Choggs, "grabbing lunatic fringe" ?

I think not. perhaps you have your head in the sand but these views are held by a large majority of "christians" who are quite pervasive and are promoted daily in the media as "values" from people of "faith", instead of bigotry and hatred by the insane.

you say "most Christains don't know what it is they follow, in that they share with the athesit"

I'm sure we could say that about any demographic. how many people actually look behind the curtain of what they believe and why ?
Since when did Atheist "follow" anything ? If they did "follow" something I can't imagine it is because of their atheism. please give an example to help me understand what you mean.

I'd comment on your spelling, but mine is shit also.

I might be inclined to group this preacher with the tabloid trash you mention except for that he leads such a large "flock" and with quotes like this people need to be aware of this person and the threat he is.

HUTCHERSON: "In a democracy if we win, we get to impose our will on you and if you win, you can impose your will on us."

yeah pride.....no, at always grabbing lunatic fringe, and running it down according to yer own garp.....get's annoying....most Christains don't know what it is they follow, in that they share with the athesit....as for the combo of some whacked opportunistic preacher's grandstanding and the gay card, you got yerself some real Maury Povich.....This is tabloid trash, not someone's rights...

yeah he like ordered us around and shit.....hey qurel??? you still gonna vote for the she-thing, Clinton, because she's the most capable, professional politician?? Or is it her special interests, or her twisted stance on illegals???? ...or was that qualm...i get you 2 mixed up...one or the both of ya have the head up the ass, "Christains are the worst thing going" avatear.....

We could guilt-trip them into coming back to take care of their child??? Auction their collective after a month of inattention? Spam them with e-mails?? I like the 3rd suggestion.
I was once told when I first joined the sift, and noticed the usual, rabid counterpoint to anything remotely conservative, that going up against this type was like "knocking over chess pieces with a water pik" I chuckled at and appreciated the simile, and found this to be an adequate observation when applied to the dynamic between the faithful and faithless, (with regard to spirituality)....I like to look at it this way-
Those most rabid in their derision of religion, (and so-flagged, "conspiracy theories"), are invariably the folks with the most lop-sided, un-actualized and sophomoric world views. They tend to be insect-type personalities, who are satisfied being bound to the available sensory apparati, and have no room in their process for the unexplainable or metagnostic, unless that unknown factor is part of some scientific method or on-going codification or experimentation. This has everthing to do with imprint, experience, and exposure, and most of them will probably say, "Thank Bob, I was not imprinted with, or exposed to that, etc, etc, blahppity, blah blah, so many variations on a theme.

I propose a collective that encompasses the best of both worlds, the mundane and the supernatural. A pit, where the the zealots of both camps can preach, pontificate, and perhaps, proseletyze in.....call it, hell, God Vs.Satan, Black Vs. White, Light Vs. Dark...........

As long as the world spins there will be those bound to duality, meditating upon the differences of a single thing
kicking a horse without legs, trying to get the thing to move.......

You Christains can be preachy, lemme say, but those damn God-boppers must have some secret seminary somewhere as well....lioke I have suggested in the past, "Oh ye that have all the answers"....G E T A R O O M !!!!!

See how far Christains have come??? They don't use stakes or fire or Catholics anymore.......they burn em' down with the love of Christ!! and the fire of the Holy Spirit!!

http://www.videosift.com/video/Atheists-and-Christains-Unite-Embrace-the-Almighty-Slack

Seems more like a problem with insolent, spoiled, kiddies than anything of substance.....most of the atheist banter looks as if it comes from the youngsters....grown-ups in the group sometimes carry on a point-by-point rebuttal, or evoke the highly overrated goddess of intelligence....and then proceed to using her as a trungeon.

ALTHOUGH I think u wud have to be pritty dence to be a young earth creatoinist this vidoe is pritty stupid initself .

its fine to say sumone is wrong by a factor of something but then to try and abatreraly aply that factor to unrealated things is quite stupid and dosent actualy work. it would be better to have a clip that went over all the sources for evidence of how old the earth is and poke fun at young earth creatoinists ability to be ignorent.

i reolise this clip is just poking fun at christains but its ironik that in itself it is stupid.

it sickens me how christains use the same disproven arguments repeatedly where do you get your morals from. i think you will find that we get morels from the evalutoinary process. if i stick with a bunch of people and dont kill them then chances are i will live longer + have a suply of women to mate with + have food to live off . manny christains are like a whining child that has lost an argument but repeatedly asks the same questoin evan though its been anserd.

i simply dont understand how sumone can be religouse in the sence of beaing a muslim a christain a whatever. it seems people want certanty so bad thay will lie to themselfs to get it.

have believed for some time that parents need licensing, and must meet certain basic criteria for procreating....these parents just need a holy ass-kicking, from a brother with some sense, of course, this hayseeds friends are no doubt, cookie cutter renditions-like begets like-this is simply the fundamentalist Christian twist, on a time-honored method

This is why Kim Dung Ill, needs to be murdered, by a sensible, caring, and humane contingent of Humans being-and why Christains need to practice the fine art of pulling their heads out of each others asses.....this is not representative of all Christians,-why when most times you see the streams of comments from atheists. they talk of Christians like a bunch of racists saying "all niggers are alike", "They" all look alike to me". stc, etc.....same mechanism of hate-

i dont like the crowed atitudes and the woman is a right bitch and it seems she is just out to make herself feal better rather than to prove ore disprove annything. however would you have interlectual respect for sumone who constantly sead gibbons created the universe. you probably wouldent evan talk to them unless thay could construct a logical ratoinal argument. the problem the christains in this cannot evan provide a logical argument and are compleat morons every rubutal thay have is compleat nonsense. its probably more likely than not that interlectual christains think that thay are uterly retarded.

whats funny is that the Raelian belife is just as likely to be as true as christain ore muslims.

This clip has Demonstraited the Valid and worth while scientific debates that christain fundies creat. i think we should definatly get hawlkins working on a likely time span it would take for life to form in a peanut butter jar. i wonder what the best jared substance is for life to spawn.

lol i have muslim friends and jewish and christain and im sure thay are ratoinal on most things however i think its a grate shame for annyone to belive annything on faith alone like core components of most religoins. its not a dig at you its a dig at annyone who belives annything with no evidence and evan contraveaning evidence. im sure that the muslim faith has lots of scince and deep philosiphy in it like all religoins which is why i read into them all . but thats still no resoin to belive all of a sudden in "god" ore varoise things u religoins state are fact that you just cannot know. i think its iratoinal to catagorickly belive something as a fact that canot be proven u simply have to say "its something we just dont know right now" so at the piont that annyone wants to say thay are of a specifick religoin i think its a stupid thing for them to do. the resoin i sead the blow yourself up thing is i find steroitypical and generalized comments amusing. like if sumone called me a retarded gibbon for my bad spelling it could be amusing. however if sumone is to state something like you are stupid becuse u spell bad then that is more ofensive becuse it shows thay actualy belive that mantra.

She says that it wasn't the christians. Does she mean they didn't kill the black christains, or that the white christians didn't do the lynching. I not a big fan of Chris Rock, but I had to laugh at this.

Firstly - the issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This is an appalling crime, and one that is sadly prevelant in some parts of the Islamic world (I have studied FGM under the leading expert on women's rights in Africa - Dr Fareda Banda). However, it is important to be clear about the position of the Shari'ah with regards to FGM - and to do this I am going to have to provide a detailed explanation of some aspects of Islamic law.

Male circumcision is advocated by Islam - as it is by the Jewish faith. There is no dispute about this. However, there is a great deal of dispute about FGM. There is nothing in the Qur'an which advocates FGM. The most important source of Islamic law after the Qur'an is the hadith - sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The hadith were compiled about 300 years after Muhammad's death. While some are authentic and beyond dispute, others are not and have been held by scholars of Islamic law to be weak. The only possible justification for female circumcision is the following hadith:

"A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina [Madîna]. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: 'Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband." (Sunan Abu Dawûd, Book 41, #5251.)

It is important to look at the authenticity and strength of this hadith. The hadith is found in the Sunan of Abu Dawud - an important collection of hadith. However, the compiler himself - Abu Dawud - classified this hadith as "weak". A hadith can be classified as weak for a number of reasons - but normally it is because the chain of transmission (isnad) from the Prophet to the compiler is broken or incomplete. When this happens, it is often suspected that the hadith could be fabricated. Consequently, one cannot derive a legal ruling from a weak hadith. Therefore, the vast majority of experts in Shari'ah law believe that there is no justification for FGM in Islam.

However, FGM still exists in parts of the Islamic world, and the above quoted hadith is sometimes used to justify it. What is important to note is that in those countries where Muslims advocate FGM and justify it by reference to Shari'ah law, Christains also practice FGM and justify it by reference to the bible. In reality, FGM is a practice who's origins lie not in the religious texts of the major world faiths but in the barbaric traditions of traditionally male-dominated societies.

Secondly, I will try and qualify what I think Farhad means when he says that "Sharia is no in no way representative of the religion of Islam." Shari'ah in many of its modern manifestations is not representative of the rich traditions of Islam. Much of the rigidity which people associate with Shari'ah law is a relatively recent phenomenon brought about by a number of factors. For example, there was an inherent flexibility in classical Islamic law. For example, there were five schools of law (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Zahiri) who differed in their opinions on certain issues, and this gave Shari'ah an inherent pluralism. Judges could choose between the positions of the various schools, and exercise their own judgment in order to reach fair judgments. However, in the 19th Century there was an enormous amount of pressure put on the Islamic world by the West to reform its legal system - either directly, in the form of colonialism, or indirectly in the form of economic/military pressure - to change its legal system in order to facilitate trade with Europe. The result was that the Ottoman empire, during the Tanzimat reforms, instead of working within the rich Islamic legal tradition, simply got rid of Islamic law in many areas and replaced it with European style legal codes. The Islamic law which was kept was that which would be called in Western legal systems the law of personal status - family law, inheritance. But, what the Ottomans did was codify this law - they codified one of the key Hanafi manuals of Islamic law. A similar codification occured in India under the British resulting in what was referred to as Anglo-Muhammadan law.This codification - which has continued in recent years throughout the Islamic world - has removed the inherent flexibility and pluralism in Islamic legal thinking. It has meant that judges only have one opinion to choose, and it has also meant that many judges have stopped practising ijtihad - deriving the law from its sources. All progressive scholars in the Islamic world agree that the Islamic tradition of ijtihad must be revitalized. Scholars must turn back to the sources - Qur'an and hadith - and derive Islamic law which is appropriate for modern times, and which is flexible.

There are some important examples of ijtihad worth mentioning. In the sub-continent, the prevailing legal tradition is Hanafi. Under Hanafi law, the grounds on which a woman could apply for divorce were limited. However in a landmark case, the judges used ijtihad to ensure that women could divorce much more easliy. What they effectively did was adopt a position from Maliki law and extended it. In Tunisia, women have complete legal equality with men - in marriage, divorce, no polygamy, etc. Morocco has also made important advances similar to those taken by Tunisia. In both cases it is important to note that instead of replacing Islamic law, scholars instead embraced the flexibility and pluralism inherent in the classical Islamic legal tradition. They derived new Islamic law - based on the Qur'an and the hadith - which provided full equality for women.