Bullshit. Christians can and do wear religious iconography in jewelry, tattoos, clothing, and display stupid slogans, posters, statues, etc at workplaces.
They can't hold prayer services in some workplaces, and can in others. But why would you want that anyway? To be fair and legal, we would have to allow anyone and everyone to do the same. Do you want Satanists, minions of Mot, Soldiers for Shiva, Pagans, Norse, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindu, Pastafarians, Rastafarians, Wikans, Jedi, etc to all spend the day praying with a legal right to ignore work to do so?
This is about as rational as claiming there's a "war on Christmas" because some people don't say Merry Christmas reflexively two dozen times a day all December.

Really? Trumpeteers get beaten up for hat wearing? I seriously doubt it, please post the video.

Insulted, well, calling people in MAGA hats (not MEGA, can't even get your own slogan's acronym right) idiots, ignorant, or just brain dead morons isn't pure insult when it's so often just statement of fact. I've never met one willing to wear the hat in public with an IQ greater than 100 (paid talking heads don't count, since they so often turn on Trump as soon as he stops paying them), and I know plenty with an IQ seemingly well below 80 that won't leave the house without it.

Compared to those wearing an Obama or Clinton hat/shirt in the south over the last 9 years, MAGA morons are treated like princes and princesses.

Couldn't agree more with ya A.C. Mr Oldman proved himself TWICE with me when he played a wannabe rastafarian drug dealer in "True Romance" & again in 1997 when he directed Kathy Bates to a best actress award at the Cannes film festival. I've little doubt you've seen it, but to any sifters who haven't, I HIGHLY recommend it----------> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nil_by_Mouth_%28film%29

*Doublepromote
*Quality

Thanks for posting

CEREAL
"Snoop onto them..."
NIKON
"...as they snoop onto us!"

Soooo whaddya do, stand outside 9800 Savage Rd Fort Meade, MD and toss bottles and bricks at the windows?
Americans could do what the Brits did when their poncy government ass-fucked them and lay down and take it like a bitch, I suppose.

Oh hai, in the opening 10 minutes this guy rattles-off the addresses of the largest of the heads of the Babylonian hydra...I imagine an army of Rastafarians mounting a frontal assault, mon!

The I am your butterfly I need a samurai is a reference to this gem (as the top comment notes: Swedes singing a J-Pop song in English with Rastafarian dreadlocks -- true story.): http://youtu.be/zvCyrv3VpPc

got to love ithaca. spent 4 years of school there and this is the perfect cross section... peaceniks, stoners, hippies, idealists, professors, young mothers with darling children, young lovers, rastafarian street musicians...

@Bidouleroux

I think this needs to be clarified... When I refer to "atheists", I'm talking about the demographic that self-identifies as being atheistic. If we're talking about the best and brightest then, yes, I'd concede that atheists are, and I'm trying to minimize pretentiousness, of greater intellectual maturity and honesty than their religious counterparts. They, however, aren't representative of their demographic by definition; the best and brightest are a minority. Mature, open minded, intelligent, critical, Socratic individuals who think for themselves and take pride in the exploration of ideas are a goddamned rarity and, whether they identify as atheistic or rastafarian, they're not much different from one another in basic function. The critical analysis of ideas doesn't seriously take place, or at least it doesn't seem to... a congregation is split between the shepard and the sheep; ideas are absorbed from the figurehead, processed and adopted or rejected. The same thing occurs in secularists, atheists, humanists and so on; assimilation of ideas from figureheads or icons or humans who people feel represent their own sentiments better than they do. There's also a sort of intellectual osmosis, depending on the environment. Essentially, I've come to accept that people mostly adopt their ideas from other sources, and free-thinking individuals can do that and modify those ideas or cultivate concepts of their own, but do so on a much more active, serious, engaged level.

There was more here but it was essentially irrelevant, and I've been as excessively verbose as I'd ever like to be.

I'm more of a Live-and-Let-Live, PastaFarian RastaFarian............
......
......
um, what were we talking about?

Is there really a huge wave of test impersonators using a Muslim Niqab? I call bullshit on that. I also call bullshit on the Niqab being an impediment to communication. They're not taking acting classes. Don't tell me you can't hear what's being said through a veil. It's not a muzzle. It's a thin piece of cloth. I hear my stupid neighbors arguing across the fucking street every day. If you want to make this about security you have a real problem, because like I said, the onus is on them to provide security and that means everyone needs to be identified before the test, but they are not trying to identify everybody.

" There is a difference between private beliefs/practice and public behavior. Public behaviors are subject to reasonable regulation regardless of whether they originate from a religious belief or some other idea." ... "The only difference between a religious practice and an arbitrary choice is how many people follow it." ...

This custom has been around for over a thousand years. Long before the foundation to these schools were poured. In fact, longer than many nations have existed. It doesn't really matter, justifying these rights is part of the problem. They already ARE rights. Taking rights away is the issue and you all should be concerned when any government starts telling you what you can wear.

>> ^jwray:
There are some issues with covering your entire face in a classroom:
1. It would be easy for an upperclassman substitute to take an exam for you. This is a common method of cheating in large lectures where the teacher doesn't know people's names. ID badges would accomplish nothing at all, as you can give your ID badge to the impostor and the exam taker cannot be seen except for her eyes. DNA, retinal scans, and fingerprinting are a little bit too high tech for this specific application. The most realistic solution is to reveal the face of the test-taker so that it can be matched against the picture ID. Voice identification might be a viable alternative, but it is much more difficult to match a voice than to match a face.
2. It impedes communication severely by hiding all facial expressions and muffling the voice.

Additionally:
3. There is a difference between private beliefs/practice and public behavior. Public behaviors are subject to reasonable regulation regardless of whether they originate from a religious belief or some other idea.
4. Rastafarians don't get exemptions from relevant regulations for their arbitrary religious dogmas involving marajuana, either.
5. The only difference between a religious practice and an arbitrary choice is how many people follow it. What if I decide that my new religion is skivinism, whose religious practice is to skip class every Wednesday. The teacher better not mark me down for it, or he's voliating my FREEDOM OF RELIGION! If practices based on religious beliefs must be granted exemptions from various regulations, then so must practices based on individual ideas. There is nowhere to draw the line along the continuum from individual nutter, to small cult, to large cult, to small religion, to large organized religion.

There are some issues with covering your entire face in a classroom:

1. It would be easy for an upperclassman substitute to take an exam for you. This is a common method of cheating in large lectures where the teacher doesn't know people's names. ID badges would accomplish nothing at all, as you can give your ID badge to the impostor and the exam taker cannot be seen except for her eyes. DNA, retinal scans, and fingerprinting are a little bit too high tech for this specific application. The most realistic solution is to reveal the face of the test-taker so that it can be matched against the picture ID. Voice identification might be a viable alternative, but it is much more difficult to match a voice than to match a face.
2. It impedes communication severely by hiding all facial expressions and muffling the voice.


Additionally:

3. There is a difference between private beliefs/practice and public behavior. Public behaviors are subject to reasonable regulation regardless of whether they originate from a religious belief or some other idea.

4. Rastafarians don't get exemptions from relevant regulations for their arbitrary religious dogmas involving marajuana, either.

5. The only difference between a religious practice and an arbitrary choice is how many people follow it. What if I decide that my new religion is skivinism, whose religious practice is to skip class every Wednesday. The teacher better not mark me down for it, or he's voliating my FREEDOM OF RELIGION! If practices based on religious beliefs must be granted exemptions from various regulations, then so must practices based on individual ideas. There is nowhere to draw the line along the continuum from individual nutter, to small cult, to large cult, to small religion, to large organized religion.

>> ^notarobot:
"Faith based" perspective??? Which faiths have officially said anything about marijuana (other then Rastafarian)?? I don't recall pot being discussed in the Bible...


It's often translated as "calamus," but one of the ingredients of the anointing oil in the Old Testament was "keneh-bos." It's speculated that this may have been the same thing as the "cannabis" used by Scythians in religious ceremonies.

So yes, it does seem to be in the Bible--as part of the Temple ceremonies.

"Faith based" perspective??? Which faiths have officially said anything about marijuana (other then Rastafarian)?? I don't recall pot being discussed in the Bible...

>> ^RedSky:
blocked


Be thankful.. it really sucked.

Hulu and NBC are officially supported by the sift now as of 3.3, so you should be able to sift them.

In reply to this comment by Baera:
Yea, Hulu has it as well, but being a non-star member, I cannot use many embeds.. Oh well.

It sounds to me, gwiz665, as if your beef is not really with religion, but with malignant ideological authoritarianism. But this isn't a problem merely in religion. Communist China and the Russia are/were both atheist, and are both committed to the veracity of science, and yet their subjection to ideological authoritarianism has seriously set back scientific progress in both countries. Russia failed to study statistics after WWII, for instance, because it was perceived to be out of line with party ideology.

It has only been in areas of ideological tolerance--for both religious and scientific thought--that any major scientific advances have occurred in the last two hundred years. I believe your animus toward religion is misplaced. While religion has frequently been a transmitter of malignant authoritarianism, I would submit that this is not because of irrational elements within religion, but because of the widespread acceptance of religious thought. It was easier for authoritarian attitudes and ideas to spread through this medium as a result. If some other ideology becomes widespread, then it acts as the vector by which authoritarianism is spread. Communism acted as such a vector, as I noted, (Communism does not, in itself, mandate authoritarianism) as has nationalism in causing World Wars I and II.

Denouncing religion in favor of science will only render science itself subject to the same social and historical forces, thus perverting it and rendering far less effective.

In addition, your understanding of religion is, as I noted, extremely flawed. You do not seem to grasp the implication of "orthodoxy" versus "orthopraxy." Here it is: Primarily orthopraxic religions do not have creeds. Thus, there are no creeds to submit to. Only a general sense of what moral principles to act on, and the performance of a few ritual acts. This leads to vast diversity in all areas of thought, including the ethical. (Compare Stoicism to Epicureanism to Cynicism sometime. Then remember that they arose from the same culture with the same religion.)

"Supernatural" elements do not always require faith. "Faith" does not always mean "unquestioning belief."

During the Dark Ages--classified by historians as the first half of the medieval period, roughly 476 to 1000--there was relatively little religiously motivated violence. There was plenty of violence of other kinds, but Christianity was used as a tool to abate it to some extent. (There are exceptions, of course. There was the beheading of remnants of paganism in the Eastern Roman Empire, the bloody persecution by Charlemagne of pagans in the Saxon Wars, and the persecution of Norwegian heathens by King Olaf I. Without these three elements, there's a substantial chance some pagan religions might have survived.)

In the second half of the medieval period, the Crusades were not motivated merely, or even mainly, by Christianity. The Western Crusaders marching on Jerusalem murdered Christians just as readily as they murdered Muslims and Jews. They killed because they had been trained for war since childhood. Though there was a rise in violence caused by religion as evidenced by the Albigensian Crusades, which were religiously motivated, and the Inquisition.

I think it's obvious to some extent that aspects of most religions are in there to control the populace. But the same can be said of government. Government is far more explicitly "control over individuals way of life, their income, and their thoughts." Religion, in contrast, has far more often been an agent of change and rebellion in various cultures. That's how Christianity and Islam started--though there were elements of authoritarianism from the beginning. From a less authoritarian perspective, one also has Protestant Christianity, Sikhism, Mormonism, the Quakers, the Shakers, modern pagan revivalism, the Nation of Islam, Rastafarianism, Druze, and many more. Each of these religions was created explicitly to rebel against the authority structure of the day.

You really don't seem to have studied "religion" very much, Gwiz, and yet you're awfully quick to condemn it. I would recommend a great deal more study before consigning such an integral aspect of human experience to the great dustbin of history.