Culture

Regarding the Religious Exemption from the Vaccine Mandate — Guest Post by John Buckner

In the spirit of finding and using any tool, even anemic ones like Constitutional challenges presented to woke and cucked courts, we have this guest essay. We must do all we can to stop the spreading tyranny.

Here is the Department of Labor’s (a branch of the Expertocracy) rules on Religious Exemptions, written before the vaccine mandates. Here is another take, from a woke firm. Another source for schools. And one propaganda source.

Even the propaganda source admits there is room for a religious exemption. Use it if you are sincere believer.

ESSAY BEGINS

I am interested in how employees’ requests for Religious Exemptions will be addressed, and by what criteria.

The mandate supposedly reads: Per federal guidance, a refusal to be vaccinated does not qualify for a religious accommodation if it is only based upon personal preference, concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine, or political opinions.

But what does that really mean? It implies that the Company must administer some test about an employee’s religious conviction? How can any corporation administer a ‘religious test’ and by whose or what authority?

No Religious Test

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution in discussing ‘Religious Tests’ concludes its discussion of Article 6 of the Constitution as follows:

The limitation of Article VI, Clause 3, to federal officeholders was effectively eliminated by the Supreme Court in the 1961 case, Torcaso v. Watkins. Relying upon the First Amendment religion clauses, the Court struck down religious tests for any public office in the United States. Torcaso means that not even a simple profession of belief in God—as was required of Roy Torcaso, an aspiring notary public—may now be required.

The scope of anyone’s immunity from disqualification from office on religious bases now depends upon the meaning of the Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses, not upon Article VI. At present, the central rule enunciated by the Supreme Court for Establishment Clause jurisprudence is the “endorsement” test. It stipulates all public authority—from state and federal to the most local municipal body—must never do or say anything that a reasonable
person could understand to be an “endorsement” of religion, i.e., that favors adherents over non-adherents. Nothing in the neighborhood of a religious test for office could survive application of this norm.

The Establishment Clause thus totally eclipses the Religious Test Clause. Questions about the
precise scope of the sort of “religious test” banned, and about whether “office[s] of public trust” include members of Congress as well as the most junior postal worker, no longer matter—save, perhaps, to historians.

I believe, since we are apparently classified as Federal Workers or contracted for by the Federal Government—hence the Vaccine Mandate; a Religious Test administered by the Corporation at the behest of the Federal Government would not survive a legal challenge.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof
.

The very first line of one Corporate Policy on Conflict of Interest states: “All…business transactions and relationships must be free from even the appearance of impropriety.”

As an employee working on sensitive programs, I cannot use nor purchase legal CBD products. I cannot even be directly invested in any company involved in the production, sale, or distribution of legal CBD products.

Clearly in the matters of Ethics, Conflicts of Interest and issues of participation in drugs, lines have clearly been drawn by Corporate and Government concerns.

Likewise, the ‘taint’ of the available vaccines, developed, tested or produced through embryonic research is abhorrent to me. It impinges on my and other employee’s free exercise of religion. Mandating the use of these vaccines goes against everything that the Ethics Office purportedly stands for and represents.

Equal Protection Clause

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Let’s discuss ‘accommodations’. In choosing not to be vaccinated, it is my understanding that I may be ‘accommodated’, by being subjected to rules of ‘accommodation’. The implication is that those who do get the vaccine will not be subjected to rules of ‘accommodation’.

Yet, and clearly, the Government does not seem to make a distinction between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated; all continue to wear masks, all continue to social distance. There seems to be no distinction. The Science says the efficacy of the vaccines decline over a period of time (hence the subject of boosters), yet the mandate nor the Corporation, make no distinction between those recently vaccinated and those vaccinated earlier in the year (with or without boosters).

Regardless of how or when you were vaccinated, no accommodation is mandated.

I wonder if the Ethics Office was consulted at all on the matter of this vaccine mandate. Or is the Ethics Office an empty shell to signify to the Government that we meet some Government Standard of Ethics? God help us all! I even question the Corporate Legal Office’s involvement other than to reduce the Corporation’s ‘exposure’.

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Categories: Culture

96 replies »

  1. “ I believe, since we are apparently classified as Federal Workers or contracted for by the Federal Government—hence the Vaccine Mandate; a Religious Test administered by the Corporation at the behest of the Federal Government would not survive a legal challenge.”
    Then hire a lawyer and challenge it.

  2. GP,

    Lotsa luck hiring a lawyer and going against the infinite resources of the government. It can and has worked, but it isn’t cheap.

  3. I looked at the religious exemption questionnaire the government provided my brother. Every question on the form is designed to convict you. “Have you ever taken a vaccine before?”

    I couldn’t fill out the form without convicting myself.

  4. Brad,

    The strategy there might be, “As an adult, I have never taken a vaccine.” Or something along those lines.

  5. Briggs is exactly right responding to GP above, and it’s one of the big problems with our legal system. There are many things governments and others do (such as nominally private corporations essentially acting as government agents), that could and should be successfully challenged in court, but the system makes it so onerous and expensive that most people are basically given a choice between going bankrupt (without any guarantee of success however solid the case) or just resigning themselves to compliance and letting the govt get away with shafting them.

    The Left, of course, has not only the govt bureaucracies and Deep State itself, but massive private financial resources (including the ideological capture of most major firms and “public interest” legal funds, as well as many judges). We need a Based Legal Fund endowed by some rogue billionaire (unfortunately most of that class is on the ideological Left as well)

  6. As a devout Catholic I refuse to use my religious exemption for something I disagree with on scientific grounds. People need to stop folding back to the religious justification because it doesn’t move anything forward. It is a regressive win and does nothing to protect others.

    My religious beliefs propel me towards truth, not cowering in fear. Those of us that seek martyrdom cannot be stopped by the threats of the secular.

  7. Brad

    It’s kinda like Covid numbers are noticeably low for the last 3 to six weeks

    “not elsewhere classified” is noticeably high for at least six months
    They have a death (because of the certificate it may not be clear or the certificate has not been finalized), but they have a death they can’t categorize.

    ALL CDC data seems subject to change!

    During the 2017/2018 flu season, flu deaths had actually been reported as 80,000 early on, then 71,000, then 60,000 … today the 2017/2018 death toll from the flu is pegged at 52,000!

    I will be curious to see what the final Covid data will be … 500,000?

  8. Russell Haley

    Depending on where you are, as a Catholic, you couldn’t use the Religious Exemption because the Pope and USCCB are “okay” with the vaccine

    Besides, even an Atheist could have moral qualms about the Vaccine and shouldn’t have to justify themselves

  9. HR/EHS are empty shells, full of climbers and token employees.

    The Legal dept is there to ensure compliance upwards, and enforce it downwards.

    The corps are proud of their conformity to their peers, and of their compliance with the biden admin.

    There is little additional thought in it.

    Business as usual.

  10. @Brad Tittle

    Idea: Don’t fill out the form; attach a letter to the form copied to the 200 or so congressmen who have not taken the vaccine. Point out that there is no mandate for Congress.

    Then ask them to explain why there is:

    — No mandate for 59 million who receive welfare benefits.
    — No mandate for 12 million illegal immigrants.
    — No mandate for Federal Postal workers.

    and that you are equally permitted to exercise your right of religious exemption per Biden’s order — that your religious beliefs are a private matter. Tell them this is clearly discrimination.

    Pay a lawyer to draft it.

  11. I have noticed that the Dems seem to have a new modus operandi, coming up with edicts they know are unconstitutional, but they don’t care because it gives them the short-term win, because the courts move so slowly. The only solution I can see is “loser-pays” legal reform.

    Yet again, the lack of accountability turns everything to sh*t.

  12. Brad: “Have you ever taken a vaccine before?”

    My employer asked me that and I replied that as far as I know, no other vaccines have been manufactured or tested using embryonic stem cells other than rubella, and that I was given the rubella vaccine before I knew anything about the subject.

    John: “as a Catholic, you couldn’t use the Religious Exemption”

    Not sure this is true. The church in which I was raised was dead set against abortion. I have no idea how they feel about embryonic stem cells or the vaccine as I am no longer actively participating but I stand by the beliefs which were taught to me as a child.

    Russel: “it’s a regressive win”

    Fair enough but it buys me time to figure out another plan. I don’t particularly care to lose what I have worked for without an opportunity to rationally decide on the next plan. Since the next plan doesn’t necessarily involve joining a monastery or living on the street I have chosen to use the tools provided against them. Either way I am in the ranks of the un-vaxxed which in the long term I believe to be a good thing.

  13. Heresolong:

    “As a Catholic, you couldn’t use the Religious Exemption”
    Not sure this is true

    I prefaced with depending on where you are [and the ‘rules’ embedded in the exemption language by the employer

    Some companies in NY require a letter from one’s pastor or minister
    Also in NY , NY diocese are forbidding parish priests in writing them
    https://thetablet.org/dioceses-begin-to-address-vaccine-mandates-religious-exemptions/
    Not sure who the Tablet is…

  14. Fortunately, I get to sit on my gamers chair throne and ignore most of this because my employer has never shaken hands with me. Everything is zoomed and they don’t care.

    My brother works for the government. He decided to use freedommarchwa.gov letter.

    The format of the “exemption” forms seem designed to cause someone to say “ok, fine I will just get jabbed”. It is easier than answering these “have you stopped beating your wife” questions with yes/no answers…

    When the swine flu came to an end the hard count was 8,000 deaths. Somehow that number inflated after the fact…

  15. Actually, Francis’ declaration that the reception of the murdered baby fetus vaccine is a moral responsibility, is not of God. Men within the Catholic Church, at different times, have made declaratioms that are not truth. We who are true Catholics have the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit, just as Scripture says. The authority of the Catholic Church itself, given by Jesus, is real and true, but at times, attempts are made to use it in an ungodly manner.

    Stand firm in the truth and ask God our Father, and trust God our Father, to provide as needed. Am still working with Jesus on Fear is useless, what is needed is trust.

    Recognize that all of this is the result of the multitudes of sins, which only the reception of and the acting upon God’s graces of repentance can end.

    God bless, C-Marie

  16. John: Yet another reason I am glad I don’t live in NY. My employer (local school district) asked me generic questions and then approved my exemption. Pretty sure they just wanted to see if I would veer off into a rant about the government or something.

  17. brad

    My company doesn’t allow remote work as an excuse

    Swine flu? 2009? I’m certain they have had reasons to uptick some deaths.

    They’ve ‘unofficially’ downtick’d the worldwide death toll for the Spanish flu (20 million down to 4 or 2 million depending on paper.)

    They haven’t been able to do much about the US figure, harder to mask that one.
    The original worldwide were probably based on guesses

  18. A lot of people compare these times to ‘1984’

    I’m thinking more in the way of ‘Catch-22’
    Milo Minderbender as Joe

    Or Red Dwarf’s Quarantine
    Rimmer: I can’t let you not get the jab.
    Lister: Why not?
    Rimmer: Because the King of the Potato People won’t let me. I begged him. I got down on my knees and wept. He wants to keep you here. Keep you here for ten years.
    The Cat: Could we see him?
    Rimmer: See who?
    The Cat: The King.
    Rimmer: Do you have a magic carpet?
    Lister: Yeah, a little three-seater.
    Rimmer: So, let me get this straight. You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato People and plead with him for your freedom, and you’re telling me you are completely sane?

  19. The final covid deaths will be about 800,000 or more
    Pretty bad flu year, that.

    For the UK the number is expected to be over stated by about twenty five percent.
    Since the way the data is collected is just the time of death coinciding with a +ive test.
    Germany is different again, much typical German pedantry about admitting anybody dies of covid at all!
    Russia is busy laundering deaths from last year
    France? hid deaths last year, no reason to trust them going forward
    Spain? who knows, they probably will let you know tomorrow
    None of this is a secret.

    There’s a strange insistence on numbers being so vitally important to be accurate in hundreds of thousands of deaths when in fact the strong emotional argument about the vaccines and their fetal cell lines dates back to two babies in the sixties. Their cells have already saved millions of lives potentially. So if the numbers count? they count. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t bring the babies back either. Some of your family will have been saved to be alive today directly due to vaccination.

    How many of your daughters had a Rubella jab?

    It is like saying that old Ivory which predated banning and control of ivory, that has already been stolen or taken should be put into the ground or burned because it is a terrible trade.

    It is a double sin to knowingly refuse to save lives in the millions.
    Individuals may object, but it’s pretty weak. The Pope agrees.

    but it’s all a joke, all sci fi comedy.

  20. People are asking me, Hagfish, you are a noted sartorialist, what should I wear to get my jab? That’s a good question people, since appropriate attire is foundational to civilization. For men v’axeing you want to be wearing a noose necktie, thirteen knots are traditional. Also, wear a black hood over your face, and a dunce cap for headgear. The proper jacket for a v’axeing is the straight jacket, the pants are prison stripes, the shoes paper prison slippers. Socks, go crazy.

    Ladies, you want to be in a black leather trench coat over carbon-kevlar push-up bra and snakeskin panties, a black leather face mask with zipper, net stockings with runs, needle stilletto shoes, a dunce cap cocktail hat or, optionally, a dried squid perched at a rakish angle. Always happy to help out, people.

  21. Joy

    Yes!
    I saw that the only MMR jab available in the US and Canada was developed and/or tested with fetal cells.
    THAT is a Catch-22.

    Sci-fi comedy?
    I’d call that particular episode (or that moment) Satire – Was Shakespeare Comedy or Satire or both.
    In fact that particular bit from RD almost reads like Catch-22.

    I once wrote on a Rowan Atkinson’s FBFan page (purportedly ‘owned’ by him) about how I realized how much Catch-22 reminded me of Monty Python and Black Adder (especially Black Adder Goes Fourth). I realized how very British Joseph Heller’s Black Comedy really was. Realizing that, I investigated and found that in its first year Catch-22 sold a respectable 33,000 copies in the US. In its second year, Catch-22 was published in the UK and immediately became a Best Seller there.

    Jonathon Swift’s Modest Proposal was indeed accepted and acceptable.

    Viva Frei discusses vaccine passport lawsuit in Canada based on Canadian Charter Rights.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ8T1aSPzsw

  22. Black Adder Goes Fourth

    Reminds me of a dirty ditty from years ago (and likely still in circulation with multiple variations) containing the lines:
    “The king became angry and ordered Daniel to come forth
    But Daniel slipped on a lion turd and came fifth”

    Just sayin’

  23. Hagfish, squid?
    Is that because you’re a bagpipe and octapusses/pi always fall for you? Try to take your “J’s off?
    I have the same problem

    I think you are a poor sartoriali’st and a worse satirist.
    Sartorius is a muscle:
    It is named after the action it causes when it contracts. It enables you to put your foot on your thigh like a tailor!
    Its origin is the anterior superior iliac spine and it’s strap like.
    It attaches to the medial condyle of the tibia. Check out grays.
    You’d make a bad tailor and I think that hat’s really just borrowed from Briggs’ old wardrobe after he grew out of it.

    I have quite a few pairs of boots. None like you suggest. Long ones, high heels but very decent
    Only riding ones emus’s fluffy winter ones, ski-ing ones, Briggs has actually seen one of my pairs.
    I can talk you through my trouser collection if you like

  24. For all budding sartorialists (and satirists) out there, I recommend Thomas Carlyle’s novel, “Sartor Resartus.” Plenty of sartorial and other lessons from the life and work of Herr Doktor Professor Diogenes Teufelsdröckh and his magnum opus, “Clothes: Their Origin and Influence.”

  25. That’s funny Dav 🙂
    Do you know the one about the drunken giraffe in the pub?
    “what’s that lyin’ dead on the floor for”
    “It’s not a lion, it’s a giraffe”

    Johnby,
    Was Shakespeare Comedy or Satire or both?
    Everything. Satire appeared only when the purpose was in the story to poke fun at the character or to make a contemporary joke about a real life character type. *the CDC. of the day.
    You’re thinking of irony, he was master. That’s what you like about the comedies you mention.

    Shakespeare used satire but according to our teacher? Mrs Brock, Mrs Dishman, Mr HOllace, Mrs tailor? My English “expert” sixth form friend,
    (it’s important to quote your sources):
    He said,
    “If it’s used against the weakest it is just mean and cruel. ”
    I think some Americans think all irony is satire. Hence the often misunderstood communications.

    Satire’s exactly like it seems. Bitter, unpleasant and aimed at the powerful as a leveller. Well you have a computer!
    It’s really like sarcasm.
    I still love black Adder though, and RD is funny but depressing because they never get out of one room
    It’s that disbelief again.
    Cinderella? no problem. Wizzard of oz?
    Totally believable.

    One more thing I have to share because it came to mind!

    Rodney from Only Fools And Horses had my favourite line when he said he couldn’t find anywhere to have a private conversation with his girlfriend without Del listening…. because,
    “Del’s got R2D2 break dancing in the kitchen”
    It was a dodgy spin dryer. Anyway it makes me smile just thinking about that.

  26. I use all of it. I throw everything at them. The Science. The conflicts with THE SCIENCE ™. The politics. The VAERS, The Nuremberg. The Catholic Faith. The Fatima prophecies. The very likely Antipopery of the Francis. The Abortion Stem Cells. Fauci’s dead puppy dogs. The kitchen sink. The bullet Alec Baldwin was supposed to use. And the fact that I’m not taking any Mark of the Beast shit, which I will openly declare this system is a preparation for. They can call me nuts, but there’s no way they won’t believe that I believe all of this by the time I’m done.

  27. Joy said : It is a double sin to knowingly refuse to save lives in the millions.

    You do know the vaccine is not a cure?

    At best a therapeutic … like HCQ, Ivermectin, …

  28. “At best a therapeutic … like HCQ, Ivermectin, …”

    But unlike those mentioned, a therapeutic with unknown side effects. I suppose for my parents in their 80s the long term side effects probably aren’t worse than getting the Wuhan flu. For my friends in their thirties with small children, those same effects could determine whether they are around to raise their children or see their grandchildren. No one knows. So to argue that they should be mandated by some bureaucrat to take that risk, rather than evaluating the probabilities on their own, is totalitarian at best.

  29. “It is a double sin to knowingly refuse to save lives in the millions.”

    Well then stop preventing people and doctors from:
    – using HcQ, Ivermectin etc.
    – refusing treatment for every other thing unless vexxined.
    – BUYING FOOD AND NECCESSITIES.

    Vexxines have killed! If it saves just one life, vexxines must be pulled frim the market! It’s a go-directly-to-Hell sin to deliberately murder people by forcing a toxic substance on them!

    European Youth Deaths Rise Sharply – And Nobody Dare Ask Why
    https://chriswaldburger.substack.com/p/european-youth-deaths-rise-sharply

    Proof that the CDC Is Lying to the World About COVID Vaccine Safety
    https://www.globalresearch.ca/proof-cdc-lying-world-about-covid-vaccine-safety/5758901

    Hard facts pour in from country after country that Covid cases rise with vaccination and the stupid media reports that the cases are the result of permitting people freedom of movement
    https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/10/25/hard-facts-pour-in-from-country-after-country-that-covid-cases-rise-with-vaccination-and-the-stupid-media-reports-that-the-cases-are-the-result-of-permitting-people-freedom-of-movement/

    It All Makes Sense Once You Realize They Want to Kill Us
    https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/it-all-makes-sense-once-you-realize-they-want-to-kill-us/

  30. I don’t know why everyone seems to be stuck on the religious exemption being based upon aborted fetus cells. If I was in need of using a religious exemption to the jab, I would use the excuse of it being the mark of the beast. Just look at what they are attempting to do here, and have already done in Australia and other countries, where you must be jabbed in order to “buy or sell”.

  31. Religious exemption from a lifesaving vaccine, which the Catholic Church officially backs? LOL What a load of disengenuous rubbish. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine wasn’t developed with the help of fetal cell lines, so you can have that one. But in any case, what about this:

    they will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be made well [Mark 16:18]

    So if you’re all such devout Christians, why don’t you go and heal some sick people while you’re getting the vaccine?

  32. Swordy, what’s the experience of official Regime brainwashing like? I’d really like to know…you seem one of the finest specimens around these parts.

  33. SFT

    https://www.gotquestions.org/Mark-16-9-20.html

    As the oldest manuscripts are known to be the most accurate because there were fewer generations of copies from the original autographs (i.e., they are much closer in time to the originals), and the oldest manuscripts do not contain vv. 9-20, we can conclude that these verses were added later by scribes. The King James Version of the Bible, as well as the New King James, contains vv. 9-20 because the King James used medieval manuscripts as the basis of its translation. Since 1611, however, older and more accurate manuscripts have been discovered and they affirm that vv. 9-20 were not in the original Gospel of Mark.

    I’m shocked that you didn’t go for Roman 14:22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.

    You should read and contemplate all of Romans 14; it’s all about “injesting” food offered up to idols – you could make a parallel

  34. Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.

    Obviously the context of Mark refers to encounters that may harm them in their mission. They did not go around handling snakes and consuming poison for show and fun. But I do believe there are some crazy contemporary evangelicals who do just that.

    The context presumes someone tries to poison them, in which case God will help them survive. So when the trumbone regime breaks down my door and forcibly injects me, I’ll hope in Mark 16. But buddy, if you’re voluntarily lining up for one, I hope you know that you’re lining up for at least 4 which will maybe hopefully sometimes could likely wedunno *shrug* let you leave the hospital it is more likely to help put you in in the first place. The bar is pretty low right now as to what the vexxine actually does, and that’s being generous. But we thank you for volunteering as a test specimen.

  35. “They did not go around handling snakes and consuming poison for show and fun. But I do believe there are some crazy contemporary evangelicals who do just that”

    Check out “Holy Ghost People,” 1967 documentary about West Virginia Pentecostal snake handlers (I wonder if their community is still around?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZIa4kutkIM. Available on Amazon Prime Video streaming as well.

  36. The great band, Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus, featured an excerpt from “Holy Ghost People” at the beginning of the track “Repentance/Sama” from their album “Beauty Will Save the World”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooJGPuVLcs0

    The way that dude pronounces “piano” (“pie-anna”) just cracks me up.

  37. But you know what the best part of this outburst was?

    That he said,”which the Catholic Church officially backs”…

    Because as we all know, even us Catholics, but especially militant atheists like the fish… if the Catholic Church i.e. particular clergymen and/or reigning pontiff operating outside their jurisdictions… is “officially” backing i.e. paying lip service/passively going along… with some government program… then it must be good!

    Nope, nothing ever went wrong there!

    This may come as a surprise to many… but Catholicism isn’t an assembly of drone cult members who simply follow the leader…

  38. Oh brother. Again?

    This was a good article, but it begs this question: Why accept the premise that we need a special “exemption”, religious or otherwise, in order to avoid being forcibly injected (a form of rape) with a gene-modifying serum, for a virus with a >99.98% survival rate? When the average age of death from this virus is (at least) 80, and the average age of death from all causes is 79? When the serum admittedly doesn’t prevent us from either catching or transmitting the virus, and only (maybe, sometimes, supposedly) causes less-severe symptoms?

    Using the same logic, if my boss tells me I need a jab from HIS little prick, in order to keep my job, do I need a special “religious exemption” in order to “just say no”? More likely, I’d file a lawsuit, and my boss and his little prick would be in the pokey AND the poorhouse, for violating my bodily sovereignty against my will, under threat of termination.

    This is a big problem with “our side”: We accept their demonstrably false premises, then argue how to come up with better “solutions” for their false premises: “Here’s my ‘religious exemption’ so you can’t legally rape me!”

    GlobalClimateWarmingChange is another example of accepting a false premise: “Okay, CO2 is ‘killing the planet,’ but instead of closing down our natural gas and coal plants, and freezing to death, let’s “capture” the carbon…or arguing that modern internal combustion engines emit less CO2 than electric cars (1% of what they did in the 60s), which mostly depend on coal and natural gas for their electricity. In using these arguments, we accept their false premise, that CO2 is bad for the planet, instead of vital food for plants.

    Another example of accepting their premise, is saying “so and so” is a “biological man”… as if there is any other kind. Just say, “so and so is a man”….even if he DOES cut off his little you-know-what. (Which they almost never do. It’s so handy, after all.)

    I’m with Hagfish Bagpipe on this one: the only proper response to “Vaccine Mandates” is “F.U. and the snake you rode in on.”

  39. I’ve made that argument before Ann, but you are exactly right. Once you accept that you have to beg for a “religious exemption” you’ve already lost, since you’re accepting their terms of debate and what’s acceptable behavior, as well as allowing them – usually quite arbitrarily, with no fixed standards – to decide whether you qualify for the grace of an exemption from their tyranny.

    The only “exemption” one needs to explain to the tyrants is this: “I don’t want it, period. It is my fundamental human right – regardless of religious or other belief – to reject being coerced into taking experimental medical treatments, or any medical treatments if I don’t want them (and not to suffer deprivation of other rights and liberties for not doing so). Beyond that, I don’t need to justify myself to you. I need not beg for your benevolence to “grant” me something that belongs to me by right. Now, kindly piss off and mind your own business.”

  40. Ann Cherry,

    I agree that there shouldn’t be any such thing as a religious examption. But your claims are false. Injection isn’t a form of rape, that’s just stupid hyperbole which detracts from the experience of those who have actually been raped. The vaccines don’t modify your genes, that’s a flat-out lie, and the survival rate for COVID is more like 98.3%. The fact that the average age at which people die from COVID is higher than average life expectancy *AT BIRTH* just shows that you don’t understand how life expectancy works:

    Life expectancy is an average, which means it is pulled down by people who die young. It also means that life expectancy increases as you age. A set of data called the National Life Tables, produced by the ONS, shows how life expectancy adjusts as a person ages. An 82-year-old man can expect to live for another 7.4 years on average, while an 85-year-old woman can expect to live another 6.87 years on average. [FullFact]

    https://fullfact.org/news/boris-johnson-whatsapp-covid-life-expectancy-cummings/

  41. L Ron Hubbard alias John B()

    As the oldest manuscripts are known to be the most accurate because there were fewer generations of copies from the original autographs

    I’d be more worried about the 30+ years of oral storytelling which preceded those “originals”. But plus points for at least recognising that parts of your holy book are completely made up. I assume you also go with the earlier ending of Mark, which lacks post-resurrection appearances by Jesus, rather than the later, made up one?

    Johnno,

    Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.

    Exactly what they’d say if God was made up.

    Obviously the context of Mark refers to encounters that may harm them in their mission

    Yeah, but “L Ron Hubbard alias John B()” says that this passage in Mark isn’t authentic, so no need for you to think up excuses for why it doesn’t apply to you.

    This may come as a surprise to many… but Catholicism isn’t an assembly of drone cult members who simply follow the leader…

    It comes as a surprise to me that you’re a Catholic, as I literally can’t detect any difference between you and any Christian Nationalist Evangelical I’ve argued with. Do you even go to confession? I find that difficult to picture.

    PS: My family have all been vaccinated now, with no ill-effects, exactly as you’d expect, and exactly in line with the official medical position of the entire world.

  42. Well, Swordfish, you can’t rape the willing, and I wouldn’t be taking medical advice from Boris Johnson! I’m clearly talking about those who are unwilling to take Big Pharma’s little prick. And yes, this Vexxine does in fact modify your RNA. As for the state of my soul, I thought you didn’t believe in souls. I truly hope you and your family has no bad effects the next time you’re infected with a coronavirus, as your RNA has now been re-programmed and things may well go wonky, as they did on every animal on which this was tested: they all rather quickly died. God bless!

  43. swordfishtrombone
    October 28, 2021 at 5:26 am

    Some do go on after attaining a certain age … some don’t

    You applied a somewhat similar argument about old people dying from the Vax

    Most Bibles acknowledge

  44. I was going to say most Bibles acknowledge that issue in Mark as well as in other places
    (The woman caught in Adultery is another such passage)
    They’ll keep the text and bracket and preface or footnote it

    The early editions of the Catholic New American Bible took it upon itself to reorder verses that it decided were out of order. (they still kept the original numbering but moved the verses around)

    Later, the NAB reversed that editorial decision

    But, I encourage you to read Romans 14:1-23 – totally applicable to the times

    It’s very applicable to the topic of the Vaccine and shows the true tensions in making the decision

  45. Swordy once again confusing CFR with IFR at 5:26AM post, even after I explained his error several weeks ago, when he thought throwing CFR in my face proved I was lying about death rate (And even if one uses CFR, Covid is simply not particularly deadly – certainly not enough to justify what we’ve suffered for the last 20 months, or to justify vax mandates, vax Apartheid, etc.). No surprise: The Covi-vax fanatics, having no shame and no humility, never learn anything from their errors (Once again, Eugyppius today is spot on about this: https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/there-are-no-arguments-on-the-other).

  46. Dennis

    Unless you discount the total dead

    If you assume every one in the country has been infected, the best survival rate is 99.77%

  47. Johnb,
    Regarding your strawman distraction:
    Joy said : “It is a double sin to knowingly refuse to save lives in the millions.”
    ?You do know the vaccine is not a cure??At best a therapeutic … like HCQ, Ivermectin, …

    Is that another invitation for another discussion about what a vaccine is? Or how vaccination functions?

    That has been thoroughly discussed and nobody except an ill informed person would make the claim you make right there, implicitly that they are supposed to “cure”.
    You know better than that now, surely?
    If you don’t want a vaccination don’t have one but you seem to think that refusing makes you somehow morally superior and therefore qualified to call others who do have vaccines, members of aside cult or verbiage to that effect.
    A cure, is something which can never apply to a vaccine even if the vaccine prevents ALL infections (which NONE do any way). They are at best a ‘guaranteed’ prevention. *except, as said, none are.
    So your question belies a false notion about vaccination. Little more
    As for therapeutics? If you don’t understand the function of a vaccine you’ve no hope of sorting out the difference between a therapeutic and a preventative measure.
    On another note regarding your comment;
    You address the point to “joy says’. So inviting an audience but not addressing me directly. Which in a room would be the hight of rudeness.
    Then the comment diverts to:
    “You do know…”
    Presumably, at that point you’re speaking to me?
    Just another. Distraction to be off-hand, I suppose

    If you’re going to be so grandiose as to say it’s wrong for people to help save the lives of millions directly and indirectly, then spare the phoney judgement that those receiving the jab have somehow been complicit in abortion! It is sick.
    As someone above said, disagree on noble and truthful grounds. You don’t need any more moral reason than that. Catholic sin by proxy is the worst aspect of tge entire faith. Leads to suicide and hopelessness in so many of its members.

  48. That John B. I’ll use 99.77 instead of 99.9 from now on. Statistically negligible, but I don’t want Swordy getting his knickers in a twist.

  49. “It’s very applicable to the topic of the Vaccine and shows the true tensions in making the decision’
    There are no tensions. Only objections looking for a reason in the bible.

    The tensions are ‘of this world’, very political, emotional, often irrational and based on a lack of trust and good information. Little else of any substance beyond ordinary objections to any medical intervention.
    Not a reason to campaign. Just say no and be done.

  50. Okay, so the above quote from my comment SHOULD read:
    “If you don’t want a vaccination don’t have one but you seem to think that refusing makes you somehow morally superior and therefore qualified to call others who do have vaccines, members of a suicide cult or verbiage to that effect.”

  51. Joy

    I don’t think refusing makes me morally superior and therefore qualified to call others who do have vaccines, members of aside cult or verbiage to that effect.

    [You address the point to “joy says’. So inviting an audience but not addressing me directly. Which in a room would be the height of rudeness.]

    Sorry Joy – It’s just there were many posts between when you said it and I replied
    I apologize, it shows that a ‘reply’ function would have been nice.

    I should have used that handy function:
    Joy
    October 25, 2021 at 7:59 pm
    Their cells have already saved millions of lives potentially. So if the numbers count? they count. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t bring the babies back either. Some of your family will have been saved to be alive today directly due to vaccination.

    Do you really think there’s evidence that millions of lives have been saved by the vaccines?

    It is like saying that old Ivory which predated banning and control of ivory, that has already been stolen or taken should be put into the ground or burned because it is a terrible trade.

    Ivory sale ban still exists in the US. 100+ year old ivory can be traded but you better have its provenance.

    As you know, I’m not now Catholic, but with my experience, I can understand a lot of what goes on here.
    As I invited SFT to read Roman’s 14, it was an invitation to understand my own tension between Romans 14:22 and Romans 14:23. Unless anybody can convince me that the vaccine did or does any good, 14:23 tells me not to take it. Romans 14 is about food offered to idols and God says nothing from him is unclean. 14:22 allows one to eat but that is to be kept between oneself and God.

    Part of my journey was to try to dismiss everything ‘religious’. Part of that was to reject the Bible and ‘collect’ conflicting passages in the Bible. Eventually I realized they were just ‘tensions’.

    I apologize if I offended you, Romans 14:22 absolves you … me nor any priest need apply

    I s’pose L Ron is appropriate here

  52. Joy: “…but you seem to think that refusing makes you somehow morally superior and therefore qualified to call others who do have vaccines, members of a suicide cult or verbiage to that effect.”

    Pure projection, as usual from the pro-vax crowd. This may have been directed to John specifically, but, I simply have to point out how it exemplifies a total lack of self-awareness from the pro-vax crowd to impute this attitude to the other side, while pretending to be offended at such rhetoric. I’ve lost count of how many times in the last 18 months I’ve heard people on the left and those who support forced muzzles, lockdowns, jab mandates, etc., accuse those opposed of being a death/suicide cult. It’s the same attitude that sees the left spend four years stupidly accusing Trump of being “literally Hitler…hurr durr…” then feigning disgust when someone on the Right makes Holocaust or Hitler analogies related to policies or people on the Left. If the Left wants to resort to those kinds of lame insults and stupid analogies, fine…just don’t get huffy when there’s blowback.

  53. Monkeyfromfishy,

    I’d be more worried about the 30+ years of oral storytelling which preceded those “originals”. But plus points for at least recognising that parts of your holy book are completely made up. I assume you also go with the earlier ending of Mark, which lacks post-resurrection appearances by Jesus, rather than the later, made up one?

    Why worry? You act very surprised that copyists would add additional details for later audiences, which is already well known from Old Testament copies, in fact, with Mosaic books having repeating details with changes of context, done so that later generations would find a detail more understandable and relevant to their age, but which hilarious sceptics like you think are made-up or contradictions. Unfortunately for you, many such ‘discrepancies’ are completely innocuous to the point. So one could take ’em or leave ’em without anything substantial changing. But atheists desparate for a string to hold on to like to imagine what else could be wrong based on hypotheticals. Even more hilarious are that atheists are often the sort who religiously subscribe to ever changing fak-chekas and “science.”

    Exactly what they’d say if God was made up.

    Why? Go on, tell us…

    Yeah, but “L Ron Hubbard alias John B()” says that this passage in Mark isn’t authentic, so no need for you to think up excuses for why it doesn’t apply to you.

    Maybe he’s right, but as I said above, even if authentic, what has really changed here other than a passage hyperbolically encouraging one to be brave and trust in God to look out for them?

    It comes as a surprise to me that you’re a Catholic, as I literally can’t detect any difference between you and any Christian Nationalist Evangelical I’ve argued with. Do you even go to confession? I find that difficult to picture.

    Well they do like to maintain many of the things the Church preserved for them and handed down so that should not be surprising. I know that I come off very impeccably saintly and morally upstanding here, but I assure you that I am only human and therefore do have a proclivity to sin and am therefore in need of the Sacraments.

    PS: My family have all been vaccinated now, with no ill-effects, exactly as you’d expect, and exactly in line with the official medical position of the entire world.

    Well good for you. Let’s see how you are doing 3-5 years from now which is when even fast-paced vaccine trials typically conclude. Many many others have died or are suffering permanent disabilities that make them wish they were dead thanks to the vexxines, exactly in line with the official medical position of the entire world. So isn’t it nice when you are offered the choice and informed of the risks versus being forced or coerced to take a medical treatment you do not want and gas-lit that absolutely nothing can go wrong? And then cannot hold the manufacturer liable for their very very trustworthy corporate product with secret ingredients? You got anything to say to those people who’ve lost loved ones or who can no longer control their motor functions or who now must monitor their heart conditions closely for the rest of their lives, or have palsey?

    Are you going to claim these people don’t exist?

  54. “They also objected on religious grounds to a requirement imposed by a trial judge that they choose among proposed alternative methods of execution, saying that doing so would amount to suicide.”

    Well, no. Whatever one’s opinion on the imposition of the death penalty as currently practiced in this country, it’s not suicide to give the condemned an option as to method (which is dumb though. And the medicalization of executions by lethal injection should be stopped – good old fashioned hanging or firing squad should be reinstated) nor does it implicate the religious liberty and free exercise clause in any way.

  55. Ann Cherry,

    Well, Swordfish, you can’t rape the willing, and I wouldn’t be taking medical advice from Boris Johnson!

    If vaccination is “a form of rape”, then teaching children religion is a form of child abuse, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins. If you read the quote I cited, do you accept that your comments about age and COVID-19 deaths were ignorant at best, misleading at worst? Also, I have to say how absurd it is for so-called “pro-lifers” to be so uncaring about the deaths of old people from COVID-19. If foetuses were dying from it, you might be concerned, but if you’re 80? Too bad, Ann Cherry couldn’t care less about you.

    And yes, this Vexxine does in fact modify your RNA.

    You originally said: “a gene-modifying serum”, which was false. Our genes consist of DNA, not RNA. Surface modifications to RNA aren’t passed on when cells replicate. And it’s “vaccine”.

    As for the state of my soul, I thought you didn’t believe in souls.

    I didn’t mention souls at all.

    I truly hope you and your family has no bad effects the next time you’re infected with a coronavirus, as your RNA has now been re-programmed and things may well go wonky, as they did on every animal on which this was tested: they all rather quickly died.

    The claim that animals involved in mRNA vaccine research all died “rather quickly” is another lie. Do you actually know any true facts about anything? I have no evidence that you do.

  56. If vaccination is “a form of rape”, then teaching children religion is a form of child abuse, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins.

    Funnily enough, Richard Dawkins has come around on a lot of the stupid shit he’s said over the years. But this is another grasp by the fishbecamemen believer here. Even assuming “teaching children religion” is akin to telling lies, where is the physical harm or disability done, unlike with experimental vexxines. Ah ain’t false equivalences grand? The typical cries and hollering of a wokey. Your speech is violence! But my maiming and killing and beating and arson is speech! If it wasn’t, the government would’ve said so!

    Also, I have to say how absurd it is for so-called “pro-lifers” to be so uncaring about the deaths of old people from COVID-19. If foetuses were dying from it, you might be concerned, but if you’re 80? Too bad, Ann Cherry couldn’t care less about you.

    Uh, Ack-shully, pro-lifers don’t have much to say about perfectly natural deaths which nobody can do anything about, only deliberate murder and deaths based on neglect and deliberate medical malpractice – like euthanasia and deliberate uninformed consent.

    We don’t like old people being used against their wills for medical experiments any more than dead unborn children. Too bad, fishypoo couldn’t care less about human beings as a whole when he has an internet argument to win to protect his woke atheist hedonism. That’s why all those children need to be cut up into little pieces… because swordy reserves the right to cum in a vagina and not be burdened by any responsibility for doing so. How noble!

    The claim that animals involved in mRNA vaccine research all died “rather quickly” is another lie.

    Nice qualifier there. You’d do a great job as a fak-checka! The point is the animals easily succumbed when exposed to the live viruses for which the vexxines only helped undermine their natural immune systems to. So the phrase, “rather quickly,” is only a vaguery depending on how you feel, that you’ve latched on to here and redefined according to your own criteria in a desperate plea to find something wrong with the main thrust of the argument – that the vexxine trials made things worse, have never successfully passed animal trials to be safe for human testing, much less consumption, and now you and many many others have naievely chosen to hop on board and participate in them because it’s trendy and run under a marketing slogan that you are saving lives like a superhero! The one saving grace that the fac-checkas take pains to point out is that the dosages given to you and definitely not the same as those given to the early animal subjects, which we do believe! You certainly don’t want what they got!

  57. Johnno,

    You act very surprised that copyists would add additional details for later audiences,

    I referred to 30+ years of oral storytelling prior to anything being written down, but you don’t seem to have addressed that at all. Regarding those “additional details”, the resurrection of Jesus, missing from the earliest version of Mark, seems more than a detail. I find it surprising that the earliest version of the earliest gospel doesn’t even mention the single most important event in the New Testament.

    But atheists desparate for a string to hold on to like to imagine what else could be wrong based on hypotheticals.

    I don’t need any “string” to hold on to. Even if the Bible was completely free from contradictions, scientific errors, morally bad ideas (such as advocating for slavery), historical innacuracies, etc, I still wouldn’t have any reason to think its claims about God were true. You are the one who is clinging to hypotheticals, such as your claim that copyists added false (but irrelevant) details to an earlier true text: how do you know that the original text is true?

    Why? Go on, tell us…

    Does this really need explanation? I mean, if things are real – such as gravity – then you’d tell unbelievers to test them: “Try dropping something!”. Yet in the case of God, unbelievers are told NOT to test him, due to *reasons*. How incredibly convenient.

    “Of course he can work miracles. Lots of ’em. Any time he wants. Just don’t test him by asking him to.” <- RED FLAG!

    Maybe he’s right, but as I said above, even if authentic, what has really changed here other than a passage hyperbolically encouraging one to be brave and trust in God to look out for them?

    What if the inauthentic part is the resurrection? Or the miracles? Or all of it?

    I know that I come off very impeccably saintly and morally upstanding here, but I assure you that I am only human and therefore do have a proclivity to sin and am therefore in need of the Sacraments.

    If you’ve “sinned”, then you should apologise to the people you’ve hurt, not ask for an imaginary friend to forgive you. If your sins haven’t hurt anyone else, then there isn’t even anything to forgive. Plus points for making your first-ever semi-endearing remark, however.

    Let’s see how you are doing 3-5 years from now

    This is where I’m supposed to worry about long-term side effects from a vaccine whose effectiveness is also claimed to decline rapidly. Do you not see this is a contradiction?

    Many many others have died or are suffering permanent disabilities that make them wish they were dead thanks to the vexxines, exactly in line with the official medical position of the entire world.

    I have as much reason to take you at your word as I do to trust the Bible. In other words, zero. But assuming this is true, how many is “many many”, bearing in mind that hundreds of millions of doses have been given? If (say) 1 in a million people suffer serious side-effects from a vaccine, but it saves (say) 1 in a thousand from dying, then it’s a thousand times better being vaccinated than doing nothing.

  58. “This is where I’m supposed to worry about long-term side effects from a vaccine whose effectiveness is also claimed to decline rapidly. Do you not see this is a contradiction?”

    There is no contradiction. It’s the distinction between safety and efficacy.

    The vexxine causes a heightened antibody reaction to the spike protein itself. That antibody reaction wanes rapidly. The spike protein is highly mutagenic and escapes any antibody response in those vexxinated, causing variants that the vexxinated will catch next time round because they don’t have full immunity. Hopefully, ADE or OAS won’t play a part.

    Meanwhile, the spike protein itself is pathogenic, and causes many other adverse events independent of its efficacy against the original virus. Many of the adverse events include clotting in all sorts of weird places, myocardial damage, strokes, immune dysfunction, and flare-ups of everything from shingles to in-remission cancers. Not to mention, pregnant women, and breast-feeding mothers losing their babies…

  59. If I had a gun to my head and had to choose between mRNA vax or listening to Swordfish on religion and biblical hermeneutics, I think it’s the only situation in which I’d chose the vax.

  60. philemon,

    (What you said)

    Without data to back up your claims, they’re worthless. Shut the door on your way out.

  61. Dennis,

    Swordy once again confusing CFR with IFR

    Nope. According to this paper, the IFR for COVID-19 in afluent countries with relatively elderly populations, like the USA, is 98.85%, which is much closer to the figure I cited than it is to your obviously made up 99.99% figure. In your reply to “John B()”, you claim there is no difference between 99.99% and 99.77%, but the former equates to 1 in 1,000 deaths, while the latter equates to 23 in a thousand deaths, which is 23 times more deaths. The 98.85% figure means 115 times more deaths. From the introduction:

    To date, estimates of the overall COVID-19 IFR have ranged from <0.01% – 2.3%, with a review combining estimates across studies reporting an overall estimate of 0.68% (0.53-0.82%)

    [This is exactly the same as the figure I cited.]

    https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-34-IFR/

  62. Johnno,

    Funnily enough, Richard Dawkins has come around on a lot of the stupid shit he’s said over the years.

    You obviously missed the point of my analogy. Richard Dawkins still thinks teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse, and he’s still the strongest-possible type of atheist. What do you think he has come around on?

    Ack-shully, pro-lifers don’t have much to say about perfectly natural deaths which nobody can do anything about, only deliberate murder and deaths based on neglect and deliberate medical malpractice – like euthanasia and deliberate uninformed consent.

    We can do something about COVID-19 deaths, namely to vaccinate people. Unfortunately, “pro-lifers” seem to be against that, due to *insert idiotic conspiracy theory*.

    We don’t like old people being used against their wills for medical experiments any more than dead unborn children.

    You’ll find that most old people wanted to be vaccinated, as did I. In any case, I’m not aware that anybody has been vaccinated against their will. And if you’re against euthanasia (above), then it appears that you’re in favour of old people being kept alive against their will. Consistency! Try to find some!

    Nice qualifier there.

    The qualifier was Ann Cherry’s. You’re citing the fact that some early mRNA vaccines didn’t work, but the new ones do work, so you (and Ann Cherry) have no argument.

  63. [Corrected indenting. Hopefully.]

    Johnno,

    Funnily enough, Richard Dawkins has come around on a lot of the stupid shit he’s said over the years.

    You obviously missed the point of my analogy. Richard Dawkins still thinks teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse, and he’s still the strongest-possible type of atheist. What do you think he has come around on?

    Ack-shully, pro-lifers don’t have much to say about perfectly natural deaths which nobody can do anything about, only deliberate murder and deaths based on neglect and deliberate medical malpractice – like euthanasia and deliberate uninformed consent.

    We can do something about COVID-19 deaths, namely to vaccinate people. Unfortunately, “pro-lifers” seem to be against that, due to *insert idiotic conspiracy theory*.

    We don’t like old people being used against their wills for medical experiments any more than dead unborn children.

    You’ll find that most old people wanted to be vaccinated, as did I. In any case, I’m not aware that anybody has been vaccinated against their will. And if you’re against euthanasia (above), then it appears that you’re in favour of old people being kept alive against their will. Consistency! Try to find some!

    Nice qualifier there.

    The qualifier was Ann Cherry’s. You’re citing the fact that some early mRNA vaccines didn’t work, but the new ones do work, so you (and Ann Cherry) have no argument.

  64. I referred to 30+ years of oral storytelling prior to anything being written down, but you don’t seem to have addressed that at all. Regarding those “additional details”, the resurrection of Jesus, missing from the earliest version of Mark, seems more than a detail. I find it surprising that the earliest version of the earliest gospel doesn’t even mention the single most important event in the New Testament.

    Yes, how very very odd… especially considering that there are verbatim quotations of those “additional details” from Mark by other writers centuries earlier that precede these surviving earliest versions of the Greek Mark text we still happen to possess… It’s almost as if there were even older texts that included them or something that even earlier writers quoted from that we unfortunately don’t have around… just imagine that!

    I don’t need any “string” to hold on to. Even if the Bible was completely free from contradictions, scientific errors, morally bad ideas (such as advocating for slavery), historical innacuracies, etc, I still wouldn’t have any reason to think its claims about God were true. You are the one who is clinging to hypotheticals, such as your claim that copyists added false (but irrelevant) details to an earlier true text: how do you know that the original text is true?

    You’ve been addressed about the slavery topic. The fact that you ran away with your tail between your legs going “waaah waah, but look at how — I —feel about it!” and are carrying on like you weren’t informed says a lot about your honesty. Are you talking to those “other people” reading the comments again instead of to the person you’re addressing? Fancy yourself a stageman of sorts?

    It’s not hypothetical that copyists added new details to the Scriptures. It’s been done since the Old Testament. Which is why other books also have repetitive details reiterating things even with slight differences, or names of ancient places that ceased to exist changed to their contemporary ones or more contemporary locales etc. It’s how knowledge was passed on and contextualized at the time. They didn’t have the internet, and they didn’t care about how sceptics would feel thousands of years later because they didn’t follow the format of Wikipedia editing notes. But despite this, all of it is still more consistent than THE SCIENCE ™ and modern media reporting, which is highly remarkable and why I believe it was true! Precisely because it doesn’t feel the need to change its story every week or soften its language despite the very clear grand claims it makes that would remain just as “unbelievable” to people at the time as it would to modern internet sleuths. That suggests to me that the writers weren’t trying to bullshit their way out of an imaginary quagmire they made up. They stuck to their claims right up to their suffering ends. Can’t say the same for current day affairs or the current day science and academia with their golden parachutes and lucrative futures as CNN experts or pharmaceutical ‘just-show-up-n-sit-down’ board members.

    Does this really need explanation?

    Clearly it does! Just look at what you said next!

    Swordfish: “I mean, if things are real – such as gravity – then you’d tell unbelievers to test them: “Try dropping something!”. Yet in the case of God, unbelievers are told NOT to test him, due to *reasons*. How incredibly convenient.

    and

    “Of course he can work miracles. Lots of ’em. Any time he wants. Just don’t test him by asking him to.” <- RED FLAG!

    So you’ve misunderstood this concept entirely. Sigh…

    “Putting God to the Test” means treating Him exactly as you just did… comparing Him to “gravity” and taking Him for granted, as if like the law of gravity God is somehow obligated to intervene and suspend nature to save you every time like some clockwork mechanism.

    Gravity is commanded to work as it does, so you can count on it because it is fixed and obligated to remain that way to serve you, absent some rare hypothetical miraculous necessity. God, on the other hand, is a person and is free, and He is not obligated to do anything for you, despite that He does a lot. He is not at your beck and call. So if you go out of your way to try pulling some stupid shit, then even gravity will not come to rescue you. This is why Moses couldn’t enter the Promised Land at the end.

    Sorry lad, but God doesn’t care that you can’t test rigorously Him out with your transparent tubes and boiler plate apparatuses, anymore than that these would tell you whether the thoughts you are thinking right now are actually real or even yours at all! Which is why atheism has veered into the idea that we live in magical holographic multi-verses where free will is alll an illllluuuusion…! OOooOOOOOooo!!

    But don’t worry, you’ll get your opportunity to experience what’s on the other side some day soon enough. Either that or you won’t experience anything at all. But remember to keep your testing kit with you, just in case…

    What if the inauthentic part is the resurrection? Or the miracles? Or all of it?

    I’ll do you one better! What if everything you’ve experienced in life and are experiencing right now isn’t actually happening at all? How do you know? Where does it end???

    If you’ve “sinned”, then you should apologise to the people you’ve hurt, not ask for an imaginary friend to forgive you.

    All sins are first and foremost against God as misuses of your Free Will as well as against those other people whom He loves. So you need to apologize to both, buckaroo! Raise your standards!

    If your sins haven’t hurt anyone else, then there isn’t even anything to forgive.

    Sins are also wounds against yourself and damaging to your being. As I said, you need to raise your standards instead of trying to escape your responsibilities, which includes not only to others but even more importantly, to yourself. There are likely others who also care about you and would be hurt to see you doing stupid shit to yourself in your self-centered-ness.

    This is where I’m supposed to worry about long-term side effects from a vaccine whose effectiveness is also claimed to decline rapidly. Do you not see this is a contradiction?

    Nope! It’s reputed effectiveness against THE COVID ™ declines rapidly.

    The other potential side-effects? Not so much… Many we know are with immediate effect! Long term? We’ll find out…

    You don’t distinguish the difference? Nah… of course you do… you just didn’t stop to think about it before typing that out!

    I have as much reason to take you at your word as I do to trust the Bible. In other words, zero.

    Why not consult your own fak-checkas? You know? The ones you link to but never actually read?

    But assuming this is true,

    It is!

    how many is “many many”, bearing in mind that hundreds of millions of doses have been given?

    Enough ‘manys’ to conclude that it is unethical to force or coerce anyone to take it against their will.

    If (say) 1 in a million people suffer serious side-effects from a vaccine, but it saves (say) 1 in a thousand from dying, then it’s a thousand times better being vaccinated than doing nothing.

    How cruel of you to overlook the suffering of the one who wishes they never took it! Yeah tell ‘im – “Too bad for you buddy! But know that you were a sacrifice that swordfish was willing to make! Because swordfish certainly doesn’t want to be that 1!”

    Well then, we should also ask logically, if it saves “just one life” by banning a drug or vexxine known to cause death and immense suffering to 1 unlucky person, then we should also do that too, no? We recall stuff all the time, yes?

    That’s why many many drugs and vaccines are never brought to market and there are many regulations around them. You understand why this is so, yeah?

    It’s why Fauci needs to spend all that time murdering beagles before releasing a product for human testing and consumption, you see?

    Absolutely no-one wants to take away your right to volunteer yourself as a noble test pilot for so great a cause swordy. So like that CNN grunt, feel free to call the rest of us “cowards” for not stepping up! But we’ve made the informed decision that we would rather count on natural immunity without the loving care at the hands of the BigPharmaCorps who were already stuffed to their eyeballs with decades of lawsuits for malpractice and injury. And that’s just the “approved” stuff!

  65. You obviously missed the point of my analogy. Richard Dawkins still thinks teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse, and he’s still the strongest-possible type of atheist. What do you think he has come around on?

    Last I heard him he was publicly regretful that the erasure of the Christian heritage of his country was inviting in not only something he’s afraid of even more – like radical Islam – but has given rise to every kind of liberal trans-this-that identity and immorality that he had to relent that all that ‘child abuse’ helped put some restraint on society. The utopia atheists promised with the reduction of Christianity is not turning out like he hoped.

    We can do something about COVID-19 deaths, namely to vaccinate people. Unfortunately, “pro-lifers” seem to be against that, due to *insert idiotic conspiracy theory*.

    *insert conspiracy facts*

    You’ll find that most old people wanted to be vaccinated, as did I.

    And were they or sound state of mind to be making their own medical decisions? Many aren’t! Did you also mention the *insert conspiracy facts*? Or at least list the risk of side effects printed on the literature? Or was this just passed over? Be honest now!

    Because at least half of the old people I talk to are convinced otherwise and don’t want it, some who had it were never really informed, they just passively take whatever they’re told to, whereas some shrug, not knowing what to think, or some will certainly believe the *conspiracy facts* are bullshit because the media would’ve said something, and how could all those people on TV be wrong, besides, am I a doctor?

    In any case, I’m not aware that anybody has been vaccinated against their will.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeah! Because it’s totally not against your will if your job and day-to-day normal life is being held hostage!

    And if you’re against euthanasia (above), then it appears that you’re in favour of old people being kept alive against their will. Consistency! Try to find some!

    Yes! Because deliberate suicide is murder! And anyone who helps is an accomplice to murder! That’s consistency!

    You’re citing the fact that some early mRNA vaccines didn’t work, but the new ones do work

    Qualify… “work.” I want to see the spin, so please demonstrate your “work”!

    Because as the previous propaganda demonstrates the definition PharmaCorp used for “working” was conditional and limited to a certain specific criteria of circumstances – briefly, measuring any uptick in anti-body creation, ignoring disastrous side-effects after a certain period, and/or in accordance to computer model simulations, and incumbent on destroying the placebo group for the greater good etc. Very promising sounding-results that time and again were refused advancement to human trials because the other experts then could see through the expert-bullshit that is only meant for investors. It’s like when your fak-checka said, “New Vexxines did NOT skip animal/human testing and ANYONE who says OTHERWISE is a LIAR!!! …. … … … .. .. .. . .. wejustdecidedtorunthemattheexactsametimeasthegeneralpopulationroll-outseeyouin2-3yearsLOL!Disclosure:ThiswebsiteisfundedinwholeorinpartbytheGAVIvexxinealliance.”

  66. Dennis: “If I had a gun to my head and had to choose between mRNA vax or listening to Swordfish on religion and biblical hermeneutics, I think it’s the only situation in which I’d chose the vax.” Thanks for the laugh.

    But isn’t that how this works? You get to listen to endless lectures on what a miserable specimen of humanity you are until you submit to the vex. If you’re finally willing to grovel for a momentary relief from the shrill hectoring, then you learn it was for nothing. They continue to proclaim you are a miserable specimen of humanity until you get the next booster, and the next…

    And what will be in those boosters? You don’t know!

    Of course, I care not at all that the branch covidians think I’m a reprobate. Cheers!

  67. Actually Fishy, it’s 99.985, but let’s not quibble over statistically meaningless numbers (I never said 99.99, but 99.98, and yes, the difference between that and even 99.77 is statistically meaningless). The article you cite from the Imperial College (the same outfit that gave us Dr. Neil Ferguson, whose models have been wildly incorrect about every disease outbreak for the last 25 years!) dates from October 2020. My number comes from Prof. Ioannidis’ IFR analysis of May 2021. I’d take him over the compromised and untrustworthy Imperial College any day.

    Philemon: Glad you had a good laugh…I’m always happy to be source of amusement! And, I agree about not giving a damn what the Covidians think. More are coming on board the side of sanity every day as the Regime Narrative continues to collapse.

  68. Yes, how very very odd… especially considering that there are verbatim quotations of those “additional details” from Mark by other writers centuries earlier that precede these surviving earliest versions of the Greek Mark text we still happen to possess…

    I’m not sure what your point is here. Most scholars think Mark was written about 30-40 years after Jesus’s death. I’m not sure where you get writers centuries earlier? Maybe you mean centuries before the first offical Bible?

    You’ve been addressed about the slavery topic. The fact that you ran away with your tail between your legs going “waaah waah, but look at how — I —feel about it!” and are carrying on like you weren’t informed says a lot about your honesty.

    More accusations against my honesty? If I failed to respond to something you wrote, it’s most likely for one of the following reasons:

    1. I was too busy.

    2. I didn’t know you’d replied. (Email notifications don’t seem to work on here.)

    3. I didn’t think your argument worth responding to.

    4. I didn’t want to wade through repugnant, hate-filled rubbish. Like the stuff about my Grandmother.

    Regarding slavery, you started with the usual BS about Biblical slavery being the nice, indentured servitude type of slavery, then when I pointed out that you can “buy your slaves from the heathens that surround you”, you said that was okay because they were heathens. Great! According to that argument, the African slave trade was fine because the Africans were heathens. That wasn’t a defence of Biblical slavery, it was an indictment of it. It is absolutely a rock-solid fact that the Bible (at the very least) condones slavery, and that it NEVER condemns it. That’s not running away, idiot.

    Are you talking to those “other people” reading the comments again instead of to the person you’re addressing?

    Not sure what you’re talking about here. But yes, I respond to you to draw out how obnoxious and stupid you are, and because I can’t stand your lies, not for the pleasure of interacting with you.

    It’s not hypothetical that copyists added new details to the Scriptures.

    I know. The hypothetical part is the claim that the original is true.

    That suggests to me that the writers weren’t trying to bullshit their way out of an imaginary quagmire they made up.

    What about (for example) BSing a way to get Jesus of *Nazareth* born in Bethlehem, to line up with prophecy, complete with contradictory stories, made up censuses, etc? (Incidentally, who was the eyewitness to events before Jesus was even born?)

    <blockquoteThey stuck to their claims right up to their suffering ends.

    So do Muslim suicide bombers, but that doesn’t mean Islam is true. And few of the martydom stories are credible.

    “Putting God to the Test” means treating Him exactly as you just did…

    You’re just making up more excuses on behalf of your no-show God. There shouldn’t be a problem with an omnipotent God providing evidence that it exists. Does it want me to believe in it or not?

    Sorry lad, but God doesn’t care that you can’t test rigorously Him out with your transparent tubes and boiler plate apparatuses

    I didn’t say “rigorously test” – that’s a strawman you’ve invented. And I don’t care about a God which would rather play hide-and-seek than reveal itself.

    What if everything you’ve experienced in life and are experiencing right now isn’t actually happening at all?

    You’re just evading the question. How do you know the Bible is true?

    All sins are first and foremost against God as misuses of your Free Will as well as against those other people whom He loves.

    I don’t see how it’s possible to hurt an omnipotent being.

    As I said, you need to raise your standards instead of trying to escape your responsibilities, which includes not only to others but even more importantly, to yourself.

    I should raise my standards, says someone who doesn’t know what my standards are, and whose behaviour includes spreading hatred and lies, and trashing the life’s work of hardworking scientists and being a rude, arrogant loudmouth.

    (COVID-19 stuff ignored. I’ve already said I don’t care if you’re vaccinated.)

  69. — October 31st 2021 at 404PM:
    Good point Swordfish.
    This is such basic biology as to be clear evidence of the degree of ignorance of the average anti vaccine activist on the internet.

    Regarding the God ‘debate’, they don’t know their own faith and seem to have given little to zero thought at all, regarding the concepts of forgiveness, humility or the truth, (in its very mundane sense; where statements of logic are concerned).
    Yet again, I have to say that I value your commentary. It is important to call people out for their lies and you are quite right about forgiveness. My interpretation of the bible and what I understand about God, tells me that it is for me to ask for forgiveness or say sorry, to those who I’ve wronged. Same for everybody else. There is not one rule for those who believe in God and another for those who don’t. Shame the lessons on morality have to come from someone who doesn’t believe God is there but I can’t say I blame you as I’ve said in the past. You know the rest.

  70. Bless her little heart, Joy is ignorant of genetics. And, for some reason, she thinks the sun shines out of swordfishtrombone’s nether regions.

    But, it’s okay… she’s from Barcelona.

  71. You ought to know that I mostly scored 100% in genetics questions in A level biology!
    Hippo’s milk is pink, too!
    Octopi are the only underwater creatures that blush.

    Genetics is not difficult. Nor is cellular biology when dealing with simple linear chains of function *worked out already by scientists years ago in most cases. Understanding those kinds of systems is little more than regurgitation, pun intended.

    Difficulty comes when dealing with the true complex system of the entire organism as a whole, working together.

    You seem also to be trying to distract, again, from what is true about what was discussed above. Swordfish made a simple and very basic correction of someone’s ignorance about RNA versus DNA.

    It is very sad to see how low the level of discourse has sunk. I would argue that it is in large part due to the lack of moderation and adherence to truth and logic as well as the topic at hand. However, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

    I do find Swordfish’s comments helpful and instructive but not for the reasons you might imagine. You have your own crazy notions and you’re welcome to express them freely here as you so often do. Doesn’t it occur to you ever that if you’re lying about someone you don’t even know and continuing to maintain that position, that you’re really hurting your own argument, whatever that is supposed to be. Certainly it makes you a loose canon on whichever side you’re supporting, whether that be Christianity or covid matters or anything else.

  72. you ignorant slut.

    There was a time when this blog was civil. It began changing when Aquinas was introduced into the posts; when erudition was replaced by insult lacking even the semblance of cogent argument. The similarity to Twitter is uncanny.

  73. Goodness, had I read the last three comments prior, I’d never have posted overleaf.
    Dav,
    There was a time when this blog was civil. It began changing when Aquinas was introduced into the posts; when erudition was replaced by insult lacking even the semblance of cogent argument. The similarity to Twitter is uncanny.
    Yes, as I’ve pointed out for several years.
    Poor standards reflect on everybody whether they are to blame or not.
    You have always been a gentleman, measured in your commentary, and alot of other things, so thank you for that.

  74. “You ought to know that I mostly scored 100% in genetics questions in A level biology!”

    Well, obviously, the UK educational system is worse than I thought. And I thought it was pretty bad.

  75. “DAV is right.

    “Let’s knock it off, or I will put in moderation for all comments.”

    My apologies to DAV. I was making a classic comedy reference (Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtain), but I’m sorry that was missed.

  76. Without context, “ignorant slut” falls short of being funny
    Just like when in an earlier post, in discussing “being from Barcelona” came from Monte Python …
    Sorry, close only counts in horseshoe – get it right
    Yes … John Cleese … but no … Fawlty Towers

    40 year old context (Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM

    42 year old context (James J Jack Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cESACuuh6kM

  77. The person to whom you owe an apology, is me.
    You are a troll and have a problem with our discussion for reasons which appear to be extremely petty and feminine in nature.
    Your joke is not the first time you have levelled that comment at me.
    The last time it was followed up by john b as if nothing happened.
    Clearly standards of discourse in the US vary greatly.

    Regarding my knowledge of genetics you’re simply just going to have to find a way to deal with it.
    Our initial interaction was only ever light hearted on my part but you took the comments very badly and followed me onto more than one page to pursue me. You have continued to be in the wrong and are still unable to simply accept the explanation offered to you. Thee’s no point going over old ground because nothing’s about to change regarding what is actually true and what is false with regards to genetics of eye colour and physiology of liver function with regards to infant digestion! You did not like my description which was a metaphor. Why are you so upset about it? Just move on and Let It Go, as the song goes.

  78. John b,
    Thee’s nothing funny about the remark at all, with or without context.

    As for the Barcelona reference was always clear as a Faulty Towers reference but so what?
    It just isn’t relevant or an accurate depiction of my character. It is simply an attempt to take someone out of a discussion, aka cancel them from discussion by fallacy and foul play. A technique employed frequently and often on here with impunity.
    The individual concerned was offered a step by step discussion back on the original post but failed to show, preferring to repeat her/his understanding of what was described and holding that no follow up explanation must be allowed to stand but the original throw away language that was used. This is actually what the individual is engaged in. A version of it is used by the CNN network when quoting Trump. Just disparagement.

  79. John b,
    I also ought to say that just as I said to the Chesterton reader years ago, after which discussion I cried for five hours solid (I wasn’t well). NOBODY has ever called me a name like that in real life. Even when hit by a ‘boyfriend ‘so my eardrums ruptured bilaterally, despite evil revenge and evil intimidation, THAT is not a realistic slur. I noted years ago on a brief discussion with our gracious host, how different interchange is between men and women in the US, compared to the UK, with Dav you, Johnby, and perhaps a few others apparently, as one exception.
    Let It Go

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk

  80. Joy

    I do apologize … Jane Curtain was always in on the joke … so yes … not funny in the least

    My comment about Fawlty Towers was that Philemon or somebody incorrectly attributed it to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

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