Why do 90% of black people vote for Democrats?

[Lorizael]

Also, it's not as if his views are too radical to be taken seriously. His views are, in fact, all too common amongst certain branches of humanity. It's the way that BK espouses his views that we take issue with.

[Lorizael]

I mean seriously, my philosophy is centered around the idea that the only thing worth doing in the universe is achieving omniscience by collecting all matter and transforming it into a singular entity that exists across all space. But yeah, BK must be soooo radical for sharing a belief with 2 billion other people.

[Lorizael]

Sorry for all the posts.

[Elok]

Oh holy ****ing ****.

I just... I... wow, dude. Just ****ing wow. I honestly have no idea where to begin.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I am. BK, you're the poster child for the decline of Christianity.

[Jon Miller]

I (mostly) don't read BK's posts and didn't in this case.

I think that Elok is right though.

JM

[Elok]

You have said that it was a tragedy, but you're also placing the blame squarely on the victim.

Rape is bad, but so are really short miniskirts...

[Hauldren Collider]

I think it's safe to say that some people on this board will think the worst of Ben for no other reason than he is a religious Catholic. I also think it's safe to say that most people simply read into his posts what they want to read into them instead of actually taking them for what they are. And frankly it is as if all this prejudice and hatred is not being levelled at a human being anymore but at some caricature of religious nuttery. Ben isn't a person to some people on this board. He's a bogeyman, or a witch who everyone can be comfortable with burning, simply because taking his views seriously is perceived as far too radical a proposition, so far outside the comfortable confines of our every day assumptions, that not only should they not be taken seriously, but their author should be demonised at every turn. Who shall everyone demonise next, I wonder?

Zev, he's also a complete moron anyway you slice it. I'm sure he gets a fair amount of heat from Asher just for being catholic but let's be fair here. Ben's retarded.

[Elok]

I think it's safe to say that some people on this board will think the worst of Ben for no other reason than he is a religious Catholic. I also think it's safe to say that most people simply read into his posts what they want to read into them instead of actually taking them for what they are. And frankly it is as if all this prejudice and hatred is not being levelled at a human being anymore but at some caricature of religious nuttery. Ben isn't a person to some people on this board. He's a bogeyman, or a witch who everyone can be comfortable with burning, simply because taking his views seriously is perceived as far too radical a proposition, so far outside the comfortable confines of our every day assumptions, that not only should they not be taken seriously, but their author should be demonised at every turn. Who shall everyone demonise next, I wonder?

The reason he gets treated as a caricature of religious nuttery is because he goes out of his way to present himself as a caricature of religious nuttery. He has a mindset of absolute, unquestioning loyalty to certain positions and has taken it upon himself to defend them to absolutely any extent, even if he has to lie a thousand times over in the process. He doesn't argue so much as shout down the opposition with a relentless stream of false evidence, strawmen, red herrings and sundry other fallacies. Sometimes his responses don't even begin to make logical sense--for example, in this thread (I think) I made the facetious claim that Obama killed Osama to take his place. BK responded with "I thought the War On Terror was supposed to be Bush's fault?" A complete non sequitur, he plainly just threw out something tangentially related to muddy the waters.

Note that Heraclitus believes, or at least believed, that brown people are racially inferior. Kid's theological positions are at least as unconventional as BK's. Neither one gets/got half as much hate. There's a reason for that.

[Elok]

While I've been posting a lot, I'd like to add that Elizabeth wasn't just one of England's greatest rulers; more importantly, she was one of Civ 4's greatest rulers.

[molly bloom]

Just looking at facts. Ulster itself is already majority Catholic.

Which is irrelevant as to whether union is likely. Catholics in the Six Counties enjoy access to abortion, contraception and divorce. Their Catholic brethren in Eire have to travel to Babylon across the Irish Sea... besides, ever wonder just how keen the Irish government is to have a sizeable Protestant minority on its hands ? And where do you think the money for the new citizens is going to come from ?

America is only 22 percent Catholic. That's a large difference between 42 and 22. There's a few dioceses which are majority Catholic, (El Paso, in the Valley, Rhode Island, Boston, Corpus Christi. Even my own which is San Antonio is only 35 percent Catholic.

And ? Checked future population growth figures for Hispanics (who are mostly Catholics) in the U.S. lately ? And that's just the recorded immigrants and citizens, and not the illegals.

Well since Molly can't be bothered to actually reference the incidents involved

Time and space. On the other hand, 'Croatian terrorism in Australia'- failry specific, I'd have thought. Besides which, we're in a forum where many people are sufficiently well-educated enough to know about the actions of various Latin American governments, from Argentina to Venezuela, where Catholic Church and State were complicit in state torture and repression in the twentieth century. The death of an Archbishop in El Salvador is one of the honourable exceptions in age where the Vatican and its hierarchy and representatives have too often sided with Caesar:

To those who bear in their hands or in their conscience, the burden of bloodshed, of outrages, of the victimized, innocent or guilty, but still victimized in their human dignity, I say: Be converted. You cannot find God on the path of torture. God is found on the way of justice, conversion and truth.

Oscar Romero

The fact that you can't dig any American examples up indicates to me that you are conceding that even in a country with only 1 percent Muslims, that they have committed more terrorism and killed more people than everyone else through terrorism in America, combined.

I wasn't looking for any. And I concede nothing to you, except your greater ignorance...

Does this lack of violence only count for modern America ? Because let's face it, Catholics killed off a substantial proportion of the population of the Americas through war, torture and enslavement and disease. But of course, that was all in the propagation of the faith.

In any case, I could cite numerous cases of terrorism in Great Britain committed by Irish Catholics- are you saying that Irish Catholics are uniquely violent ? I find this surprising, coming from such a family.

[molly bloom]

Yes, a war against Muslim invaders who overran and executed Christians. Gosh. Christians defending themselves? Who would have thought they would?

So the Western and Northern European Crusaders were defending themselves against the Muslim Sunni Seljuk Turks who took parts of Asia Minor and the Levant from the Byzantines and the Shi'ite Fatimids of Egypt ?

No they weren't. And what did they do when they captured Jerusalem ?

After the fall of the city, the crusades sacked the city, massacring much of the population, not limiting themselves to the Moslems, shocking even their contemporaries with the violence of the sack.

David Nicolle, The First Crusade 1096-1099: Conquest of the Holy Land , Osprey Campaign Series, vol 132

That's without all the Jewish massacres in Europe before they reached the 'Holy Land'.

yeah, we forget that the Crusades simply retook Christian lands.

No they didn't. But your ignorance of Mediaeval history is showing.

Right, where the Catholic France fought on the other side.

And ? Says much about the venality and self interest of Roman Catholic Cardinals, doesn't it ?

The persecution of the Recusants.

Are you seriously suggesting that the persecution of Recusants in Reformation England (many of whom simply had to pay a fine) is comparable with the mass deaths of Huguenots and their expulsion after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ? Even Louis XIV's advisers thought he'd ruined France to the betterment of Protestant Europe. As indeed he and his predecessors had- the first Governor of the Bank of England had Huguenot ancestry.

Admittedly a refugee from Alva's terror in the Low Countries, but Spain's loss was England's gain.

The execution of the Catholic priests by Good Queen Bess. The fact that it took 300 years before they could even vote again...

One of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence was also unenfranchised. So?
Unlike the Huguenots, English Catholics were not murdered en masse, nor expelled en masse. What prompted Elizabeth's treatment of English Catholics ? Could it be to do with the Papal Bull 'Regnans in Excelsis' and Papal and Spanish plots against her and her kingdom ? They suborned English Catholics to betray their ruler and country. So much for render unto Caesar...

Which is why England which was completely Catholic is now only 10 percent Catholic.

You don't think the corruption of the later mediaeval Church and the decadence of the Renaissance Papacy ahd anything to do with that ? How about the attraction of a faith which spoke to people in their own language- something which from Wiclif to Coverdale and Tyndale has proved strangely appealing in England.

As it does help being a lapsed Anglican

Unfortunately you're a convert. They're usually to be found on the more orthodox wing of anything they convert to. Not many liberation theology converts I'd imagine, more's the pity.

[molly bloom]

Ignorance is bliss.

You've clearly reached Nirvana.

[molly bloom]

Who killed far fewer than Elizabeth killed. The Tudor period is probably the darkest period of English history. The result destroyed England, and she recovered during the reign of the Stuarts.

So James Stuart left Scotland (a kingdom not noticeably richly endowed by the reign of his Catholic mother) to live in 'destroyed' England. So destroyed that a lot of his Scottish followers came with him to take up residence and enrich themsleves.

The Tudor ruin managed to provide England with a world language, not a an off-shore European one. A world literature, in Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama, the Bible (based in many aspects upon work by Miles Coverdale and William Tyndale) and trading links from Arkhangel to Istanbul and India.

Still, Charles Stuart managed to provoke a Civil War and lose his head, and James II Stuart managed to lose a country to his daughter and Protestant Dutch husband. Hmm, cracking dynasty, those Stuarts.

And don't mention James I & VI's enthusiastic 'support' for handsome young men....


Try Catholic history crack- you won't go back!

[rah]

90% of black people vote Democratic for one of two reasons.
1. They're too stupid to vote differently.
2. They're so smart that they know not to vote differently.

[Ben Kenobi]

Which is irrelevant as to whether union is likely.

Hardly so. The only rationale for the division between the two in the first place, is division by the creed.

Catholics in the Six Counties enjoy access to abortion, contraception and divorce.

Enjoy? You mean to say that they have a choice? Somehow I think that if they were permitted to have Home Rule, which is what they are desiring, that they would wish to do things as the rest of Ireland.

Their Catholic brethren in Eire have to travel to Babylon across the Irish Sea

And for that reason that the Irish have kept what they believe, while the English have not.

... besides, ever wonder just how keen the Irish government is to have a sizeable Protestant minority on its hands ?

The total protestants in Ireland at present is around 625k. Northern Ireland would add roughly a million. You'd have roughly 1.5 million protestants to 5.24 million Catholics. So the percentage would still remain 75 percent Catholic in Ireland.

By my count, the only dioceses in a united Ireland that wouldn't have majority Catholic, would be in Down and Connor and Dromore, at 32.1 and 44.8 respectively. That means that the only majority protestant areas are the area to the east of Loch Neagh.

And where do you think the money for the new citizens is going to come from ?

The Irish would be stronger with 6 and a quarter than 4 and a half. About a third stronger.

Checked future population growth figures for Hispanics (who are mostly Catholics) in the U.S. lately ? And that's just the recorded immigrants and citizens, and not the illegals.

As opposed to the Irish Catholics. Again, union is at this point, inevitable. Moreso because of the collapse in the number of Presbyterians.

Does this lack of violence only count for modern America ?

In this discussion, that is the topic at hand. Terrorism in America.

Because let's face it, Catholics killed off a substantial proportion of the population of the Americas through war, torture and enslavement and disease. But of course, that was all in the propagation of the faith.

I'm not sure how you can pin that on the Catholics other than the fact that they were there first.

In any case, I could cite numerous cases of terrorism in Great Britain committed by Irish Catholics- are you saying that Irish Catholics are uniquely violent ? I find this surprising, coming from such a family.

I would argue that the violent acts instigated by Catholics must be compared with those committed by the Orange order. It makes no sense to condemn the one and not the other. Thankfully, as the Catholic population increases, the troubles go away.