Knights were there? Since 2001 the Jedi Census phenomenon has been very successful around the world, but despite this, the ABS still refuses to put in an official category in the output for Jedi, lumping them in with ‘Not defined’.... This group (which also includes Pastafarianism, Chocolate, and various football teams) grew by 22% to 132,600 people in 2011.

 

WOW!

 

http://blog.id.com.au/2012/population/australian-census-2011/2011-australian-census-how-have-our-religions-changed/

 

 

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