On Apr 12, 12:57 am, Amy Guskin  wrote:
> >>On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:36:52 -0400, Carl wrote
>
> >> Nina Totenberg once said of Jesse Helms :
> > "I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the
> > Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice,
> > he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren
will get it."
>
> > [Can you imagine O'Reilly ever getting away with that?] <<
>
> I don't know what to say about this, because I don't think it fits the
> parameters of what we're discussing.  Howard Stern was once really, really
> upset with the head of the FCC, and on his show, he did a segment in which he
> prayed -- actually prayed to God and to Jesus, with appropriately heavenly
> music behind him -- for that guy to get cancer, painful cancer (I think it
> was specifically rectal cancer), and die.

Yikes. The idea of pursuing some kind of spiritual relationship with
the kind of god who'd actually *grant* such a prayer is more than a
little scary, and it's my earnest hope that no such being or entity
exists in actuality. In AD&D, for example, Gods of poison or disease
are typically of Evil alignment.

If the head of the FCC had been advocating cutting funding for cancer
research on the grounds that cancer sufferers are typically sinners
who've brought the disease on themselves, and if he'd advocated not
providing simple methods to greatly reduce the prevalence of cancer
(i.e. the equivalent of condoms), then this would be a little more
comparable, at least if the comments had been matched.

> To me, what Totenberg said is no different from things I've heard from
> Christian proselytizers after long discussions about the state of my soul.  
> It usually goes about like this: "It was really nice to meet you,
and it's a
> shame you'll be going to Hell."

I've had some interesting discussions with Christian proselytisers. I
usually agree to talk to them unless I happen to be too busy at the
time. I remember one time I was having dinner by myself in one of the
university cafeterias, and this guy came over and asked me if I'd mind
taking a quick survey. There was a series of questions (a 1-7 scale or
something) about things like whether I considered myself to be a good
person, and how often I read the Bible. He looked at my answers and
said something like that I was a reasonably good person but that
nothing less than perfection was acceptable to God, and that I had to
purge myself of sin completely by surrendering myself to God's will.

We got into a discussion, and at some point another gentleman came
along and joined in the conversation. He pretended he'd been looking
for the other guy, but to me it looked like the first person's job was
to screen potential recruits and the second person's job was to join
in once the first person got someone talking. Anyway, we got talking,
and I can't remember too much of the conversation, but towards the end
these gentlemen introduced the topic of premarital sex and tried to
convince me that I wanted to marry a virgin. I replied that actually
that wasn't the case, and that if a female relationship partner of
mine had been sexually intimate with others (or wanted to be such
currently, even) then that wasn't an issue for me as long as safe-sex
precautions were considered and there was honest and open
communication.

It's funny because this was the point at which the second gentleman
seemed to give up on me, realising I wasn't likely to be a suitable
recruit. And I can say that I've had other experiences where finding
out that I have liberal sexual beliefs seems to be a turning point in
the conversation where the proselytisers realise that they're wasting
their time. It's interesting that all the intellectual debate doesn't
get rid of them but that that does. So I guess that's kind of a trump
card that one can use if one gets tired of the conversation and has
trouble getting rid of them by other means. (Though in the above
example, it wasn't intentional on my part to get rid of them, as they
introduced the topic.)

I'm not sure how they'd respond to Paganism if I brought it up more
directly (possibly the same way). My answers are generally along the
lines of that I believe vaguely in some kind of spiritual force that
could possibly be described as God, but not exactly in the way that
they frame it. So I guess my description of my religious beliefs isn't
sufficiently oppositional to put them off me, most of the time.

Matthew
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