Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 26, 2012

Damn Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state”; full speed ahead!

Along the lines of “They only believe in states rights when the State does only what they think is right” except with religion.

Because this is America, where freedom of religion means the freedom to worship Jesus in any of several prescribed ways. Or so some say…

HaHaHaHa!

I had two Jewish friends that were brothers who inherited a pharmacy and turned it into a bar. They were two of the funniest people I have ever known.

but, isn’t roland’s youth and all the youth of fox news heads was the 1950s and 1960s. where, tv was black and white for many. blacks, jews, and other minorities were not allowed in many professions, schools, lunch counters. and, it was ok to beat up your wife. also, many of the newsheads were draft dodgers. either by getting a college deferment or becoming a “missionary” to france or couldn’t pass the draft board.

To make up for it, somewhere nearby someone is using a high powered rifle to kill someone. America is the candy store for people who want to kill other people.

I’d like to see Fox News react to a nativity scene where the Holy Family actually looks Middle Eastern. Most I see are very light-skinned, blue-eyed. Mary looks like an Irish girl dressed in blue.

I suspect that the historical Jesus looked more like Yasser Arafat than Jeffrey Hunter

Each culture makes them look like themselves, God in my image.

HAPPY BOXING DAY !

Still one of my favorite jokes (because so true)..On the point of what Jesus looked like, he definitely wouldn’t have had long, Renaissance-style hair. The norm was (and still is) short hair for men. Long hair attracts negative spiritual energy, long beards attract positive energy.

Yeah, we all know just how wonderful life was in the atheist workers’ paradises created by Stalin and Mao. Why, that’s the reason they fortified the borders and built the wall through Berlin—to keep all the envious people from the religious part of the world out!

That’s Fox News for ya! GT nailed it again…

@ tigre1again – what in the world have you been smokin? The second commandment states “no graven images” fast on the heels of the first – “thou shalt have no other gods before me”No one worships at a nativity scene – it’s a silent reminder of a wonderful event.For those of us who chose to worship God – the Bible [not the holly bibble as you so irreverently called it] describes simple what a Holy God expects.If the Bible is nothing to you – let it remain that. You only attack because it threatens your warped ideology.If you are tolerant because of your greater knowledge, then be tolerant of ideas that are different from yours.

it seems a lot of people are really mean spirited that read Doonesbury.

I think you made some interesting points Kaffekup, and I see no reason why anyone would take offense at anything you posted… Also, to be honest, I don’t recall that you told us what you believe or what you don’t believe, though I guess I may have missed it as I am sometimes in and out and on and off the computer throughout the day.

@jerseyjo “Go back to your cesspool and load up with another load of slime and throw it up on your keyboard.”

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Louie didn’t originate those comments; he’s just repeating an old joke, told by many a Jewish comedian. It spoofs a number of stereotypes about Jewish men as well as poking fun at Christian theology. It’s pretty gentle, really. At least I think so, and I’m a deep student of the Bible.

For an article on Jesus being a Nazirite, look here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazirite

“I find it so much easier going through life believing that there was and is a God as I have been taught.”

It’s almost ALWAYS easier to go through life believing what you have been taught. Questioning (and sometimes abandoning) the beliefs into which you’ve been raised can be difficult, and frightening, and the results can be momentous (for good or for ill). That’s part of the reason both converts and apostates are so often so notably zealous.

Most rifles are high powered – how else could you hunt larger animals? Firearms are just tools, and have their place in many people’s lives.

Fanned and faved, pi. Oops, sorry, wrong website :)

“what was so radical in [his] teachings that the priests wanted him dead”That’s a very interesting question, and the subject of much speculation over the centuries.If Jesus’ crimes were purely theological, the Jewish priesthood would have had him stoned to death, and the Romans would have ignored the entire episode. But Jesus was crucified – by the Romans – which was a Roman punishment for treason or rebellion against Rome. A political crime.Some writers have speculated over the centuries that the “Cleansing of the Temple” incident (Mark 11, Matthew 21, Luke 19, John 2) was in fact, an incipient armed rebellion in order to ‘jump-start’ the kingdom of heaven on earth, or at least was interpreted by the Romans as an armed rebellion.

@lookinside “In Jesus and the Essenes I quoted from The Archko Volume, a little-known book written by Drs McIntoch and Twyman, printed in 1887.”

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Your post reminded me that I did some research into the Archko Volume so many years ago that I couldn’t remember what I’d found. A quick look at Wikipedia just now, though, brought forth the fact that the material was taken “almost verbatim” from a short story (fiction). Just Google “Archko Volume.”

JJ, I’m sorry I was so offensive; I have deleted both of those posts. What you believe is obviously your business. I was just trying to have a discussion about belief and if you prefer not to, that’s fine.

@ luckylouie – Good one!

Good one luckylouie. That made me laugh out loud.

@Sharuniboy, @Kaffekup, @John Pike, etc.The archetype of a bearded, long haired Jesus is very ancient. There are some theories that the “Mandylion of Edessa” – the first icon, and model for the multitudes of Byzantine icons that followed – was based on the testimonies of eye-witnesses who had known Jesus personally.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_Edessa

I know nothing about Trudeau, except I’ve enjoyed his work but disagree with his world view almost 100%, but wonder if he expected believers of Christ as Lord and unbelievers to talk about this strip in this manner?

How does the Nativity set violate the Constitution? It is not establishing a faith?Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

“Name one job in America that blacks or Jews weren’t allowed to have in the 60’s?”President?

Personally, I don’t really know if Jesus had long or short hair and I assume that we are only speculating on the matter, since scissors have existed for a very long time. If it was Jewish custom to have short hair, why wouldn’t Jesus have it short? I don’t think it makes much sense to think that Jesus looked like me, with blond hair and blue eyes. He simply didn’t come from Scandinavia and I think we know that much. It was hard for people to travel long distances in those days, although we know that some ancient people did travel. It seems unlikely that he was Nordic looking, only that Renaissance European artists had a habit of portraying him in that way.

The historical Jesus was most likely born in a cave.

‘I know Jesus was a rebel Jew.’Many of us think of him as the first Reform Rabbi.

Of course, there have been jobs in which blacks and Jews had only very limited access to in the 60’s. Only 7 blacks have been in the US Senate in all of our history. True, the first one was in 1870, but 7 is a very small number if you consider all the years in which the US Senate has existed. The very first African American was appointed to the Supreme Court in the 60’s, Thurgood Marshall. For my money, I would prefer the appointment of Thurgood Marshall over Clarence Thomas, but I guess we are stuck with him for a few more years. The first US Senator was elected right after Reconstruction, Hiram Revels 1870. After that, Blanche Bruce 1875, Edward Brooke 1967, Carol Braun 1993, Barack Obama 2005, Roland Burris 2009, Tim Scott 2013.

We only elected our first African American prez in 2008. We have never had a Jewish prez. I don’t really seen anybody coming up very soon either… Al Franken doesn’t seem interested, though I think he is great. Mayor Bloomberg is not interested. Mayor Rahm Emanuel doesn’t seem to be looking into the presidency either… I am sure I am missing some prominent people, but no one seems to really be all that into it, as far as I can tell.

Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein would be pretty great candidates too. Just don’t think they have expressed interest as far as I know… Yes, there are others out there…

I’m not sure that a sentence in which the subject is “Our founding fathers” can ever make any sense. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would both have to be considered founding fathers, and they certainly did not agree on the proper relationship between church and state. When Jefferson ran against Adams for the presidency, one Adams supporter went so far as to call Jefferson “a howling atheist.”

I read a book that put forth evidence that the shroud was the cloth that Jacques deMolay was wrapped in after he was tortured and nailed to a door before he was burned to death by King Philip’s men.

Perhaps I should have said, “There is some truth in it.”

I think it is clear that, even if only half of what he says is true, one cannot deny that our “founding father’s” (for simple lack of a better label) saw no problem with having God along for the ride during their public service. Government has no place in religion, but religion has it’s place in government.

vwdualnomand , now we have a “president” who did not worry about the draft, he was a “foreign” student!!!

What is a “reasonably reliable publication” when it comes to a description of Jesus? There is no record of any description of Jesus, either in the Bible or by any historian of the period. Besides, if God was Jesus father, Jesus couldn’t have had blue eyes, as blue eyes require two parents with the recessive gene for blue eyes, and God probably doesn’t count.

“Those who “submitted their resignations” after the Benghazi report will be back to work the week after Jan. 1. One will change desks. Otherwise, all is the same.”

And your evidence is [drum roll] . . . .

Was it this section, 1 Thess. 2.14-16?

14 "For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:

15 Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:

16 Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.Along with Matthew 27.25, this is the core of christian anti-semitism, 2,000 years old and still going strong.

But the strip does point out the real rub. Those of us who find Christianity, and the other myth threads to be outdated and ridiculous don’t care if you make your shows IN YOUR OWN CHURCH and part of YOUR religious practice but we DO object to having OUR taxpayer money pay for it. You’d be just as pissed if I insisted there be a six foot pentacle with a horned statue of the Oak King outside the post office and city hall. So keep your fraud virgin, her cuckolded husband, and bastard child OUT of MY government’s budget.

“As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.” —Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008 (Watch video clip)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/palin-talks-russia-with-k_n_129318.html

The basis for the line was Governor Palin’s 11 September 2008 appearance on ABC News, her first major interview after being tapped as the vice-presidential nominee. During that appearance, interviewer Charles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded: “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”:Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/seealaska.asp#TyTfIM1rpI1oB7bw.99

The wise men understood the meaning of Christmas. Give gifts!