Religion Thread

[David K]

The definition of a Puritan:
One who spends his life worrying that somewhere,  somehow, someone might be enjoying themselves
------------
Three couples, an elderly couple, a middle-aged couple and  a young  newlywed  couple wanted to join a (fundamentalist) church.
The pastor said, "We have  special  requirements for new parishioners.
You must show your willingness to defeat the evils of the flesh by abstaining  from  having sex for two weeks."
 
The couples agreed and came back at the end of two weeks.
The pastor   went to the elderly couple and asked, "Were you able to abstain from sex   for the two weeks?"
 
The old man replied, "No problem at all, Pastor."
 
"Congratulations! Welcome to the church!" said the  pastor.
 
The pastor went to the middle-aged couple and asked, "Well, were you  able to abstain from sex for the two weeks?"
 
The man replied, "The first week was not too bad. The  second week I had to  sleep on the couch for a couple of nights but, yes, we made it."
 
"Congratulations! Welcome to the church!" said the pastor.
 
The pastor then went to the newlywed couple and asked, "Well, were you  able to abstain from sex for two weeks?"
 
"No Pastor, we were not able to go without sex for the two weeks," the  young man replied sadly.
 
"What happened?" inquired the pastor.
 
"My wife was reaching for a can of paint on the top shelf  and dropped it. When she bent over to pick it up, I was overcome with  lust and took  advantage of her right there and then."
 
"You understand, of course, this means you will not be welcome in our church," boomed the pastor.
 
"We know." said the young man dejectedly, 
"We're not welcome at Mitre 10 anymore  either."

[David K]

A SERIOUS 12 STEP PROGRAM

1.  We admitted that we were powerless over seriousness- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.  We came to believe that only by lightening up could we achieve a state of non-seriousness.
3.  We made a decision to turn our constant self-criticism over to our sense of humor and
     learn to lovingly and wholeheartedly laugh at ourselves.
4.  We decided to give ourselves a break once in a while and chill out, instead of  constantly doing searching and fearless moral inventories of ourselves.
5.  We admitted to God, to ourselves and to any other human being thet would listen, that our  wrongs were often in our heads.
6.  We were entirely ready to accept that our characters were as good as anybody else's and possibly better than most .
7.  We quit harping on our shortcomings.
8.  We made a list of all the persons we though we had harmed and saw that they'd forgotten all the crap we'd blown out of proportion.
9.  We quit making amends for breathing air and taking up a few square feet of the planet's surface.
10.  We resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to criticize ourselves at times, but would try to stick to our guns when we knew we were right.
11.  We sought through prayer and meditation to calm down and realize we're not responsible for everything.
12.  Having experienced immense relief from these steps, we would try to carry this message to other overly-serious people and to practice these
       principles in all our affairs.

[David K]

The Pope was at his morning devotions, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted by
his private secretary.

“ Your Holiness forgive me for interrupting” said the secretary,  “but I thought the news too important to wait”. 
“News” said the Pope “It had better be good news to warrant interruption to my devotions”.
“Well” said his secretary nervously, “there's Good News and some not so good  news”. 

The Pope looked up and said “Speak!”
“The Good News” said the secretary, “is that Jesus has returned to Earth as he promised -
He is  to set up the Kingdom of Heaven on earth - and He is on the phone to explain your part  in His plan to you.”. 

“This is more than Good News” said the Pope,” This is what we have all been waiting for over the centuries - and it is happening now, in my own time.
How could anything be less than good news in the light of this, the Second Coming?? ”
The he paused and said "Not so good news??"

'Well' said the secretary, even more nervously,
'it’s just that He is ringing from Salt Lake City'.

[David K]

I must have a warped sense of humour
========
It was a dark dark night.

   A burglar, about his trade, broke into this house.   It was pitch black inside and the burglar was afraid to turn on a light
   because he might alert a neighbor.  So he began throwing the  silverware into his bag, when he thought he heard a voice say,
   
   "Jesus is watching you."
   
   Thinking he was just hearing things the burglar ignored it and returned to rifling through the house when he heard the voice again  say,
   
   "Jesus is watching you."
   
   Now he was worried so he flicked on his torch and in the dim beam saw a parrot sitting on a perch over in the corner.
   
   "Was that you talking", the burglar asked.
   
   "Yes", replied the parrot.
   
   "Well, is your name Jesus?", asked the burglar.
   
   "No, my name is Dennis", replied the parrot.
   
   "Dennis!", the burglar said "That's a silly name for a parrot."
   
   "Well",the parrot replied, "its not nearly as silly as Jesus is for a rottweiler."

[David K]

Just wait till Lance Armstrong takes up meditation 
======
MONK GLOATS OVER YOGA CHAMPIONSHIP
"I am the serenest!" he says

LHASA, TIBET - Employing the brash style that first brought him to prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International
Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.

"I am the serenest!" Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. "No one is serener than Sri
Dhananjai Bikram-I am the greatest monk of all time!"

Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and
two-time champion Sri Salil "The Hammer" Gupta.

The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss. "I should be able to beat that guy with one lung tied," Gupta said. "I'm beside myself
right now, and I don't mean trans-bodily."

Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he
attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, "I'm
blissful! You blissful?! I'm blissful!" to the other yogis.

Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that
competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis.
While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally
considered "unBuddhalike."

"I don't care what the critics say," Bikram said. "Sri Bikram is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram's own yoga thing."

Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than fourth.
Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike's new line of prayer mats
and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn
him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikram's "guru."

"My special training diet for Bikram of one super-charged, carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win," Vasti
said.

The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram's taunting was a factor in his inability to attain TC. "I just wasn't myself today," Gupta commented.
"I wasn't any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul."

In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes
while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo Zen-Off.

"That's my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his," remarked Gupta. "He stole my thunder."

Bikram denied the charge, saying, "Gupta's been talking like that ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner."

Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the
competition's halfway point.

But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram.

The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual arsenal, but his response to today's riddle-"Show me the face you had
before you were born "-was reportedly "extremely illuminative," according to Commissioner Prabhupada.

While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth,
insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges "highly enlightened."

With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events
to come away with the upset victory.

[David K]

 

[Willy The Londoner]

Well from all the jokes and quips you have supplied then at least we can say that you have a great interest in Christianity David K!!!!

I have to say Ha Ha as my smileys have disappeared again today.

Willy

[Rhonald]

Religion, like scientific thesis, is put into place to answer some question or fill some need, usually to answer WHY.

Not quite true Rhon....In science a Thesis is put together to provide unequivocable proof of a Theory, based on fact, research, analysis and conclusion.

In religion there is not a single shred of evidence beyond the random happenings of statistical chance, that any of it has any basis in fact.

I would say the basis of my statement is true. Usually in religion, as in science, & philosophical thought, it is the more inquisitive person that pauses and wonders. They take the time to try to figure out why and rationalise their thought process. Now I agree some religions and non religious ideas are inspired by spirits (bottled) or drug induced or some sort of extreme situation ie: spirit quest, illness, hallucinations, but aha moments can also come during normal periods of quiet. But usually it is the more intelligent shaman, priest, scientist that tries to answer WHY.

It seems the problem with religion, as you state it, and even science has followed this same faulty path, is when the quest to maintain the status quo supersedes the logic that things do not quite work out. I remember from one anthropology course I took that in the early days of measuring cranium capacities of different races, the measuring grain substance they used to stuff inside the skulls, could be crushed. The earlier studies showed that the Caucasians had on average a larger cranium. My teacher explained that since the scientists that were doing the research were white and believed in their innate superiority, he could see them squeezing to get as many grains into the skull for the whites and just do a general fill it to the brim for the other skulls. Science also follows this path of the originator of a thesis not wanting to be wrong so he fudges the results.

And why the quest to maintain the status quo? I would say that those in power have a chance to lose a great deal of influence, resources, and face. For scientist, they could lose their research grants, for priest, their livelyhood. And the further up the totem pole, the greater the fall, be it money, status, or power.

[David E]

The vast majority are not brain washed into giving.  Willy

You have got to be kidding !!!!!!!!!!!!!!....pay us money and ease your path to "Heaven".........if thats not brainwashing, I dont know what is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[David K]

Well from all the jokes and quips you have supplied then at least we can say that you have a great interest in Christianity David K!!!!
Willy

I'd like to feel I can offend serious devotees of all religions equally

The reason that I used the name of the founder of the Christian religion in the Rottweiler post
was that if I had used the name of the founder of another Aramaic religion I would likely have a Fatwa   
issued agin me by now   
In the name of God, of course.

[David E]

Sorry Rhon, I cant agree with your premise that enlightened Shamans/Priests primarily ask the WHY question.....it is counter to the dogma that sustains the myth that "He" made it so. In fact to ask WHY from a religious perspective is in fact a blasphemy....deliberately structured as such to prevent the WHY question. Arguably there have been many Priests who have wondered about the WHY, especially in the light of scientific method constantly questioning the WHY issues and over time constantly updating and refreshing ideas and concepts that could not stand the test of reality and proof...

I refer here to some of the "science" that could not stand the test of time and subsequently got revised and updated...such issues as:

* The Earth is flat
* The Earth is the centre of all things and the Sun and the Planets revolve around it.
* The Earth is supported in the heavens on the back of a giant turtle
* Evolution actually happened as a natural phenomena, we were not created out of somebody's rib.
* The Earth is not 6500 years old.

Etc etc etc.

Subsequent leaps in knowlege gradually debunked all these myths and replaced them with truth.

Contrast this with religious dogma where the myths are the only leg on which the whole belief system stands...defying the test of proof on the pain of eternal dammnation.

Certainly, in scientific evaluations,  there have been some massive blunders in interpretation...as you say some of which were deliberately falsified to suit a particular set of circumstances...most of the early attempts to answer the WHY question were ill-informed, dangerous and unsafe...but eventually these gave way to the truth.

Look where we are today on the issue of Global Warming...............this expression (which was meaningless anyway) has given way to "climate change" which is a brilliant generic statement that gives Politicians and Greenies two bob each way !!!

The science is way behind the emotion....but it WILL catch up and maybe will or will not endorse the premise.

I cant see any evidence that religion has ever applied the reality test and got to grips with updating the model....how could it ?? To do so would bring the whole thing down in rubble....it can only survive by totally AVOIDING the WHY question.....it is the nature of the beast.

[David K]

The vast majority are not brain washed into giving.  Willy

You have got to be kidding !!!!!!!!!!!!!!....pay us money and ease your path to "Heaven".........if thats not brainwashing, I dont know what is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey David E,
You have a lovely Chinese wife; she gives to you; you give to her; there is harmony between you
Let me hypothesise in that instant you experience something beyond mere molecular arrangements...
If that be true, there is no valid reason to limit the experience giving brings to her body, or yours..
It is possible that the folks in Willys church are expressing that same wish to give, just in a different form


But just as a caveat, see below

[David E]

Maybe that is why I like the Chinese Church here. No money is asked by anyone, there is no collection taken before during or after the service.  No one has ever asked for money.  Here we get gifts not give them Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day and Fathers Day and of course Chinese New Year.

Willy

I'm on a roll here Willy, so I'd better keep going while I have the inclination......

You, of all people should have a greater knowlege and insight into the Chinese mind, and the Chinese way of looking at things......

The modern Chinese person who has embraced Western Religion is just exhibiting the shrewd, devious and cunning mindset that makes the Chinese mind unique, I am sure that they (in their inimitable way) regard Western Religion as maybe, just maybe might hold the key for them to get ahead next time round. So they give it a go....just in case and happily smile and participate in all the pomp and ceremony....and bull sh ***t

But...but...but....just pass a collection plate around at the service, or just ask them for a regular tithe to the Church and you would be killed in the stampede to get out of the door !!!!!!!!!!

Or am I being too cynical....I think not....

[David K]

Personally I do not believe that there is a place waiting for me after my time here comes to a final end. 
Willy

Rumour has it that Willy was around 2000 years ago...
  For proof see below

[David E]

Hey David E,
You have a lovely Chinese wife; she gives to you; you give to her; there is harmony between you
Let me hypothesise in that instant you experience something beyond mere molecular arrangements...
If that be true, there is no valid reason to limit the experience giving brings to her body, or yours..
It is possible that the folks in Willys church are expressing that same wish to give, just in a different form

Not sure 'bout that.....My wife and I are like 2 ships that "pass in the night"...by some random chance we met, we share a bond that is possibly pheromonal, possibly situational...but not all consuming...I am not built that way. We exist on mutual respect, tolerance and goodwill to each other. We ARE both a collection of molecules...cant avoid that. For this moment in time all is good and expected to continue as such.
I never look at our marriage as "give" or even "take"...it just IS and we work to make it so. I dont know if we have any limits, it's early days, but we have the intent and we have the Chemistry, so we have got more than most !!!

I cannot predict the future, but I know in the Laws of Statistical Chance it is written somewhere....but I dont want to know the answer, the juorney is much more interesting than the destination............