Oh My - Controversial Artwork Destroyed!

[nguirado]

Originally Posted by sweevo

Anybody who can think rationally.

Deciding what is rational *should* be easy. Hint: beliefs without any evidence whatsoever to support them are not rational.

Would you call belief in elves rational?

Do you believe the universe created itself?

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by sweevo

Well, God the Father certainly didn't walk everywhere:

Yeah, but when he does, he just HATES to step in poo:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...14&version=KJV

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by nguirado

Do you believe the universe created itself?

Do you believe that God created himself?

(Hint-- if you can say "no, he was always there", I can say "the multiverse was always there.")

[sweevo]

Originally Posted by nguirado

Do you believe the universe created itself?

See, you're trying to argue "we don't know how it happened, so it must have been a god, and moreover the same god I believe in".

You are arguing a logical fallacy. Appeal to ignorance / god of the gaps.

Logical fallacies are fallacies. They are not rational.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I am not aware of "art" attacking non-Christian religions being displayed in American tax-funded galleries.

You don't think any tax-funded galleries have depictions of the Crusades? Of Aztec temples being invaded? Of the burka as a jail cell?

Depictions attacking non-Christian religions have been acceptable in western art for centuries. It's only when the attacks go the other direction that they become newsworthy.

[kennyc]

That's a great ad/art elf. Thx...

[mjhudston]

Is this typical of how right wing religious groups brain wash their members? So much for teaching acceptance and love!

[weateallthepies]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Hmm...putting a figure that resembles the common conception of Christ's image in a sexual situation and you don't expect to get a violent reaction from people to whom what you've done seems sacrilegious? That's like Salman Rushdie being surprised that a fatwa was placed on him.

Unless the artist lives in a totally autistic bubble, art is created to elicit reactions from its viewers. Why should he be surprised that his work elicited a violent response? Hasn't he been paying attention to what's been going on in the art world in connection with images that seem to mock religious iconic figures? Is the that naive?

Surely he'd get a Christian response...forgiveness...turning the other cheek and so on.

I don't think the artist is naive, obviously the art was going to offend some people. I just don't believe that violence is an acceptable response to being offended, nobody has the right to not be offended.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Now let me make this point. If you don't think there is a bias in the US media against Christianity, why do you think that so many news reports fail to show the work of art and fail to adequately describe what it is that the protesters find objectionable?

I think that they failed to show the art and failed to make explicit what the protestors were objecting to because they didn't want to offend their (mainly Christian) readership!

"Dear Editor, I was deeply offended today to find my local paper was printing obscene pictures and descriptions of sex acts...."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This is obviously getting a little bit away from the art, but I'd love to hear some examples. The only instances of "Christianity under attack" I've come across from USA is when state support for Christianity is withdrawn after a law suit - i.e. when some special privilege that is against your constitution is ruled to be unlawful.

This is a busy thread, and as my question was a bit off-topic, I've created another thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=101924

I'd be really interested to discuss actual examples of Christianity under attack in the US. Perhaps some of the people here would kindly pop over to the new thread and provide some?

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Tom, it is my understanding that Jesus and his disciples walked everywhere. I have been told that only Roman soldiers (officers?) and high mucky-mucks had horses to ride on.

So for that reason, I believe that Jesus and everyone else was relatively thin and in good shape.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Well, as I said, it certainly isn't the only possible explanation of his quick death on the cross, but as far as walking goes, I had an uncle who walked everyday all over town and he was a regular butterball. True, when he finally had to go to the hospital in his 60s he was told he "had the cholesterol level of a twenty-year-old," but he still had quite a gut.

Just confirming what Tom said really; walking everywhere does not equal thin. I walk, a lot. Not everywhere these days, but there've been periods in my life when I have. And I've never, ever (since late childhood) been thin. There was even a period where I was subsisting on less than 800 calories a day, exercising for an hour for 5 days a week, and I never lost more than half a stone. And yes, I am overweight - I cold stand to lose quite a few half-stones (I am a good keeper, to refer to myself as if I were a pony )

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's why most of the advances in the field have been made in Europe, where no such suppression of research exists.

Not sure that's entirely true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_laws#Europe

[HarryT]

Thanks for the link, Sparrow - I was not aware that such restrictions existed elsewhere in the EU!

[astra]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

until a child dies as a result of his parents belief that diarrhea can best be cured by homeopathic medicines or a cancer patient dies because they relied on homeopathic remedies rather than Western medicine.

It is human's right to believe it. Nobody forces them. So be it.

[astra]

Originally Posted by SneakySnake

It makes you wonder what the snake looked like before it was cursed!

Probably like that....