Anyone remember the scene from Shawshank Redemption where they are tarring the prison roof? and the "Red" character (Morgan Freeman) has a voice over about how it was just like being any group of men working on one of their roofs and they finish with a beer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ44hTuRDP0

*doublepromote

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/xuh28u/tosh-0-web-redemption---three-cheese

I think many Christians are holding their nose and voting for Trump because he is against abortion and will appoint conservative supreme court justices. There has been a strange kind of quasi-reality at the intersection of politics and faith, where the biblical worldview is kind of thrown out of the window. There are scriptures which warn us about these kinds of situations, and why America is in this position in the first place.

I hate politics, it is nasty and ugly and I don't think Christians should have much to do with it. God is our government and our faith is in Jesus Christ to bring redemption to the nation. As people turn to God we will start to see real and lasting change, and not before then.

Just as advertised. There is no redemption.

Glitching like Red Dead Redemption.

http://videosift.com/video/Holy-Shit-A-flying-horse

http://videosift.com/video/Red-Dead-The-abominable-Cougar-Man

http://videosift.com/video/Red-Dead-Redemption-Hes-Had-Enough-of-Living-Funny

http://videosift.com/video/Red-Dead-Redemption-Bloopers-Glitches-Silly-Stuff-2

Your video, Morgan Freeman Looks Back on The Shawshank Redemption, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Robot-Chicken-The-Arkham-Redemption

Just some guy who composed The Simpsons´ theme in the car on the way home from meeting Matt Groening.

Who could have imagined redemption was possible after Oingo Boingo.

upvote for "I'm gonna have to science the shit outta this".

Hopefully, this will be Ridleys sci-fi redemption after Prometheus.

Also, Matt Damon's gonna start to feel like directors really want to strand him on another planet.

abstinence is the answer. sex is sin. be ashamed of your body. seek redemption through christ.

ED is certainly one of the best games of the year. I got a HOTAS for it myself. Would love to have a Rift or even head tracking to support it.

Got to disagree with @shagen454 a bit on Shadow of Mordor which I liked a great deal. Wildstar was okay, but it and ESO both need to be F2P or B2P (ala GW2). AA, I dumped $150 on, and that is disappointing, though it was great at the time, I just burned myself out on it. Not as disappointing as Evil Within, my biggest regret of the video games I got this year. I agree Alien Isolation, was great, and I haven't spent enough time with Divinity to really evaluate it much. Hearthstone I can't even make it past the AI missions... lord I suck at video games.... probably shouldn't have got Lords of the Fallen given that I'm so bad at games as that game is brutal.

For others we have Gauntlet as a fun diversion, Hand of Fate, Nosgoth (been in since early beta), Road Redemption is a decent homage to Road Rash, South Park: Stick of Truth, Starbound, Zombies Monsters Robots is a fairly good F2P shooter... I can't remember if Kerbal Space Program came out this year or last... The Endless series (Dungeon of the Endless and Endless Legend)... The Evolve alphas (well, one alpha down so far, which was great and one coming this weekend, and more a next year game anyhow)... Titanfall was a great deal of fun.

At or at least near the top though is ED (I personally didn't stream it or make as many videos about it as I did others, it's still a great game). I'm glad I went with ED over Star Citizen, at least as they stand now. I seriously looked into head tracking, but it's just too pricey for me at the moment. I got a Thurstmaster X Flight HOTAS though off Craigslist for a decent price and that helped the game. I haven't updated it to Beta 3 yet, I'm sure I'll need to rebind stuff on the HOTAS and in Voice Attack... and this weekend is the Evolve alpha, so I'll probably be busy with that, especially as there is no NDA this time.

Pissing off Damon Lindelof? That's not a sin, that's redemption.

(Check out Lindelof's lame dis at 1:58. That's rhetorical fallacy a 12 year old could see through.)

I like him a lot.

He did a great job narrating The Shawshank Redemption.

Quite a few have fallen past me, I have no console, only play PC.

New Austin - Red Dead Redemption
Bullworth Academy - Bully
City 17 - Half Life 2
---
New York - Mafia
Trevelyan's Bunker (Cuba) - Goldeneye
2Fort? - Team Fortress 2
---
Nos Astra, Illium, Crescent Nebula - Mass Effect
---
---
---
Mario somethingorother
---
---
Panau - Just Cause 2
---
Rapture - Bioshock
San Andreas - GTA:SA
Skyrim - Elder Scrolls V
USG Ishimura, in orbit around Aegis VI - Dead Space
Vice City - GTA-VC
Midway - Battlefield 1942
XEN - Half Life
---
---

Meh. Keep yer X-Playwiis.