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Mike Hampton's avatar

Yeah, yeah, every time I mention religion not being the BEST, a bunch of people unsubscribe. It's easier to be virtuous with a click than with knowledge yelling complicity (their religion must be convenient).

In my defence, those starving kids in last night's video (the post before this) are haunting my 4am, hence my splattering.

It's also Darkstar's fault because he commented that: "In my country , the land of bombs and tanks, people still justify this genocide. Why is that so? Because they were taught that good Christian people love Israel. When I ask why, they say the Bible says so. "

Chris Rock said: "When you’re black there’s like no religion to turn to. Christianity? I don’t think so. White people justified slavery and segregation through Christianity so a black Christian is like a black person with no fucking memory."

Marilyn Manson sang: "Each time I make my mother cry, an angel dies and falls from heaven. When a boy is still a worm, it's hard to learn the number seven. When the worm consumes the boy, it's never, ever considered rape." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj_vCNevsfY

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roger hawcroft's avatar

Losing readers who unsubscribe because they choose to be offended when one says something - usually only too true - which they don't like or with which they disagree, are not a real loss for their minds are closed.

As Jonathan Swift said, some 300 years ago: "It is useless to try to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."

Take care. Stay safe. ☮️

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Filtering isn't losing :)

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roger hawcroft's avatar

Sorry, Mike. You've lost me there - think perhaps we've misunderstood one another on that one or, perhaps it's just me that's not understood what you were intending by your first paragraph.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Filtering subscribers isn't losing subscribers, it's efficiency through controversy.

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roger hawcroft's avatar

I still don't understand. Please help me out.

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roger hawcroft's avatar

If someone 'unsubscribes', how can that be 'filtering'. Surely the first is the decision of the reader and the second would be the decision of the writer - therefore very different?

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Mike Hampton's avatar

By not pandering to political correctness, or choosing a side at the sake of another, I cause filtering. I create the goodbye door.

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Val D. Phillips's avatar

I have no problem with you criticizing religion--I enjoy it actually--but I just think I'm too tired to understand.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

I appreciate your diplomacy.

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Val D. Phillips's avatar

Trying to ‘like’ this and failing. Lol.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

I'll get it right for you - he he.

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roger hawcroft's avatar

Well written, well meaning, so timely.

I wonder if the Jesus referred to is the ubiquitous white skinned one of so many images - the one that seems strangely odd given his supposed birthplace and ethnicity.

Bob Dylan, in his usual inimitable way made a similar point with his song: "God on Our Side."

For those that don't know it, I'd also suggest listening to his much less well known, "Black Cross."

Surprisingly, given his Jewish heritage, his religious song period and what appears to be religious belief and his song "Neighborhood Bully" those first two songs I mentioned say it all.

Take care. Stay safe. ☮️

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Mike Hampton's avatar

I used the header image for that highlight. Dylan's lyrics are impressive, so I post 'God on Our Side' here so that others can know:

"Oh, my name, it ain't nothin', my age, it means less

The country I come from is called the Midwest

I's taught and brought up there, the laws to abide

And that the land that I live in has God on its side

Oh, the history books tell it, they tell it so well

The cavalries charged, the Indians fell

The cavalries charged, the Indians died

Oh, the country was young with God on its side

The Spanish-American War had its day

And the Civil War too was soon laid away

And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize

With guns in their hands and God on their side

The First World War, boys, it came and it went

The reason for fightin' I never did get

But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride

For you don't count the dead when God's on your side

The Second World War came to an end

We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends

Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried

The Germans now too have God on their side

I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life

If another war comes, it's them we must fight

To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide

And accept it all bravely with God on my side

But now we've got weapons of chemical dust

If fire them we're forced to, then fire them we must

One push of the button and they shot the world wide

And you never ask questions when God's on your side

Through many dark hour I been thinkin' about this

That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss

But I can't think for you, you'll have to decide

Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side

So now as I'm leavin', I'm weary as hell

The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell

The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor

That if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war."

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roger hawcroft's avatar

Yes, I wasn't criticising your use of that image, Mike, rather my words were an attempt to suggest a significant hypocrisy in the white version of Christianity, if not perhaps Christianity as a whole. :-)

Here are the Black Cross lyrics - though all the more powerful hearing them sung aloud:

This is the story of Hezekiah Jones

Hezekiah Jones lived in a place... in Arkansas

He never had too much, except he had some land

An' he had a couple of hogs and things like that

He never had much money

But he'd spend what he did make as fast as he made it

So it never really mattered that he had much money

But in a cupboard there, he kept in the cupboard...

He kept in the cupboard books

He called the books his "rainy season."

The white folks around the county there talked about Hezekiah...

They... said, "Well... old Hezekiah, he's harmless enough

But the way I see it he better put down them goddam books

Readin' ain't no good, for nigga is nigga."

One day the white man's preacher came around

Knockin' on doors, knockin' on all the doors in the county

He knocked on Hezekiah's door

He says, "Hezekiah, you believe in the Lord?"

Hezekiah says, "Well, I don't know, I never really SEEN the Lord

I can't say, yes, I do..."

He says, "Hezekiah, you believe in the Church?"

Hezekiah says, "Well, the Church is divided, ain't they

And... they can't make up their minds

I'm just like them, I can't make up mine either."

He says, "Hezekiah, you believe that if a man is good Heaven is his last reward?"

Hezekiah says, "I'm good... good as my neighbor."

"You don't believe in nothin'," said the white man's preacher

You don't believe in nothin'!"

"Oh yes, I do," says Hezekiah

"I believe that a man should be indebted to his neighbors

Not for the reward of a Heaven or fear of hellfire."

"But you don't understand," said the white man's preacher

"There's a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked..."

Then they hung Hezekiah high as a pigeon

White folks around there said, "Well... he had it comin'

'Cause the son-of-a-bitch never had no religion!"

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Mike Hampton's avatar

No probs. I was doubling down in agreement. This is the medium for confusion.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Those 'Black Cross' lyrics go hand-in-hand with that quote from Chris Rock.

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Johann Goergen's avatar

Nice! Had hoped when young, that by now, when old, the bane of stupid superstition otherwise known as religion would be a thing of the past. Alas, we are just an undirected evolutionary experiment, able to build rockets and computers, but unable to coexist. In large part due to the narrativ cover the idiotic superstitious provide. Clever monkeys lacking wisdom.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

I'm going to stick with Marilyn Manson this week, and compliment your comment with:

"If you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean

The worms will live in every host -

it's hard to pick which one they eat the most

The horrible people, the horrible people,

it's as anatomic as the size of your steeple

Capitalism has made it this way -

old-fashioned fascism will take it away!"

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Henry Brewer's avatar

Interestingly, those who worship Jesus are also worshipping a psychopathic evil Jewish god. Never mind that they completely negate the teachings of Jesus. The Christian church has turned the entire teaching of Jesus on its head. Maybe the Jewish God got better after Jesus came, but I highly doubt it, seeing what is happening in Palestine.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Christians stole from the Jews, and the Jews stole from others before them. The nature of religion is theft and adaption, but they're still the same family.

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Daniel Helkenn's avatar

There will be no chance at heaven at all for any American unless Israel has the latest weapons.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Yep, the fools supporting the profiteers want to be on the side of Armageddon.

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Paul Black's avatar

Naomi Wolf Read the 1560 Bible which states no need for "religion" to interface or commune with god. Satanists have inverted and corrupted everything

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Mike Hampton's avatar

I prefer Klein over Wolf, but I catch your drift. However, the bible stole from previous religions, so the propaganda is far older.

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.

4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.

5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.

7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

9. Do not harm little children.

10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

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AKcidentalwriter's avatar

Religion has always been a tool throughout history. Some of us just choose not to see it. Religion is part of history not separate from it.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Religion, unfortunately, creates interesting history.

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AKcidentalwriter's avatar

It definitely has and we are witnessing it in real time again in our time.

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Mike Hampton's avatar

Sadly, we never learn.

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