She mocks well, that perk of LGF: field trip to Sally’s Beauty supply for scrunchies should become a classic.

#brasnapper gots de homps for Dana because she’s Uppity right back in his Muggity.

To repeat: She’s a married mom. And also, like Wombat said, we know her husband.

In general, it’s probably best to reserve the blatantly lecherous sexist comments for the celebrity bimbos featured at WeSmirch — which is why celebrity bimbos exist, eh? But beware of Courtney Stodden — she’s only 17.

I call blatantly lecherous on that. It’s the thought that counts.

 We Catholics would differ that it was an “enlightenment.” Just sayin’…

OK, well, I do have to admit to being lecherous in general, and to attempting (with little success) to stake out some SEO territory on the phrase “Dana Loesch Naked.”

But in this particular case, there was no lecherous mens rea. It was more a matter of reflex.

It was a good comeback, a bit of shtick.

 Jesus said the Holy Spirit would come to lead us into all truth. He didn’t say the Holy Spirit would wait for sixteen centuries before coming…..and the Holy Spirit did not wait for sixteen centuries to come.

Lest you say don’t throw stones, yes, Christianity has plenty of adherents living with Christ’s love — or as Matthew put it, other-referencing — in their hearts. But more Christians living without Christ’s love than with it, actually. Plenty using the religion to justify and defend selfishness and extreme selfishness.

This is basically why i prefer the non-mainstream. Shit happens in all systems, in all religions, organised or not. And yes, some cults are worse than others, ie more closed-belief-system and more exploitative-harmful. But the non-mainstream cults at least don’t have their hands on the levers of political power. It is the mainstream cults that influence events and shape people’s minds on a large scale. Like the mafia, they are organized, and they get results. Politicians pander to them and it’s all one big sucking-up-fest.

 One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism….also mentioned in Ephesians.

I stand on my previous comment.

Re. Pathfinder’s wife

If the strict study (religious study if you will) of doctrine and
adherence to that order is taken out of a religious system all you are
left with is spiritual mysticism…and taken to its denouement that will
wind up getting you a group of people who are willing to follow any
charismatic and drink his/her koolaide.

Shifting the all-important aspect of hierarchy out of
religion into society in general and then attempting to retrofit it back into religion
would be disingenuous.

The aspects of Organized Religion (OR) that one could innocently list are well
defined structure, hierarchies, goals and rules.

There are simple differences between OR and tribal religion which anyone
understands and hierarchy is the most important. It’s all very well that there
are some branches of Xianity that don’t have a hierarchy, that’s to their
credit. Perhaps they have seen the problems with hierarchy.

In any case, hierarchy here means that there is more to the
organizational structure than just the local priest. There is an organization
of many people, with a power structure, and the neighborhood guy is at the
bottom. There is an HQ somewhere else dictating policy and issuing orders. The
local guy is not autonomous. S/he has to do what middle management elsewhere
says and moreover gets dogma spoonfed from a fixed, unchanging, increasingly
anachronistic Holy Book which has been created by a previous iteration of the
organization. (In fact, this organizationally created Holy Book remains as a
problem even to those groups who have tried to do away with hierarchy in their
own structures, precisely because it has been created and perpetuated by an
organization.)

The shaman has no one above him/her in corporate HQ somewhere
else. End of story as far as difference is concerned.

Yes, many similarities can be found between tribal religion and
OR. Actually, finding these similarities is usually the business of
those who campaign against any and all spirituality, the f*ndie
rationalistas who profess to be skeptical but are not skeptical about their own
beliefs. You may be in funny company with this quest.

Whatever. The shaman is the real “oldest
profession,” the first specialized occupation that not everyone does, like
hunting and tent-mending, and in part “supported” by the rest of the
band. They perform “services” on behalf of the others but again there
are important differences between those services and the kind offered by the
hierarchical priestly caste. Think vision quest. There is little like this in
hierarchical religions. A vision quest means each individual is encouraged to
go and find their own experience, not have it pre-shaped and pre-digested to
fit into a certain formula. The priest mediates between a supplicant and a
supposed God whom the priest represents. The shaman does not mediate and does not
represent Mother Earth or any other entity.

It is true that sexist trips did not originate with
organization. The tribes had ‘em too, in spades, and it may be one of the great
benefits of civilization that we are finally evolving away from this. (And OR
might even get credit for being part of that civilizing process, even as they
perpetuated and horriblized the sexist trips.) But civilization has its
problems too.

So you might wonder:  So
if tribes have organized religion, and “modern” societies have
organized religion, each according to their own technologies, how do you have a
non-organized religion? Is there such a thing?

But, “If tribes have organized religion” hasn’t been established.
 

Indeed there is such a thing as non-organized religion. And
it consists of a movement or group whose members are encouraged to find their
own relationship with Source/Mother Earth/God/etc, and the “leader” (guru/shaman/pastor)
helps them with methods and insights and whatnot to get over predictable
hurdles which the leader understands.

I could use the term “religious power abuse” if you like
that phrase, there’s nothing wrong with it. But i think “power-abuse”
as a term does not do much to point to where the power abuse might come from. It
comes from hierarchies, an integral part of what i am calling organized
religions. So i’ll stick with that.

Or could it be that it’s the advancing technologies, which
humans are applying to everything they do, and which result in us forming
larger groups, that I don’t appreciate?

The answer would be No. Larger groups are themselves the
problem, or at least problematic. The group will always have a structure which
will try both to perpetuate itself and dominate others. The goal of religion “should”
be to see beyond these petty human trips but the organization can only be
antithetical to seeing beyond. It will always place itself between the
individual and reality.

As I remarked, organizations are useful for getting some
things done but they have almost no place in a spiritual
quest.

Could be. Maybe I’m getting rusty.

In anyway, y’all, I wasn’t intending to be lecherous there. Almost exactly the opposite, in fact.

Pointing out that Ms. Loesch is attractive is bringing coals to Newcastle. The point I was trying to make was that in addition to being cute and cuddly, some kitties have claws.

Re. Pathfinder’s wife:

Actually two great examples for the price of one: Jim Jones AND a clue
as to why people such as yourself are not at all uncomfortable with the
impetus that creates such an occurance (“can’t win them all”….dead
perfect…really).

It may well matter in cases such as Jim Jones, where the delusion is strong enough to preclude critique, strong enough to enlist the supportand co-dependency of others, and in the end strong enough to lead to some tragedy.

Such tragedies will result usually only when there is also an underlying basis of life-negative structures, such as those found in Xianity. Xian cults will often end in this way, though rarely so spectacularly. 

In less destructive cases, what harm is done by someone joining a co-dependent cult where the leader is delusional? Ha ha! Could be still a lot, who knows, apart from eternal damnation, so it is still worthwhile to consider that dishonest is “better” than delusional. With dishonest you get ripped off and exploited but learn something in the end. With delusional you may never learn, getting trapped in a self-reinforcing loop.

 PW, if you are unable to ‘Disable Javascript’ in your browser, you can read my entire comment here.

(Thanks for the tip, Wombat.  But I’m not going to start a blog just yet.)