Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to “undo the curse that was just put on our city.”
An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”
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Rick Bick is a party pooper. Don’t be a dick, Rick Bick.
The prayer is a common one used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa. “Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued. “Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.”“It is done. Hail Satan,” he finished.
Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”
Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations.
Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true.
Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all.
That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.
Think about it. To me that sounds like a literal slice of heaven, especially that last line.
But this guy’s convinced it’s a curse. Either that or the
multi-syllabicbig words made him scared.Sounds like Rick Bick is thick as a fucking brick.
Imagine being a grown-ass man listening to this, taking the stage and unironically saying “that was a curse put on our city, and most of you know that”. They actually fucking believe that some guy saying “Hail Satan” has the power to “curse” a city.
Honestly it’s very hard to argue with anything in that prayer, it’s pretty reasonable and clear.
Only thing I don’t like is the call for judging. I do think people can change, they should be judged on their actions and intents, but we should reasonably allow for second chances and improvement.
One thing Christianity is good at is taking people who feel irredeemable and reassuring them that they’re still people with a chance in life. As long as people see their wrongs and try to improve, I think we can and should forgive some things.
I hate the people who continue being shit then say God forgives them or Jesus died for them so it’s all washed out. That’s the same energy as throwing stuff on the ground because there’s a janitor. You are responsible for your actions and their impacts, just asking for forgiveness shouldn’t grant it without sincerely understanding and trying to improve.
Ideally, religions (yeah, including mine) should be as away as possible from politics, but it’s priceless to see christians’ reaction when they hear the names Satan and Lucifer. I’ve been at that other side once, it really feels “scaaariee” when we’re a christian, feels like He’s gonna suddenly pop up out of the thin air with a flamey trident and an evil laughter “muhwhahahahah” while approaching to perform a bone-crushing bear hug (in reality, He’s too busy with His own cosmic businesses to keep performing to we the hominids at the Pale Blue Dot when someone says His name out loud here in this quadrant of the universe, and He doesn’t have a trident or a trisula, these are Poseidon’s and Shiva’s departments, respectively). Sad thing most christians don’t know about their own Isaiah 34:14, so they would be clueless when/if someone were to say out loud “Ave Lilith” (or, even better, “Renich Viesa Avage Lilith Lirach”)… An idea of which I leave here as a suggestion to Iowa, by the way.
My mother was a lifelong devout catholic and always described satan as simply a shorthand for the absence of good rather than a powerful entity. Though I guess she was pretty progressive.
IMO if your conception of god exists primarily in contrast to a powerful demon, you’re kind of just building your life around a demon.
Also Satan is not in the bible, it’s fan fiction from Dante a thousand years later.
you’re kind of just building your life around a demon
Oh hell yeah, you’re making it sound cool
What’s the matter Rick? Too much freedom for you?
That’s something most Americans don’t understand about our history. We love to claim that the first settlers in the modern-day states (Puritans mostly) were ‘fleeing religious persecution’ and sought a new land where they could gain ‘freedom of religion’. Pretty much all of that is wrong, they were a fringe early-Protestant group who wanted to distance themselves from the new Church of England which they felt was still too Catholic. Once they got here, anything and everything they considered too heretical was… well, see the Salem Witch Trials for a prime example. They were the epitome of “freedom for me, not for thee” and that attitude/practice went on to infect the whole rest of the country as history progressed.
To paraphrase the immortal Robin Williams: “people so uptight the english told them to get the fuck out”
lol
Hail Satan.
Does he drive taxis? Or are you just forecasting the weather to him?
Mephistopheles is a pedicab driver.
And Jerry is a race car driver.
I hear he drove so goddamned fast.
He’s got a flat rate to and from the airport
Is it $6.66, $66.6, or $666?
Depends on the city:
- $6.66 to get to Midway from the Loop
- $66.6 to get to Newark Liberty from Manhattan
- $666 to get to Mccarran from The Strip, oh and the credit card reader is broken so he only takes cash, but only tells you that at the destination.
I love that Satan is little more than “fuck you” to established systems and norms.
I mean, that is kindof Satan’s whole deal.
Naw. In Christian theology…. Satan is god’s henchman.
You’d think these law and order type Christians would love his loyal and dedicated service…
That would imply these people knew what they were preaching and not just parroting a pop culture chimera of a relgion
Now, I’m no religion expert, but isn’t Satan the first cast out angel of heaven, doomed to rule over hell for all eternity? Doesn’t sound “henchman” to me. Sounds more like the guy who can’t leave his job getting all the clients the other guy doesn’t want to manage.
Not trying to be snide when I say: read the Book of Job. In it, God and Satan are work colleagues discussing what to do with Job.
Cartoon fanfic here: https://youtu.be/6E2pvA0hZKw
The original Bible doesn’t mention any kind of Satan.
It’s an adaptation from the later Quran terminology shaytaan or al-Shaytan, which means demon, devil, evil spirit, anything that is against God.
In the Quran the first shaytaan is also said to be Iblis, the first fallen angel (equivalent of Lucifer, as the origin story matches up quite closely).
Later Bible translations adopted this terminology as the name Satan, but in reality it’s more of a title as above explained - it can be applied to any hell-dweller who’s gone against God.
Then of course this morphed into many meanings… so there’s multiple ways to interpret it:
- as Lucifer’s title for his rebellion
- as a distinct prince of hell in demonology
- as a general term for any evildoer who’s specifically against god
all in all, it’s basically the worst religious insult one can use.
the worst religious insult one can use.
Christ’s cum-dumpster, that’s the worst they’ve got?
I mean, being named the ultimate enemy that must be vanquished at any cost IS pretty much up there with the worst possible insults.
It’s not worst in the sense of being the most vulgar, most outrageous statement. It’s the worst in the sense of it being the highest insult of one.
I mean imagine if I stated that in the name of all Europeans, YOU are public enemy number one. That you’ve done egregious acts against all Europeans that must not be tolerated, that must be avenged at all cost. That from now on, all Europeans have the right to exterminate you.
It is a pretty high insult, isn’t it?
I’ve been called worse. sniffs haughtily
More akin to the guy who thought he could do the job better then his boss quit in a huff and opened his own business. Then proceed to just get bought out by his old boss and now is fucked twice.
And at the last, the boss planned it all happening because he’s a sadist who wants to fuck every thing over.
Yeah, he’s glorious isn’t he?
Satan sounds like my kind of guy 🥳
People often seem to forget that “Religious Freedom” means all religions, not just yours.
Never mind the importance of the separation of church and
skatestatefreedom from it, as well.
But mine is the only correct one!
—selfish idiots
You will literally hear dumb fuck xtians argue until they are blue in the face that what the Founders really meant to do was to merely allow you to choose among an array of xtian sects. Maybe if you are spicy, you’ll be permitted to be Jewish, because well, Jesus was a Jew. And we will “tolerate” that.
Other xtians just seem to view “religious freedom” as “xtians get special privileges and they should be able to treat certain groups less-than if it suits them”.
And man, they’ll definitely get butthurt when you point out that the First pretty much requires that you have freedom FROM as well as freedom OF. And that “OF” means…anything, not just xtianity. I’ll be a fucking pagan on Monday, fuck you very much because of that OF, and if I please, I’ll be an atheist on Tuesday because of the FROM. Because that’s real religious freedom.
Thanks for your opinion, Charles Darwin
I’m glad you fixed it. Some priests are not down with the separation of church and skate.
He’s going for that sweet Christ Air
Forget air fryers, let’s talk about air friars.
Amen brother
electronic music intensifies
♫ EVEN FLOOO-OO ♪
separation of church and skate
sings
Now, Heaven would be a DJ spinning dub all night long
And Heaven would be just kicking back with Jesus packing my bong
And if you don’t believe in Jesus, then Muhammad or Buddha, too
And while the world is warring, we just sit back and laugh at you, singing
If I die before I wake
At least in Heaven, I can skate
'Cause right now on Earth, I can’t do jack
Without the man up on my back
I was actually referring to NOFX, but that’s a solid song too
At the Tuesday night council meeting, the audience stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance the moment Dalbey finished.
The dubiousness of unquestioning nationalism aside, the pledge of allegiance containing ‘under god’ also makes it a religious phrase.
They should do as Alcoholics Anonymous did. Change god for “higher power”. Because, you know, people need a higher power nanny.
BTW: Alcoholics Anonymous has a direct surrender to God in 4 of it’s 12 steps, and indirect mention in 2 more. And god is obviously a “Him”
AA was started by a pair of Christian revivalist Oxford Group (now known as Initiatives of Change) members. They believe that fear and selfishness are the root of all problems, and that the solution to living without fear and selfishness is to “surrender one’s life over to God’s plan”.
Basically, they don’t think people, in general, can govern themselves and require a sky daddy to keep them on track.
It’s honestly so weird. The whole ritual needs to be done away with
But without idiotic, blind patriotic fervour, what will become of 'Murica?
Won’t nobody think of the flags?!
maybe they used the original?
It didn’t used to
Even if they removed ‘under god’ from the pledge of allegiance today (Republicans would probably filibuster any such attempt in the Senate), indoctrinating students at public schools with its daily recital has contributed to an unhealthy level of nationalism that leads to not only a view of American exceptionalism, but also the belief that any overt or covert attempt to replace the governance of foreign countries with institutions closer to that of the United States must inherently be good.
they added the Under God part during the Red Scare to show the world that the US wasn’t a secular godless nation like the USSR at the time.
That’s also when they started putting “In God we trust” on our money. Assholes.
Even as a kid growing up in the 90s, knowing separation and state and finding it odd as fuck we had “In God this and that” in various aspects of our lives. Even my developing, super small brain could tell something didn’t add up right. 🤨️
Fucking Reagan.
I appreciate the sentiment but what does Reagan have to do with the pledge? It was changed under Eisenhower.
No curses are being lifted tonight.
But a huge chunk of Americans already worship Satan! 🤔
Satan and the Antichrist are separate. Wearing the red hat means you worship the antichrist, not necessarily Satan
I find this distinction hilarious.
RedHat Linux?
Ba’al / Mammon
Baphomet myself.
Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”
They only recognize the “dark god” when it exists in the other. A theology of hypocrisy.
Her should burn his percoid constitution as an invitation to be disabused of the black magic (dark deeds disguised as a beacon of light) it is.
Lucifer was the most beautiful of all angels and was cast down to earth for daring to question God’s authority.
Not that any of those cross eyed bear-ing Christians would now that.
The word “Lucifer” appears only once in the Bible (Isaiah 14:12), and is a Latin translation of the Hebrew “hêlêl”, which was referring to Nebuchadnezzar II, not Satan or an angel or any other supernatural being.
apparently along with several other angels that rebelled with him, depending on which lore you want to get into.
Satan and lucifer are different entities
That’s fan fiction, it’s from Paradise Lost, not from biblical canon
I’m not saying Paradise Lost is a literary achievement on par with the Bible. I’m saying the Bible is a literary achievement on par with Paradise Lost.
TY! TIL.
Corrected, or at least acknowledged.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve read the old testament.
IMHO it’s all fanfic.
Technically, all stories are made up, be they prose or poetry.
The Bible is the canon story so Milton would be fanfic.
If the Bible was fanfic, it implies the canon lies elsewhere. I consider it a fantasy epic, but a really really dull one. It’s like someone thinking Harry Potter is non-fiction - you’d have to be special to think it happened.
They literally put the ending on the cover! No sense for narrative arcs or dramaturgy.
The Bible is fanfic in the sense that most of the books were written decades after the life of Jesus and add details that contradict eachother and some retcons.
For example, Matthew 28:11-15 adds a story about guards at the tomb of Jesus, the author of that gospel wrote it 100 years after the alleged “resurrection”, by then there were already rumors (and he probably knew about it) that the body of Jesus disappeared because it was stolen not because it was resurected. So, by adding that detail to the story he countered said rumors. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
I think if we’re using modern genre words, a story about a guy I’ve heard stories about in the past, maybe with some embellishment, would be considered Historical Fiction.
Yes, the Book of Mormon is fanatic though.
To add to your point: the story of Jesus (born of a virgin, visited by three wise men, performed miracles, etc.) Was told of many gods and dieties before the story of christ. I believe Horus is a prime example.
It’s the power of fiction and storytelling made into a weapon.
Wasn’t it the Council of Nicea (or something like that) that more or less assembled the Christian Bible as we know it today? Which means there’re a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it in.
Some of which appears in Jewish scriptures and in Islamic scriptures or lost to time.
If it’s written by fallible men, and edited by fallible men, then its “Canon” isn’t worth shit.
Don’t forget that when you translate it from the original, you make choices about which words to use
The Ethiopian Bible exists and has the stuff they took out. Its a good read too and most modern Christians dont dismiss it out of hand. Just to play devils advocate, the weird thing is if we look at original texts of the Bible from western Europe and then we look way east to the orthodox people in Russia and then down to the Ethiopian Christians in Africa, all their texts are the same. Not just similar, the same. Yeah, there are some translational differences, but theyre really not huge. Then we find the dead sea scrolls and even then, same exact texts. These texts spread like wildfire all over the world. Now I get it. I see Christianity today and the absolute bastardization of it all and I understand why what i believe would and should be completely considered irrational. When you get down to what Jesus taught, its so much simpler and philosophical than the religion being espoused by sonny Christians Who seem like they’ve never actually read the book. Over the years, ive talked to a lot of people one on one about it, a lot of staunch atheists. When I’ve had the time to actually explain things to them over a beer and not just expected to defend myself with a couple of sentences, I’ve always had them walking away with a least the understanding of why. Because when you take what Jesus said, remove the religion and rules and crap everyone has tried to tie to it, then put it into a philosophical context, its pretty plain to see what he was saying was “dont be an asshole and love everyone. Youre going to reap what you sow. Theres a God that created all this around you and what he wants is your spiritual enlightenment and for you to willingly give of yourself and do no evil, not because of reprocussions, but because its the right thing to do.” To bring it to a modern example: be the guy at the Cornell party who sees the situation, picks that girl up and carries her out of that house and gets her somewhere safe. Not being the guy doing lines of ketamine off of a drugged up, passed out girl. If you can be that guy who stands up and does the right thing even if it means losing everything, I think no matter what, youre my brother. And thats what Jesus was trying to teach.
It depends on the speaker. Just like you are explaining Jesus’s pro social teachings, i went to a Bible study for a while where the guy leading it kept studying the passages claiming that only followers of Jesus would be saved.
IMHO I agree
The entire new testament is fan fiction. Iēsous of Nazareth didn’t write any of it, the first assumed author never even met him.
The “biblical canon” of today seems to be more or less just whatever was later dictated when Christianity became the Roman Empire’s state religion. Who knows how much other, potentially more accurate reports about Iēsous were lost during that dictatorship?
Now, I agree that Paradise Lost does not have any claim to veracity. I would just also say any claim the new testament has is null and void.
The whole Bible and every other “holy” book is fanfiction, technicaly ¯\(ツ)/¯
yeah I was about to say, just cause ones older than the other doesnt give it any more credibility.
They were still written by men, men with agendas. Same with every translation they’ve gone through, Not only getting translated by minor tweaks to suit the new agendas.
Bible is an astrological sungod myth for the dawn of the age of Pisces (fish), end of age of Taurus (dead bull), and looking forward to age of Aquarius (guy with water pail). It tells the winter solstice, dying for 3 days and rising again, the spring equinox triumph over darkness, and helped civilizations track the 2250-year constellation progression into Pisces. In 2250 we’ll need a new Bible for Aquarius.
I prefer just calling him by his English name, Joshua, or just Josh for short.
“I am just joshing around” “Jesus christ”
You gotta specify which Josh though, he’s Josh with the ointment
So the figure of Satan is exclusive to that specific book and religion then? (“the Bible”). You know that it’s largely based on other religions and books, right? 👀 Bible doesn’t have more or less authority over Satan/Lucifer/Bahomet/AnyOtherOriginName than Paradise Lost or any other holy or not holy book 😬
The biblical canon is written by flawed, biased narrators though. I think it’s perfectly valid to project an alternate canon onto their story.
deleted by creator
What do you call people who believe in Satan?
Christians*
* yes, yes, not just them, others too.
Satan? I do not believe in Satan, leprechauns, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, jujus, angels, Tooth Faeries, Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra, Brahma, Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah, or the Trinity, demons, devils, Astrology, the Tarot, Satan. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐟 empirical, 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 any 𝐆𝐨𝐝 and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, we could make a case for some unspecified “intelligent designer” or “prime mover” or begetter of “something rather than nothing”? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to “design” of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical “evidence” betrays ignorance of biblical scholarship. The burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, could 'his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book. As for the cosmological argument, whose God goes under names such as Prime Mover or First cause, again no evidence. Because physicists are closing in, with spell-binding results. Even if there remain unanswered questions - where do the fundamental laws and constants of physics come from? Obviously, it cannot help to postulate a designer whose existence poses bigger questions than he purports to solve. If science fails, our best hope is to build a better science. The answer will lie neither in theology nor - its exact equivalent - reading tea leaves. In any case, it is a fatuously illogical jump from deistic Unmoved Mover to Christian Trinity, with the Son being tortured and murdered because the Father, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, could not think of a better way to forgive “sin”. Equally unconvincing are those who believe because it comforts them (why should truth be consoling?) or because it “feels right”. The wife of a former UK prime minister may stand for the” feels right” brigade. She based her belief on “an understanding of something that her head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.” She aspired to become a judge! My’lud, I cannot provide the evidence you require. My head cannot explain why, but my heart knows it to be true. Why is religion immune to the critical standards we apply not just in our courts of law, but in every other life?”
Richard Dawkins
Is this an LLM account?
Or else a Dawkins quote as it says it is, same difference.
No evidence for the Prime Mover? Something had to start the ball rolling somewhere. Was the ball always rolling? That makes no sense based on the life/death, on/off, one/zero life we see all around us.
so right. I mean its like saying the prime mover was just always around but he was created by god-god and then god-god-god made him and so on.
The “prime mover” is a false solution, since it claims something out of the universe was always there and made it exists. So that the universe don’t need to have always been here… But if something was always here, there is no reason to suspect it is a weird entity that defy all the rules we know. It could be that the universe was always here.
Also, as we have no clue of the rules applying out of the universe, we can not really explain its begining (nor even know if it has a begining).
The universe is weird. Quantum foam literally allows creation from vacuum energy. We obviously don’t have the definitive answer but there’s no need to invent a concept when we can save a step instead of having the complication of who made the prime mover.
We didn’t start the fire It was always burning since the world’s been turning
Fun fact about space-time: there is no time “before” time. The human words like always, before, and other bullshit we see around us are only make sense in our world at our scale, and that’s infinitesimally small part of the reality that we even know about, and who even knows what we didn’t discover yet. There are sets of very complicated mathematics to try to make sense of that stuff, but we don’t have a way to talk about it using our everyday terminology.
I call Occam’s Razor…in it’s simplest form, if something moves, then time exists. I’m no theoretical physicist so I may be wrong.
In order for something to move something need to exist, and we’re very iffy on the concept of things existing “before” or “during” singularity.
Ah…the old “cogito ergo sum” vs. “esse est percipi” philosophies. If that is the standard then the best I can agree with is that time, may or may not, exist.
No, not really. Not at all. It’s quite new theory of relativity interpretation, that is by now established quite thoroughly, that time is relative and significant enough masses, speeds, or energies effect not only space but time. So it’s not “I wonder how shadow tastes” philosophical pondering, it’s quite hard and mindbending “Here’s math that is so thorough and precise, it allows us to predict and then detect ripples of fabric of the universe that a dying star sextilions of kilometers away made a billion years ago. According to this math, if you move quickly enough you will be younger than your grandchildren, and if all the mass of the universe is squished together and converted to energy, actual time doesn’t actually flows”.
