I could go for a good quart of lo mein right now.
That actually sounds much better than Christmas turkey. Getting hungry⌠
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You know youâve been in Taiwan too long when you start craving Americanized Chinese food!
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Lo mein with deep-fried wontons.
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Shut up, now Iâm craving that.
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Was that an intended pun "the right direction " ?
Ok cannot work out if this is parody, fake news or real.
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I used to go to Shabbat at a rabbiâs house. They didnât care if you were a Jew and were welcoming. But it was always clear they felt sort of superior as Gods chosen people. Not in a way that directly puts anyone else down or hateful to anyone else. But that feeling was there.
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I was told by a Jewish friend that they are like the pilots of the plane and we are the passengers.
Freedoms for women, sexual freedom, freedom to live the life of oneâs choosing unfettered by dogmatic restrictions in general, etc.
Sure, thereâs no doubt thereâs been influence. But Iâm not sure thatâs what @finley said
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What you describe as âfreedoms for womenâ is not entirely novel, and itâs by no means incompatible with Christian philosophy (it would be almost inconceivable for said freedoms to have emerged in, say, the orthodox Muslim world).
St Paul was a bit weird about women, but he did make it clear in his missives that he was merely expressing his opinions and not purporting to fill in the blanks on behalf of God/Jesus.
Freedom is a double-edged sword. Every choice you make brings consequences, and a core tenet of Christian belief is that you are free to do as you please ⌠with the proviso that (a) you should own the consequences and (b) you are answerable to God for your actions. In contrast, modern secular beliefs seek to shield people from the negative consequences of their own poor life choices.
A typical example would be women who âfollow their dreamsâ and âpursue a careerâ. About 1% of the human population has an actual career: some fulfilling life goal that just coincidentally delivers a pay packet. Most men, and now most women, are simply enslaved in soul-destroying bullshit jobs, incurring endless debts and expenses to pay for stuff that they wouldnât even need if they didnât have their ⌠careers. They believe this is âfreedomâ, while their overlords are laughing all the way to the bank.
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Will this be complete bollox?
When you look at the âChristiansâ in US politics that did absolutely f.all for the Christians in Syria that were culled, raped etc. by ISIS I donât hold much hope.
He should back Assad as there is religious freedom and the Christians there are celebrating Xmas alongside other faiths.
Muslims believe something similar: that every human being is a Muslim, but that non-believers are simply in a state of rebellion. Likewise, the entire planet Earth is a figurative mosque. So how can you be in a mosque if youâre an unbeliever? Pretty high brow stuff there, derp.
With Judaism it goes back to Jesus himself when he says people must repent for their sins and someone responds by saying thereâs no need because the Israelites have sacred DNA; that is, they come from the seed of Abraham. Jesus rejects this idea, and says their father is the devil because theyâre trying to murder him. A big reason for the religious split.
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They donât call us goyim for nothing, and they donât have shabbos goy for nothing.
Iâm all for people having their cultures and belief systems, but this air of superiority is self-defeating. Maybe you are better at certain things, but being arrogant about it makes people lose respectability.
Something I find quite interesting:
Islam and Judaism are incredibly similar. Theyâre not the same religion, but most of their religious texts are the same. Islam also has some overlap with Christianity (many Christians would accept their definition of the Injil as technically accurate while rejecting it on the basis that all we have are the gospels, and that the Injil is a hypothetical).
But: Jewish people, on the whole, are incredibly successful, while Muslims, on the whole, go nowhere in life, even when transplanted to successful countries.
Something similar happened with Catholicism. Christians, whatever their sect, tend to do fairly well (although not as well as Jews). The Catholic world, in contrast, is an almost unmitigated failure (exception: Poland).
Obviously, Iâm painting with a very broad brush here, but I find it fascinating that you can âbreakâ a religion by making apparently minor tweaks.
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There are plenty of successful Muslims in the U.S., especially the Iranians.
No kidding. Tons of brilliant Iranian engineers, doctors, etc. in the US, and more arriving all the time.
All Christians were Catholics until the Reformation.
Itâs not a question of describing it, itâs a clear difference with the Muslim world and very much an event in progress in the West.
I have no idea what youâre talking about. There are many places in the Bible that make it clear that women are in a subordinate position. This remained the case throughout the far greater part of the Christian era. In the West in more recent times these ideas are in the process of being cast by the wayside as incompatible with the (non-religious) ideal of freedom for all.
This is just muddying the waters. What you think about the overall state of Western society or women being incorporated into it on an equal rather than a subordinated basis isnât relevant here, even if they are in fact worse off now (which I donât believe for a minute). The point is women have the freedom to do these things, where they previously did not during the majority of the Christian era and the Muslim world currently.