Author Archives: Deoxy

Mormons who edit Hollywood Blockbusters - All Opinions Welcome!

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[Editor’s note: I think we’ve covered this one before on SEB, but I can’t find the entry. It’s been awhile since this first came to the forefront, but it appears the lawsuits haven’t made their way through the courts yet.]

Here is a link to some info about a bunch of Mormon folks who have been editing Hollywood Blockbusters for what they adjudge to be unnecessary content which includes;

1) Violence – Sometimes only Gory Violence
2) Sex Scenes
3) Profanity
4) Suggestive language
5) Blasphemy
and in some cases
6) Homosexuality

I’ve just seen an A&E Documentary called “Bleep: Censoring the Movies” which was very interesting. It showed these “Flick-Cleaner-Upper” companies and how they work.

They work by basically taking existing movies and editing them on their computers to remove/obscure/dub content they don’t like. There inst a financial issue because they have to buy a copy of each movie every time they sell one – so they supposedly aren’t schtupping Hollywood of their money, but many Hollywood Directors (at least 15 named in a lawsuit including Stephen Soderberg and other Academy Award Winners) still strongly object about their intellectual property being battered in this manner – they see this as an intellectual property and artistic integrity issue – I agree.

One company has a more hi-tech opinion which handles movies kind of like a v-chip in a TV which allows each specific category of “offensive” material to be removed “on-the-fly”.

Particularly difficult for me to accept is the fact that some of the movies that were cleaned up include “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List”. Both sides of my family – my own British side and my wife’s American side – have survivors and victims of WWII violence – I want everyone to know the true horror of war – not a sanitized version of it.

Something I find that particularly offensive – to remove the image of a young soldier lying on Normandy Beach attempting to hold his intestines in his body whilst writing in pain so that they can be rid of a part of a movie they narrowly adjudge to be “unnecessarily violent” is truly the height of ignorance in my opinion.

Personally my opinion is that if you are not willing to accept a director’s vision – sex, violence and bad language included – then you should not receive the gift of that movie at all.

Art is art.

If you find the nude male figure offensive then you should not see ANY of Michaelangelo’s “David” or of Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”. To make and sell censored copies would be as offensive to me as it is for them if I used the words “Jesus Christ!” as a curse.

Anyone else feelin’ me here, homies?

Regards,

Deoxy.

Vent Buffer - Bill O’Reilly : Should I send him something like this?

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Hey, did any of you see the Daily Show and what O’Reilly said about that Samantha Bee skit?

I’m thinking of sending this to Bill O’Reilly and cc’ing Jon Stewart at comedy central.

Mr O’Reilly,

I’m not a Christian, Mr. O’Reilly. My reasoning, partially at least, is to do with passages in the Christian bible, such as 1 Timothy Chapter 2 (KJV), which remind me why I avoid religion. I love and respect the strong, intelligent and remarkable women in my life far too much to submit to such a misogynous (meaning “Woman-hating” for Fox Viewers) doctrine.

I’ve always known what kind of “Conservative” you are, but I have watched your show and kept my mind open to what you have to say.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I mulled in my mind after viewing your show. “Maybe I’m too negative.” I thought – “Each to their own.” I reminded myself.

However, your “War on Christmas” is nothing but a fictional comfort tale.

Mark Twain wrote, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

I don’t care what you celebrate and what comforting fiction you tell around your dinner table – just don’t expect us all to pretend and buy into this “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” fiction.

Come on, Mr. O’Reilly, don’t you at all feel a little silly calling December 25th the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s birth?

Didn’t it ever strike you while singing “While Shepherds watch their flocks by night” that unless you want your “Flock” pre-frozen you don’t graze sheep in December – not in the northern hemisphere at least.

Most Christian Churches these days admit the date is way off and that they just moved the date of “Christmas” to fit with the Roman mid-winter festival of “Saturnalia” and the other disgusting, sinful and depraved pagan Winter-Solstice traditions of feasting, gift giving, decorating trees in the home, kissing under the mistletoe etc.

Strange isn’t it that every single so-called “Christmas” tradition has no biblical basis nor was any of it considered part of celebrating “Christmas” until very recently in western culture (like 150 years or less).

Yet those traditions are proudly remembered far before anyone had heard of a “Jesus Christ” in the oral traditions of numerous pagan mid-winter festivals such as the Scandinavian holiday of “Yule” or “Juul”.

Are you really that ignorant that you don’t know the fact that the first American’s – those puritans which you conservatives pretend to proudly emulate – actually were such a happy celebratory bunch they banned Christmas?

Don’t you realize that the many pagan traditions of mid-winter that most Americans enjoy today this time of year were considered disgustingly hedonistic when this nation was in its infancy.

O.K., so maybe I am wrong about you. Maybe you were misinformed and didn’t know this stuff and you are really an affable old guy with a self-effacing sense of humor like the rest of us who got caught up in this “War on Christmas” crap because it sounded rousing and Ra-Ra-American enough to be fun on Fox. That’s what I’ve been thinking this whole time.

Then I saw your comments on a Samantha Bee sketch from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” I laughed and realized how terribly I’d misjudged you, Mr. O’Reilly.

I’ve given you way too much credit because you really are this ridiculous that you would try and pick a fight with one of the greatest credits to American entertainment – Mr. Jon Stewart on such a petty minded premise.

Jon Stewart – I would dare venture the finest Satirist of his time, a man that surely Mark Twain would have had much to say about – and you pick a fight on the most ridiculous of premises – That Jon Stewart is anti-Christian … or at least anti-Christmas.

Lord Byron wrote, “Fools be my theme, Let Satire be my song”.

Clearly, during an incident that you have vowed that you will never mention again (but we will – oh how we love reminding your Fox-Fanatic Squad of your true nature) you’ve made it quite clear that you have about as much respect for women as you do for non-Christians.

Therefore I’m sure that you are very happy with the women-hating passages in the bible – and yet you talk about American freedom all the time.

If only public hypocrisy was rewarded with herpes!

Mr. O’Reilly, $100 from my single-income family to a worthy charity of your choice (perhaps one to do with American soldiers abroad) if you can send me a tape of you reading the portion of this letter which tells the truth about “The Reason for the Season” on the air on your show as a rebuttal to the fiction you are peddling.

Regards,

Me.

I’d really like to get your thoughts.

Thanks,

Deoxy.

More Nonsense Scientific “Theories” perverting our children’s minds

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More Nonsense Scientific “Theories” perverting our children’s minds.
By Rev. Amos “Duke” Ashen

Human Evolution is only a theory – we know because they call it a theory themselves. The Godless egg-heads just can’t bring themselves to admit that the idea that we are all mutated monkeys is nothing but a foolish guess about where we come from in the sad soulless vacuum of their invented reality where intellectuals anoint themselves to be God. They invent these lies to relieve themselves of the social pressure they cannot bear to be moral folks living in the light of Christ’s love.

If our kids are convinced of this nonsense that we are nothing but mutated monkeys what reason is there to persuade our kids to be moral people? Our kids will be nothing but God-hating vile freaks if they have their minds messed up by the liberal media and their evil egghead theories.

Well, Recently I heard of another dumb egghead theory – but instead of being honest they call this one a “Theorem” – Doubtless to try to make it sound more credible than using the word “Theory”; a word which the righteous among us have debunked as being just another Godless lie.

No matter what name they use, “Pythagoras’ Theorem” is just another egghead theory. The eggheads will try to trick you into believing that they can tell you how big triangles are without measuring them.

If true it would be a god-hating devil worshipping trick but good folks can defeat this evil with the power of the truth of the Christ!

Try this –

1. Just let Christ’s love fill you and take a deep breath
2. Take your pencil and paper and draw
3. You will find you can draw the sides of triangle to be any length you want – That’s because God gave you Free Will. That something the communist eggheads can’t do!

Just try this proof of what I’m saying.

1) Draw a triangle of any size on a piece of paper and measure the sides of the triangle and write them on the paper.
2) Phone up your local godless communist university and ask to speak to one of their chief eggheads.
3) They will probably try to avoid your questions by telling you that they are busy of some other dance – typical godless liars– they don’t want to be shown up as the liars they are. Maybe you’ll have to pretend to be a student or something.
4) If you can get through to an egghead, tell them you’ve drawn a triangle and ask him/her to use Pythagoras’s Devil Magic to tell you how long the sides are.
5) The atheist liar will try to trick you into giving him hints – Don’t give him any – Tell the egghead that godless magic wont help him now because you are a soldier of the truth of CHRIST!!
6) He can’t tell you anything. Why? Because he’s just another godless liar – and the devil is a coward if you confront him.

Absurdly, even though you can prove that Pythagoras’ Devil Magic doesn’t work in the light of God’s love, somehow they have tricked some folks into printing it and allowing it into our innocent children’s schoolbooks and classes.

Just so you know how to recognize this devil-loving lie here is what an egghead told me about it.

1. They have these blasphemous godless names for the three sides of the triangle– “Hippopota- Moose”, “A.J.’s End”, and “Oppose It”.

I worked out myself that a “Hippopota- Moose” is the name of some evil genetic monster combination of a Hippopotamus and a Moose. That’s obviously evil.
“A.J.’s End” must be some sort of weirdo liberal bathroom humor – some “hiney” joke that I don’t get – that makes it evil.
“Oppose it” is obviously a message to other devil worshippers to whine about anything that Godly conservatives say to distract them from noticing how many of these godless lies are being sneaked into our children’s schools. In context of the other two names it must be evil too – that’s obvious.

2. They use some nonsense to define this devil magic. It’s probably a chant or something you have to write in blood on the walls.
a2 + b2 = c2

No matter what this means it’s obviously evil – If you find this written in your little ones schoolbooks it’s too late. Your best bet is probably to drown them in the bathtub next chance you get. You must save their soul, and God will forgive you.

3. This is the clincher to my case. Pythagoras was a pagan who believed he once heard the words of a passed friend in the bark of a dog.

Is the work of this lunatic really fit for teaching to our kids as the unquestioned and unchallenged truth?

I think not.

Our kid’s eternal souls must be protected from the work of godless freaks.

Yours in Christ,
Reverand A. Marmaduke Ashen

Question: Kansas School Board Vs Rational thought - What is the state of play?

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I know this is mentioned in other topics but I would really like to establish a point where we can just get updates on where we are with the Evolution Debate in Public Schools.

I’ve read as much as I can from other topics here on this forum, from news sites, from various blogs and opinion columns but I still cannot figure out what, currently, is the state of play in the ongoing attempts by the Christian Right to ride roughshod over the American education system.

Are the attempts to install Intelligent Design BS into official public school curriculums still going on or are we done?

I heard that one all-Republican anti-evolution school board was fired and replaced with a board of all Democrats and pro-Darwinian ppl. I’m not sure where that was though – was that in Kansas?

I’m lost I have to confess.

I’m guessing that someone here is savvy enough to know the big picture of whats going on.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear this subject up for me.

Deoxy.

The Tyranny of Tradition aka Lets dispense with xmas.

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[Editor’s Note: Although this is a topic I’ve written about previously it seemed like a good way to bring the discussion up again in case anyone wanted to talk about it.]

Hello All,

I apologize in advance if this gets kinda long but I have a point I want to make. It is up to you and everyone else who isnt sucked in by the lies that the Christian Church spews to do the right thing and bring some truth into our lives.

The very core basis of the Christian holidays are a farce. There is not one Christian holiday that has any basis in its religious doctrine, in the facts of where traditions come from or in the stories we are told that supposedly give them reason.

You probably all already know, or at least have realized by now that both Easter and Christmas both fall almost bang on days that correspond with relevant solar and lunar confluences. The date of both Christian holidays have changed repeatedly over the last couple of millenia. Christmas has no basis in the biblical doctrine, Easter has only a feint basis as a celebration. Obviously there are no rotund jolly old bearded men wearing red and white in the bible and no bunnies delivering chocolate eggs either.

Where do those things come from? Pagan tradition.

The reason for all this is that Christmas and Easter are both based upon pagan origins – the biblical events were clumsily superimposed over the top by conquerors who murdered anyone who dared disobey the Churches of Europe and their hijacking of our cultures.

April Fools Day is in fact a day of Christian creation – a papal decree intended to oppress non-Christians and force them into falling into line with their doctrine.
Ancient cultures, including those as varied as the Romans and the Hindus, celebrated New Year’s Day on April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st.) In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year’s Day to be celebrated Jan. 1. Many countries, however, resisted the change. In fact, some European countries held out for centuries (Scotland until 1660; Germany, Denmark, nd Norway until 1700; and England until 1752).

In my opinion, the great misnomer of the period is the humble “Christmas tree” – a name that may well be oxymoronic – a self-contradiction.  The act of cutting down an evergreen tree and bringing it inside your home at winter time is a tradition that is more than 7000 years old – That is a fact.  Many cultures did this – including even the ancient Egyptians millenia before the Judeo/Christian faiths existed!!  It was believed that the trees would bring luck and that they had a magical power to resist winter and if people brought those trees inside with them they believed the tree would help their family to survive the hardships of the season.

Not forgetting of course that the bible actually directly forbids and condemns the taking in of an evergreen tree as a pagan tradition. 

“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.” (Jeremiah 10:2-4, KJV)

Christian apologists make the excuse that reading the rest of Jeremiah gives the context that the tree is only forbidden if it is an “idol” and they try to make some technical distinction between todays “Christmas trees” and those of old by saying that the sin was in idolizing the object.

Make up your own mind – but I think that’s BS.  Bringing an evergreen tree into the house is a pagan tradition, non-Christians have been doing it for millenia, many asian cultures do the same thing in fact.

Easter is an rip on the Spring Equinox – An obvious time in an agricultural society to have a celebration – time for sowing and planting new crops and a time when and traditions concerned with hopes for a good harvest.

The 25th of December is a close approximation to the shortest day in the western half of the northen hemisphere (the 20th/21st of December). 
The Winter Solstice in Pagan tradition was a time when quite often families would surprise each other with secret stashes of food that they had put aside during the warmer months of the year when there was plenty to eat. 

Fruits, nuts, berries – all preserved by drying or some form of waxy glaze in some circumstances, smoked and salted meats were always a favorite around the time of the holidays – in the right conditions even without refrigeration apparatus meat that is cooked, smoked and salted will stay edible for many months. 

The idea of saving one or two of your fattest healthiest turkeys or other fowl for slaughter around this time to be the centerpiece of a big feast must have surely crossed peoples minds too.  It’s a well known fact that Dark ales, Port, Sherry, and Spirits are all winter favorites which were also given as gifts.

You only have to imagine what it must have been like for a working family who were not wealthy to have to get Children through long and bitterly cold winters before modern convenience items were available.  There was no 24 hour Asda/Sainsburys/Walmart/Target/etc around and you ate what you could find, kill, steal or scrounge.

So what can we do?  Well we can all try to set things straight and place rational traditions of joy and preclude traditions which enforce doctrines that are centered on selfish arrogant belief systems that promote irrational and unscientific cultural arguments. 

Take back our culture – Don’t call it Christmas – Call it what it is – The Winter Solstice.  Don’t call it Easter – call it Spring Equinox. 
Only by beginning new traditions can we begin to rid ourselves of our cultural dependance upon religious doctrine. 
The good news about this is that you can do this yet almost none of the traditions we enjoy at these times of year need be sacrificed – only their meaning should be changed to reflect reality – not Christian revisionism.

Tree’s, Gifts, Feasting, Turkey, and of course – Booze!  All part of the pagan traditions of the winter solstice.

In lieu of that you can always decide on Festivus!!
Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Happy Holidays to all of you.

Deoxy.

P.S. My apologies if I am singing to the choir here – I’ve found that even some the best educated atheists don’t realize to what degree the Christian Churches have managed to pull the wool over peoples eyes.  If you all know this stuff, I’m sorry if I come off as patronizing, arrogant or a little presumptuous.  I’m here to hopefully meet a few cool people who think on the same wavelengths.

Jesus took the wheel and lo he did drive the bus full of all the women off of a holy cliff

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I noticed recently that the adorable and very cute Carrie Underwood – the 2005 winner of the highly popular musical puppet contest, American Idol, has released her CD and dropped a couple of singles on us.

The second single from Carrie’s album is called “Jesus, Take the wheel”. Not like we don’t expect American Idol to suck but to come straight out on the Christian Pop wave is just plain weak.

This comment is to remind all of you of your duty when you are addressing the ladies who love to waffle on endlessly about their faith and religion and the bible to remind them about what the bible REALLY says about women.

For Instance,

1 Timothy, Chapter 2,

“2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;  > Yup, God is a man, ladies – and don’t you forget it.

The chapter continues –

2:6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 
2:7 Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. 
2:8 I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.  “I will therefore that men pray every where.”
Yeah yeah, Blah blah….

And then the kicker.

2:9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
Thats right girls, No gold, No pearls, Nothing of costly array.

Dress in SHAMEFACEDNESS and SOBRIETY and in MODEST APPAREL!!

We didn’t write the book but if you’re going to preach a religion to people the least you can do is pretend you believe what it says.

For me, I’m a fortunate SOB.. I’m from the UK (living in the US) and despite the fact that the UK has a state religion (we call it Church of England – you might call it episcopalian) most of us don’t give two hoots about religion.

My wife is the daughter of a prominent Minnesotan geologist – Again, being married to another atheist is something I’ll be thankful for when I’m eating turkey this year whilst honoring a day when European immigrants paused briefly in their invasive genocidal onslaught against a native population – not that I’m pretending that the British have a squeeky clean rep when it comes to invasive genocide of a native population (i.e. South Africa).

I really enjoy reading all of your comments.

Thanks,

Deoxy.