Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
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Robertson doesn’t understand anything about Halloween. Here’s the story of its origin:
During colonial times, in Boston, Massachusetts, there was an itinerant hot dog salesman named Horatio. He was much beloved because of his habit of wandering the town dressed in outlandish clothing and giving out free samples to all the boys and girls. One October 31st, there was a terrific storm, a true nor’easter. Horatio went into the nor’easter without his sou’wester, and got swept out to sea.
All the Boston children were saddened by this, so to cheer them up, the city council instituted a holiday in which costumed children went door-to-door collecting hot dogs. However, since the local frankfurter salesman was now dead, the hot dog supply was unreliable. So it was decided to give out candy instead. This holiday was called after Horatio’s call when he was selling his hot dogs: “Hallo! Weenies!”
I was going to say something about inconsistency with Robertson, but clearly it is just a severe dislike of hotdogs! Love that, ‘Tis Himself.
I could see Pat Robertson believing that story to be true.
Holy crap, someone, quick, fix all the errors on the Wikipedia Hallowe’en page!
Wait a damn second — he “doesn’t believe in the dead rising”? What about Lazarus? For that matter, what about his beloved Jesus? Both (allegedly) rose from the dead, and the latter’s rising from the dead is the entire basis of Christianity…
Imagine living in Pat Robertson’s mind, being him, in fear of reality, scared of dying and meeting the gods, who he knows will tell him to take a hike. Don’t any of you have any sympathy for this wretch of a human. And lets not forget his handlers, the folks that are forced by economics to work for him, you can see it on these clips, every time he opens his yap, they cringe hoping no one will notice and dock their pay for crimes against his holiness.
@Mike
Let me look deep … Nope, no sympathy at all. The man is a cancer on society. Those who choose to work for him choose to work for him, so no sympathy for them, either.
It seems to me that Robertson’s objections to Halloween are due to the holiday being based on a competing mythology. Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night aren’t part of Christianity. They’re holdovers from the pre-Christian Celtic mythos. Robertson’s wealth is due to his successful selling of Jebusism, so like many salespeople he’s slamming the competition. When the product he’s pushing is made of pure imagination, he has do a lot of tapdancing to keep the customers from straying towards some other imaginary product.
Not surprising about Robertson, but after watching it, one the suggestions afterward had a title that said “Atheism is a Demonic Disease.” Curious (I didn’t know I had a disease), I started watching it, and just heard the line “The separation of church and state has been twisted. Originally, it was supposed to be that *God* was superior, and the state was separate [hand motions: hand is held flat at head level or so for “God,” and lowered to a new level for “state was separate”]”
Ummmm, wow.
That makes no sense.
[…] Happy Hallowe’en! Stephanie had a great idea in posting a science demo of an exploding pumpkin, so I figure I should take a cue and post something appropriately Halloweenie. […]
NathanDST #9
The religious right are trying to figure out how to get around that pestiferous First Amendment. Some of them even go so far as to claim separation of church and state applies to everyone but Christians. Also many of these folks, including Robertson, pretend they’re “strict constructionists who only follow a literal interpretation of the Constitution.”
Well, since neither God nor a Creator are mentioned in the Constitution, then any time they try shoving such a thing in there they put a lie to that “literal interpretation” they’re attempting to follow.
@’Tis, or anyone else for that matter; I just read over the 2nd amendment, and it specifies that “Congress” shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free practice thereof …”. As much as I hate to say it, wouldn’t that give a strict constructionist a valid argument that any restrictions on state (as in the various states) establishment of religion must be based on jurisprudence and interpretation?
I know that the jurisprudence has come to be that this phrase means that no government at any level can favour any religion over another, but I can see the argument from a strict constructionist viewpoint. The fact that strict constructionism is a myopic and tone-deaf theory is beside the point.