"The modern interpretation".

Which brings it in line with the original intention of the document. I.e. the people are the militia and they have a right to bear arms.

"I can't imagine that Franklin would have expected that children should go to elementary school in fear of being murdered by their classmates either."

I'm glad you can't imagine it, because statistically it's occurrence is almost zero. They should fear this no more than fearing being eaten by a shark, struck by lighting, or killed in a plane crash.

"with a few lobby organizations like the NRA"
Why are you including the NRA? At the last presidential election they didn't even make the top 50 contributors.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/318177-lobbyings-top-50-whos-spending-big

Does this change your assessment?

The word "militia" comes up time and time again in those founding documents. That the citizens should have access to arms as party of "a well regulated militia."

The modern interpretation of the second amendment has done away with the idea that a citizen ought to be a part of an organized militia to bear arms.

The founders of the US said other things too:

“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

I imagine that Franklin thought the republic would need defending against other monarchies, not from large corporations who, after centuries of wealth concentration would, with a few lobby organizations like the NRA, become the de-facto unelected rulers of the land.

I can't imagine that Franklin would have expected that children should go to elementary school in fear of being murdered by their classmates either.

Modern interpretation of the "Turn the other cheek also" bit and the rest of the "sermon on the mount" ignore cultural context. There's tons of commentary about it if you Google it. Jesus was teaching passive resistance. Not that he necessarily existed at all.

Anyway, he goes on whith the old trope about aksing contrition allowing wrong-doers to do more wrong without consequence. The point of contrition is that if you have to openly, verbally acknowledge your sins, you become more aware of bad things you do, and are less likely to do them again. Raised Catholic myself, until I left the church, I avoided doing bad things because then I'd have to confess them. People who delight in others' suffering aren't the type to get all contrite about it. It's a strawman argument. He equates, "cleansing of unrighteousness" with forgiveness, though they're not the same thing. Unrighteousness is the defect that causes you to do bad things. If you sincerely believe you have been cleased of it, then you will have to choose to act against your god to reoffend. It's a pretty smart system. He also assumed that forgiveness also wipes away contrition. It doesn't. It just clears your heavenly ledger of sins that will be counted against you when you die.

And he really goes wrong with, "Love your neighbour as yourself." He's not commanding people to have loving feelings towards their neighbour or themselves. That's impossible to comply with. It's not love as a feeling, it's love as action. He's commanding people to treat everyone well rather than to harbour grudges and be a bitch, which only leads to escalation. If everyone treated everyone else decently, the world would be a much more comfortable place to live, and we'd all prosper more easily.

Further, it means if someone does something bad, and you show them love, it's more likely to change them in a good way. If you show them hate and contempt and "take pleasure in their suffering", it's just going to make them a worse person, and someone who has already shown a tendancy to do bad things is exactly the wrong person to make worse. You can love someone while protecting yourself. It's way, way out of the Western concept, but it's common in other places to punnish someone, even severely, with love.

The worst is the selective interpretation of "...as yourself." This means "Love your neighbour as well as yourself." It's an extention of your own love to you. When you love yourself, you'll treat yourself better, take care of yoruself more, show yourself more understanding. The result will be your having more love to share with others. I'm totally down with that.

So, you and I are talking about confirmation bias in another thread. Do you think that as an anti-religious person in general, you feel satisfaction when you are shown fault in religious teachings? Does it satisfy you to the point where you might not really analyse what's being said? Looks to me that's what's happened here. You were looking for someone to agree with you, and someone slamming Jesus' main teachings hit the sweet spot. I dislike religions too, and enjoy people like Hitch and Tyson, and to a lesser degree Dawkins doing their thing, but this is really weak soup.

>> ^hpqp:

Quote mine: fallacy of quoting out of context.
Care to illustrate how his citation of Bible verses is such?
As for recycling other people's arguments, that's pretty much what everyone does, some with more eloquence than others of course.
>> ^messenger:
He quotemines the bible and recycles others' arguments only to demonstrate that Jesus wasn't a very good god.

I like both versions of Willy Wonka and I don't feel they can really be compared. Depp's Wonka version is supposed to be creepy, without the twinkle, and the whole movie is a bit darker ( IMO anyway ). The cheap duplication of the midget for the Oompa-Loompas was a huge disappointment though. I really looked forward to the modern interpretation of them.

>> ^T-man:
Why the hell did they remake this movie. Gene Wilder is Willie Wonka. He has that devilish quality but he also has that twinkle in his eye that was missing with Johnny Depp.
[And Tim Burton is grossly over-rated as a director.]

>> ^shuac:
Well, in reference to the fellow with the gray goatee, name-calling is the wrong approach. I've always based my atheism on the following two things:
1) There are a hundred ancient gods which have all been discarded: Thor, Zeus, Isis, Apollo, Osirus, et al. Why?


There's also other religions that are all but forgotten now, too. Zoroastrianism for example. Zoroaster was the first man to (allegedly)go out in to the desert and get the idea for "One god, One devil" who would do battle for however many years, 12,000 I believe it was. Zoroaster was born of a virgin mother, started his own religion (Zoroastrianism) and was a man with long brown hair, and a beard. Basically the modern interpretation of Jesus.

The kicker is, Zoroaster was born first. Then in the timeline of religions, Buddha was the next to be born, again of a virgin mother, started his own religion after getting some spiritual beliefs.

Then came Christianity. with its virgin birth..again.. with a son who had his own beliefs, again.

It's basically stories like these, that make it hard for me to believe in any religion. I'm not an athiest, more agnostic then anything. But i'm still a firm believer in evolution, and this museum is just a sick way of trying to warp the minds of younger children.

That entire room without god, all i was able to make out for the most part was
a bunch of magazines with "Gay" in the title.