Oh dear!! Yes, you did get serious, and actually I appreciate it.
I thought about who Talmudic Satanists could be, and came up with wondering if it was those very strange people who believe that the Holocaust did not happen, and that Jews are evil. These people are all over the web, spewing an enormous amount of hate, and I find them reprehensible. Unfortunately, they appear most frequently at conservative Christian web sites in my experience, and the Pope has just apologized for hundreds of years of misinterpretation of the New Testament which encouraged that hatred, which led somewhat to the extermination during World War II.
So I do not think we are Talmudic Satanists, but there are several people here, definitely including me, who do, as you say, an awful lot of irreverent joking, and I wonder if we are being taken much too seriously? So, just to make one thing perfectly clear, I joke about cucumbers and other phallic symbols but really usually just have sex with my husband, okay, and he is CATHOLIC to boot. It just developed as a way to keep this a place that was not too serious and differentiate it from the all Christian, all the time threads. It is nice that you brought up the point that there are many people who hang out here who do consider themselves Christians, but are just lighter about it and do Christian good works without seeming overbearing and judgmental, and do not take themselves too seriously.
I did not know X was rearing her children at an upside-down altar! Now I am really worried, because for the most part X and I have the same child rearing practices, and they are extremely nurturing ones in my opinion. There is not much more you can do to show your love and acceptance of your children than sleep with them and nurse, nurse, nurse them and the neighborhood children as well. (This does not conversely mean that bottle-fed children are deprived of love, however.) I did not see any upside-down altars at Toys 'R Us, but I know that if X has one they must be very beneficial to the little ones, so I'd better private message her and find out where to buy one.
I do think that the normal social conventions do not apply in cyberspace, as you have said to me before, Penni, and in a way I think this is part of the problem we have at SI between the Christians and the pagans/agnostics/atheists/free thinkers. To illustrate, I was driving my husband to work one morning, and I was talking to him about the debate we were having here about homosexuals and the conservative Christians, and how some people had been offended at the suggestion that Jesus may not have even existed, since one web historian pointed out that there was nothing in the historical record of him for 150 years after his death.
Well, my husband quickly responded with some Bible verses--I do not remember them exactly--about how Jesus had asked his followers to keep quiet about him, and that perhaps this explained the discrepancy. I am not sure whether this is true, and Bible verses fall out of my mind like water off a duck's back for some reason. But I do know that his response was a little stunned, like I had hurt his feelings. It is not my goal to do this. On the other hand, my husband is totally accepting of all people, all races, all religions, gay, straight, transsexual, whatever. So his personal religious beliefs have never offended me in any way, because he is tolerant, and I do think there is a legitimate debate to be had here, and everywhere really, about people's belief systems when they get in the way of other groups of people being accepted and leading full lives.
But that is not what I am saying, and I am getting off on a tangent there. What I am saying is that in this medium perhaps we are all much more brave and bold about challenging people we disagree with than we would ever be if we were standing somewhere looking in their eyes, and I think that has maybe caused a lot of problems that are unique to cyber communities, and unnecessarily polarizing.
Okay, I have to get off the soapbox now to catch the latest 60 Minutes update on Kathleen Willey. But what do you think, Penni?
Christine |
