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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”
  2. I mean that the existing writings from the first few hundred years of church history generally hold a negative view of abortion — to the extent that it’s discussed. I brought this up as a counter to the growing trend seen here and elsewhere suggesting that opposition to abortion is somehow unsupported by Christian doctrine and ethics. It’s absurd, but we live in an era where winning arguments supersedes dealing with the issue honestly. Whether it’s possible to make a historical or theologically informed prochoice case is a separate issue. There’s a reasonably well-supported case that many (most?) early Christians saw abortion as a practice contrary to Christian ethics. Arguing or suggesting that a pro-life position means that modern pro-life Christians don’t understand their own faith is simultaneously arguing that many or most of the earliest Christians likewise didn’t understand their own faith and it’s practical application. This is absurd on its face. It’s the same nonsense that evangelicals pull telling other faiths what those faiths “actually teach.” This is somewhat distinct from a connection between evangelical support of the pro-life movement and opposition to desegregation and all the other arguments that the position may be disingenuous. But yes, practices and beliefs would have varied in ancient churches.
  3. You’re not wrong, but pulling quotes from Numbers as some “gotcha, they don’t even know their own faith” isn’t accurate either. Hypocrisy and selective reading aside, there’s a certain elevation by evangelicals of the early, pre-Constantine church and the early church was largely against abortion to some degree. The quote was pulled for its character and surlyness, but it’s far from alone in presenting abortion as something bad or sinful.
  4. It gets complicated and messy pretty quickly, but the early church generally held a negative view of abortion. Claiming that anti-abortion Christians lack an understanding of their faith or are coming to their conclusions ignorantly or flippantly is somewhat intellectually dishonest. The early church’s view was somewhat diverse, but fits within a view that we’d mostly call pro-life today. This is separate from the issue of how to handle the issue in a pluralistic society, what the proper “Christian” response to the issue should be, or how Christians should balance this issue with other moral and social issues. Some of those ancient negative views were expressed quite colorfully. Apocalypse of Peter:
  5. A pastor friend of mine refers to the vibe in certain parts of the evangelical community as “Trump coming in on his white horse.”
  6. The “ready to go” part doesn’t seem feasible to me.
  7. Agreed. Also, a lot of early hip hop is just disco grooves in a different context. Some great grooves came out of that era.
  8. Team post COVID tinnitus here as well. Ent told me that my ears and hearing are in perfect health, although there’s some dead skin on the ringing ear’s drum. They’re gonna scrape it off in a few weeks. If that doesn’t work, she thinks it’s a benign growth or some weird disease that won’t kill me but will make life increasingly unpleasant until something else kills me.
  9. 1951 through the end of 1960 gives you early Miles, peak Coltrane, most of Clifford Brown, and early Elvis. 1896-1905 gives a bunch of Mahler Symphonies, a couple of great Strauss tone poems, and Sibelius Finlandia. Turn of 19th century gives you late Haydn and early-mid Beethoven. You miss Mozart though.
  10. A graying hard boiled egg rolling around next to 4-day old hot dogs sounds wonderful.
  11. Catching up on this thread: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-austria-orchestra-nazis-idUKLNE92A00O20130311
  12. Lovely, more COVID threads please. I can’t get enough.
  13. Bonds in particular is probably a victim of his own success. That drug-fueled early 2000s run was so absurd that is overshadows his pre-juice greatness. I get the argument that one of the small handful of most dominant players ever should be in the HOF, but it feels a bit icky to honor him, invite him to give a speech, etc. when his peak greatness was built on PEDs. It’s not that he cheated more than some of his contemporaries who have made it in, but that his cheating briefly broke baseball and put him in the pantheon of greatest ever. A day honoring that seems strange, even if it’s irrational to specifically exclude him over other juicers who were less great.
  14. Sweardle seems to use a pretty inclusive definition of “swearing.”
  15. Chicken a la Stephen King.
  16. Speaking to the musical side of things as someone who has made a living as a musician for most of my adult life, there are a lot of failed/struggling musicians who abuse substances, but not many working, productive musicians doing so. Making music for a living in any capacity and any genre is hard work and takes a great deal of organized, focused thinking. When you meet musicians who are actually working, you’ll usually find them to usually be focused, hard-working, sober-minded people. The substances that make people think they’re creative aren’t actually conducive to the real work of being a musician. If you want to write, it’s a bit of a numbers game. You write a lot of bad songs/partial songs until you write a few good ones. If you want to perform, you need hours of daily, focused practice for years. Musicians need time and a clear head to do their work. Substances only make that work harder. Some people sort of make it work, but it’s ultimately a drag on their productivity, no matter how much they lie to themselves otherwise. The jazz cats who were all heroin addicts? They either got clean or died. The geniuses who got clean were still geniuses, just more productive. The dead ones were still dead. The same goes for any other genre.
  17. Regarding the risk the unvaccinated pose to a community, my community is largely unvaccinated (somewhere less that 40% of those eligible). From July through September/October the only hospital within 45 minutes reported that their ICU bed capacity was maxed out. Even the if my personal COVID risk was minimal due to the vaccine, life and other bad things happen. People have emergencies and need medical care. The unvaccinated strain on my local hospital surely put my entire community in greater danger.
  18. I pray that at least half of this thread is Russian bots arguing with sociologists studying our impending idiocracy. Surely so many real people haven’t completely abandoned even the slightest pretense of good-faith discussion for the most moronic caricature of troll culture. This has to be a bit, right? Like some kind of demented flash mob?
  19. He’s going to put the system on trial?
  20. Mole

    The Supremes

    I assume it’s:
  21. My parents replaced all their pillows with My Pillows because smart, sane people also get taken in by the stupid, insane culture war. Reporting from visiting for the holidays: they’re ok; better than sleezy, bloodstained motel pillows, but nothing all that great. They seemed very inflated, if that makes any sense; like a balloon full of air. They’re a bit strange, but not entirely unpleasant. At least we can say “Merry Christmas!” again.
  22. Pfizer 2 in April, delta breakthrough in July, booster in December. So far, so good for omicron. My breakthrough was about 3 days of mild sinus infection-like symptoms, maybe a week of no smell, and one or two days where I got winded really easily. I never really had a cough except for dealing with the post-nasal drip. I have had some strange and mostly minor health issues that have popped up post-COVID, and I wonder if they are lingering effects.
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