Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Grant:
Fair enough, and I'd be the first to admit that sometimes my irritability overcomes the best good judgement. Personally, my tolerance for salty language and vivid idiom is much higher than watching faith -- something I value and take enormously seriously -- routinely used as an offensive political weapon. And not for the first time, I wonder if some folks who engage in rather ill-informed discourse, and blanket generalisations about Christians would be a little more scrupulous -- and a great deal more dignified -- when it comes to other faith communities. I certainly think PAS is the kind of community where lumping over a billion Muslims together as murderous ultra-fundies would be given short shift.
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Dear oh dear--that Craig fellow sure takes things personally. Be assured that I don't 'teach religion' at the University of Waikato--I leave my religion (or lack of) at the door.
Yes, I do take it personally and I'm bloody sick of the ill-informed and smug nonsense that gets talked when folks want to use religion as an offensive political weapon. As I said to Deborah, I tend to walk away from these kinds of arguments because I find evangelical atheists about as shrill and careless as their theist brethren. Nor am I particular impressed with either the religious left or the religious right taking the concept of the bully pulpit to places Teddy Roosevelt never imagined.
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Nice try...
Meh... I've gotten into the habit of just walking away from harrangues by evangelical atheists, and while I wouldn't be silly enough to equate that to any kind of "attack" I'm a little tired of being held personally responsible for the Crusades.
But since folks brought it up, papal infalibility is actually a pretty limited and rarely exercised concept. This is about the best explanation I've come across online, pitched in layman's terms. Humanae Vitae most certainly was not intended as an infalible statement, as a papal encyclical does not have the status of a " dogmatic statement 'ex cathedra' from the chair of Peter".
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I'd be fucking amazed to hear one say "I'm a Catholic but I leave that at the doors of Parliament" (That person would be a bloody liar).
Um, no Paul. I'd like Mike Huckabee, for example, to get it into his fucking fool head that the President of the United States swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States not the Bible as understood by the Southern Baptist Convention. (Or fundamentally erroneous heretics, as they're affectionately called in my house. :) I'm very relaxed about living in a secular parliamentary democracy which defends and values religious freedom; rather than a theocracy, even if it happened to be one run according to Catholic canon law.
And if you think that makes me a liar, then leathery titties.
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I believe that we need to know about such stuff, for it is naive to believe that religious activities and political stances are not interdependent...not to necessarily make judgements, but to better understand how Bill English and his ilk shape their world view.
I'm not a fucking 'ilk', Lealand. And, yes, you are making judgements so don't be so bleeding cute about it. This might be rather confusing to some people, but I believe Catholics lie across the political spectrum and we don't take instructions from either the Vatican or the New Zealand Bishops Conference on how to vote. I really hope there's a better quality of teaching and a slightly more sophisticated view of religion being taught at the University of Waikato that you're showing.
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And I'd also like folks to consider what the reaction would be if Helen Clark was tagged as an agnostic/atheist. That might be a relevant data point to some people, but unless New Zealand became a theocracy when I wasn't looking I fail to see what particular relevance it would have to her public life.
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The information about English's moral beliefs and his wife's activity in conservative Catholic organisations was added last April by user Calibanu, who I presume is the GayNZ.com columnist Craig Young. I don't have a clear view on whether Young's edit was appropriate, although its removal is equally questionable. What do you think?
I don't know about Craig Young, but my partner and I actually have any number of differences of opinion on all sorts of matters. I also happen to be a fairly observant Catholic; he's a Methodist who, since I've known him, has never gone to church.
Young's views on political conservatives and religion are well known. But, FFS, we are living in the 21st century aren't we? It is possible to assume that women are capable of having lives -- and opinions -- of their own?
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Damn you Sarah Silverman (NSFW)
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Lucy:
Don't hit anyone, just be the best bloody friend you can be. I don't think anyone who hasn't been there can really understand how shitty and utterly powerless you feel at the very notion of choking down medication. It might not seem so at the moment, but it really does matter to know there are people around you who don't understand the fifty flavours of Hell you're going through, but care all the same.
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No Right Turn has already slapped up a post declaring SSRIs to be "snake oil".
To which my response is, fuck off and come back when you're Doctor Savant. Ironically enough, I'm due for the quarterly checkup where I pay careful attention to medical professional who aren't the bitches of Big Pharma who reach for the perscription pad as a first resort.
SSRI's are part of how I manage my mental illness, and one I accepted with extreme reluctance BTW. While there are perfectly legitimate concerns around over-prescription, poor monitoring and unrealistic expectations, there are some of us out there who don't need to be told "talk a walk and cheer up". If it was that simple, that's what I'd be doing.
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