The Problem with Protecting the "Sacred"

And in the end the next episode turns out to be images of me meditating and occasional dramatic sounding dialogue that amounts to nothing.

Six words: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

edited 14th Jun '12 2:11:38 PM by Jhimmibhob

Lt. Cmdr. Taoist - You don't understand, sir. Carciofus hasn't captured Starship. Starship is now actually working with him!

Commander Aondeug: That's....impossible.

Lt. Euodiachloris: Incoming hail, Commander.

Aondeug: On screen.

(An image of Captain Maxima appears, completely altered, now covered in religious dogma and intractability.)

Starship: We are the Inquisition. Your lives as they have been...are over. You will adapt to service us. Resistance....is futile.

(A tense silence....)

Aondeug: Ms. Euo..........FIRE!

.....to be continued......

<imagines holy fires aimed at mega-mechas and their ballistic missiles>

Actually, that'd be pretty neat.

I wanted to wait tomorrow for posting this, but I'm afraid I'll lose my train of though during my sleep.

1. Accuse me of Moving the Goalposts all you like, but I'd really like to know in what tone he was "ordered" (the word itself is already a red flag) to eat or return the host he was given. Antagonizing someone, maybe even frothing at the mouth, is no incentive to obey, it only makes the orderer look like a lunatic.
2. I'd like to bring back the argument about one's life versus Christ's sacrifice: I fully agree with Radical Taoist here and would like to go further: If you choose the host above you, you're rejecting Jesus's sacrifice. In fact, I think dying for a host would desecrate it far more than anything Myers could come up with.

That I can answer: It's not about getting the wafers, it's about getting them blessed.

edited 14th Jun '12 2:42:08 PM by Medinoc

Not to mention you can buy the wafers online at a fairly low cost if you're so inclined. I don't really understand the outrage either.

I can understand the outrage: I didn't fall asleep in my Confirmation Class (and, it was a High Anglican one). I no longer choose to accept the fact that it is much more than a (rather taste-free, mouth-gumming) wafer. However, I wouldn't take it out the church if given it, and would take part in the Eucharist as expected to, partly as a nod to the old me and what I used to whole-heartedly believe, and as a promise I haven't forgotten what I used to believe at the time.

It's also polite. I'm lapsed, but occasionally nostalgic. And, pretty certain that, although some people might want to hit me for doing so, the Joshua bar Joseph I know about was a good enough egg to get where I'm coming from. Even if Paul might have come at me a bit for not taking part as he saw fit.

Just as I wouldn't walk everywhere in a Shinto compound with my nasty shoes on, take the water and put it in water pistols to shoot everywhere, or walk into a mosque without covering my hair. Nor, for some reason, did I yell my head off in Stone Age caves. For the exact same reasons, actually. Somebody believes (or believed). So, be polite.

edited 14th Jun '12 2:49:49 PM by Euodiachloris

We're in agreement that we'd all prefer a safe Carciofus to a safe wafer.

I don't see how that idea is mutually exclusive from, don't screw with stuff others find important, regardless of how important you think it is personally.

Yeah Paul can be a bit of a grouch. Especially about sex. Dude need to get laid.

Wait that joke is in such horrid taste. Needless to say I agree with you on that. To me, even when consecrated, a wafer is just that. A wafer. I'm not going to eat it as I don't believe in it and I'm not going to take it out of the church as that's rude. I may disagree with the views people have of the objects, but I will politely observe it from afar and discuss with them in a calm fashion about the differences in our views if I can. It's a big part of three friendships I have with three Catholics. And I rather like that we can do that so happily.

Also I interrupt our topic to post this. Thank you for being a Star Trek loving goof basically, Maxima.

On the issue of Carc vs. the wafer...I personally would prefer seeing him alive over a safe wafer, but I can understand and respect his belief and position on the matter. I wouldn't let him die if for some reason I had the ability to try and save him from giving his life for the wafer.

But then we would be in a battle of religious beliefs. I value life of all kinds especially highly for many reasons. One of the big ones being that whole "Life that is sentient feels pain and pain kind of sucks you know?" But he believes that the wafer is simultaneously a wafer and Jesus and thus must be guarded.

This my friends would be the climax of a hit film. Beloved for its pulse pounding drama and the line "PUT THE WAFER BACK. IN. THE BOX."

edited 14th Jun '12 2:26:58 PM by Aondeug

Anyone mind if I bring some crackers to eat while watching next week’s episode?

What...?

If you want to eat those wafers, it's entirely up to you. <blerch> As a culinary experience, they are lacking without sherbet. Even with sherbet. Lo! The wafer as a UFO! Please note: pretty much the same wafer. Just this one never has set foot in a church, nor intends to. The only thing this one does is... disappoint children everywhere when they were hoping for something a bit more impressive in their Halloween haul.

I'm going to stick with popcorn or nachos when it comes to watching that movie, thanks.

edited 14th Jun '12 2:38:51 PM by Euodiachloris

Aon, I love you. And to commemorate the warm fuzzies, I'll channel a little Star Trek Voyager.

Captain Maxima: (addressing his brave crew) We were enemies before. But not anymore. We are in a hostile and uncharted part of the forums. We've made some friends (points to his fellow Startrope officers) and we've made some enemies. But as of this stardate, we all united.

I don't care if you're a liberal, or a right-winger, or a neo-pagain, or even if you drink nasty shit like matcha tea (ignores burning glare from his first officer Aondeug). We're all going to carry out our standing orders to explore the internet.

But our primary goal is clear. To return home, back to the Troper Covens and the TV Tropes web page. There's a lot of work to do, so let's get to it.

Helm?

Ensign Silasw: Sir.

Maxima: Set a course....for home.

Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Civilprise. It's continuing mission; to explore new ideas and ways of reasoning. To seek out common ground with those who don't share their views. To boldly prove the civility and intelligence can exist.... Edited .......even in the forsaken space known as the internet, from which there may be no return. (thanks Euo!)

edited 14th Jun '12 2:44:00 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

...even in the forsaken space known as the internet, from which there may be no return.

Hmmm: which quadrant would TV Tropes be, again? Alpha, I guess... And, no charge, Starship.

edited 14th Jun '12 2:45:17 PM by Euodiachloris

In other words, Neophyte Syndrome. It's really not that hard to sell something as if it were some kind of grand revelation and get them to parrot it.

Because politics have gotten to the point that politicians like to identify with half your views and then yell the rest of theirs really loudly until you believe them, and that any deviation from this is treason from the party! so they can present a unified front.

And I'm about to address exactly why that kind of tendency is so frustrating...

Rural Oregon, college town. It's the demographic equivalent of dropping a gummi bear into potassium chlorate. Big city types that skew left who moved in for our engineering program, Eugene and Portland hippies that skew really far left, home-grown "backlash against Eugene and Portland hippies" people that skew really far right, a whole lot of right-leaning farmers and agriculture students that grudgingly vote Democrat because of environmental concerns and wish the corresponding Republicans would pull their heads out of their ass on it, a lot of non-denominational Christians who are bitter at establishments but still evangelical-ish, and a ton of exchange students from the Middle East where things are even more rough. It's kind of a powder keg because everyone polarizes each other more than they normally would be, and most demographic and political polls around here are really deceptive because the results often happen for reasons you wouldn't immediately guess.

As for that class, I knew a decent chunk of it from my church group, and that group was about as vocal as the places I went in the Midwest. None of them had any problem with "use the tools we give you for the assignments we give you", or "analyze this topic using this frame of reference". No need to go trying to sanitize your class of them.

A lot of atheists are sure good at dressing it up like one.

<angelic trumpets>

For thine is the reason, the wisdom and the rationality...

Did that make it a schism when PZ ripped up the God Delusion?

It's more in the way some people take atheism. These people are rather distressing. Because often times they are dumb. As shit.

Like my little brother.

edited 14th Jun '12 4:01:57 PM by Aondeug

PZ Myers and Dawkins are each other's fans. More often than not, when you listen to a debate or lecture by either one of them, they'll mention the other one at some point, usually because they want to quote something that the other one said.

BTW, in one occasion where PZ Myers was discussing his desecration of the cracker and some other things, he said that he wasn't willing to waste anything he had paid for, so the copy of The God Delusion was one that he had been given by someone who didn't know that he already had the book. Same with the Bible and the Quran.

Basically, PZ Myers is the 5th Horseman. As is Neil Degrasse Tyson (though he refuses to publicly call himself an atheist, instead just saying that he doesn't believe in God because for him there's a difference.) And Lawrence Krauss. And so on.

edited 14th Jun '12 4:08:15 PM by BestOf

I hate PZ Meyers...

I have become a fan of his as a result of all the videos I've seen of him in You Tube. (I've watched or listened to everything longer than 30 minutes unless it had poor audio.)

I find Myers motivation in destroying sacred objects totally relatable. For instance.

If I had somehow had some holy communion on hand, I would have instinctively destroyed it when I read that.

Then I would have regretted my rash behavior, as I would have lacked the appropriate witnesses, rendering my blaspheme an empty gesture.

If some object is so sacred that you feel you are justified in attempting to sabotage someone's life over their perceived disrespect for it, then I would very much like to burn it down.

If you're so sensitive to the insult that you think it justifies materially attacking people, then Meyers is doing a public service by desensitizing you to that insult.

I just find everyone involved to acted distastefully and in a wrong manner. As I do with many things.

"PICK SIDE" "no they all suck and have failed".

I'd no more want to do that to somebody than run over their cat in front of them. Just because you don't care for the cat, doesn't mean they don't have a valid reason to feel really, really close to it.

You might argue that the cat has no real love for them, that they are anthropomorphising what they wish to see in the cat... but, still: they feel an attachment to the cat.

And, I'd expect somebody to at least threaten me with death for doing it, if I did do it: high emotion does that. And, getting on my high horse about how they should thank me for obliterating the cat to open their eyes would not make them like me very much, either. It's mainly grandstanding to the converted.

edited 14th Jun '12 4:32:09 PM by Euodiachloris