An Epiphany I've had about the Westboro Baptist Church

[stromboli]

I never doubted Phelps is a very bright guy. And I could also agree that he is a psychopath, and a very twisted one at that. Despite all the animosity against him, there are certainly people that buy into his rhetoric. But his congregation doesn't grow, so that is apparently not his point. All in all I agree with your statement, there is certainly some stuff going on behind the obvious.

And APA is right. He does have a formula that works.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I keep tellin you guys.. Make ChristianFuckBuddies.com the financial wing of atheistforums.com and you could fly us all to [insert sinful resort] once a month for shits n giggles with change left over. :)

[ApostateLois]

Some of you may have  heard about the recent deaths of 19 firefighters in a terrible forest fire in Yarnell, Arizona, which is close to Prescott, where I live. Their deaths were a blow to the whole community, and it has been touching how several cities have banded together to donate money to the families, some of whom lost their homes as well as their loved ones. The Westboro fucktards planned on picketing their funeral, for what convoluted and stupid reasons only they can possibly know. What they do is, they stand around picketing, and they wait for someone, anyone, to start trouble with them, because some of their members are lawyers and are just itching to file lawsuits that will leave families devastated. That is how bad they are. They are not funny or amusing anymore, they are horrible, horrible people who need to be stopped. I do not know why these cults are tolerated. I think that most other countries would have shut them down long before now, and put some of the members in prison.

At any rate, a strange thing happened on their way to Prescott: a bunch of people created a human shield, including 300 bikers (some of them from the Hell's Angels group), the Patriot Guard, and many locals. Check out this video, which makes me proud to live in Prescott:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tExseFVM ... e=youtu.be

The result is that Westboro reconsidered their plan to picket in Prescott, Arizona. These assholes CAN be defeated when enough people stand up to their bullying. And that is what they are: a cult of stupid, inbred, hateful bullies.

(How do you embed a video on this site? Doesn't seem to work no matter what I try.)

[BarkAtTheMoon]

I had an epiphany once. But a doctor gave me a shot and it cleared up.

[youtube:2vgsobsi]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsB2KGaX6bg[/youtube:2vgsobsi]

[GSOgymrat]

I can't stand Fred Phelps and his church. I think protesting someone's funeral, purposefully inflicting pain on people who have suffered the loss of a loved one and who are at their most vulnerable, especially for his own ridiculous political/religious agenda and ego, is particularly loathsome.

[Cthulhu's_Priest]

Westboro Baptist by no means represents all of Christianity, let me just say that much. The majority of us aren't hate-filled demons. Indeed, in my opinion, Westboro Baptist can't be considered Christian at all, not when they throw away every teaching of Christ in the name of their personal agendas.

[formality_is_key]

I think atheists obsess over the WBC because it's so extreme. It's not reasonable to compare Christianity with the WBC when there are roughly 80 members.

[Cthulhu's_Priest]

And as ApostateLois said, they're not a church, they're a cult.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Well..at least nobody is singing their praises. Anyone else want to say how shitty they are?   Its not as if theres a shortage of us not liking them so the more the merryer. :)

[Colanth]

I keep tellin you guys.. Make ChristianFuckBuddies.com the financial wing of atheistforums.com

Christianmingle.com beat us to it.  (That's "sign up to get laid but pretend you're doing it in Jesus' name.com".)

At any rate, a strange thing happened on their way to Prescott: a bunch of people created a human shield, including 300 bikers (some of them from the Hell's Angels group)

Hell's Angels seems to have a new chew-toy - WBC.  This isn't the first time Phelps & Co. had to choose between going home and climbing over a lot of bikes.

Westboro Baptist can't be considered Christian at all, not when they throw away every teaching of Christ in the name of their personal agendas.

There are thousands of Christian sects, most of which don't have even a passing acquaintanceship with the Bible.  

"Teaching of Christ"?  Paul speaks of a space-dwelling (or heaven-dwelling) Christ, not a man physically present on Earth.  Everything he knows about Jesus is either from the scriptures (which would have been the OT at that time, which mentions nothing about Jesus, because the Babylonian Jews who wrote it had no concept of Jesus, so it's all in Paul's head - deliberately made up or imagined) or Jesus "told him", but not being a physical entity, that's either fraud or schizophrenia.  Read the authentic letters and you'll see.  (Not everything claimed to be written by Paul is authentic - even most Christian apologists agree.)

The Gospels ... Well, Matthew is based on Mark and Q, Luke is clearly based on Mark and Q (and knows nothing of Matthew) and some original material (which the author states is his own interpretation).  John seems to be based on word-of-mouth renditions of the earlier ones.  Dates?  No way to tell.  About the only thing we know is that the first three don't mention anything later than 90 CE.  But a novel placed in the civil war wouldn't mention Sherman tanks either.  "Internal evidence", the only dating method possible for these works, is as accurate as guessing.  A novel that mentions Lincoln having been shot last night wasn't necessarily written on April 16, 1865.

We also have no idea who the authors were.  The gospels are clearly not historical renditions.  Not even Jesus' closest friends could have known his literal thoughts.  Much of the story is pure nonsense - like the inn.  Rome required that everyone return to his place of residence for their censuses, not to his place of birth.  That would have meant that Mary and Joseph would have been home, Jesus would have been born in a plain ordinary way (in his mother's bed), no wise men, no animals, etc.  Rome NEVER required people to return to their place of birth.

But someone writing a few centuries later might not have known that, and he'd be writing for an audience that wouldn't catch the mistake.

So please spare us "teachings of Christ" as if it's any less a myth than the teachings of Harry Potter.

[Cthulhu's_Priest]

There's no reason for that kind of venom. I accept that you disagree, but there was no call for an attack like that.

I never said anything about Paul. Paul was simply a man, and much of what he says is - in my opinion - completely invalid. I said that Westboro Baptist threw away the teachings of Christ - love your neighbor, etc. - in the name of pure, blatant hatred. Think what you will about Jesus, but his teachings were never malevolent.

And as for the ambiguous dating, well, I am of the very, very tiny group that don't believe the modern scripture is 100% accurate, that's it's been corrupted. Obviously none of us can know for sure, however, and you seem to be ignoring the many successful endeavors to chart an accurate timeline for the New Testament. The genealogies in the gospels help quite a bit with pinpointing the era. And please don't bring up the difference between the two genealogical records as if that invalidates scripture - one record was for Joseph, one was for Mary. I hope you have enough dignity to not try the cliche attacks.

And Bethlehem was Joseph and Mary's original residence. They moved to Nazareth some time after leaving Egypt (which they journeyed to to escape Bethlehem, you may recall). That much is clear from a dedicated reading of the scripture - which I would suggest to you, if you intend to afflict the comfortable for a few more years. It might help you if you understood the source material a little better. But that's simply a suggestion.

And the teachings of Christ? Regardless of what you think of the man (whether he was God or a psychopath), his teachings are valuable. How could you say that loving your neighbor and sacrificing your needs for someone else's are childish? Even if you think the religion is full of idiots and murderers, the teaching itself is priceless. It is far superior to something as useless and banal as Harry Potter, and remarks of that nature don't make your points any less insulting and incorrect.

I want to say again, for the record, I accept your disagreement. I am a huge believer in freedom of religion. And I hope I didn't make it seem as though I thought you were stupid. You seem very intelligent. If I did insult you in any way, please accept my apologies.

God bless you in everything you do.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Plenty of confirmed real people were preaching the "love thy neighbor" shtick long before Jesus supposedly existed. I will credit Gautama Siddartha before I ever credit Jesus.

Also, Harry Potter is amazing and you are a bloody heathen for thinking otherwise.

[Hydra009]

Westboro Baptist by no means represents all of Christianity, let me just say that much.

Of course.

The majority of us aren't hate-filled demons.

Hatemongers.  And yes, Of course.

Indeed, in my opinion, Westboro Baptist can't be considered Christian at all, not when they throw away every teaching of Christ in the name of their personal agendas.

A Christian who disavows an ostensibly Christian group.  How rare.

And often, these sorts of disavowals seem to be motivated not by any major difference in religious beliefs but by the fact that the organization is so thoroughly disliked that the tacit association has become embarrassing.  Curious.   :-k

[FrankDK]

While I strongly oppose violence of any kind, and am as far from recommending this as one could be, it wouldn't surprise me if someone exercised his 2nd amendment right and walked into their Sunday service shooting.  They might later picket the funerals of the victims.

Horrible and wrong, but poetic.

Frank

[Plu]

Most of the teachings in the bible are either so obvious that you don't need the bible to back them up because they're self-evident (like "love thy neighbour", which has been around since the dawn of time), completely worthless (like "don't eat shellfish") or actually bad for society (like god's apparent problem with homosexuals and unruly children, although those commandments are mostly ignored, except for the apparent problem with homosexuals).

So basically, the net gain from reading the bible is either zero (if you're already a sensible person who knows how to determine right/wrong on their own, because you'll have to discard a lot of it and already know the rest) or negative (if you copy all morals from the bible, which would turn you into a horrible person that would condone slavery, abhor homosexuality, and stone to death children for disobeying their parents, along with a handful of positive traits that everyone in the world who didn't read the bible will also have because they're common sense)

I don't see an added advantage to reading it, really. Good morals stand on their own. The best religion can do is teach dumb people morals by saying "this and don't think about it", but only if religion is imparted by someone who actually wants to help, for which the bible would be a terrible resource. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster works far better in that regard, because it leaves out all the horrible morals and preaches only the positive ones. The worst religion can do is teach people terrible morals, because those are indefensible (like hatred of people of a different faith or sexual orientation or whatever) except by invoking non-logical arguments like "god demands it, and no, you cannot ask him yourself".