(January 16, 2015 at 6:20 pm)abaris Wrote:

(January 16, 2015 at 6:14 pm)Davka Wrote: I already know all the right buttons to push, having been a gullible evangelical myself for so may years.

Try to preach evangelical in Europe. You'd be surprised how few people would give a shit.

That particular poison only seems to work in America and Africa.

yeah, well, you need to start with a poorly-educated, highly superstitious population.

it's so fucking embarrassing to be an american sometimes.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:23 pm)Davka Wrote:

(January 16, 2015 at 6:20 pm)abaris Wrote: Try to preach evangelical in Europe. You'd be surprised how few people would give a shit.

That particular poison only seems to work in America and Africa.

yeah, well, you need to start with a poorly-educated, highly superstitious population.

it's so fucking embarrassing to be an american sometimes.

I might have mentioned it before, one of the recent selling points the Vatican has been making is all the diversity with the new bishops and Cardinals. Thing is most of them are coming from less educated and poorer countries.

I will say even with all these attempts at turning back the clock in the states that the right wing is making, younger generations socially, not so much economically, but socially are not buying the bigotry of their parents and grandparents.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:26 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I might have mentioned it before, one of the recent selling points the Vatican has been making is all the diversity with the new bishops and Cardinals. Thing is most of them are coming from less educated and poorer countries.

Yeah well. They're outsourcing too. Only in Austria, where I live, they're losing 54.000 members a year according to recent statistics. With Austria being a small country with only 8 million people, this figure is rather high.

But the Catholic church has one advantage compared to other more literal denominations. They've made an art out of bending and shaping.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:23 pm)Davka Wrote:

(January 16, 2015 at 6:20 pm)abaris Wrote: Try to preach evangelical in Europe. You'd be surprised how few people would give a shit.

That particular poison only seems to work in America and Africa.

yeah, well, you need to start with a poorly-educated, highly superstitious population.

it's so fucking embarrassing to be an american sometimes.

I know that feeling all to well......

(January 16, 2015 at 6:32 pm)abaris Wrote:

(January 16, 2015 at 6:26 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I might have mentioned it before, one of the recent selling points the Vatican has been making is all the diversity with the new bishops and Cardinals. Thing is most of them are coming from less educated and poorer countries.

Yeah well. They're outsourcing too. Only in Austria, where I live, they're losing 54.000 members a year according to recent statistics. With Austria being a small country with only 8 million people, this figure is rather high.

But the Catholic church has one advantage compared to other more literal denominations. They've made an art out of bending and shaping.

Not sure how long that can last. It was easier to do when media was much more limited. But it is huge now and growing and news gets around the world in a nanosecond now.

And that isn't just with religion, politicians as well if they flip flop it will get shown and exploited.

Romney is screwed after his 47% comment and Jeb Bush is going to have problems running now that his own mother said "We don't need another Bush in the White House"

I don't see the institution dying anytime soon, but it is going to be increasingly harder for them to spread bigotry or censorship.

(January 16, 2015 at 5:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(January 16, 2015 at 5:21 pm)goodwithoutgod Wrote: A pyramid scheme based on fear, and founded on fiction. Money goes up, nothing of tangible, intrinsic value comes down...

Even the idea of religious charity has the opposite affect they claim it should. If churches cared about the poor, they would put pressure on government to invest and pressure on businesses to pay well. Charity is good, but it should be a last resort.

Same with business charity, it is also PR. All that money they get in tax breaks and tax write offs for donating, if they put it into better pay and benefits they would get that less dependency they say they want.

The way charity works now keeps people desperate, good PR for churches and businesses but lousy for workers.

Hitchens wrote a book about Mother Teresa, very scathing indictment.

Huge fan of hitchens, I have all of his books.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:50 pm)goodwithoutgod Wrote: [quote='Brian37' pid='847885' dateline='1421445036']

(slaps bible out of hand) fuck your bible give me a burger.

I love Hitchens too, but titling his one book "The Portable Atheist".......HOLY FUCK! You need a forklift to lift that book. The Yellow Pages looked at it and said "DAMN!" I threw my back out lifting it. "Portable" my ass.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:54 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I love Hitchens too, but titling his one book "The Portable Atheist".......HOLY FUCK! You need a forklift to lift that book. The Yellow Pages looked at it and said "DAMN!" I threw my back out lifting it. "Portable" my ass.

you need a semi too take all the parts of the book with you.
i opted for the 1TB ebook copy.

(January 16, 2015 at 6:54 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I love Hitchens too, but titling his one book "The Portable Atheist".......HOLY FUCK! You need a forklift to lift that book. The Yellow Pages looked at it and said "DAMN!" I threw my back out lifting it. "Portable" my ass.

looking at it right now, his "arguably essays" is twice the thickness of the portable atheist