| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
13 Mar 2006 01:05:33 PM |
| Object: |
Hey, folks! It's time to play "NAME THAT RELIGION!" |
Yes everyone, it's time for your favourite game show!
Tonight, we're looking at the recent burning of the churches in
rural Alabama. The first of our lucky contestants to correctly
guess will win his or her choice of six wonderful prizes!
Were the men who burned down the churches:
(a) atheists
(b) satanists
(c) methodist christians
If you can answer correctly in the next five seconds, you win!
Here's a hint if you need it:
Alabama Fire Marshal Richard Montgomery told The New York
Times: "My profile on these suspects is shot all to heck
and back."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20060313/cm_ucas/itwasntthedevilthatmadestudentsburndownchurches;_ylt=Av_e8ZXZT6l6chng9DCoLnn9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--
Oooooh, I'm sorry, you took too long in pushing the button, but
thank you for playing, and here's a copy of our home game!
Bob Dog
-----
"Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community
is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological
design. We don't have such a theory right now, and
that's a real problem. Without a theory, it's very
hard to know where to direct your research focus."
- Paul Nelson, creationist
and anti-science advocate
"Maybe he needs a new version of the Ten Commandments
-- George W. Bush's Ten Commandments:
Thou shalt not steal...votes.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's...country.
Thou shalt not kill...for oil.
Thou shalt not take grammar...in vain."
- Margaret Cho
-----------------------------------------------------------------
IT WASN'T THE DEVIL THAT MADE STUDENTS BURN DOWN CHURCHES
By Cynthia Tucker
Here in the Deep South, the buckle of the Bible Belt, a man who
sets fire to churches is believed to be Satan's personal
representative. So, last month, when arsonists struck five rural
Alabama churches in a few hours -- and four others days later --
the locals assumed that evil was stalking the countryside.
Who attacks houses of worship but men distorted by hate? Who
preys on small backwoods sanctuaries but the cowardly and small-
minded, pumped up by their pretensions to power? Who tries to
destroy a community's center, its soul?
As it turns out, those who do such things may not look like
demons or spew hate like demented psychopaths. Last week,
authorities announced the arrests of three upper-middle-class
college students -- Russell Lee DeBusk Jr., 19, Matthew Lee
Cloyd, 20, and Benjamin Nathan Moseley, 19 -- young men with
no apparent criminal histories. As Alabama Fire Marshal Richard
Montgomery told The New York Times: "My profile on these
suspects is shot all to heck and back."
According to investigators, the suspects had gone deer hunting
in the piney woods south of Birmingham, but that pursuit, it
seems, didn't offer enough pleasure. The first fires, officials
say, were "a joke that got out of hand." The second set of fires,
four days later, were a failed attempt to throw investigators
off the scent. According to published reports, all three have
confessed at least some involvement in the fires.
With the cliches that accompany crimes such as this, friends and
acquaintances expressed shock that these young men -- nice,
studious, fun-loving, successful, all-American (white) boys --
might be accused of such heinous acts. Two were students at
Birmingham-Southern College, a small, Methodist-affiliated
liberal arts college, and the other had transferred from BSC to
the University of Alabama, Birmingham. They have not been
described as poor students or habitual criminals or mental
patients.
(The Birmingham-Southern community is small and close-knit, and
the administration is so stunned by the crimes that college
president David Pollack announced that the institution would
help rebuild the churches. "Students, faculty and staff of our
college are at once shocked and outraged," he said at a campus
gathering.)
Nor did these crimes follow any simple script. A decade ago, a
spate of arsons struck black churches across the South, bringing
back ugly memories of night riders who terrorized their black
neighbors in the harsh days of Jim Crow. Investigators
eventually concluded that there was no grand conspiracy at work,
although a few fires were attributed to suspects with racial
motives. Others were attributed to drunken vandals or even
church members.
But last month's fires struck black and white churches alike.
While only small Baptist churches were burned, four of the five
churches struck on Feb. 3 had predominantly white congregations.
All four of the churches burned on Feb. 7 had black congregations.
The weeks to come will bring endless speculation about the
suspects' childhoods, motives and relationships, all in a
useless effort to make sense of these crimes. Pundits, observers
and psychologists will try out theories, dig up old injuries and
assign blame.
Some will decry the emptiness and ennui that so often accompany
American affluence. Already, The Birmingham News has noted that
some friends claim DeBusk and Moseley were "Satanists." Cloyd,
according to the News, once wrote on his Web site: "Let us defy
the very morals of society instilled upon us by our parents, our
relatives and of course Jesus."
But it strikes me as just too easy to blame the devil for these
stupid, selfish, disrespectful crimes. You don't have to have
ever set foot in a church to respect the ideals that they
represent. You don't have to be a Christian to understand the
ugliness of desecrated sacred ground.
My sense of outrage is no doubt heightened by my own heritage --
the days, and, yes, the nights I spent at little piney woods
Alabama churches as a child, churches with names like Bethesda
and Bethany and Lighthouse. They were more than places for
Sunday morning worship. They were community anchors, keepers of
ancient memories and burying grounds for the revered dead.
Reverence, however, is something the three suspects apparently
never learned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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| User: "Geoff" |
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| Title: Re: Hey, folks! It's time to play "NAME THAT RELIGION!" |
13 Mar 2006 01:36:45 PM |
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<bg12345@apexmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142276733.093565.176670@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
Yes everyone, it's time for your favourite game show!
Tonight, we're looking at the recent burning of the churches in
rural Alabama. The first of our lucky contestants to correctly
guess will win his or her choice of six wonderful prizes!
Were the men who burned down the churches:
(a) atheists
(b) satanists
(c) methodist christians
It doesn't seem that their personal beliefs were a motive. Apparently, they
did it for some kind of sick thrill. So your question is a bit irrelevant.
But I sure am glad they didn't torch any libraries.
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Hey, folks! It's time to play "NAME THAT RELIGION!" |
13 Mar 2006 02:02:46 PM |
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Geoff wrote:
<bg12345@apexmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142276733.093565.176670@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
Yes everyone, it's time for your favourite game show!
Tonight, we're looking at the recent burning of the churches in
rural Alabama. The first of our lucky contestants to correctly
guess will win his or her choice of six wonderful prizes!
Were the men who burned down the churches:
(a) atheists
(b) satanists
(c) methodist christians
It doesn't seem that their personal beliefs were a motive. Apparently, they
did it for some kind of sick thrill. So your question is a bit irrelevant.
Not totally irrelevant: If you go over Christian post here you'll find
statements along the lines of 'Christians have superior morality'. This
events, like many others, show this to be wrong.
j.m.#1491
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Hey, folks! It's time to play "NAME THAT RELIGION!" |
18 Mar 2006 09:55:08 PM |
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On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:02:46 -0500, "j.m.1491@gmx.net"
<j.m.1491@gmx.net> wrote in alt.atheism
Geoff wrote:
<bg12345@apexmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142276733.093565.176670@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
Yes everyone, it's time for your favourite game show!
Tonight, we're looking at the recent burning of the churches in
rural Alabama. The first of our lucky contestants to correctly
guess will win his or her choice of six wonderful prizes!
Were the men who burned down the churches:
(a) atheists
(b) satanists
(c) methodist christians
It doesn't seem that their personal beliefs were a motive. Apparently, they
did it for some kind of sick thrill. So your question is a bit irrelevant.
Not totally irrelevant: If you go over Christian post here you'll find
statements along the lines of 'Christians have superior morality'. This
events, like many others, show this to be wrong.
At least the superstitious are consistent.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
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