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Despite the santorum splattered about, the Pontiff of the Church Universal and Triumphant [EDIT: This is actually referring to the Roman Catholic Church, not the Church Universal and Triumphant] is going to agree with the climate change consensus in an encyclical to be released on Thursday. Early leaks give some idea of the content.
Pope Francis is preparing to declare humans as primarily responsible for climate change, call for fossil fuels to be replaced by renewable energy and decry the culture of consumerism, a leaked draft of his much anticipated statement on the environment suggests.
The source for this somehow concerns Australians, but we will take any indication of infallibility where we can get it.
So the humble submitter has to wonder, does this mean that climate-change deniers are now to be considered heretics, rather than just Petro shills or anti-environmental conservative conspiracy theorists? It does add a entirely new dimension to the debate, and I hope that God will forgive your Conservative asses for screwing up Her creation in the quest for profit.
UPDATE - janrinok 18 Jun 12:36UTC
is it possible to update/append aristarchus' post "Pope Affirms Anthropogenic Global Warming" (https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/06/17/0317256), as follows:
Update: The encyclical can be read and downloaded here.
I am not affiliated with the submitter, aristarchus, or the pope. I have a slightly paranoid reason for asking for this update; it is my experience that, whenever politically important documents are published, the actual document often gets overshadowed by an enormous load of blog commentary, providing a bit of "damage control" and "spin". It is my fervent opinion that the readership of Soylentnews deserves to read the actual source documents. (It's only 82 pages long, in this case, anyway).
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:21PM
> To top it all off, you refer to God as a "Her"
I thought it was common knowledge by now that God looks like Alanis Morrissette.
But let's be serious. The correct pronoun for god is "it." We are talking about an omniscient being with the power to build an entire universe in less time than it takes me to redecorate my lounge [1] and magic up at least one world full of life from less than thin air. You really think something like that is going to be restricted by piddling little mortal labels like "male" or "female"? You really think god couldn't spontaneously transmogrify upon a whim into a woman, or a man, or a protozoa, or a quad-sexed semi-sentient fishoid from a water moon in the outer reaches of the Andromeda galaxy, or all four simultaneously? In that case, where god's form is as fluid as its needs or wants, what's the point in attempting to define it by any particular form (like male or female)?
Furthermore, I would argue that one of the defining characteristics of being "male" is that you are part of a species that has a corresponding "female" gender, and vice versa. According to all the dogma [2] god is unique, that there are no others gods of any kind, and it has always been so. Therefore there can be no complementary God(dess) of the other gender, ipso facto god cannot have a gender itself.
I suppose one could try to bypass all of the above and ascribe god a gender by personality characteristics rather than physical characteristics. That's tricky, given the somewhat schizophrenic and contradictory character described in the bible, but I think in the end that rather plays into my argument above about god being able to switch on a whim. The god of the old testament is certainly very patriarchal: Vengeful, warlike, jealous, authoritarian. I can see a definite argument for masculinity there. But then again, it is also a creator: Bringing life and order to the void, which seems to me a far more feminine trait. In the end it's a wash. God is male, and female, and both, and neither, and everything else besides.
[1] Fucking textured wallpaper.
[2] Actually, I've read arguments that the ten commandments tacitly admit the existence of other gods by forbidding their worship, but I'm not going there.
(FWIW I am an atheist and find the whole thing rather silly. This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it. )
(Score: 1) by Fishscene on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:46PM
Excellent Observation. This is why I specifically referred to the Bible always referring to God as "Him" instead of saying God was male. I would hope that God, being who He is, would be able to direct the contents of the Bible just fine. :P
Now, I can wager why the Bible refers to God as a "Him" or "Her", but those would strictly be my opinions.
I apologize for not clearly expressing that in my original post.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:01PM
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, you would have though he/she/it wouldn't have put so many contradictions in it.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Friday June 19 2015, @03:36AM
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, you would have though he/she/it wouldn't have put so many contradictions in it.
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, they would put some information there that would be provable only some time later. For example: "a kaon, made of an up and anti-strange quark, decays both weakly and strongly into three pions, with intermediate steps involving a W boson and a gluon. You will understand what it means once you figure out what small particles of matter are made from." That would prove that the Bible is a word of god - or, to be exact, not the work of priests. One could insert several such revelations and target them for key phases of development of the society. Even just the formulation of Fermat's theorem would be beyond abilities of ancient scribes to invent on their own. Or the god could have used the four color theorem - it is easy to formulate for ancients, and pretty hard to prove :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:23PM
Wasn't Man made in God's image, then God made a woman later (apparently because God thought Man was too comfortable and he needed a lot of stress in his life)? So wouldn't God be male by definition?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:54PM
> Wasn't Man made in God's image
That's what the book says, but "In god's image" is pretty vague. Google up an image of "the creation of Adam". From that you can see that most christians (or catholics at least) seem happy enough to accept that at the moment of creation Adam is a young dude with curly blonde hair, while God is an old guy with white hair and a big beard. Hard to tell, but I think the eye colour is different too. Point is, god did not create an identical copy of itself. Therefore the phrase "In God's image" seems to permit certain discrepancies between the original (god) and the image (Adam).
Why shouldn't gender be another such discrepancy? Maybe just having two arms and two legs is enough to be "made in god's image". Maybe the ability to think and reason is what is meant by "in god's image". Where does it say that a cock and balls are a necessary part of the package any more than a big beard is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:30PM
Children who draw stick-men are drawing images of themselves and people they know. "In His image" doesn't mean an exact replica, just representatively similar.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:34PM
This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it.
No it isn't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:58PM
This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it. )
You say that as if it were a bad thing! The comments so far, including yours, have been quite interesting, and not really what I expected. Thanks.
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:05PM
If god was female, and Mary was female, would that mean that religions are pro-gay-marriage? Or doesn't it count because Jesus was a bastard?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:03PM
Jesus a bastard and Joseph a cuckold.
Or to be more realistic, Joseph fucked Mary, and they lied about it to avoid being stoned.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday June 18 2015, @10:00AM
I thought that this "Gabriel" person did Mary, and she was stoned (in the fun way) hence believed his story.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday June 19 2015, @03:27PM
Could even be true. There are documented cases of virgin births where the male didn't quite stick it in before cumming and some sperm still managed to swim up and find the egg.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by penguinoid on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:17PM
Considering the Israelites used to honor God by building Asherah poles to honor His consort, the goddess Asherah, I think it is fair to say that God is male (or a lesbian!). Asherah poles were built in His temple, and some historical artifacts indicate the people thought this would please Him. Of course, that was back when God was the ruler of the pantheon. God may have lost any gender once he became monotheistic.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday June 19 2015, @01:41AM
by the old testiment, god is more of a destroyer and mean son of a bitch than a warm caring woman.
I'm not biblical scholar but every chraracter trait that is attributed to god points to the notion that if there was such a being, it would not be femle-like, as we understand females.
what characteristics does god have (in either testiment) that suggests that he's a woman?
and why even THINK in terms of animal sexuality. then again, I stopped believing in god in my teens and I could never buy that bullshit set of stories that has more internal inconsistencies than the combined republican and democratic parties...
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