Ross Douthat:
” And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.”

Yes well…lets debate it…

Buddha said this:

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/believe_nothing-no_matter_where_you_read_it-or/143661.html

And this quote by R.A. Wilson is likely the best summary of Christianity :

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/robert_anton_wilson/

nuff said.

Also this…..

“In Leviticus, chapter twenty, we find lists of commandments that pertain to the consequences of having sex outside the sanctity of marriage. While burning at the stake and being cut off from the people were among the consequences of sexual immorality, death by stoning was the usual punishment for fornication among the chosen people of God. “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10)
http://www.christianet.com/bibleverses/sexualimmorality.htm

This was painful to read, even by his own self-made standards of crapulence. Because ya know Ross, your strawman about how “kneejerk” outrage drowning out serious, thoughtful responses from Buddhists and Buddhist scholars is complete bullshit. It’s perfectly possible and actually quite logical to simultaneously think that a) Brit Hume is a smarmy, Christianist, right-wing douchebag whose actions could only be defended by a fellow asshole and b) Christians like Hume and Douthat don’t know the first thing about Buddhism. (And what they do know is perverted by only being able to understand another religion through the lens of Christianity.)

Hint: It has plenty to say about living a moral life, it just doesn’t have magic Jesus dust sprinkled all over it.

Christ, are the intro to world religion classes really that shitty at Harvard?

As far as comparing religions goes, the Wikipee sez:

As an adolescent Douthat converted to Pentecostalism and then, with the rest of his family, to Catholicism.

Someone like Ross, so desperately searching for something more than a tumble w/ Chunky R. W., either doesn’t pay attention in certain classes, or looks at it as a trial from GAWD, who doesn’t want him to think kindly about any other legends & myths.

Bogg’s right, it’s strictly about comparing sacred dick sizes.

Though it is funny how Hume managed to expose the essential hypocrisy of Xianity.

Oh, great. Now. I not only have THAT FACE in my head, I’ve also got THAT SONG.

Still kowtowing to the Christianistas I see.

Maybe if Brit Hume was a better Christian, his son would not have killed himself.

A “lost soul like Woods”? Rose is just mad jealous because Tiger Woods doesn’t lose his hard on during sex. With women. His big, black hard on, which Rose finds oddly exciting and disturbing.

Signed,

Chunky Reese Witherspoon

An exercise in missing the point. Hume’s call for Tiger’s conversion was a grossly unprofessional act by one of Fox News’ leading “journalists.” Douthat can conduct a seminar in comparative religion if he wants, but that has very little to do with this latest evidence that Fox is simply not a real news operation.

Maybe if Brit Hume was a better Christian, his son would not have killed himself.
Ouchy ouch ouch ouch.

The huge piss off about these clowns and their ‘gods’ is they don’t believe the crap either, it’s merely a political tool to scrag who they feel like scragging or to rope in the rubes. Douchehat is a low rent Elmer Gantry.

Well the answer to that is easy. DoucheHat’s god obviously has the biggest dick, and he’s it.

Hume offered a path to forgiveness, based on his preferred delusion. He offered nothing at all to the equally complicit women. Apparently his invisible friend didn’t guide him to do that. Do Christians prefer their women unforgiven?

Alas, the evidence suggests that Douthat actually can’t conduct a seminar in comparative religion, even if he wants to.

If Tiger would just ask Jesus to be his personal savior, he’d be born again and all his sins would be forgiven. In fact, Jesus would probably love him even more than normal people because he could go around giving powerful testimony about how badly he strayed before being saved.

Now he might have some difficulty with the people in his life that didn’t get that those sins got washed away, but that wouldn’t be a big problem. He could just act like the victim, then blow them off and hang with his new family at his church.

With Buddhism, you don’t have any outs. Consequences are consequences and you just have to live with them. You have to wonder why anyone walk the more difficult course when Evangelical Christians get free unlimited mulligans.

Ouch.

It takes a very special kind of mind to get from Hume’s inane “Tiger Woods should convert so that he can grab a Get Out of Hell Free card,” to “freewheeling religious debate,” in one leap. From there it’s smooth sailing into “If A=B, then A=H I J K L M…”

“…the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there is…” — No, Ross, it isn’t. Arguing whether Brit’s particular fairy tale God is more powerfuller than Tiger’s, or whether we should follow Jeebus or that Mooslim fellow is a total waste of time that strictly acts to empower those who claim to represent those fanciful variations on the Tooth Fairy.

But, yes, we should all think about how we live our lives (and where we stick our wood when we’re not whacking our balls around). However, that’s a deeply personal issue that can never be institutionalized or “debated” the way you seem to want it to be — just like prayer should never be imposed on people or, really, undertaken in public, it’s for you and you alone to figure out, not for Brit Hume to casually throw out there along with fashion advice and the latest on retirement planning.

Douthat’s next Fantasy League column will be titled “Could Odin Totally Kick Zeus’s Ass?”

Debating religion with Rose would be like debating foreign policy with Caribou Barbie.

You might as well just bang your head against a brick wall for 90 minutes.

Don’t hate on the Dan, man.

I’m pretty convinced at this point that Angry Ewok is trying to see just how crappy he has to get in order to get booted from the NYT.

Would Hume have said the same thing if Tiger were Jewish? I think we all know the answer.

Well the answer to that is easy. DoucheHat’s god obviously has the biggest dick, and he’s it.

You did forward this to your thesis advisor, right?

dstatton@22 You see, if Bill Kristol were anything other than a toadying, mindless, GOP apparatchik, he would have spoken up to say “Tiger may want to become a Christian, but we Jews make better divorce lawyers.” Instead, he chuckless off “Brit wanting to save Tiger’s soul” to predict Tiger will win the Masters.

Talk about a self-hating Jew.

The drivel point of the column: first sentence, second paragraph, “That’s the theory.” No, you stupid monkey, that’s not theory, that’s law–it’s called the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

(Drivel Point: the point at which everything that comes after is drivel. With Ross? Like Bill Kristol, everything after the byline.)

Do Christians prefer their women unforgiven?

No, preferably stoned to death in the public square. See #2.

I have to agree with Brit, for completely different reasons of course.

I doubt it would do much for his eternal salvation, but it would do wonders for regaining loss sponsors.

Tiger’s tearful story of how his transgressions led him to a closer relationship with his Lord and Savior would be a good way to kick off the marketing campaign for Tiger’s new driver called “Tiger’s Wood”
retail $599.

I am a thesis advisor.

This just in… (from a real God particle fearing ReButtLicken…)

Atom Smasher Exposes Hole in Earth’s Defenses: Kevin Hassett

In particular, it could provide evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, a hypothesized particle that has become known as the God particle. If it is found to exist, it could complete our understanding of the basic laws of the universe.

Before we get too far down the road with this guy, let me suggest that his predictions are just a little shy of reasonable…

But since any idiot can blow smoke up the ass of the body politic then let’s give him a chance to look deep into the bowels of the fearsome. vengeful Mother Nature…

There are many things that theoretically could go terribly wrong, some of them quite exotic. The chief threat is that the LHC’s high-energy collisions might create a microscopic black hole that would, perhaps over a few years, swallow the Earth.

Now why would a McCain ’08 advisor want to diss Physics?

Whatever the likely benefits from this experiment, it is impossible that they would be significant enough to justify accepting a cost that includes a real risk of the Earth’s destruction. If Ord’s numbers are correct, and they may not be, then the LHC is the biggest policy error of all time.

Oh, because Science vs. public policy can only be controlled by the military!

Right now, the world’s governments have no mechanism to coordinate rational thinking about these risks. If the U.S. wanted to stop the LHC experiment, it would have no recourse short of military action.

So what the heck — let’s put religion back into the military and put the military back in control of the public — it’s the Bush-Cheney formula for success!

Early in his term, President George W. Bush appointed a bioethics panel to consider the weighty questions that scientific advances presented. A successor panel named by President Barack Obama has a lamentably narrow focus. It is urgent that a panel be assembled to explore policy in the presence of catastrophic scientific risks.

Just don’t mention anthropogenic climate destabilization!

Or should we just preemptively declare war on the E.U.?

And now that $P’s gone to work, intermittently, for Faux, imagine what we’ll see…

Oh geez, I meant when you got your doctorate. I was just guessing your academic background from your name… ;)

For some strange reason, poking fun at Ross is one of my favorite intertoob memes.

(OK, it’s not that strange. The “My God is better than your God” thing makes me endlessly laugh and wonder.)

The guy is a hilarious example of “intellectuals” ruined by faith. He really, really needs to hook up with a dude in a forest preserve and decide if he likes it or not. On that much, I am clear.

That’s an excellent question though. As long as we’re comparing religions, Buddhists have a pretty solid concept of an afterlife. Multiple ones, actually, that you’re trying to avoid being born into over and over again.

Judaism doesn’t — lights out, so to speak.

But this would all go over the head of Douthat and his copy of “Jesus for Dummies.”

At this point my thesis advisor is long retired.

PLEASE, JohnO…please don’t encourage DoucheHat to set his inner homo free. We do not want him. Really, the Tribe’s already full-up of insufferable blowhards. And it would take way more resources than one can find in Greenwich Village to undo this level of self-loathing zealotry and transform him into a proper queer. There simply aren’t enough therapists in Manhattan.

And…how to put this nicely? Have you seen his picture? Let’s just say that the stereotype is true; for the most part, we really DO judge a person based on their appearance. And there is no professional makeover, no ten-year fitness plan, that will EVER wash the ugly out of THAT hair. Ross’ indelible unattractiveness sort of makes us nervous on an existential level.

Yes, it would be best for all if he just continues to rage inside his own little Jesus closet, mkay? Its that hint of self-loathing and repression that makes his writing just so darn mockable. Wouldn’t want to lose that, would we?

There are many things that theoretically could go terribly wrong, some of them quite exotic. The chief threat is that the LHC’s high-energy collisions might create a microscopic black hole that would, perhaps over a few years, swallow the Earth.

Wasn’t that the premise behind the recent Dan Brown/Tom Hanks thingy? You know, where some evil priests are running around trying to destroy the Vatican with some anti-matter thingy? My wife forced me to watch it against my will, so I’m kind of hazy on the details…

Apparently these days it would cost a very lot of money to debate her.
Sarah’s sense of snow jobs has her making beaucoup bucks on Faux news.