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Let's also not forget that Deus Ex predicted the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Is that game now going to be taken as gospel?

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Let's also not forget that Deus Ex predicted the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Is that game now going to be taken as gospel?

You dare to question the inerrancy of Deus Ex? Heretic!

 Orlanth wrote:
I have throughout this thread refrained from making any comments on the quality of religion or religious experience provided by Satanism, it is not relevant to the thread..

Of course it's relevant. My original comment that you started replying to was directed at someone who was criticizing satanism as somehow being worse than other religions when it isn't at all. The fact that you jumped in and took the debate in a different direction doesn't make it less relevant.

Says you. Unthinking imbeciles don't tend to hold academic seats at Oxford and Cambridge University, however perhaps you claim to know better.

Ok, let me clarify: I'm sure he was a good scholar in his academic field, but on the subject of religion C.S. Lewis was an unthinking imbecile.

Curious you defend Satanism, you show not a jot of concern if other religions are critiqued and in fact join in wholeheartedly.

No, you have that backwards. I love criticism of satanism, it's an incredibly silly idea. What I do not like is the hypocrisy of criticizing satanism for being silly while not applying the same criticism to other religions.

However there has been no bash at Satanism on this thread. There isn't any real need.

Go read the first 1-2 pages of this thread and say that again.

The power of God makes people uncomfortable, it shows up those who use religion as a tool for power than a blueprint for holy living.

Lol, no. I really don't see how you can miss the fact that people in the US are constantly talking about having god do miracles for them. Every time you see a disaster there's always someone talking about how god saved people from it, every time someone has a health problem it's "thank you god for answering my prayers and healing me", etc.

Still I am yet to hear of one that involves crossing the Styx by ferry, or of having one heart weighed against a feather.

And I seriously doubt that 98% of near-death experiences involve clear and unambiguous Christian elements. I'll consider this credible evidence when you post some evidence of common clearly-Christian experiences by people who are not Christian, and preferably have never heard of Christianity. Because until then all I see is people talking about the standard idea of "heaven" in their culture (standardized to the point that even secular portrayals of heaven default to using the common Christian idea), which is far short of evidence that Christianity is true.

@Orlanth: I didn't post that Tim Minchin video to try and teach something; I posted it to mock the endless torrent of blathering stupidity that preceded it.

On NDEs being christian in tone, I'm not so sure of that. A feeling of a powerful prescence , light and doorways are in no way specifically christian or christian iconography. If doorways are a part of any religion it is the romano/greek one , who had a god who had a door as his icon.

Anyways, isn't it written in a book of the bible (revelations i think) that people are risen bodily by god after the big calamities and dragons appear (dragons will be cool) so I am not seeing evidence from the bible that there is a christian afterlife until AFTER the deserving get raised. Having said that ,I am not sure how much faith (ha) you can put in revelations as a source. Personally i think revelations is a crock, but the witnesses who come to see me certainly love it.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
God has spoken to me.

I alone know His true intent now, He is mighty displeased at the Christians, Jews and Islamics and is going to move through me to bring you The Truth, for I have beheld His Kingdom when the oxygen was cut off from my brain for several minutes.

So brace yourselves, for I will be issuing you all with New Commandments, told directly to me, when my mind was in the process of shutting down and dying off.

It's TRUE, HE told me.

The High Elves told you?

You question the pointy eared, big helmed and girly harbingers of His Word?


HERESY!

Blasphemy. Brian Blessed's Beard is the true messiah!

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Let's also not forget that Deus Ex predicted the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Is that game now going to be taken as gospel?

You dare question the word of Warren Spector, harbinger of both, Serpent Isle AND Deus Ex, hallowed by his name. The lord and provider of System Shock?!

The man has done infinite things more godly and awe-inspiring than the Christian god.

On NDEs being christian in tone, I'm not so sure of that. A feeling of a powerful prescence , light and doorways are in no way specifically christian or christian iconography. If doorways are a part of any religion it is the romano/greek one , who had a god who had a door as his icon.

I think it is more a matter that people have such an assumption that NDE are patently "Christian", simply because of the years and years of Christianity adopting them as being related to "their" religion.

It's like misquoting someone so many times that people begin to think the misquote is true, just because they have heard it more often.

I'll bet you can find an absolute fanatical follower in every religion on Earth that has had a NDE that is similar to each the other religion's super-faithfuls, which to me proves one of two things:

-Each NDE is legitimate, and as such all religions lead to the same conclusion.

or

-It wasn't a "real" NDE, but something contrived by a starved brain, but because we have been bombarded by the almost singular "glowing tunnel with door" image, that such an image is knocking around in everyone's brains, and as a result it's kind of a "collective hallucination" among NDE survivors.

Yeah, a bit like Christmas trees. Originally they were part of Pagan/Wiccan ceremonies. The church, seeing how popular they were, then promptly stole the idea, stomped out Paganism, and claimed that it was their idea all along and it hadn't existed before they laid claim to it in the name of JAYSUS or whatever. Pulling a GW, if you will.

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Yeah, a bit like Christmas trees. Originally they were part of Pagan/Wiccan ceremonies. The church, seeing how popular they were, then promptly stole the idea, stomped out Paganism, and claimed that it was their idea all along and it hadn't existed before they laid claim to it in the name of JAYSUS or whatever. Pulling a GW, if you will.

That happened with (festival of) Ishtar and Yule becoming Easter and Christmas. The real Easter is on Passover weekend, no one knows when real Christmas is, it wasn't relevant to the early church.

Christianity didn't nick Christmas trees though.

Christmas trees are a 19th century German tradition and are directly linked to Christmas.
Other tree related customs connected are pagan but they were not Christianised but remain pagan. Dancing the maypole being the clearest example, which is very pagan and has its roots in fertility worship of several coupled deities including Baal & Astoreth and Osiris & Isis. Note here that Pagan deities hijacked popular ritual also and in time became part of secular custom. Morris dancing is at its heart a pagan fertility dance asking the earth goddess to squat on the pole representing the penis of the sky god that is itself millenia old.
Maypoles and the Asherah poles Joshua cut down in the Old Testament are similar in root even if the reason why the dance occurs has been lost to time (from the point of view of secular Morris dancers).

The Yule log was related to Yuletide but always secular custom and referred to the custom of peasants being permitted to collect firewood from the lords land without paying the 'wood penny' at this time. It's remembered now as a chocolate log sometimes served as part of Christmas celebrations.

It gets quite convoluted and Christianity shouldnt be singled out. Proper Christianity only has two actual meaningful rituals: Baptism and Communion, all others are just cultural trappings.

 Orlanth wrote:
It gets quite convoluted and Christianity shouldnt be singled out.

Of course it should be singled out. You're forgetting that the context of "Christianity stole all the Christmas traditions" accusation is usually some obnoxious conservative whining about the "war on Christmas" and how horrible all those secular Christmas celebrations are.

It's mean to claim that Christians stole from other religions to make Christmas. Mostly because that's ignoring all the other religions they did that to for all their other holidays.

Seems like passover is about the only "actual" Christianity-based holiday. Everything else is a re-skinned pagan holiday.

 Orlanth wrote:

It gets quite convoluted and Christianity shouldnt be singled out. Proper Christianity only has two actual meaningful rituals: Baptism and Communion, all others are just cultural trappings.

I agree , but by the dead man with a commonly mispronounced name, the catholic church had a hell of a lot of cultural feast/holy days, must be painful trying to cover a huge pantheon of pagans gods holy days.

After all, there needed to be some incentive to convert . . .

I agree. I can imagine a missionary saying "that large festival you had last week with all the beer and rooting? Become a christian and you can spend next year in a church" What a hard sell.

"Don't have wild orgies and drink yourself stupid! Don't worship the god that promotes ruthless violence in the hope you'll get to heaven! Pray in a church!"

To be truthful Christianity is nowhere near the first religion to do this, just the most successful currently, lol.

"Don't have wild orgies and drink yourself stupid! Don't worship the god that promotes ruthless violence in the hope you'll get to heaven! Pray in a church!"

There have been many times in history where the last two have not been mutually exclusive..........

 LordofHats wrote:

 Squigsquasher wrote:
Let's also not forget that Deus Ex predicted the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Is that game now going to be taken as gospel?

You dare to question the inerrancy of Deus Ex? Heretic!

Main character's name is "J.C."? Capable of performing feats beyond the capacity of ordinary humans? Ushers in a new world making hard choices and potentially sacrificing himself?

Anyway, regarding the OP; man, that's seriously funny. I wholeheartedly encourage the trolling of WBC. They've shown that ignoring them isn't going to change their reprehensible actions, so we move to mockery.

Look I don't care what you believe. But have some respect for the dead. It's not a park or playground for people to make political statements or for one group to troll another group.

 wowsmash wrote:
But have some respect for the dead.

The WBC doesn't.

What goes around comes around, if they didn't want people making ham fisted gestures around the resting places of their loved ones, maybe they should reconsider the utterly vile things they try to interject during funerals for others.

I'm sure his mother was a lovely and classy woman.

Her son, however, leads people to say and do some truly despicable things.

Though I do prefer when there's some decent comedy in the mix. (Warning: potentially NSFW language on the WBC signs).

 Orlanth wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Still I am yet to hear of one that involves crossing the Styx by ferry, or of having one heart weighed against a feather.

I'm sure those were exceedingly common in ancient Egypt.

How sure, found any recorded testimonies of Egyptian (or Greek) NDE's?

yup.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence12.html

In fact NDEs are quite common throughout human history and culture

http://www.near-death.com/index.html#.Ue_keNKyDpV


http://iands.org/about-ndes/key-nde-facts.html?showall=1

Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Non-Western near-death research has been conducted in China, India, Thailand, Tibet, and in several native cultures in Australia, Chile, Guam, the continental U.S., New Zealand, and Hawaii. Similarities to Western NDEs are the belief that this is the afterlife, a profound sense of peace, being in an otherworldly realm, meeting deceased relatives, meeting spiritual or religious figures (usually in keeping with one’s cultural background) and to a lesser extent experiencing some type of life review. The tunnel sensation was rarely reported in non-Western cultures.


Correlations

No significant correlation has been found between religious beliefs and the likelihood or depth of the near-death experience.24
No significant correlation has been found between age, race, sexual orientation, economic status and the likelihood, content or depth of the near-death experience.25
No correlation between the life history, beliefs, behavior or attitudes of a person and the likelihood of having a radiant or harrowing NDE has been established.26
There is no evidence of a correlation between the means of coming close to death, including suicide, and the likelihood of having a harrowing NDE.

 wowsmash wrote:
Look I don't care what you believe. But have some respect for the dead. It's not a park or playground for people to make political statements or for one group to troll another group.

And to go full circle: Why? Funerals are for the living. The dead don't care.

 daedalus wrote:

 wowsmash wrote:
Look I don't care what you believe. But have some respect for the dead. It's not a park or playground for people to make political statements or for one group to troll another group.

And to go full circle: Why? Funerals are for the living. The dead don't care.

What are you basing this assertion off of?

 Monster Rain wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 wowsmash wrote:
Look I don't care what you believe. But have some respect for the dead. It's not a park or playground for people to make political statements or for one group to troll another group.

And to go full circle: Why? Funerals are for the living. The dead don't care.

What are you basing this assertion off of?

Well, I guess my own personal views, which happen to be as reasonable and valid to me as are the ones belonging to the person who thinks the opposite of me. Therein lies the dilemma.

Why are we here?!?!

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Why are we here?!?!

To go off-topic in a Warhammer forum.

 wowsmash wrote:
Look I don't care what you believe. But have some respect for the dead. It's not a park or playground for people to make political statements or for one group to troll another group.

That's it exactly. The families of several others buried there are no doubt upset about the antics going on in an area they consider hallowed ground. I'd be a tad pissed if this exibition had gone on right by, and possibly spilled over on, graves of my family members.

 azazel the cat wrote:

2. Why is everyone associated with the Church of Satan always named something White Wolf-esque like Lucien Greaves or Azrael Dark...uh...stone? Why can't we ever hear from Church of Satan spokesman Frank Johnson, or Tom Smith or something absolutely common.

hum Lucien is a very common French name. Like Roger or Louis or Tom. There is nothing evil about Lucien.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Why are we here?!?!

I dunno man, it's one of the great questions in life.

Oh, you mean why are we here in this topic? Because lesbians.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Why are we here?!?!

I dunno man, it's one of the great questions in life.

Oh, you mean why are we here in this topic? Because lesbians.

Reading the title, I was expecting some famous person's mother to come out as a satanic lesbian after he died.

I'm very disappointed.