"God has called them all home."

[beam me up scottie]

Not to single out President Obama, but WTF ?

From the New York Times:

President Obama met with first responders and families who lost loved ones and spoke at an evening interfaith service at Newtown High School.

"You know, all the world’s religions, so many of them represented here today, start with a simple question.

Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose?

We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain, that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that, no matter how good our intentions, we’ll all stumble sometimes in some way.

We’ll make mistakes, we’ll experience hardships and even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans."

President Obama concluded his 19-minute speech with biblical references and said the town reminded Americans what should really matter.

“Let the little children come to me, Jesus said, and do not hinder them,” Mr. Obama said. “For such belongs to the kingdom of heaven.”

He then slowly read the names of the children who were killed at the elementary school on Friday:

“Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dillon, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison.”

“God has called them all home,” the president said. “For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on.”

Mr. Obama often concludes his speeches by asking God to bless America. But he asked for God’s grace more deliberately — and somberly — tonight.

“May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in his heavenly place. May he grace those we still have with his holy comfort,” he said. “And may he bless and watch over this community and the United States of America.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/sunday-coverage-of-newtown-school-shooting/

If I believed that God called my 6 year old child "home" by letting some psycho pump him full of bullets as he cowered in fear, I'd be fucking pissed, not comforted.

And why does the President seem to be speaking only to and for christians?

[Gore1FL]

1. I understand what you are saying, but in fairness, he is coming from his perspective.

I couldn't put this tragedy in religious terms, myself. It's far removed from what I have to draw from. Obama, on the other hand, comes from a standpoint of Christian faith. He could no better speak from my standpoint than I could from his.

People go to great lengths to rationalize and irrational act. Religion provides the ultimate set of illogic to achieve this. I can;t blame him for being a part of that. The majority are.

[beam me up scottie]

3. He should be speaking to everyone, not just christians.

A shout out or two to Jesus is understandable but he went off the deep end.

Not all of those families are christian.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. I think he's a closet Unitarian, myself.

His grandmother had a Unitarian memorial service in Hawaii, as I recall.

[uriel1972]

4. Yeah that got me too.

Why send them if your going to rip them out of the family that has loved and cared for them for years and in such a violent, detestable manner?
I just don't get it. Why can't an immortal being wait a few more years (decades)?

[beam me up scottie]

5. Add it to the list of Things That Don't Make Sense.

There are good ways to die and bad ways to die, if they have to go, why not take them in their sleep?

[movingviolation]

6. How can anyone worship a god that lets shit like this happen to anyone..

let alone little kids? Religion is such a vestigial exercise in futility from a more primitive time.

[beam me up scottie]

7. "... so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans."

It's like one parent making excuses for the other one who gets drunk and beats you.

[trotsky]

8. When you have even so-called liberal believers offering up

"human unfaithfulness" as the reason for this tragedy, it looks more and more like the drunken out of control spouse. "Look what you made him do!"

[beam me up scottie]

9. "Look what you made him do!"

Exactly!

I hadn't even seen that post when I started this thread.

[OriginalGeek]

10. You missed the Fox News headline:

"OBAMA ADMITS ALLAH STEALING CHRISTIAN BABIES!"

[beam me up scottie]

12. Yeah, no amount of Jesus humping would be sufficient for Faux.

I am so sick of all the stupid religious platitudes, some people always have to say SOMETHING religious, no matter how insensitive or idiotic.

Chris Johnson wrote the names of the dead children on his cleats before last night's game, after running 94 yards for a TD we were told that it was because he had "little angel wings on his feet".

[mr blur]

17. What, so that he could trample them into the ground?!

Fucking weird.

Obama had me until "God has called them all home." That was instant
He was obviously upset and I couldn't care less what religion (if any) he choses to follow but if he felt the need to pander to these people while at the same time carefully avoiding upsetting the likes of the NRA then he should be ashamed of himself.

[beam me up scottie]

18. I really don't mind if a christian president quotes scripture from the bible to comfort christians.

But not everyone in mourning was christian, and yeah, he went too far.

And as someone who always feels left out- even at my own friends' and relatives' funerals, I thought it was insensitive.


I've become one of those angry atheists the religionists love to blame for all that's wrong in America.

[backscatter712]

11. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that line.

This, and variations of it like "God needed another angel" or "He was just loaning him to you" are such condescending horseshit.

[beam me up scottie]

13. Condescending, exactly!

I realize it's hard to know what to say to someone who just lost their child, but if I were on the receiving end of one of those I'd punch somebody.

[Ilsa]

14. My interpretation is that it doesn't mean God caused or allowed it to happen.

But that God has called into heaven the newly "freed" souls to give them a home in paradise.

That concept gives me comfort, even if I don't feel certain about the existence of God.

[Arugula Latte]

19. Of course not. God has better PR than that.

If you are in a plane crash, say, and dozens of people die a fiery and horrible death but you survive, it is because of God, who "saved" you. We don't talk about the fact that an omnipotent God would have either a) caused or b) not prevented the accident, and also we don't talk about that by definition if He "saved" you that means those other schmucks who died weren't worthy of His saving efforts (and of course he's a male, dontcha know). That's how the system works. I tell ya, for being an all-powerful and tremendously murderous Deity, that God gets some good press.

[beam me up scottie]

21. +1

[Iggo]

15. That's how they talk.

Whaddaya gonna do, right?

[Mr.Bill]

16. The fact is, at this time in this country

you can not be elected president unless people think you are christian. I honestly don't know if Obama is a true christian or if he is doing necessary pandering. I do notice he does not spend a lot of time in church. It pains me when any of our recent presidents end their speeech with "god bless America".

[beam me up scottie]

20. Yeah, I went there, I dissed the idiotic meme that a loving God wanted this to happen.

But I'm not just being a bitch and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Here are 2 excerpts from DarkSyde's 'Why I'm an Atheist' essay:

It makes no sense that God would disguise himself as a human, fake his death, and expect us to drop to our knees in abject awe at his 'sacrifice', because it pales in comparison to the ones we mere mortals face.

In my view, it's frankly a grotesque insult to humanity to try and pass that off as anything close to the fear, horror, and pain that real people have to deal with under torture and execution.

And it makes little sense to me that a being which creates Quasars and butterflies would come up with such an empty and downright bizarre stunt as a solution to problems they intentionally created in the first place and expect us to whimper in admiration at their sense of compassion.

Especially since by all accounts they could have remedied it with the snap of their supernatural fingers, or just not let the problem happen in the first place.

***

Lastly, no matter how sophisticated one's apologetics are, it makes no sense that a being can be simultaneously omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, while evil and pain exists and still provide us with free will while at the same time expecting us to choose door number two or be condemned to eternal torture.

All those qualities and conditionals taken together are mutually exclusive in more ways than I can count. If you argue otherwise, no matter how slick and polished your arguments, you're arguing that circles can be squares.

And it makes no sense to me that such convoluted apologetics would be required in the first place to reconcile all these crazy inconsistent claims, or explain why these supernatural creatures happen to exactly imitate ones that were made up, if all this stuff was The One Truth of the Universe.

I will post part 2 in religion today if I have time or tomorrow.

[beam me up scottie]

22. Thanks to this speech, he's being called the "Pastor in Chief".

It wasn't a speech. It was a sermon. And it is worthy of the talents of our current pastor in chief.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/17/my-take-obamas-newtown-remarks-show-presidents-as-pastors-in-chief/comment-page-4/


There's a thread in Religion asking us how we feel about it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121859649http://www.democraticunderground.com/121859649

[mr blur]

23. Yeah, but they don't really care how we feel, they just want us to rant.

It would be a shame to disappoint them, of course...

You have to laugh, really.

[beam me up scottie]

25. "What is it about Christianity that makes Christians feel exempt from treating people with respect?"

From Brother Harry's Written Word, Answers to Reader's Questions:

Q: What is it about Christianity that makes Christians feel exempt from treating people with respect? How did Jesus' message get so garbled, get stood on its head, get downgraded to simply being "right"? I just don't get it, but I do know that visiting these boards is not worth darkening my day.



A: Dear Superficial Anal-Retentive One,

What do you expect from us? Consider what we are ordered to do in the Bible. If one of our neighbor's children is unruly, we are required to go to the townsquare and stone the child until he is dead (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). I have to wonder when was the last stoning in which you participated? Frankly, it's very difficult to be polite while literally beating the brains out of one's skull with rock pelting. Rest assured, my wife's pinky is always raised during a toss, but that's about as Emily Post as it can get. God also told us to murder homosexuals, witches, adulterers and every living being in any town we invade. He told us to take the women there as our slaves. I have found no way to enslave someone in a polite fashion (allowing them to remove all bracelets before slapping on the irons is the closest I've gotten). God wasn't particularly concerned about etiquette--unless, of course, it had to do with the way we slaughtered animals for Him. Then, his instructions were quite precise.

With the secular, liberal (a/k/a Satanic) laws of today, stoning is outlawed, so we must engage in persecution (always in the name of righteousness) in words, only. Rebuking just doesn't lend itself to good hosting. I suspect even Ann Landers would concur.

Praying that all men will at least remove their hats before hurling those rocks,
Brother Harry Hardwick
Landover Baptist Church (landoverbaptist.com)
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/brotherharry/september2001.html

[mr blur]

24. I still find it shocking that someone in his position could come out with such nonsense.

I mean, we vote for such people to run our countries and at a time like that they spout infantile drivel about the unknowable ways of some supernatural myth.

[beam me up scottie]

26. Reminds me of Grover Norquist.

I remember the first time I read about ole Grover and how he's able to manipulate so many of our elected representatives,
I was like WTF??? Who is this guy? Seriously? This can't possibly be true. And his name is really Grover?

That's how I feel living here watching this spectacle every day.

Another excerpt from DarkSyde's essay in religion:

Imagine that you live in a world where 90% of the people around you sincerely believe in something that appears to you to be downright whacky, if perhaps relatively pleasant on the surface in many respects. Say they believe in Santa Claus; beard, the big red suit, the flying reindeer, the sled loaded with a billion gifts, the North Pole Workshop, Mrs. Claus and the elves; all of it.

But in this fantasy world, they're not content merely to believe in Santa Claus, they want you to publicly agree all the time that you also believe in Santa, in their specific version of same, and they pressure everyone else in numerous ways to pretend that they're not strange or childish for believing in this. They don't just limit it at that even, they insist everyone kiss their ass about their Santa belief every damn day of their lives and if you don't humor them at the drop of hat under any circumstances, you're being disrespectful, you're out of line. No matter how much you humor them, they always demand more.

Imagine, seriously imagine for a moment now, that these people, the vast majority of the electorate, vote for politicians based in large part on what they think Santa wants, campaign speeches all end with "Be good or Santa won't come to visit". And most of these voters won't even consider voting for someone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus and his factory at the North Pole. Yet they routinely congratulate themselves as belonging to the most graciously tolerant and open minded people in all of history.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121858855