Silly/Odd News Stories from around the World

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

These people just take their religion for granted and refused reason, accepted fear of their god as a form of loyalty, and preach despite their indeterminate lack of understanding for even their own religion. The author just put forward a point of view that skewers everyone left and right, and the most interesting point is how he relates Job to how the all-seeing believers being blind to themselves, and think of the heaven as a just a simple carrot and stick issue. That is downright pathetic.

Believing in a religion isn't just a "heart" issue. It is a "mind" and "soul" issue too.

The blog post was an OK read, given its context. Since Vexx was good enough to provide the link for its humour value, I hope readers here will indulge in a different take on what God means for many people. It's light-hearted; in its own way, sceptical without being necessarily offensive, illuminating without being pompous.

Introduction to A History of God, by Karen Armstrong (1993)

Spoiler for its great length. You've been warned:

AS A child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God. There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed implicitly in the existence of God; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal damnation and the objective reality of Purgatory.

I cannot say, however, that my belief in these religious opinions about the nature of ultimate reality gave me much confidence that life here on earth was good or beneficent. The Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed. James Joyce got in right in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: I listened to my share of hellfire sermons. In fact, Hell seemed a more potent reality than God, because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively. God, on the other hand, was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions rather than images. When I was eight years old, I had to memorise this catechism answer to the question, “What is God?”: “God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections.”

Not surprisingly, it meant little to me, and I am bound to say that it still leaves me cold. It ha always seemed a singularly arid, pompous and arrogant definition. Since writing this book, however, I have to come to believe that it is also incorrect.

As I grew up, I realised that there was more to religion than fear. I read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, T. S. Eliot and some of the simpler writings of the mystics. I began to be moved by the beauty of the liturgy and, though God remained distant, I felt that it was possible to break through to him and that the vision would transfigure the whole of created reality. To do this, I entered a religious order and, as a novice and a young nun, I learned a good deal more about the faith. I applied myself to apologetics, scripture, theology and church history. I delved into the history of the monastic life and embarked on a minute discussion of the Rule of my own order, which we had to learn by heart.

Strangely enough, God figured very little in any of this. Attention seemed focused on secondary details and the more peripheral aspects of religion. I wrestled with myself in prayer, trying to force my mind to encounter God, but he remained a stern taskmaster who observed my every infringement of the Rule, or tantalisingly absent. The more I read about the raptures of the saints, the more of a failure I felt. I was unhappily aware that what little religious experience I had, had somehow been manufactured by myself as I worked upon my own feelings and imagination. Sometimes a sense of devotion was an aesthetic response to the beauty of the Gregorian chant and the liturgy. But nothing had actually happened to me from a source beyond myself. I never glimpsed the God described by the prophets and mystics. Jesus Christ, about whom we talked far more than about “God”, seemed a purely historical figure, inextricably embedded in late antiquity.

I also began to have grave doubts about some of the doctrines of the Church. How could anybody possibly know for certain that the man Jesus had been God incarnate and what did such a belief mean? Did the New Testament really teach the elaborate — and highly self-contradictory — doctrine of the Trinity or was this, like so many other articles of faith, a fabrication by theologians centuries after the death of Christ in Jerusalem?

Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality. My interest in religion continued, however, and I made a number of television programmes about the early history of Christianity and the nature of the religious experience.

The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings appeared justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period. Science seemed to have disposed of the Creator God, and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine. As an epileptic, I had flashes of vision that I knew to be a mere neurological defect — had the visions and raptures of the saints also been a mere mental quirk?

Increasingly, God seemed an aberration, something that the human race had outgrown.

Despite my years as a nun, I do not believe that my experience of God is unusual. My ideas about God were formed in childhood and did not keep abreast of my growing knowledge in other disciplines. I had revised simplistic childhood views of Father Christmas; I had come to a more mature understanding of the complexities of the human predicament than had been possible in kindergarten. Yet my early, confused ideas about God had not been modified or developed. People without my peculiarly religious background may also find that their notion of God was formed in infancy. Since those days, we have put away childish things and have discarded the God of our first years.

Yet my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognisably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art.

This was not simply because they wanted to propitiate powerful forces; these early faiths expressed the wonder and mystery that seem always to have been an essential component of the human experience of this beautiful yet terrifying world. Like art, religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life, despite the suffering that flesh is heir to. Like any other human activity, religion can be abused, but it seems to have been something that we have always done. It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests, but was natural to humanity. Indeed, our current secularism is an entirely new experiment, unprecedented in human history. We have yet to see how it will work. It is also true to say that our Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us; like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God — not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has its own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

When I began to research this history of the idea and experience of God in the three related monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I expected to find that God had simply been a projection of human needs and desires. I thought that “he” would mirror the fears and yearnings of society at each stage of its development. My predictions were not entirely unjustified, but I have been extremely surprised by some of my findings, and I wish I had learned all this thirty years ago, when I was starting out in the religious life. It would have saved me a great deal of anxiety to hear — from eminent monotheists in all three faiths — that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself. Other rabbis, priests and sufis would have taken me to task for assuming that God was — in my sense — a reality “out there”; they would have warned me not to expect to experience him as an objective fact that could be discovered by the ordinary process of rational thought. They would have told me that, in an important sense, God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music I found so inspiring. A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist — and yet “he” was the most important reality in the world.

This book will not be a history of the ineffable reality of God itself, which is beyond time and change, but a history of the way men and women have perceived him from Abraham to the present day. The human idea of God has a history, since it has always meant something slightly different to each group of people who have used it at various points of time. The idea of God formed in one generation by one set of human beings could be meaningless in another. Indeed, the statement “I believe in God” has no objective meaning, as such, but like any other statement only means something in context, when proclaimed by a particular community.

Consequently, there is no one unchanging idea contained in the word “God”; instead, the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. Had the notion of God not had this flexibility, it would not have survived to become one of the great human ideas. When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is anti-historical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today.

Yet, if we look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective view of “God”: each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. The same is true for atheism. The statement “I do not believe in God” has meant something slightly different at each period of history. The people who have been dubbed “atheists” over the years have always denied a particular conception of the divine. Is the “God” who is rejected by atheists today, the God of the patriarchs, the God of the prophets, the God of the philosophers, the God of the mystics or the God of the 18th-century deists? All these deities have been venerated as the God of the Bible and the Koran by the Jews, Christians and Muslims at various points of their history. We shall see that they are very different from one another.

Atheism has often been a transitional state: thus Jews, Christians and Muslims were all called “atheists” by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of a “God” which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?

Despite its other-worldliness, religion is highly pragmatic. We shall see that it is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound. As soon as it ceases to be effective it will be changed — sometimes for something radically different. This did not disturb most monotheists before our own day because they were quite clear that their ideas about God were not sacrosanct but could only be provisional. They were entirely man-made — they could be nothing else — and quite separate from the indescribable Reality they symbolised. Some developed quite audacious ways of emphasising this essential distinction. One mediaeval mystic went so far as to say that this ultimate Reality — mistakenly called “God” — was not even mentioned in the Bible.

Throughout history, men and women have experienced a dimension of the spirit that seems to transcend the mundane world. Indeed, it is an arresting characteristic of the human mind to be able to conceive concepts that go beyond it in this way. However we choose to interpret it, this human experience of transcendence has been a fact of life. Not everybody would regard it as divine: Buddhists, as we shall see, would deny that their visions and insights are derived from a supernatural source; they see them as natural to humanity.

All the major religions, however, would agree that it is impossible to describe this transcendence in normal conceptual language. Monotheists have called this transcendence “God”, but they have hedged this around with important provisos. Jews, for example, are forbidden to pronounce the sacred Name of God, and Muslims must not attempt to depict the divine in visual imagery. The discipline is a reminder that the reality that we call “God” exceeds all human expression.

This will not be history in the usual sense, since the idea of God has not evolved from one point and progressed in a linear fashion to a final conception. Scientific notions work like that, but the ideas of art and religion do not.

Just as there are only a given number of themes in love poetry, so too people have kept saying the same things about God over and over again.

[Haruka_Kitten]

Secret formula for love revealed

Since when does love involve math?

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Harufox

Secret formula for love revealed

Since when does love involve math?

pre-nup
child-support
alimony
lawyers fee

or

las vegas which is a cheaper option

[Knight Hawk]

Dubai court annuls marriage to 'bearded lady'

An Arab country's ambassador to Dubai has had his marriage contract annulled after discovering the bride was cross-eyed and had facial hair.

The woman had worn an Islamic veil, known as the niqab, on the few occasions the couple had met.

The envoy, who has not been identified, told a Sharia court her mother had tricked him by showing him pictures of the bride's sister, Gulf News reported.

He only discovered the deception when he lifted the woman's veil to kiss her.

The court had annulled the marriage contract but rejected a $130,000 (£83,000) compensation claim for gifts he had bought his intended, the report said.

Surprise honey!

[Haruka_Kitten]

Drivers locked out in Windermere 'black hole'

Freaky much? Residents of this British lake are saying that their keys won't work on their cars, and are blaming a set of traffic lights and a ghost on the phenomenon. Tip: don't buy central locking and immobilisers

[Jill Valentine]

Originally Posted by Knight Hawk

Dubai court annuls marriage to 'bearded lady'

Surprise honey!

And that's why everyone should be dressed like their living in 21st century and not 15th. 1st Reason, because their are a bunch of liars

Harufox lol math xD

[Dilla]

Police stop generous Ind. 5th-grader with $10,000

SELMA, Ind. (AP) - Police say a fifth-grader handed out about $300 to others on the bus ride to his eastern Indiana school. Problem is, they say, the cash was among some $10,000 he took from his grandparents' safe.

Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan says the boy was riding the bus to Selma Elementary School when he handed out the money on Friday, the last school day before Christmas vacation began.

Children who received the ones, fives and twenties told teachers and the principal, and the sheriff's department was called.

Officers found the boy carrying the rest of the cash, which was returned to his grandparents. Police weren't certain what he intended to do with the money or how he got it from the safe.

[Mystique]

Japanese pop song internet fame for Manx schoolgirl

A 14-year-old Manx schoolgirl has become an internet celebrity after she posted videos online of herself dancing and singing to Japanese pop songs.
A Japanese publishing company has picked up on her fame and she is set to release her debut album on Wednesday

Some people get all the luck, eh

[Jill Valentine]

Originally Posted by Mystique

Japanese pop song internet fame for Manx schoolgirl

Some people get all the luck, eh

You have to see her sing and try and talk Japanese O.O Fail.
In a few weeks when she get's boring everyone's gonna forget her, new's stated xD

Dilla I hope they got all the money back.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by Jill Valentine

You have to see her sing and try and talk Japanese O.O Fail.
In a few weeks when she get's boring everyone's gonna forget her, new's stated xD

I saw an interview with the girl and I'm genuinely happy for her. There's always something else new and exciting around the corner and this may be the only moments of "fame" she'll get, but that's more than most of us get. Besides, she seemed like a pretty level headed person...maybe this is the foot in the door she'll need to really achieve her dreams.

Reminds me of Himeka, in a way.

[Haruka_Kitten]

I just think it's good how she's exposed J-pop to the western world. People sometimes ask me "what's on your iPod?" I can't say YUI or Abingdon Boys School coz they'd think I'm crazy

US man bites into needle at Burger King

Can you say, "snap"?

[ClockWorkAngel]

Originally Posted by Harufox

I just think it's good how she's exposed J-pop to the western world. People sometimes ask me "what's on your iPod?" I can't say YUI or Abingdon Boys School coz they'd think I'm crazy

US man cites into needle at Burger King

Can you say, "snap"?

That's really scary.

How did that thing even get in there?!

Something left over from injections perhaps?

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by Harufox

I just think it's good how she's exposed J-pop to the western world. People sometimes ask me "what's on your iPod?" I can't say YUI or Abingdon Boys School coz they'd think I'm crazy

US man cites into needle at Burger King

Can you say, "snap"?

Lesson learned: Always eat at Jack in the Box instead!

But seriously, that is scary. Although logically, it has a very minute chance of happening to you (you're more likely to get struck by lightning). But I'd like to see Burger King get smacked down hard for this, especially given their response ($5000 when medical bills were $15,000? Come on, BK, you can afford that).

[Xellos-_^]

wonderful work by the UN

FIVE years ago today, the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon was killed, an assassination that set off the “cedar revolution” and forced Syria, the principal suspect in the crime, to withdraw its army from the country. Meanwhile, global public outcry led the United Nations Security Council to initiate an international investigation, the first of its kind.
......
The United Nations investigation team was set up in 2005 by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor who had investigated the 1986 La Belle discotheque bombing in West Berlin. Mr. Mehlis had few doubts about Syria’s involvement, and said so in his first report. He asked for President Assad’s testimony (over Syrian protests), interviewed Syrian intelligence officers in Vienna and arrested suspects. When Mr. Mehlis stepped down from his position in December, 2005, he felt he had enough to arrest at least one of the intelligence officers.
However, the investigation wilted under his successor, the Belgian judge Serge Brammertz. Mr. Brammertz issued uninformative reports and displayed a lack of transparency that discouraged potential witnesses, unsure of whether he had solid evidence in hand, from coming forward; he wasted time by reopening the crime scene to determine the kind of blast that had killed Mr. Hariri, which three earlier specialist reports had already established; he failed to follow through on the interviews with the Syrian officers; and though he met with President Assad, he apparently did not formally take down his testimony.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/op...4young.html?hp

[Mystique]

Nothing new, but then again, who says chastity doesn't pay in Western related countries?
Woman's virginity offer not illegal

A teenager who says she auctioned her virginity online for £24,000 to raise tuition money did not break any laws but it might be risky for her to follow through on the deal, according to police.

The anonymous 19-year-old student, who lives in New Zealand, offered her virginity to the highest bidder on ineed.co.nz under the name "Unigirl", saying the money will pay her university fees.

She said in a post that around 30,000 people had viewed her advert and more than 1,200 had bid. She accepted an offer of 45,000 New Zealand dollars (£24,000).

[ClockWorkAngel]

^But isn't that prostitution? Or is the law for prostitution different from what I think it is.

[Haruka_Kitten]

Originally Posted by ClockWorkAngel

^But isn't that prostitution? Or is the law for prostitution different from what I think it is.

Maybe, but then again I have a penchant that you can't call it rape if you enjoyed it. I mean, when you need the money, you need the money. There is a story around here of a Korean immigrant doing rounds at a Legal Brothel to pay her tuition here in Australia. She says the clients are good, the manager's good and that the money is too.

[Zu Ra]

Terrorists Planning Breast Implant Bombs

[ShadowSeed]

I heard a funny story about an 11-year old kid threatening a 87-year old granny with a knife and saying: "Give me all your money or i will rape you." Indeed the kid was completely naked and was poking the granny's legs with the knife. She just took the knife away and called the police to take the kid away and see if they could find his mother/father.

It was in the local newspaper, so i had to laugh a bit when i read this. Youngsters are sure getting eccentric nowadays, aren't they chaps?

[Anh_Minh]

Taxi driver licenses applications... in braille.