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Bullying?

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Pamela McCorduck

Bullying?

Another skeptic here, and I don't think the Spaghetti Stuff is anything like bullying. If you're going to believe the unbelievable without question (have faith, they put it) then have the courage of your convictions, and expect not everybody will agree.

It seems to me the most egregious bullying has come from the religious people who want me to obey their rules--most recently this whole abortion/contraception flap. This *isn't* bullying? Do it my way or else? And since I can't make my own faithful follow the rules, we'll make it a secular law and make everybody obey? Please. And when certain politicians fall all over themselves to seize control of my reproductive system, not just the reproductive systems of their own female faithful, a little spaghetti ribbing seems very harmless. Of course, in the old days I'd have been tied to the stake and burned, which is bullying as ugly as it can be.

But the true believers do try our--uhm, patience? Gravity? A friend just back from Egypt, herself a Copt, told me that when the Coptic Pope died while she was there, the faithful propped up the corpse in all its regalia, mitre, crook in hand, so that the masses could shuffle by and pay their respects. FOR THREE DAYS. IN EGYPT. We both had our hands over our faces when she finished.

Match that with your spaghetti, Doug!

Pamela

"...almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions."


			"Death in Venice," Thomas Mann

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Douglas Roberts-2

Re: Bullying?

Beautifully said, Pamela.

Regarding propping the Coptic Pope, all I can say is that I imagine he was pasta his prime after three days.

I suppose one could also present this event as proof that religion really does stink.

-Doug

Sent from Android.

On Mar 23, 2012 11:35 AM, "Pamela McCorduck" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Another skeptic here, and I don't think the Spaghetti Stuff is anything like bullying. If you're going to believe the unbelievable without question (have faith, they put it) then have the courage of your convictions, and expect not everybody will agree.

It seems to me the most egregious bullying has come from the religious people who want me to obey their rules--most recently this whole abortion/contraception flap. This *isn't* bullying? Do it my way or else? And since I can't make my own faithful follow the rules, we'll make it a secular law and make everybody obey? Please. And when certain politicians fall all over themselves to seize control of my reproductive system, not just the reproductive systems of their own female faithful, a little spaghetti ribbing seems very harmless. Of course, in the old days I'd have been tied to the stake and burned, which is bullying as ugly as it can be.
But the true believers do try our--uhm, patience? Gravity? A friend just back from Egypt, herself a Copt, told me that when the Coptic Pope died while she was there, the faithful propped up the corpse in all its regalia, mitre, crook in hand, so that the masses could shuffle by and pay their respects. FOR THREE DAYS. IN EGYPT. We both had our hands over our faces when she finished.

Match that with your spaghetti, Doug!

Pamela
"...almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions."
"Death in Venice," Thomas Mann
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org