Should religious groups be banned from LibraryThing?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/127536

I would urge members of this group to make their feelings known there.

Best,
Tim

One no.

>2

Did Zoe steal your password, Jesse?

Undecided.

I'll make my feelings known here.

No. And voted so.

I avoid the religious groups. But they've got as much right to be there as we have, so "no" from me too.

I posted my opposition to that idea in the thread.

I very quickly blocked the OP in the other thread and ignored the thread. The guy is nothing but a rude, abrasive troll. DNFTT.

9> I'm glad I'm not the only one to come to that conclusion. Something about "telling (him) not to read a thread equals censoring (him)" just made me roll my eyes and be done with it.

I'm a pretty anti-religious person. The thing I most dislike about religions is that people want to push their religious beliefs on others, make their religious beliefs laws. The person who wants to ban religious groups seems to be doing just what he most abhors in the religious. Oh well, sometimes it's fun to be cantankerous. From what I read he seemed to be enjoying his anger, I don't feel the need to act on his suggestions, or even to read any more of them.

I admit that I gave the troll a peanut, but Tim spread him a banquet!

Here's my personal belief: If I take away one right, who stops others from taking away my rights?

No.

Just
No.

Hell no,
What fun would that be?

No, I am all for free speech.
Only allowing people to say what I agree with is something entirely different.

Hi Tim and others. I'm a new member and I have never been in a chat room before so please correct me is I get out of line. My name is Malcolm Henderson. I'm deeply concerned about the danger created by Christian fundamentalists as they seek to take over ths US Government. A Christian fundamentalist USA facing off against the Muslim Pakistan risks the ultimate nuclear hollucast and I fear for my children and grandchildren. My recently published book The Innoncents Abroad is in the vane of Mark Twain, a novel with a very serious undertone that comes to the forefront in the second half of the book. It is an attempt to penetrate the minds of the fundamentalists so they see the likely consequences of their actions, should they succeed in having their way. I'm a member of both the American and the British humanist associations and The Skeptics Association but their combined voice is pitifully small compared to the overall dominance being displayed by the Republicans. Malcolm

> 1

I have already done so.

Uh, oh. Here goes the "chat room" meme, again. Welcome to LT, Malcolm.

Fire in the Hole!

My name is Dorothy, and it is 6 years since I have been to church. I find it incredibly scary what I believed. I now think I was brainwashed, and self hypnotised and believed totally in the fundamentalist message. I was a bible scholar on their terms. Like Malcolm I am very concerned about the political power of the fundies. There is a clear 'them' and 'us' mentality, and anyone who thinks differently than they do is clearly 'wrong'. Interestingly they have their own set of rules: insisting on forgiveness, but not doing it themselves, insisting on their rights, but no word of responsibilities.

I want a Mark Twain vane for christmas....

And that's a red 'x' for this thread as well.

It's good fun to jump into a religious group now and again and run riot. Like that dog Fenton chasing deer.

>1
Thanks, Tim, now see what you've started!

Oh, Tim knew what he was doing.

I think I'm only going to be concerned about the poll results in post #5 if the "yes" came from Zoe.

Zoe just wants the ability to put star ratings on religious groups.

Isn't Happy Heathen a religious group?

Ooh, that's a whole 'nuther debate!

For the purposes of the original request, I think it's assumed that it is not. But the requester can answer that definitively.

#28 Only in the same way that groups about cats are groups about dogs.

#31

LOL!

(Begging pardon from all who hate to click on a post only to see a damn chat abbreviation. For the sake of those, I add--have you seen the 1985 adaptation of E. B. Benson's Lucia books, Mapp & Lucia, with Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales, and Nigel Hawthorne? If yes, how much do you love it? If no--my god, go and see it!)

Weeeell ... although, AFAIK, most HHers are atheists or agnostics (inclusing me), I seem to recall that in earlier "what/who is this group for" threads, there had been a vague consensus that believers in, shall we say, minority religions (most commonly of the mother-earth variety) were welcome so long as they could defend their position sensibly/rationally. No?

There's also a semantic fuzziness in that description: does "a religious group" mean a group of people who are religious, or a group that is concerned with the subject of religion? If the former, then we're mostly not; if the latter then we often are.

so long as they could defend their position sensibly/rationally

If one chooses to believe in the supernatural and superstitious, have at it. Trying to defend those beliefs as rational - no. It's not rational, it's just something some people want, like rocky road ice cream.

>31 Booksloth, best answer to the question ever.

I was under the impression the the OP in that thread wasn't completely serious. Don't know enough about him/her to be sure, but the whole thing smacked of tongue-in-cheekiness.

Atheism is a religion
in the same way that
baldness is a hair colour.

>36

Right. The question is whether (1) HH is only for atheists, or if the nod to and presence of pagans and other faiths means it should be deleted? (2) The problem is religion itself or the discussion of religion, for certainly HH often discusses religion.

It's irrelevant, of course, since we aren't going to be deleting any of these groups.

>31 Only in the same way that groups about cats are groups about dogs.
=========
A group for pet owners might be about both, or don't you like cats ;)

First, I looked at the Home Page. There I found this definition: "heathen -
noun derogatory
a person who does not belong to a widely held religion (especially Christianity, Judaism, or Islam) as regarded by those who do."

--OED 11th edition

Further down on the page, I found this heart warming invitation:
"Don't go to church? Atheist or agnostic? Believe in multiple gods? Are you a deist, Hindu, Buddhist, or a disillusioned Christian, Catholic, Jew, et cetera? Well, you're welcome here! Join in the fun."

The dictionaries I read, all start by defining "heathen" as some kind of off brand pagan religion. I certainly take my paganism seriously. I should remind readers that "philosophy" is a pagan system of thought. As is Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Yoga, Hinduism, Kabala, and et cetera.

#38 You clearly haven't met my cats ;-)

Heathens and Christians may have more in common than most people know.

Nearly two thousand years ago, Saint Irenaeus called it a “Gnostic heresy” that "fecundated by the Divine Light of the Father and Son, the highest spirit and Ennoia, Sophia produces in her turn two other emanations, one perfect Christos, the second imperfect Sophia-Achamoth, from hakhamoth (simple wisdom), who becomes the mediatrix between the intellectual and material worlds. Christos was the mediator and guide between God (the Higher), everything spiritual in man; Achamoth - the younger Sophia – held, the same duty between the "Primitive man," Ennoia and matter".

In Isis Unveiled (1877) H.P. Blavatsky reported the following:
"Delivering a sermon on the "Month of Mary," we find the Rev.
Preston, of New York City, expressing the Christian idea of the female principle of the trinity better and more clearly than we could, and substantially in the spirit of an ancient "heathen" philosopher. He says that the "plan of the redemption made it necessary that a mother should be found, and Mary stands pre-eminently alone as the only instance when a creature was necessary to the consummation of God's work."

Madame Blavatsky goes on: "We will, beg the right to contradict the reverend gentleman. As shown above, thousands of years before our era it was found necessary by all the "heathen" theogonies to find a female principle, a "mother" for the triune male principle. Hence, Christianity does not present the "only instance" such a consummation of God's work - albeit, as this work shows, there was more philosophy and less materialism, or rather anthropomorphism, in it. But hear the reverend Doctor express "heathen" thought in Christian ideas. "He" (God), he says, "prepared her (Mary's) virginal and celestial purity, for a mother defiled could not become the mother of the Most High. The holy virgin, even in her childhood, was more pleasing than all the Cherubim and Seraphim, and from infancy to the maturing maidenhood and womanhood she grew more and more pure. By her very sanctity she reigned over the heart of God. When the hour came, the whole court of heaven was hushed, and the trinity listened for the answer of Mary, for without her consent the world could not have been redeemed."

Blavatsky asks:
“Does it not seem as if we were reading Irenreus explaining the Gnostic "Heresy, which taught that the Father and Son loved the beauty (for¬mam) of the celestial Virgin"? or the Egyptian system, of Isis being both wife, sister, and mother off Osiris-Horus? With the Gnostic philosophy there were but two, but the Christians have improved and perfected the system by making it completely "heathen," for it is the Chaldean Anu ¬Bel- Hoa, merging into Mylitta”.

"Then while this month (of Mary)," adds Dr. Preston, "begins in the paschal season - the month when nature decks herself with fruits and flowers, the harbingers of a bright harvest - let us, too, begin for a golden harvest. In this month the dead come up out of the earth, figuring the resurrection; so, when we are kneeling before the altar of the holy and immaculate Mary, let us remember that there should come forth from us the bud of promise, the flower of hope, and the imperishable fruit of sanctity."

“This is precisely the substratum of the Pagan thought, which among other meanings, emblematilzed by the rites of the resurrection of Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, and other slaughtered sun-gods, the resurrection of all nature in spring, the germination of seeds that had been dead and sleeping during winter, and so were allegorically said to be kept in the underworld (Hades). They are typified by the three days passed in hell before his resurrection by Hercules, by Christ, and others”.

Madame Blavatsky goes on to say, “This derivation, or rather heresy, as it is called in Christianity, is simply the Brahmanic doctrine in all its archaic purity”.

My head hurts.

You and me both.

wow, I haven't read blavatsky in years.

hmmm... I haven't changed my impression from the last time I read it either.

emblematilzed

I am so going to look for a chance to play this word the next time I play Scrabble.

I was going for fecundated and mediatrix myself...

Pshaw! Anyone can play "fecundated."

I just get vile images of some cross between the 'lamp' from a christmas story and an iPad when it comes to 'mediatrix' ....

Must be the holiday season.

You'll shoot your eye out.

Y'know... that makes me think of the scene in idiocracy where the head of education is looking directly into the 'wrong end' of the gun. He most definitely was about to shoot his eye out.

A note from the other side:
I don't participate in "Happy Heathens" because I'm not a 'heathen' and don't wish to intrude on their own place. It's not necessary nor polite to do so, imho. :) fuzzi
=======
The more true opinion is, that all inanimate and irrational things may be legitimately worshipped," says Father Gabriel Vasquez, treating of Idolatry. "If the doctrine which we have established be rightly under­stood, not only may a painted image and every holy thing, set forth by public authority for the worship of God, be properly adored with God as the image of Himself, but also any other thing of this world, whether it be inanimate and irrational, or in its nature rational."

"Why may we not adore and worship with God, apart from danger, anything whatsoever of this world; for God is in it according to His essence ... This is precisely what the Pantheist and Hindu philoso­phy maintains. and preserves it continually by His power; and when we bow down ourselves before it and impress it with a kiss, we present ourselves before God, the author of it, with the whole soul, as unto the prototype of the image follow instances of relics, etc. .... To this we may add that, since everything of this world is the work of God, and God is always abiding and working in it, we may more readily conceive Him to be in it than a saint in the vesture which belonged to him. And, therefore, without regarding in any way the dignity of the thing created, to direct our thoughts to God, while we give to the creature the sign and mark of submiission; by a kiss or prostration, is neither vain nor superstitious, but an act of the purest religion."

De Cultu Adorationis Libri Tres.," Lib. iii, Disp. i, c. 2.

"A precept this, which, whether or not doing honor to the Christian Church, may at least be profitably quoted by any Hindu, Japanese, or other heathen when rebuked for his worship of idols. We purposely quote it for the benefit of our respected "heathen" friends who will see these lines".
H.P. Blavatsky, 1877