Aspies For Freedom

You can't say Jesus didn't bring home the bacon, huh?

Oh, sorry, that's right, I am a Gentile.

"Eat anything you want in the meat market without guilt, because the earth is God's and all that is in it.'  -Paul

Maybe I'll try and look that up.

Though a lot of Christians, notably SDA, decide that it is healthier to live without meat or certain types or certain amounts.  Me, the best I can do is meat in moderation.

An adult only needs 3 oz. of meat at a serving.

Of course, good will win over evil, but I meant that salvation is not good outnumbering evil in someone's life.  Salvation is evil washed away, and I guess you can figure out who does the washing away.

I think civilization requires the separation of church and state.  When was the last time you heard a believer say that?

America, and this planet, are multi-faith.  There are common sense things the government should do, and one of those things is to keep people from discriminating against each other, stealing, killing, and all that.

But.... drinking on Sunday, private behavior between two adults, not.

As long as Bush leaves on that January day in 2009, good, and I hope we don't have another President with dirty hands (blood and oil), and please tell me Cheney won't run

This McCain guy, what does he think about faith based and community initiatives, torturing our prisoners, bullying foreign policy?  

I'm a Democrat, but I am worried about the Republicans.   Maybe I ought to claim Republican status to vote against a whack job in the primary next year- I can still vote for the Democratic candidate.

I mean, vote for the Democrat in November.

I'm glad to know I'm a believer, not a fundie.
There is a reason why American law and American government are better than Iranian law and Iranian government.

Separation - of - church - and - state

To safeguard religious minorities from the will of the majority.  Don't say my daddy didn't teach me nothing.

Wikipedia says separation of church and state is very important to say, Seventh Day Adventists.  I used to Bible study with some.  If you are afraid the Beast (United States gone evil) will persecute your religion (for church on Saturday), and if your knowledge of history notes that owning a Bible could get you killed in Europe 500 to 800 years ago, yes, you will sleep better at night knowing that religious expression is guaranteed and that no competing faith will get out of its box and start running amok.

I don't understand why separation of church and state is used against tolerance.  Do you suggest if people don't pray they do not offend those of competing dogmas?

Government needs to protect people from  one another.

The Seventh Day Adventists (or Joe Crews, The Secret Rapture) and others who claim that the Catholic Church is the beast in Revelations insist that the C.C. has changed the ten commandments to remove "Remember the Sabbath Day and to keep it holy".

I've never seen a Catholic Bible, and certainly I would be in no position to go back in time and see if a previous version said that.

I think the C.C. reads the Douay Bible.  I would need to buy one and read it to compare it to the NIV or KJV (New International or King James Versions).

A continuing pattern of inflicting hate is enough to qualify for oppression, I think.  Power is not part of the equation.  For example, in Rocking the Suburbs by Ben Folds

"I pull up to a stop light
I can feel something's not right
someone's blasting me with hate, and bass
sending dirty vibes my way
because someone's great great great granddad made someone's great great great granddaddys slaves
It wasn't my idea...."

I think oppression comes around and goes around.  It not only flows from the powerful to the powerless, but also flows in reverse.
Most people who are ignorant of what they are doing can pass it on, like when I teased another guy named Chris in Spanish I class, because I thought he had fired on me, "what you doin' takin' a nap?" Someone commented that was a low blow.

I was ashamed of that later.  For the rest of high school, and thereafter, I tried not to be part of the problem, at least not for simple teasing.  I did feel threatened enough at my locker to consider how a notebook might be used as a weapon, however (if the two covers folding together at an angle make a blunt kind of point).  Couldn't I just get on the damn bus and go home in peace?

But knowing what you are doing is the first step to putting a stop to whatever you are doing.

No, I don't.
The best thing I could suggest is try one's best to instill a sense of empathy in children (Theory of Mind might be hard for some Asperger children), can you imagine walking a mile in someone's shoes?

I know we discussed oppression through political power in sociology/social stratification and all.
But I still say that even a powerless person can communicate a hateful glance at another person, maybe one who deserves it.
Nevertheless, offensiveness gets around, and maybe I am using oppression when "communicating or suggesting hatred" is appropriate instead.  

But it is useful to know that it goes far beyond oppression.  If nothing else, offensiveness feeds more offensiveness (and some oppression too).

OK, oppression is offensive activity backed with power.  Only a powerful entity can oppress an unpowerful entity.

That is important, because it means a would-be oppresser DOES NOT HAVE TO OFFEND OR OPPRESS.  Power means you can, whether or not you do.

A lot of so-called Christians delight in using this power to make other people's lives miserable.  Me, I hate that.

Nevertheless, offensive words and actions go in all directions and are not limited to the powerful, and begat more offensiveness.  

Oppression is a problem.
Offensiveness is the problem.

I think it is not all offensiveness that is the problem. You're right.  
Just the offensiveness intended as a means for injecting hatred.

Sometimes something meant only in love can offend.
Sometimes offensiveness is a tool to communicate hatred.

Oppression is a problem.
Hatred, or otherwise the lack of respect, is the problem.

I care about the image problem.
Much of what the non-Christians hold against Christianity is what I heard from Dad and/or my brother.
Dad was particularly scared of what Christians might do, especially when they were into politics.

That is why I am convinced, Max, if the four Marshes (two living, two dead) were a country, we would have a healthy counterbalance to Christianity both culturally and especially politically.

I didn't much like the Christians I met in undergraduate school.  At least I had respect for my co-religionists at Marshall University, though I admit I did not have any problems with Christian women (or women) bothering me to distract me from my studies.  
1.  Flirting incident, November 18, 1994, across West Virginia, 330 miles of flirting from one Julie, classmate at both the undergradaute and graduate levels (albeit she was finishing an undergraduate when I was in grad school).
2.  Former graduate school classmate Rebecca Jude (then a Ph.D student someplace else, ,Jude looks like a lady she would correct me, woman) sent me a Valentine and a pair of ear muffs.  I also had a fascination with Jennifer "Good Golly Miss" Holley but no Valentine.

None of these were Christians.

I was all too willing to consider Christians as a potential source of trouble during my own troubles in my last half of undergraduate school.  I was also very willing to embrace Buddhist-flavored humanism as a superior philosophy for life's problems (that is where current and past Shepherd College employee-classmate Rachael Meads came in, Julie being one of the circle).  I had met them when I went to see one Rebecca from anthropology class one evening.

I had to hate Christians before I could respect them.

I respected them when I failed to dissuade a group of thirty-something Christians (parents, spouses, homeowners, taxpayers) from returning love for contempt and disdain.

I immediately wrote Rachael with my findings.  I found the revelation remarkable.

She advised me to take Christianity slow, trust my feelings "and don't let it destroy who you are"  She also mentioned having fallen in love with religion herself, but mentioned that hypocrisy is a heart breaker.

Yes it is.  I really expected something better out of Equally Yoked Christian Singles (when I was a single looking), and even though I wasn't looking at Marshall, it also bothers me how easily I slipped through three years with the fellowship without attracting attention.

It makes me feel like the ever-loving lousy *()# Stealth bomber.

This morning on news radio, a feature story indicated that a study reported that areas of greater immigrant presence had lower gas prices, as immigrants seemed more price sensitive to gas purchases.  A local TV station is doing a report on immigration enforcement and housing prices.

I have guessed the reason I am paying relatively low rent is because many of my neighbors (vecinos, more precisely) are not fortunate to earn as much as I.  Or in other words, in my line of work, collectively, all of us would not stand to be paid and given lack of benefits like my neighbors get in their jobs.  Many people might say "we have education and they don't" or "we are American born and raised and they aren't".  

The more basic issue is that employers in the United States have done as they wished unless forced to do otherwise, such as in times of war when they had to hire women in munitions factories, or under conditions of strong demand and weak supply, when computers were hot 10 years ago.  But you know what happened to the women when the men came back from the war: Rosie the Riveter became Rosie the Homemaker (I couldn't think of a cute way to phrase that)