Sorry, my bad. You said 'creed' but what I actually heard/read was "it really rubs me the wrong way getting children to ritually repeat anything without understanding what it is." I have a horrible reading disorder

Upvoted for cute, but it really rubs me the wrong way getting children to ritually repeat anything without understanding what it is and thinking it through for themselves. This is religious thinking.

OK, I'm glad you tried though.
Actually I dismiss this as ignoring previous repeated public/biblical statements about god, Jesus, and the holy ghost being a single omniscient and omnipotent super being.
I've been told time and time again that Jesus "sacrificed himself for our sins". That means HE had control, obvious if he/3 is omnipotent, he has control over everything, knows everything, and free will is an illusion/lie...just like the cake. ;-) It simply can't be both ways. Either god is omnipotent or not. There's no such thing as 'partially omnipotent'....it's like saying 'part of infinity'....meaningless. (in case you are unaware, any portion of infinity is infinity)
If it was not intentional, and was all the doing of man, then Jesus didn't do anything FOR us in that death. So why do people thank him constantly? Why do people chastise others with 'Jesus died for your sins...so now you owe him your eternal gratitude'?
Man wouldn't need saving if god didn't CREATE sins to be avoided, or rules and rituals that must be observed (although oddly, every religion interprets the rules differently, even those that take the rules from the same book, which should be impossible if it's really the 'infallible word of god', no? Why would He make his definitive requirements so impossible to understand and follow, unless he's really closer to Loki in temperament and is really just screwing with us all), or punishment for being 'confused' about what's reality and what's not: Hell....or if god doesn't exist, or if god's existence and/or sin is unknown to a person.... (WHAT? What kind of rule system is that?) Reminds me of a joke too....

Aborigine asks the missionary :"So, you say God would not have punished us for sinning if we did not yet know about him or sin, and we would have all gone to heaven?"
Missioinary replies: "Yes, God is compassionate, and would not punish you for not knowing something you could not know, or not knowing rules you had not been taught."
Aborigine replies: "The why the f#ck did you tell us! Asshole!"

No, you misguided fools, Thursdays is beer pong, whilst Wednesday is for flip cup and hooking up with other followers of Thor. As long as you honour your ancestors, we don't care who you hook up with. Heck, if you wanna marry a shoe, we'll marry you.

The weekend is the holiest of holy days, as we observe the sacred rituals of watching sporting events, and playing video games. I'm just saying, we have a pretty great church here. As long as you pitch in for buying kegs and food, and make sure everyone passes out on your lawn, or takes a taxi cab home, the Church of Thor will welcome all!

Your video, Circle of Abstract Ritual, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Circle of Abstract Ritual has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy on that post.

What I call "good" is acting according to the golden rule...treating others as I would have them treat me. That means always honestly, even when it's uncomfortable. You don't need to know the 'truth' to not lie. It also means thinking before acting of the possible consequence to others as well as myself.
I agree, if thought crime is the same as real crime, I'm a terrible person, but I prefer to judge people's actions as I think it gives better insight to who they are.
If judged by the 10 commandments, I'm still hosed simply by not believing in the unbelievable. I would guess that if thought crime counts on that front, heaven is an empty, lonely place filled only with Asperger's sufferers and other abnormaly brained people, as those requirements are not possible for normal humans.

Heaven is filled with people just like you and me, who absolutely cannot qualify to get into Heaven on account of their own righteousness. When you stand before God you will be judged one of two ways, either by your righteousness or the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is credited to your account through faith. No one has what it takes..I screw up all the time but God is always there to help me. Through His help I am doing a lot better than I did, but I have a long way to go. I didn't and still don't deserve anything God has done for me. Put your trust and faith in Jesus and you will be prepared for eternity.

Your plane analogy doesn't hold water. Instead of jumping from a plane, I think it's more like being led, blindfolded and deafened, to a doorway, being told by dozens of people the differing things they are CERTAIN are on the other side of the door (but not one of them has ever seen it open) and deciding to trust one line of belief and putting that parachute on because your guy said you're on a cliff and need a parachute, but you might as easily be underwater and need scuba gear instead, then your parachute is a trap, or in space and it's just useless, etc.. Since there's no way to know what's beyond the door, many prefer to go unencumbered by anything, accepting it's likely there's absolutely nothing there, but ready for what may come. In the unlikely event that in the end there is a just god there judging my life, I feel I'll be fine unless ritual is more important than action. It's not a possibility I feel is likely.

Only God can reveal Himself to you. It won't be because you feel the possibility is likely that suddenly you will start to believe. I didn't believe it was likely either; the last thing in the world I imagined would happen was that I would become a Christian. It is only because God gave me personal revelation that He is real and Jesus is His Son that I became a Christian. God is knocking on your door right now, and if you choose to open yourself to what He wants to show you, He will reveal Himself to you as well. That's what happened to me; He didn't just make it clear, He made it crystal clear and He'll do the same for you too. Ask Him to show you what the truth is so that you do not have to deal with possibilities. Pray and ask God to show you whether He is there and Jesus is His Son. Read the gospel of John and pray and ask God to show you whether it is true or not. God isn't hiding from you, it is simply a matter of whether you are willing to repent of your sins and turn to Jesus, or not.

I half agree with both points of view. First of all, doing it your own way is fine, it's not doing it 'wrong' or being rude. So long as you're not talking with your mouth full, you're golden.

But if you see it as time honored suggestions for how to enjoy the experience more; that's both useful and interesting. I'd love it if we could have conversations about how to enjoy food without any snobbery.

But honestly for some people the joy of superiority is most of what they get out of it. For them these rituals are not about the food, it's about identifying the lower class who don't know what the tiny fork is for. Or in this case, when to eat the ginger.

Why are people so against learning how to appreciate food or drink?

In many cases with these things, there are decades or even centuries of tradition and experience that have gone into this little rituals that are part of the theatre of food or wine or whiskey.

Besides, especially in the context of a culture that's not your own, disregarding the cultural norms is just rude and ignorant.

What I call "good" is acting according to the golden rule...treating others as I would have them treat me. That means always honestly, even when it's uncomfortable. You don't need to know the 'truth' to not lie. It also means thinking before acting of the possible consequence to others as well as myself.
I agree, if thought crime is the same as real crime, I'm a terrible person, but I prefer to judge people's actions as I think it gives better insight to who they are.
If judged by the 10 commandments, I'm still hosed simply by not believing in the unbelievable. I would guess that if thought crime counts on that front, heaven is an empty, lonely place filled only with Asperger's sufferers and other abnormaly brained people, as those requirements are not possible for normal humans.
Moral perfection is an impossibility. What's morally perfect from one viewpoint may not be from another.
Your plane analogy doesn't hold water. Instead of jumping from a plane, I think it's more like being led, blindfolded and deafened, to a doorway, being told by dozens of people the differing things they are CERTAIN are on the other side of the door (but not one of them has ever seen it open) and deciding to trust one line of belief and putting that parachute on because your guy said you're on a cliff and need a parachute, but you might as easily be underwater and need scuba gear instead, then your parachute is a trap, or in space and it's just useless, etc.. Since there's no way to know what's beyond the door, many prefer to go unencumbered by anything, accepting it's likely there's absolutely nothing there, but ready for what may come. In the unlikely event that in the end there is a just god there judging my life, I feel I'll be fine unless ritual is more important than action. It's not a possibility I feel is likely.

Not unlike humans, the dog has been trained to perform a ritual for a reward he may or may not receive.

These comments are fun. Sounds like a bunch of old men, sitting on the porch yelling at the kids on the street.

"Stop foolin' around with that wood out there. Don't jump your bicycles over that! Get out of the road!!"

Take risks when you're young because the negative consequences are mostly restricted to your own stupid self. Later in life you'll have too many responsibilities and obligations. We've given up a lot in our modern societies. By sanitizing and padding our life experiences, we've lost the connection to the deep animal part of our brain.

There are still places in the world, even first world industrialized nations, where public ritual includes personal risk. Community celebrations that tap into our hidden animal instinct with displays that overwhelm all the senses. This is a powerful way to build a deep sense of tribalism and community, to draw people together into a supportive whole.

Tomorrow many of us will enjoy the July 4th celebrations. Sitting comfortably in our folding chairs with portable BBQs and coolers; behind ropes and guard rails designating a safe area to stand...emergency response vehicles in attendance. We'll enjoy our safe, convenient family activity then curse the traffic on the way home, inside steel boxes with triple air bags. Later on we'll feel slightly unsettled by the neighbor kids setting off bottle rockets around the block. Somewhere else in the world, they'll light a bonfire the size of your house and sing songs while they watch the young people trying to see how far they can walk into the flames. They'll feel the heat, see the light up close, sense danger and ultimately give up a piece of themselves to the crowd and the untamed thing that lies below sensibility.

I'll take the bonfire please.

OK, if you KNOW there's no good reason for it and do it to your child anyway, that's more barbaric. If you believe, because of misinformation, it's a good thing for the child and is safe, to me it's much less barbaric. People do harmful things all the time trying to do the right thing, intent and level of understanding should be considered when judging others, that's all I'm saying.
and in your analogy, I would be semi OK with that (if there's a male equivalent so it's not just sexist mutilation) because the social issues of not being accepted are far worse than having only one nipple, totally OK with it if it's by choice at the accepted age of choice or 'adulthood' (even if the other choice is leave the tribe).

EDIT: same hypothetical, is it OK if it's explained that they have to remove the nipple because otherwise they can't use the tools available needed to hunt without constant, often deadly bloody and infected hardcore nipple chafing, and so they would either likely starve or would likely be killed at birth because the tribe couldn't support them?

I'm 100% OK with the rituals of the 'alligator people' in Africa that cut themselves to look like they have alligator skin, done in adolescence or later by choice as I understand it, and that's certainly 'barbaric' by most standards.

There is no special procedure in these matters.
You just leave a note, and then go about your business.
They will contact you whenever they return to the damaged property, you exchange insurance info, and deal with it.
Nothing else to it. No rituals. No special calls or reports. No authorities to inform. It's between you and the property owner.
And unless you have some reason to believe that they will return any moment, waiting around for them to do so is pointless. So yeah, you leave.

I believe you may be confused by my statement "his insurance will cover it".
The "he" in that statement, was the sub-contractor who's saw flew off.

-scheherazade

You can sign me up @bareboards2. If there were some broad agreement on terminology I would switch to gender neutral language instantly. Fucking sick of it.

Coincidentally I was thinking about this just this afternoon, because luckily I have nothing better to do at work than stand around contemplating gender politics; pleased and proud as I am of genderqueer crusaders trying to wrestle pronouns into shape, I've been generally unwilling to join them. For fuck's sake, I spend enough time every day arguing about the excess syllable in the number sev, I can't afford to multiply that by every sentence with a person in it.

Singularising plural pronouns is offensive to me on a practical and aesthetic level, Spivak's no damn good, you've got your zes and your hirs and your hens, it's a pain in the ass but as soon as we get some consensus and momentum it's going to be cool.

Can't see that feminism really has anything to do with all this, well, I have trouble seeing that feminism has anything to do with anything. Not to go all Trancecoach here with male world problems but they're similarly told that to be professional they have to knot a piece of cloth around their neck for no reason or slice the hair off their face every day for no fucking reason. The situation is that we have a bullshit tribal culture with endless absurd customs and arbitrary rituals which is perpetuated by morons.

So we should always be rationalising - language, culture, behaviour, expectations.

Gender neutrality is obviously the way to go. If you get shoved in a box you don't become the champion of the box and work to make your box the best box it can be; you break out and start beating your captors over the head with box fragments.

I don't give a fuck about women's problems; I don't give a fuck about women, but I'm glad to consider anyone who stops wearing makeup a part of my team because I don't wear makeup for the same reason I don't shave my stupid face.

Anyway that was my choggie impression for the day. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep, not enough time spent bathing in the blood of my enemies.