Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

it is

A good read.

giving all this free press to the fucking moonies while every other outlet just reports them as “a church” is super annoying

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE

Police say a seventh-grader emerged from the bathroom of an Ohio school, ready to shoot students with a semi-automatic rifle. He then changed his mind, went back inside and killed himself. https://t.co/MXJmP6BXBL

— AP Eastern US (@APEastRegion) March 1, 2018

fuck.

god. 13 years old.

whoever has been saying around here that America is a death cult has a comrade in me. I'm more convinced than ever that Christianity is as well.

― Scam jam, thank you ma’am (Sparkle Motion)

anybody who doesn't think christianity is an apocalyptic death cult hasn't read the christian scriptures

fortunately for everybody that category seems to include most christians

"and i noticed in the most difficult times in my life there was only one set of footsteps in the sand, and i asked jesus about this, and he opened his mouth to speak, but a flaming sword shot out and killed everybody"

are Moonies Christian?

no

Sure they are Christian, in the sense that they believe moon is the second coming of Christ.

About as Christian as Mormons, who seem pretty well accepted by American Protestants now.

that's the thing about christianity, nobody can say with any certainty that anybody isn't a "real" christian. every christian is a fake christian.

the moonies are a cult and the only reason anyone calls them a church is because they made a fuckload of money and peddled their influence to media organizations in the 80's and 90's

What the fuck is a Moonie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church_of_the_United_States

thanks i hate it

There are some eccentrics trying to return to the pre-Pauline Ebionite sect of the historical Jesus. It's about as feasible as neo-pagans attempting to recreate other lost religions of antiquity.

Delegating all judgment of other people to an imaginary friend has been working splendidly for me.

Eh. I am not sure I mind all that much if people lazily conflate the Moon church with more mainstream denominations. They're equally speculative, they just differ in degree of weirdness. Possibly a minority view and anyway not for this thread

There are some eccentrics trying to return to the pre-Pauline Ebionite sect of the historical Jesus. It's about as feasible as neo-pagans attempting to recreate other lost religions of antiquity.

― It's because I'm human, isn't it?! (Sanpaku)

surely that's most of the appeal, isn't it? if you're trying to follow pauline christianity you have to reckon with all of those darn primary source documents (some of which at least are unlikely to be forgeries) that contradict what you believe. all we know about the ebionites are taken from heresiologists who, being biased on the topic, can safely be ignored. such practices strike me as being the purest form of christianity - claiming to follow Ancient Eternal Truth while in practice doing whatever the hell one feels like.

sorry. somebody should probably revive a christianity thread to talk about this, shouldn't they?

My point was just this: as a matter of epistemology, being a Moonie or Mormon or neo-pagan or Lubavitcher isn't inherently more absurd than being a Presbyterian or whatever. Zeus and Thor and Ra and Kali and God all have the same amount of evidence in their favor (none). So saying that these denominations over here are respectable - while those ones over there are kooky - is purely a matter of culture, power, taste, and class. To me, the Unification churches and the Lutheran ones are on equally shaky ground, theologically speaking. Plenty of absurdity in the mainstream doctrines.

mmmm, i think doctrine in religion is a cousin to policy in politics - people tend to overrate how influential such things are. if politics is a matter of group affiliation, religion is even more so - the lutheran church is not "mainline" because of any doctrines they happen to hold, but because of the social dynamics and makeup of that particular group. the mormons were "fringe" in america almost exclusively because they practiced polygamy - their doctrine regarding coffee and tea didn't matter. polygamy was of course a doctrine, but more importantly it was, even after being repudiated as a doctrine, a social practice. it was not the repudiation of polygamy of a doctrine, but its repudiation as a social practice, that made the lds "mainstream".

it's not the beliefs that make a cult a cult obv, but the dynamic between its elect and its members

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/03/02/central-michigan-university-shooter/388293002/

2 dead

suspect still at large

fucking fuck

The two dead aren't students.

being described as a "domestic dispute"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-shooting/gunman-kills-two-in-domestic-dispute-in-michigan-university-dorm-idUSKCN1GE23F

prev article suggested the 2 victims might be his parents- has anyone seen any more info on that angle

awful no matter how yo slice it

*you

It's far from perfect, but many of the Parkland shooting survivors wanted it: it's the first major piece of gun legislation passed in Florida in decades.

Doesn't seem like it'll affect manufacturers' bottom line much so I'm not shocked by any of the measures that made it through. Unfortunately I don't imagine they'll make much of a dent in shootings. (I *reaaaallly* hope I'm wrong, though.)

I mainly hope The Teens don't take this as a prompt to ease off one bit.

Arm school employees.
Perhaps the most controversial provision of the bill is one that would allow superintendents and sheriffs to arm school personnel — a measure not requested by the Parkland students but long desired by the N.R.A., which argues that gun-free zones prevent people from defending themselves in an attack. Specifically, the bill would create a $67 million “marshal” program under which certain employees — including counselors, coaches and librarians, but not full-time classroom teachers — could be trained and armed. (The program would be voluntary.) Under an amendment successfully proposed by State Senator Randolph Bracy, a Democrat, these employees would first have to undergo 12 hours of diversity training.

raising the buying age and instituting a waiting period are good I guess

https://theoutline.com/post/3571/david-hogg-parkland-interview

But, he clarified, he doesn’t feel like he’s the one who should be calling for this. “I shouldn't have to! I’m 17,” he said, but he and his classmates feel that adults — both voters and policymakers — have failed them. “When your old-ass parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the fucking phone and let me handle it.’ Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government; our parents don’t know how to use a fucking democracy, so we have to.”

Hero.

i love it

ha wow that's fucking great

seriously?

that's amazing.

makes u think

https://i.redd.it/zkgq9qcq9kk01.png

Now if he'd said David Platt from Coronation Street...

lmao @ "same ideas"

Sherri Pomeroy told us that Ussery and Mann were apprehended when they went onto church property, painted on a memorial poster, and screamed obscenities at her husband, Pastor Frank Pomeroy. The pair, along with many other conspiracy theorists, believe that the Pomeroys’ 14-year-old daughter Annabelle — who was among 26 people killed in the massacre — never existed, and that the incident was a “false flag” or crisis manufactured by the government for the purpose of seizing guns and power.

Sherri Pomeroy told us, “It’s been ongoing, almost from the first day it happened. They call it a drill from Homeland Security and say that none of it happened.”

Her husband told the Express-News that Ussery had threatened him and that he “… continually yelled and screamed and hollered and told me he was gonna hang me from a tree, and pee on me while I’m hanging.”
from https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/03/06/conspiracy-theorists-arrested-harassing-sutherland-springs-pastor/

Good luck, America.

Pomeroy told the newspaper that the pair tried to bait him and the church member into doing something stupid.

Ussery "screamed and hollered and told me he was gonna hang me from a tree, and pee on me while I'm hanging," he said.

Is this about the pizza and pedophilia again?