http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Article&cid=1139699409785&call_pageid=968867495754
[excerpt]
A brief history of blasphemy
In the West, making fun of the sacred is a sacred rite in itself. It took a
long time to get there
Feb. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM
ANDREW CHUNG
TORONTO STAR
In a recent episode of the hit animated TV show The Family Guy, a
white-bearded God invites Adam and Eve to take a load off under any tree in
the Garden of Eden.
Except, he says, for the one shading his porn collection.
A few hundred years ago, the very idea of God as smut connoisseur would
likely have led to the slow death of everyone involved with the show. The
most likely reaction today is laughter on the living room couch.
In contemporary North America and Western Europe, there are countless
examples of blasphemy, variously defined as the gross contempt of God or
irreverence toward the sacred.
But instead of eliciting shock, nowadays it works to establish cultural
cred. To many in Western society, blasphemy as sin is a foreign concept.
When the Fox network cancelled Family Guy, fans invoked the term.
"Blasphemy," they cried on the Internet.
Blasphemy has become an accepted trope in our cultural landscape, taken as
integral to the free exchange of ideas and deemed worthy of protection.
In New York, no one blinked when a painting recently showed the Virgin Mary
spanking the baby Jesus. In 1999, critical acclaim accompanied a depiction
of Mary adorned with porn images and elephant dung. In the '80s, a photo
called ***** Christ became infamous for its depiction of a crucifix immersed
in a cup of the artist's urine.
Don't forget Madonna's eroticized video "Like a Prayer," which propelled
her to greater celebrity, or Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of
Christ, whose controversy only helped it at the box office.
But the road to this point has been bumpy and long — thousands of years
long — and, as evidenced by the ongoing violent protests over a Danish
newspaper's cartoon depictions of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, not followed
by everyone.
If there were social developments driving the West's acceptance of
blasphemy, surely they would be the rise of individuality, science and,
ironically, blasphemy itself.
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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