Religious chain letters

[Napoleon the Clown]

The problem with using the Bible as a guide for morality tales is that there is some truly horrific shit in there. You've gotta cherry pick to make Christianity sound like one of the greatest things to happen to the world. I'm going to agree with Darth Wong. The best thing a Christian can do is set a good example. Be kind, forgiving, charitable, and compassionate. You know, the stuff that Christianity generally attributes to Jesus. Answer questions but don't set out to preach, as well. Everyone one the American and European continents know of Christianity. If someone is interested, they'll ask. Otherwise, leave 'em the hell alone. There's offering information and then there's being a pushy know-it-all asshole.


Thank god (irony unintended there) that none of my more religious relatives have my email address. I fortunately can avoid these things.

[CaptainZoidberg]

I actually wonder why the more moderate churches don't go out and revise the canon so that it actually gets rid of all the violent ridiculous stuff and focuses on the more cherished parables of Jesus.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I actually wonder why the more moderate churches don't go out and revise the canon so that it actually gets rid of all the violent ridiculous stuff and focuses on the more cherished parables of Jesus.

The last time we tried that was the Council of Nicea. It almost shattered the church. I dread to think what would happen if they tried to 'modernize' the bible.

Though Jefferson did a neat job on the gospel.

[CaptainZoidberg]

Yeah, I'm giving my Mom a Jefferson bible for her birthday (tomorrow).

[Surlethe]

It's interesting that religious chain letters don't really present evidence to support their claims about society: they merely concentrate on repeating the religious right's "talking points" over and over, in various different ways. In this case, a poem.

It's interesting, but not surprising; they take the claims to be perfectly self-evident. All of the talking points are part of the premises of the religious right's worldview, from which they derive their policies, etc. While paying lip service to science and reason, they literally cannot subject their premises to reasoned criticism. Instead, they bounce the claims back and forth between each other in an echo chamber; they call it "strengthening faith".

And ALL of them, without exception, praise the early days of America as some kind of golden age; do they really think those early slave drivers and ruthless native-killers were people to be admired?

The nostalgia for the days of yore is part of the whole conservative ethos, partly because it lends them credibility in the American "worship the founding fathers" culture.

[Darth Wong]

The nostalgia for the days of yore is part of the whole conservative ethos, partly because it lends them credibility in the American "worship the founding fathers" culture.

How do they react when you confront them with the fact that the hallowed Founding Fathers were slave drivers and ruthless killers of native women and children? I have a lot more experience with Canadian fundies than American ones, at least face to face (the dynamic is different over E-mail; they can simply ignore points they're uncomfortable with or repeat points you've already disproven, and you can't interrupt them by saying "hey!" when they try to do it).

[Duckie]

If I remember correctly, someone posted a fixed version of a SEAL/Marine one where the Professor says the logical thing after being sprawled across the floor:

"Sit the fuck down, I asked for God, not a Marine."

The obvious thing I would append to this is him looking confused for a moment and going "Now why was I wasting time doing this? I must be getting senile, let's get on with today's lecture."

[Darth Wong]

Ah yes, the Marine story:

An atheist professor was teaching a college class and he told the class that he was going to prove that there is no God.

He said, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you 15 minutes!"

Ten minutes went by.

The professor kept taunting God, saying, "Here I am, God. I'm still waiting."

He got down to the last couple of minutes and a Marine just released from active duty, and newly registered in the class, walked up to the professor, hit him full force in the face, and sent him flying from his platform.

The professor struggled up, obviously shaken and yelled, "What's the matter with you? Why did you do that?"

The Marine replied, "God was busy, so He sent me."

It would be funnier to append something like this:

At this point, a student in the front row leaned forward and said "Dude, that's obviously not what he meant."

The Marine looked confused. "What do you mean?"

The student was taken aback by the Marine's lack of comprehension. "Dude, he obviously meant that God should demonstrate his power himself."

The Marine stood up straight, confident again. "Yeah, but He was busy, so He sent me."

Giggling could be heard from the back of the class. The Marine looked confused again, so the front-row student tried to explain: "If some divine power knocked him down, then it would disprove his argument. But if you knock him down, it doesn't disprove anything. Do you honestly not understand that?"

The Marine stood up ramrod-straight again: "Yes, but God was busy ..."

"So he sent you!" half the class chanted in unison, before dissolving into laughter. The red-faced Marine sat back down, and the professor called security.

[whackadoodle]

Sorry if I'm necroing this thread, but I thought that this might go here. Anyway..

So, I'm the IT manager for a automobile dealership group. Between nimrods on the sales force, and the occasional nimrod we get as customers, - as well as being short-staffed, sales being what they are - I frequently have to email customers photos, documents, etc. when a salesperson has <can't spell address>technical difficulties</can't spell address>. I quickly found out that I should send any customer any message via a mailbox dedicated towards this, with tight spam policies set and filters (God, Christ, Christian, athiests, Obama+hell-or-communist-or-, well youget the picture). Even so, I check the deadbox for the spam, from time to time, just for shits and grins.

This one guy, whom we'll call Gen. Ripper, is really trying to rape the inbox on this address. Between the 'onward kristian souljers' chain mails, and the frequent sales pitches as health warnings ('They're trying to pollute our bodily fluids'), he has been just tons of fun.

Here's today's call to arms

Will NBC be surprised?

Here's your chance to let the media know where the
people stand on our faith in God, as a nation.

NBC is presently taking a poll on "In God We Trust"
to stay on our American currency.

Please send this to every Christian you know so they
can vote on this important subject.

Please do it right away, before NBC takes this off
their web page. Poll is still open so you can vote:

htt+p:++www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/

This is not sent for discussion.
If you agree forward it,

if you don't, delete it.
By my forwarding it, you know how I feel.
I'll bet this is going to be a surprise to NBC.

Note the bolded parts; they're just my fave! "We'll show those dirty lieberal athiestic members of the godless commie media what for, by crackey!"

[Surlethe]

These people honestly don't realize that we added God to the public square as part of a tremendous national backlash against Communism in the 1950s. We added "... under God" to the pledge, "In God we Trust" to the money, and replaced "E Pluribus Unum" (which is a superior motto anyway) to establish a national identity as a Christian nation in contrast to "atheistic" communist USSR - and that was a really key point that politicians made as they whipped up the masses into an anti-communist fervor. Now, it's been so internalized that modern evangelicals don't realize it happened within living memory.

[whackadoodle]

Yeah, but what really gets me is that this whomever is implying through his statement

I'll bet this is going to be a surprise to NBC.

that NBC will be shocked and dismayed if the poll results show anything but the godlessness that the Media Establishment is trying to brainwash us into. I wonder that it never occurs to these folks that the only thing that NBC's online marketing department gives a shit about is pumping up their pageview count.

Inciting the hordes of christian demented chain-mailing robots into a crusade to make sure that yet another fucking poll comes out their way is a sure way to catch a lot of eyeballs.

Hell, the original source of Gen. Ripper's chain mail probably is doing viral marketing for NBC.

I know that we do shit like that all the time; anything to get eyeballs onto our inventory.

[CarsonPalmer]

These people honestly don't realize that we added God to the public square as part of a tremendous national backlash against Communism in the 1950s. We added "... under God" to the pledge, "In God we Trust" to the money, and replaced "E Pluribus Unum" (which is a superior motto anyway) to establish a national identity as a Christian nation in contrast to "atheistic" communist USSR - and that was a really key point that politicians made as they whipped up the masses into an anti-communist fervor. Now, it's been so internalized that modern evangelicals don't realize it happened within living memory.

Only one thing: "In God We Trust" was added to the money during the civil war. It didn't become the motto until the Cold War, but it was on the money for a long time beforehand.

[Surlethe]

Whoops, my bad. Thanks for the correction.

[TheManWithNoName]

I just encountered one, called "The Modern Holocaust", which has sparked fierce debate on facebook.

"It is the grimmest of ironies that one of the most savage, barbaric acts of evil in history began in one of the most modernized societies of its time, where so many markers of human progress became tools of human depravity: science that can heal used to kill; education that can enlighten used to rationalize away basic moral impulses; the bureaucracy that sustains modern life used as the machinery of mass death -- a ruthless, chillingly efficient system where many were responsible for the killing, but few got actual blood on their hands." - President Obama speaking during a memorial service at the Holocaust Museum.

That quote is suprisingly relevant to today. Ironically Obama is not only describing Hitler's massive genocide of the Jews, but he is also describing the modern holocaust that he supports against the unborn.

[Darth Wong]

If Mr. Self-Righteous' daughter was raped by a deranged criminal, would he accuse her of Nazi crimes against humanity for aborting the resulting fetus?

[Darth Wong]

Here's a chain letter my wife received:

Jesus' Suffering From a Medical Point of View

I know that this article is really very long, but it opens up a whole new dimension of Jesus dying on the cross that I've not seen before. Take your time to read it through, it will definitely bless you.

The following is a transcription of an article given by Dr.Keith Maxwell, a medical doctor in Asheville, N.C.

This article is approached from the perspective of how a physician would assess the injuries of Jesus if he were there to see the actual physical trauma he experienced. Dr. Maxwell speaks plainly, with as little medical jargon as possible. His development of this topic began to evolve one night when Dr. Maxwell, in the emergency room, thought to himself, "If they brought the Lord in here, exactly what would his physical injuries be like?"

He hopes through this article to reveal some things that will make us meditate on the actual suffering Jesus experienced in the last hours of his life. In the notes that follow are his conclusions about the death of Jesus based on his research, experience as a trauma physician and his understanding of scripture.

"You may or may not have thought of some of the things I'll point out to you tonight, but I hope I can share some things with you that will make the life and death of our Saviour a little bit more precious.

By the time he was crucified, Jesus had been up about thirty-six hours without any sleep. We know from biblical accounts that Jesus was an early riser. There are several places in the gospels where he arose early and went and prayed. We have no reason to believe that he did anything other than that the day he had his last meal with his disciples. He likely arose early that morning, spent his day, and subsequently had dinner with the disciples that night - the last supper in the upper room. He was then taken prisoner in the garden of Gethsemane, was led all about the old city of Jerusalem and was tried at least twice. The next day at about daybreak he was actually hung on the cross, and hung there throughout that day. Between the time he arose and the time he actually died on the cross, a period of about thirty-six hours had passed, with no sleep or rest.

Something else you may not have thought of was how far Jesus actually walked about in the old city of Jerusalem. We know he was led about from the chief priest's house to Herod's to Pilate's during the time that he was being tried, and we know he was led all about the old city of Jerusalem. If you add it up, he walked about two and one half miles that last night. Also, as best we can ascertain from historical accounts, Jesus carried his cross about a third of a mile before he collapsed and wasn't able to carry it anymore. These are some physical exertions that added up, place stress on a person.

The next thing I want to talk about is a phenomenon called hemathidrosis. Hemathidrosis is a very rare medical phenomenon that's been reported about twelve to fourteen times in world medical literature and is only seen in people who are under tremendous stress and agony. In hemathidrosis, a person actually exudes blood from every sweat gland in their body. Each sweat gland has a small capillary that surrounds it, and in hemathidrosis, that small capillary ruptures. As it bursts, a person actually bleeds into their sweat glands. Instead of perspiring sweat, if you will, they actually perspire blood. The Bible gives an excellent description of this phenomenon, saying that the Lord's sweat became as great drops of blood. Indeed, every pore of Jesus' body oozed and drained blood.

Now, I believe that Christ was a man just as much as any one of us. But at the same time, I believe that Christ was God and knew the terrible fate that lay ahead of him. He knew the job he had come to this earth to do, the mission he had to fulfil, and I believe the man part of Christ dreaded this agonising death and torture that lay a few hours ahead of him just as much as anyone of us would. We know he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, saying 'Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.' But he submitted his will to his Father's. There in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was under about as much anxiety and physical stress from an emotional standpoint that a human could experience, knowing that in a few hours he would be delivered into one of the most agonising and brutal deaths ever recorded in history.

Why didn't the Lord bleed to death if he bled out of every sweat gland in his body? If you've been to Israel, as I have, you know that this time of year you have warm days and cool nights. It was this cool night air that probably caused the Lord's damp skin, covered with sweat and blood, to chill, causing the capillaries to constrict and stop the bleeding. This same chilling in the cold night air has kept many a drunk and hoodlum who I've seen shot or stabbed and who's then lain in a ditch all night, from dying. It causes the blood vessels to constrict and causes the blood loss to be minimal. But by the time Jesus was taken by the soldiers from the garden of Gethsemane, he probably had a mixture of sweat and blood over his entire body surface. I can imagine this was some sight to behold.

Let's talk about the scourging. Scourging was such a horrible torture that Roman citizens were forbade to be scourged - only slaves and traders could be scourged. It was one of the worst punishments the Romans had to inflict on a human body. Typically, the victim was stripped completely naked and tied by his wrists to a post or wall with his back exposed. He was then whipped from the back of his arms, down his shoulders and back, across his bare buttocks, down the back of his legs and calves, all the way down to his heels by two Roman legionnaires, one on either side, alternating blows.

The historical accounts tell us that the traditional scourging consisted of thirty-nine lashes. If you can, imagine two large, strong, burly Roman legionnaires (someone that we would equate to say, a pro football player today) with a wooden handled whip about eighteen inches long that had nine leather thongs, something akin to what we would call a cat-o-nine tails. The n ine leather thongs were about six to seven feet long, and at the end of each thong was some lead shod, like a sinker you'd use to go fishing. Attached to the lead shod were pieces of sheep and cattle bone. The idea of those small pieces of bone was that, as the Roman legionnaire would beat his victim, snapping his wrist would cause the weight of the metal shod to dig into the back, while the sheep/cattle bone cut the skin.

As the sheep/cattle bone lacerated the skin and actually dug in under the surface of the skin, the skilled and trained legionnaire could whip his wrist and literally lift small shards of skeletal muscle out through the skin, leaving small ribbons of muscle, about two inches long, hanging through the skin."

"When I was working on this, I looked at in the cadaver lab and did some dissection, trying to figure out what one blow like this would mean to you and me. As best I could tell, and from some of the information I was able to gather from the Shroud of Turin exhibit, one lash with this whip - one thong - would make a cut about two inches long and about three quarters to an inch deep. To put that into medical terms, that's a cut that takes about twenty stitches to close. So with one lash, one swing of the whip, a total of nine lacerations could be inflicted on the victim, each laceration two inches long and three quarters to one inch deep.

With one blow, one Roman legionnaire could inflict enough wounds to take one hundred eighty stitches to close. If you multiply that times thirty-nine, those two Roman legionnaires inflicted enough lacerations to take about 2,000 stitches to close. I've seen people who've gone through the windshield of a car or wrecked a motorcycle into a barbed wire fence, and I've still never seen anyone that tattered up in any of my medical experience. This gives you an idea of the amount of the physical trauma that was inflicted upon Jesus just from the scourging.

Again you'd ask why Jesus didn't bleed to death. And again, you have to remember that this was done in the cold night air, the very thing that caused his blood vessels and capillaries to constrict and actually cause the blood loss from this beating to be minimal.

As mentioned, the idea of the lead weight was to lift the skeletal muscle out. Imagine having a cut on your skin with an inch of muscle pulled out through the cut, exposed to the night air. We see this sometimes in stab wounds or when people are stabbed with sharp objects like sticks and the muscles are pulled back through the skin. The purpose this served in the scourging was, that as the victim hung on the cross in the heat of the day, birds could light on him and actually peck and pull at these pieces of muscle, just like a robin trying to pull a worm out of the ground.

Frequently, how long a person actually survived on the cross during the crucifixion was determined by how severely he was scourged. Sometimes they would beat a man nearly to death before they put him on the cross and he would only live a few hours. Most of the time, though, the scourging was intended for public humiliation and embarrassment, because it was such an inhumane method of t orture. Another thing you may not have considered....TV. has done a real injustice to trauma, depicting men in bar room fights who take blows to the face or head and jump up and beat up three or four men. I can tell you that it's really not that way in real life. If I took any one of the men here, tied his hands behind him and then let any other man of average size and build beat him in the face with his fists open and closed, I cannot begin to tell you the amount of trauma this would inflict on him.

We know that Jesus was beaten in the face and head as he was mocked. I can assure you with all confidence that by the time the Lord was crucified after his beatings, it's almost certain that both of his eyes were swollen shut and no doubt his nose was pouring blood. I can also tell you that when people are struck in the mouth with a fist, the first thing that happens is that the lower teeth come right through the lip. I've taken care of many people in the emergency room who've come in beaten up in fights with their teeth sticking through their lips, both upper and lower sides. If Jesus was tied and held and beaten in the face by these strong legionnaires, I don't think there's any doubt that his lips were tattered like paper and some of his teeth were knocked loose or maybe even knocked out. You might ask if his jaw bones were broken. Normally they would be, but not in Jesus' case, and I'll tell you why in a few minutes.

During Jesus' trials and humiliation we also know that a crown of thorns was plaited and placed on his head. In Christ's case this was done to mock him as being King of the Jews. Some of you have been to Israel and have seen these thorns. They're about an inch and one half to two inches long, and they're as sharp as an ice pick. The custom was to take a small three or four foot long reed and slap the thorns on top of the head of the victim in order to drive the thorns into the skull. Those thorns laid upon someone's head and then tapped down with a reed were hard enough to penetrate the outer table or the outer bone of the skull. Imagine the bleeding from three or four hundred puncture wounds in the scalp and around the forehead from these thorns.

So, before Jesus' crucifixion ever begins, his face has been beaten to a pulp, no doubt his eyes were swollen shut, his nose is bloodied, and I remind you that every pore in his skin has wept and oozed blood. Every visible surface on the good Lord Jesus, I am confident, was covered and caked with dried blood. And his back and his arms and his buttocks and the back of his legs were literally torn to shreds from the scourging. This was the shape Jesus was in before they ever gave him his cross to head out to Calvary."

"Now, one of the things I take issue with from agnostics who I've heard debate this: I do not think the Lord died from shock secondary to blood loss. There is nothing that Jesus said on the cross and nothing in the description of the crucifixion in any of the gospels that gives us any idea that Jesus was in shock before he died. How do I know that? When someone is shot or hit by a car and comes to the emergency room, they're not sitting up talking to you. Their eyes are glassy, their colour is pale, their blood pressure is about sixty over nothing and they're barely conscious, if conscious at all. Jesus never lost consciousness. There's nothing in the description of his trials, his scourging or his time on the cross that tells us he was incoherent mentally or lost consciousness.

Something else, physical stress - everything the Bible tells us about the life of Jesus is that he was a healthy, early thirties male who lived a rough life. He didn't have a home, he probably slept outside, and he walked every where he went. He was probably, as we would say, as tough as a pine knot. I think Jesus was a hardy young man, very strong and stout physically, and that there was nothing weak or puny about him from a medical standpoint, prior to the crucifixion. As far as emotional stress, I don't think Jesus had any kind of nervous breakdown. He was certainly under stress in the garden of Gethsemane, but nothing that he said on the cross gave any indication whatsoever that he was decompensating mentally, even during his gravest hours on the cross.

I've also heard cardiac arrhythmia debated as a cause of Jesus' death. When people go into cardiac arrhythmia, if it's ventricular tachycardia or some of the other types of cardiac arrhythmia's, one of the first things that happens is that the heart, even though it beats fast or funny, doesn't function very well as a pump. When it doesn't function well as a pump, your blood pressure drops, and you lose consciousness. Again, nowhere in the gospels do we have an account where Jesus ever lost consciousness until he died. Let's talk about the cross for just a minute. We know from Corinthian and Roman history that the crosses were usually in two parts. First, the cross bar, that from very good historical accounts can be estimated to have a weight of 125 to 150 pounds, and to be about the size of a cross tie.

Many of us have stacked or used cross ties at one time or another or have certainly seen what they look like on the railroad tracks. I want to remind you that this was a rough, unplanned, unfinished piece of wood with splinters and spikes and rough places in it, just like you would expect to see in a railroad cross tie. When the victim's final trial and condemnation had taken place, to maximise the shame and suffering, the custom was to tie the cross bar to the victim, and have him carry it through the city from his point of condemnation to his point of execution. Part of the custom was that many times these people would be forced to stagger through the streets after being scourged and beaten, with the cross bar tied to their arms, and to add to the ultimate humiliation, the victim had to bear the cross naked. Imagine how humiliating that would be in this day and time, much less how humiliating and agonising it must have been for Jesus.

The other part of the cross was an upright part, which is just like a post in the ground. Every major city at that time had an area outside their gates where they performed crucifixions. It was really not only a form of execution, but of entertainment as well. Many of the major cities had areas outside their walls where they would have three or four of these upright posts that were permanent fixtures. Someone condemned to crucifixion would bear the cross bar through the streets to the point of crucifixion, and once there, would be thrown onto the ground. Nails would then be driven through their hands into the cross bar. Then two forks, something similar to pitch forks, would be placed around each end of the cross bar, and they would be boosted up and the cross bar hung on top of the upright post. Once they were braced on the upright post, both feet would then be nailed to the foot piece.

The nail wounds....The Romans practised crucifixion for hundreds of years, and they perfected the art of pain and suffering. How could a man have spikes driven through his hands and feet and not bleed to death? The Romans figured out that if they drove the spike through a man's wrist right at the middle, they could avoid hitting any arteries or veins. If you go back and look at the Hebrew word for hand, it's inclusive from the fingertips to about where your wristwatch crosses your wrist. So the hand didn't necessarily mean the palm, and I can tell you, from having been a hand surgeon at one time and from dissecting cadavers to try to see if the muscle was strong enough to hold the body weight, it's not. You can not drive a spike through a man's palm and hang him by it without it pulling right out between his fingers. It is an accepted medical fact that the muscle in your palm is not strong enough to support your body weight.

In order to be able to drive spikes through the Lord's hands, they had to drive them through at the wrists. There, there's a very strong ligament, called the traverse carpal ligament, that's strong enough to support the body weight. The Romans figured out that if they came about where the crease in the wrist is and drove the spike through this area, they would miss the radial artery (the artery people cut when they try to kill themselves by cutting their wrist - right where the doctor takes your pulse), and they would also miss what we call the ulnar artery over on the little finger side. What they would do though, is drive the nail right through the biggest nerve in the hand, called the median nerve. If any of y'all have ever had carpal tunnel syndrome, you know how uncomfortable any inflammation or irritation to that median nerve can be.

When the median nerve is transected, it gives about the sensation of having an electric cattle prod stuck to your w rist and a constant electrical shock going through your hand, and causes the fingers to claw. In essence, the Romans devised a way they could drive a spike through a man's hand and not lose one drop of blood, while maximising the amount of pain and suffering that man would endure."

"The Romans did the same thing with the feet. They calculated where they could drive a spike through both a man's feet and not cause blood loss that would cause the victim to bleed to death. The spike would have been placed between the first and second metatarsal bones, missing the dorals pedis artery. There again, they drove the spike through the feet with no blood loss. The spike misses the artery, but does hit the plantar nerves, thereby causing that same horrible shock sensation.

Let's talk now about Jesus hanging on the cross. When hanging by their arms, as a crucifixion victim's body weight sags down, their diaphragm functions like a billows. As the diaphragm drops into the abdomen it pulls in air, so someone hanging on the cross had no difficulty whatsoever pulling air into their lungs. The tough part for people hanging on the cross was breathing out. In order for a crucifixion victim to exhale, they would have to pull up against the spikes with their hands, and push up against the spikes with their feet. I want to remind you - here's Jesus hanging on the cross, probably naked in front of the whole city of Jerusalem. I've already described his back to you.

Every time he took a breath, that tattered, lacerated and riddled back was drug and scraped across the splinters and the rough knobs and spikes protruding from the cross. Each time he breathed out, each time he uttered a word, he would have to pull up with his arms and push up with his legs. That's why I want to remind you just how precious Jesus' words from the cross were. That's why he couldn't say more than three or four words at a time. Because when you talk, you only talk as you breathe out, not as you breathe in. Every word Jesus spoke on the cross was spoken as he was pulling up against the nails and dragging his back across the cross.

That's why what the Lord tells us - what he spoke from the cross - is very precious to me, because I know what it cost him and how badly it hurt him. Every time I give this talk it reminds me how he died for us and just how every word hurt and how he suffered just to give us every word. What did he say? He said, 'Behold your son." And then he said 'Behold your mother.' Jesus knew he had just about finished his job and done everything that he'd come into this world to fulfil and do. Finally, when he had done all of that, he said, 'It is finished.' And when he said 'It is finished", that's the last time he p ulled up with his hands and pushed up with his feet, dragging his back across the cross as he hung there naked before the city of Jerusalem in total shame and humiliation. Convicted and tortured and condemned for something of which he was not guilty.

If you go back and look at historical accounts, you find that people actually lived on the cross, crucified, for up to six days. If you can, imagine a man hanging on a cross outside the gates of a city with the birds pecking at his eyes and roosting on his head, as he hangs there naked as a spectacle for the whole city. That was the point of this. It was part of the shame and humiliation that a man hang there so people could come by for a day or two and stand and mock and jeer and shout accusations and railings and blasphemy at him. The idea was to make him suffer as much as possible. Crucifixion was never intended to kill anybody.

*Crucifixion was never intended to kill anybody.* It was only intended to make a human being suffer as much as could be inflicted upon him before killing him by breaking his legs.

But I don't believe Jesus died from crucifracture or from exhaustion asphyxia either. Crucifracture is what they would do when they simply grew tired of watching this agony and suffering or when they had something better to do and wanted to end a crucifixion. They would take a spear and swing it like a ball bat and hit the victim in the shins to break his shin bones. They'd break the tibula and the fibula bone. Many times they would have to beat the legs for five or ten minutes until they finally could break the shin bones - it takes a lot of force to break your shin bone. With the shin bone broken, the victim could no longer push up to breathe.

Why didn't they break Jesus' legs? If you go back to the Psalms - I believe the 34th chapter - it says "Not a bone of his body was broken." This is why Jesus' nose and jaws and cheekbones should have been broken but couldn't have been. The 34th chapter of Psalms wouldn't let that take place. And that's why the Roman centurion didn't break his legs, because the Bible says "Not a bone of his body was broken."

That was totally uncharacteristic of the crucifixion, because that's how crucifixion victims died. When they grew tired of you and got bored with the situation they'd break your legs and in about four to six minutes you'd smother to death, because you could no longer push up with your legs. You laid there sagging, unable to breathe out, and you were asphyxiated in about four to six minutes. That's how the two thieves died. But Jesus was dead already.

Let's go back to the 19th chapter of John. What happened? What did they do when they went to the first thief? The Roman centurion broke his legs. What did he do when he went to the second thief? He broke his legs. But when the centurion went to Jesus, the Bible says he was dead already. Now why would a young, strapping, healthy man be dead after being on the cross for six hours? There's absolutely no medical explanation for it at all. Excuse my interpretation here, but the Lord had no business being dead. He should have been alive just like the other two.

He wasn't beaten to the point of death, his blood loss was minimal and we know he wasn't in shock, because everything he told us from the cross made sense. He identified his mother standing at some distance from the foot of the cross. He was able to see enough to identify her and to identify one of the disciples. And everything he said was coherent. He was not out of his mind and he was not having a nervous breakdown, and he wasn't even in shock from blood loss. The Lord was perfectly coherent and sane up to the moment he died."

"The spear wound to the Lord's side was not the cause of his death either. When the centurion saw that Jesus was dead already, he thrust a spear into Jesus' side. The Bible says in Zachariah that they may look upon him who they've pierced. The spear thrust was biblical prophecy fulfilled. That was one of the reasons why Jesus was already dead; God had a plan that we were to look upon the one they had pierced - Zachariah had to be fulfilled. Roman centurions were trained killers.

They were taught how to deliver death blows that would take a man's life in a matter of seconds. I've taken care of many gunshot victims to the chest. A person can take a .22 through the left side of the heart and likely come in sitting up talking to you. However, if you're stabbed or shot on the right side of the heart, where the inferior and superior vena cava are emptying into the right side of the heart, you're unconscious and pretty close to dead in about twenty to thirty seconds.

This blow to Jesus was no doubt delivered from the right side through the right lung into the heart and on into the spine. It would have penetrated somewhere between the seventh and eighth intercostal space probably on the right. But the Bible says that blood and water came out of Jesus' side after the spear was thrust in. Now if you take a unit of blood, drain it out of a human being's body, put it in a quart jar and set it on top o f a desk, in about thirty minutes the red blood cells begin to settle out and the plasma rises to the top. The plasma separates from the red blood cells. When the soldier thrust the spear into the Lord's side, Jesus had already been dead for thirty or forty-five minutes. Maybe you've never thought about that. The spear wound did not take the life of the Lord Jesus; he was dead already when they thrust the spear into his side.

So let me conjecture a little about what I think. I think there's a very good description of the crucifixion in the Bible and there's very good medical evidence that can be pulled out of that description that tells us that the Lord did not die in the manner that most crucifixion victims die. When the Roman centurion went to him to break his legs, he was dead already. They couldn't break his legs because the Bible said in Psalms, "Not a bone of his body shall be broken." Why then would the soldier thrust a spear into his side? Because Zachariah told us hundreds of years before that we'd look upon him that we'd pierced. And what came out? Blood and water - I think there's enough medical evidence there that the Lord was dead at least a half an hour.

So what took the Lord's life? No man did. No man, no Roman centurion, no cross took Jesus' life. He was able to do something I've never seen another human being do - he laid down his life. When it was finished and with a loud voice, he gave up the ghost. Jesus gave his life." "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life - only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father." (NIV) John 10:17,18 I'm deeply blessed ... Our Lord conquers death and gives life ..Amen?!

It's interesting how much macabre fascination they have with the grisly details of his suffering and death. It's also interesting how they're so eager to manufacture so many fine details of exactly what happened and in what order, despite the fact that their primary source document (the Bible) contains none of this detail. But the last paragraph is the best: it can be summarized as "I have no real evidence but I speculate that this is what happened, and my speculation impresses the hell out of me, so ... praise God!"

PS. This E-mail had all of the line-breaks hard-coded into it, so it had hard-coded narrow paragraphs which would look stupid if I copy-pasted them here. I had to do a multi-step search/replace in KWrite to replace all the blank lines with a placeholder, then kill all the line-breaks, then replace the placeholders with new line-breaks to restore the paragraphs. I don't even know how you're supposed to do that in Windows. Why do so many chain letters employ that format?

[Sela]

Here's another odd one to add to the bag:

"Film 786'' is a movie that Holland has made in which our beloved prophet(S.A.W.W), is made fun of.
60 million Muslims can destroy the economy of Holland by taking less than 5 minutes to forward this message so that we can answer Allah Subhana Wa Tala when He asks us what actions did you take when His most beloved(S.A.W.W) was made fun of?




Denmark is Loosing

Please don't let this mail stop in your pc.
Assalaam O Alaikum,
Great News
Hope you all know about the Denmark newspaper who made fun of our holy Prophet PBUH and till now they do not regret... let us make them regret for good....The Danish Ambassador, Prime Minister and Denmark National Channel; all are trying to do something just to stop the boycott by Muslims since last month through which their losses have reached 4 billion Euro. If we continue to boycott Denmark products 7 months more it could reach around 80 billion Euro's loss. Believers do not let this message stop in your PC. Please forward this text to as many Muslims as possible ... Can't u spare 15 minutes in order to spread this message among Muslims ...
ASAP? REMEMBER THE
PROPHET (SAW) MIGHT ASK YOU ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT,' WHAT DID YOU DO
WHEN THEY MADE FUN OF ME? HOW DID YOU DEFEND ME?'
7-up drink, LEGO, Cadbury chocolates, Hall Chewing gums or any product with barcode no. starting with 57
Please convince all Muslims to circulate this to Muslim ummah to ban
Danish made products

Terrible spelling and exaggerated claims aside; does anyone actually know if this boycott is a real thing? Any idea on these numbers?

[SCRawl]

My favorite part is the way they have to make the professors unbelievably dumb to suit their story. Not even a freshman physics or engineering undergraduate student would ever say there's such a thing as cold or darkness without adding caveats.

Well, they'd point out that it's relative. And any professor worth his salt would explain that "cold" is really just a noun for the process of cooling (albeit with an implied magnitude), which is merely a direction of heat transfer. Obviously, a direction (even if we add a magnitude to make it a vector) does not exist in the same sense that an object does.

PS. It occurs to me that it would be amusing for someone to write a corrected version of this little story, in which the professor actually responds the way a real professor would, and the fundie just keeps doggedly moving onto the next page in his script by saying "leaving that aside" or "moving on" or "let me ask you another question" or any of a number of other evasive techniques that fundies use to carry on with their presentation in real-life. We've all heard them.

In the process of debunking a letter someone posted on my facebook page, I came across this little gem.

Now, let's revisualize the above dialogue rationally. Where major editing is done, the justification is given in (parentheses).

Dialogue with a young theist (longer version)

A philosophy professor challenged his students with a form of the Euthyphro dilema: Did 'God' create everything that exists?" A student replied, "Yes, he did!" (The 'bravely' part is removed: civil disagreement is the very point of philosophy courses, no bravery is required for dissent! Civil dissent is rewarded! Agreement is the death of philosophy, disagreement is its life's blood.)

"God created everything?" the professor asked. "Yes," the student replied. (The 'sir' part is removed: no college student in the 21st century addresses a college professor as 'sir' - which demonstrates that whoever it was that made up the original story never went to college. In addition, the use of 'sir' is just a pretense of 'respect' - it comes off as passive aggressive anger more than anything else.)

The professor answered, "Well then, here's a logical puzzle for you: If God created everything, then God created evil; Therefore, according to the principal that 'our works define who we are', 'God' is evil."

The student became silently enraged over his worldview being 'attacked'. He began to project out his feelings of inadequecy as smugness coming from the professor.

The student then said: "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course," replied the professor. That's the point of philosophical discourse. (The writer of the original story clearly has little experience with a real college classroom. The whole point of a philosophy or theology course is to foster discussion.)

Student: Is there such thing as heat?"
Professor: Yes, the professor replies.
Student: "Is there such a thing as cold?"
Professor: "Yes, there's cold too."
Student: "No, there isn't"

The professor doesn't grin or frown or react with any emotion other than curiosity. After all, he's heard bad arguments like this for more years than the student has been alive. (The desire to see the professors 'smug smile wiped off his face' is just another projection of the feelings of inadequecy found in theists who aren't able to argue their own points well...)

The student continues. You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold, otherwise we would be able to go colder than 458. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, just the absence of it"

Professor: (Nodding his head in dismay, and working out how many times he's heard this bad logic by now. 100 times?). Do you remember the section in your workbook on semantic fallacies?

Student: ( gives a confused look a dog might make)

Professor: Let me give you a quick review. Both 'heat' and 'cold' are subjective terms... They are what the philosopher John Locke properly called "secondary qualities". The secondary qualities refer to how we humans experience a very real phenomena: the movement of atomic particles. The terms 'heat' and 'cold' refer to an interaction between human nervous systems and various speeds of atomic particles in their environment. So what we 'really' have is temperature.... the terms 'heat' and "cold' are merely subjective terms we use to denote our relative experience of temperature.

So your entire argument is specious. You have not 'proven' that 'cold' does not exist, or that 'cold' somehow exists without any ontological status, what you have done is shown that 'cold' is a subjective term. Take away the subjective concept, and the 'thing in itself', the temperature we are denoting as 'cold', still exists. Removing the term we use to reference the phenomena does not eradicate the phenomena.

Student: (a bit stunned) "Uh... Ok.... Well, is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"

Professor: You are still employing the same logical fallacy. Just with a different set of of secondary qualities.

Student: "So you say there is such a thing as darkness?"

Professor: "What I am telling you is that you are repeating the very same error. "Darkness" exists as a secondary quality.

Student: "You're wrong again. Darkness is not something, it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, Darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker and give me a jar of it. Can you give me a jar of darkness, professor?

Professor: Sure, right after you give me a jar of light. Seriously, "light and dark' are subjective terms we use to describe how we humans measure measure photons visually. The photons actually exist, the terms 'light' and 'dark' are just subjective evaluations, relative terms... having to do, again, with an interaction between our nervous systems and another phenomenon of nature - this time, photons. So again, doing away with a subjective term does not eradicate the actual phenomena itself - the photons. Nothing actually changes. If we humans tend to call 'x number of photons' 'dark' (while cats refer to it as 'bright enough for me&quotEye-wink those number of photons we denote as 'dark' exist, and they continue to exist even if we do away with the term 'dark.'

Do you get it now?

Student: (gives a look not unlike a 3 year old trying to work out quantum physics)

Professor: I see your still struggling with the fallacy hidden in your argument. But let's continue, perhaps you'll see it.

Student: Well, you are working on the premise of duality, the christian explains.

Professor: Actually, I've debunked that claim two times now. But carry on.

Student: "Well, you assume, for example, that there is a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure.

Professor: Be careful. If you want to place your god beyond the grasps of reason, logic, and science and make him 'unmeasurable', then you are left with nothing but a mystery of your own devising. So if you use this special plead your god beyond reason to solve the problem, you can't call your god moral either. You can't call 'him' anything. You can't say anything else about something that you yourself have defined as beyond reason other than that the term you've created is incoherent. So your solution is akin to treating dandruf by decapitation.

Student: (Gulps. Continues on, oblivious to what was just said) Sir, science cannot even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has never seen, much less fully understood them.

Professor: You just said that science cannot explain a thought. I'm not even sure what you mean by that. I think what you mean to say is this: there remains many mysteries in neuroscience. Would you agree?

Student: Yes.

Professor: And, along the same line of thought, we accept that there are things like thoughts, or electricity or magnetism even though we have never seen them?

Student: Yes!

Professor: Recall the section in your textbook concerning fallacies of false presumption. Turn to the entry on 'Category error'. You'll recall that a category error occurs when an inappropriate measure is used in regards to an entity, such as asking someone what the color of a sound is... Asking someone to 'see' magnetism directly (and not just its effects) commits such an error. However, there is yet another error in your argument: your assumption that empircism or even science is based on 'real time observation' alone. This is false. Sight is not the sole means of knowing the world, nor is science merely the study of whatever we are currently looking at. We can use other senses to detect phenomena. And we can also examine their effects upon the world.

Furthermore, you are importing yet another erroneous presumption into the discussion: you are conflating the fact that science is incomplete with the implication that a lack of an answer from naturalism automatically means that your theistic assertion is correct. So you'll also want to review the section on 'arguing form ignorance.'

Do you have more to say?

Student: (The student, continues, mainly unfazed, due to the protection his shield of ignorance affords him.) .... Um....... to view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, merely the absence of it"

Professor: You are really in love with this secondary quality fallacy, aren't you? You are again confusing a secondary quality with the phenomena in of itself. "Death" and "life" are subjective terms we use to describe a more fundamental phenomena - biology. The phenomena in question, however, does exist. Biological forms in various states exist. Doing away with the subjective term does not eradicate the existence of death.

Nonplussed, the young man continues: "Is there such a thing as immorality?"

Professor: (Reaches for an asprin in his desk) You're not going to again confuse a secondary quality for an atttribute, are you? Please... what can I do to help you see this problem?

Student: (Continues on, fueled by ideology and oblivious to reality) You see, immorality is merely the absence of morality. Is there such thing as injustice? No. Injustice is the absence of justice. Is there such a thing as evil?" The christian pauses. "Isn't evil the absence of good?"

Professor: So, if someone murders your mother tonight, nothing happened? There was just an absence of morality in your house? Wait, I forgot... she's not dead... she's just experiencing an absence of life, right?

Student: Uh.....

Professor: You're beginning to see that something is missing in your argument, aren't you? Here's what you're missing. You are confusing a secondary quality... a subjective term that we can use to describe a phenomena, for the phenomena itself. Perhaps you heard me mention this before? (The class erupts in laughter, the professor motions for them to stop laughing.) 'Immorality' is a descrptive term for a behavior. The terms are secondary, but the behaviors exist. So if you remove the secondary qualities, you do nothing to eradicate the real behavior that the terms only exist to describe in the first place. So by saying that 'immorality' is a lack of morality, you are not removing immoral intentions and behaviors, or the problem of immoral intentions and behaviors from existence, you are just removing the secondary attribute, the subjective term.

And notice how dishonest your argument is on yet another level... in that it speaks of morality and immorality devoid of behavior, but 'evil' exists as a behavior, evil is an intent to do harm and an act commited with such an intent.

By the way, are you really trying to imply that immorality or evil are merely subjective qualities?

Student: Gulp! (Reeling from the psychological blows to his corrupt worldview....) Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, professor?"

The professor soothes his aching forehead, and prepares for the 1 millionth time that he will be subjected to the 'can you see the wind' argument.

Professor: What an interesting turn this conversation has taken. Can I advise you to read Brofenbrenner's suggestion against arguing over subjects over which you are uninformed? It's in your textbook. Page 1.

Student: "Professor, since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a priest?

Professor: Interesting indirect comment on the priesthood. But let's leave that aside... We do observe the process of evolution at work, for the process works at this very moment. As for the implication in your argument that one must 'be there' to observe a process at it occurs, surely you realize that we can infer the process through examining the evidence that these processes leave behind? In a sense, we are there when we observe artifacts.

Consider for example the science of astronomy. How do we know about super novas? Because we can observe diferrent supernovas in different stages of super nova, by observing their 'artifacts' in the night sky. The same stands for any historical science. Your mistake here is that you think science is merely 'real-time-observation'. This is a strawman of science. By your logic trees can't grow - after all, who's actually witnessed a tree growing?

Science is both direct and indirect observation... it also allows for inference. If, for the sake of consistency you were asked to follow your own rule, you'd have to concede that we have no evidence tree growth, or mountain formation - after all, I've never actually seen a seed grow into a tree, I've only seen it in stages.

Student: "But professor! You stated that science is the study of observed phenomena.

Professor: No, this is a strawman of what science is... Science is more than just real time observation, we also observe artifacts and make inferences. But continue....

Student: (Responds to this as a goat might respond to a book on calculus) May I give you an example of what I mean?"

Professor: Certainly.

Student: "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen air, oxygen, molecules, atoms, the professor's brain?"

The class breaks out in laughter. The christian points towards professor, "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain... felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain?" "No one appears to have done so", The christian shakes his head sadly. "It appears no one here has had any sensory perception of the professor's brain whatsoever. Well, according to the rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science, I declare that the professor has no brain!"

(So much for the student's pretense of respect, clearly his goal is to ridicule).

Professor: You mean, according to your strawman view of science. I am glad that you are here in my class so that I can help you better understand what you criticize. Science is not merely 'looking' at things. Science is empirical, but also rational. We can make inferences from evidence of things that we do see, back to phenonema that we might not be able to directly see. Such as a functioning brain.

And one inference I can make from observing your behaviors here today is that you've wasted the money you've spent on your logic textbook so far this year. I strongly advise, for your own sake, that you crack open that book today, and start reading. From page 1.

Those who know the good, do the good. - Socrates

Needless to say, proper credit goes to the above-mentioned The Infidel for bringing this to my attention.