I made this comment on a "would you die for your faith" blog:

I remember my principal at my jr high was a nun and a truly awful person and she used to brag to us all that if someone put a gun to her head and said "renounce christ or I will kill you!" she would gladly die rather than betray her faith.  I always thought this was idiotic, and pictured jesus in heaven screaming "YOU IDIOT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, JUST SAY THE WORDS AND GET OUT OF THIS!".  What parent would rather their child be murdered than be forced to say at gunpoint "I don't love my parents" or something?  It's insane.

I remember I wished I had the power to turn back time and undo anything I did so I could bring a gun to school just to see whether she was full of shit and undo it later (not to shoot her of course).

I think that most of the "I'd die for my faith" people are probably full of shit and wouldn't do it if it came down to it, though to be fair I have no way to test this hypothesis.  I think that it's just a way to feel good and strong and noble by a christian comparing themselves to christ, who is supposedly the ultimate role model because he willingly let a bunch of people brutally kill him for no good reason, and they'd like to think they would do the same.

I hope that no christian would, almost as much as I hope no one would put them in that situation to begin with.

I replied:

So far as the cross, it's a throwback to a more barbaric time, the idea that we suffer because god requires blood and pain and death for our sins. A primitive rationalization for the existence of disease and natural disasters and drought etc before we could get better explanations. This is very clear in scripture, if it doesn't rain and your crops die it's because god is punishing you, if it rains too much it's because god is punishing you more.

We know now that these things have zero correlation to religious adherence and that they occur because of the chemical and physical properties of the chemical elements, gravity, barometric pressure and various other forces.

Because of this notion that god requires us to suffer in order to be appeased and that that is why disease etc happens, during the middle ages when the plague was decimating the population priests would torture and mutilate themselves in the noble but misguided effort to maximize their own suffering and bring the end of the plague upon us sooner.

It's a really demented idea and a really monstrous concept of god, one which neither of us subscribes to I'd wager.

But 2,000+ years ago everyone did, and they tried to get out of their own suffering by mystically piling the sins of their tribe on an animal and then destroying it to destroy their sins and bring an end to the foul weather or sickness or whatever that they were experiencing, or prevent it. Then along came the christian religion, which is based on the notion that this vindictive god who can only be satisfied with blood decided to spare us by letting us torture his son to death in our place, and that somehow this sacrifice appeased god so much that we no longer had to do animal sacrifice.

The idea of a savior or a god sacrificing themselves for man is not uncommon. In greek mythology prometheus defies zeus, father of the gods and steals fire from the gods and gives it to man to protect them, because his brother epimetheus gave away the good traits, like fur to stay warm, claws, speed, flight etc to the animals and left nothing for humans.  Prometheus was punished for this by being chained to a bolder on the top of a mountain in the blistering sun to have his liver pecked out by a giant bird every day, and it regenerate every night forever.  The story of pandora's box is almost the exact same story as the story of eve and her apple. By some versions pandora was even the first human created by zeus.


This stuff is just mythology. It didn't actually happen.

A lot of people, especially those on tv whose opinions are bought and paid for in advance, insist the president hasn't gotten anything done his first year in office.

On the contrary.  Politifact's "obameter" keeps track of anything and everything he said he'd try to do in office, and he made 510 statements that could be called campaign promises. 

Of the 510 he's already kept 91.  275 more are "in the works" (many waiting for congressional approval) and so on.

 

The Obameter Scorecard

• Promise Kept 91

• Compromise 33

• Promise Broken 15

• Stalled 87

• In the Works 275
• 
  
• Not yet rated 2

At this pace he could conceivably be the first president in history to actually DO most of the shit he says he's going to do while in office.

And that's with the republicans doing everything they can to hold up congress.