It leads stupid people like Ray Comfort to say things like this:
The Queen of rock ‘n’ roll passed into eternity today. All the money that Tina Turner possessed, all her fame, all her awards, and accolades now mean nothing. The only thing that matters, is “Were her sins forgiven?”
OK, I forgive her sins. Done.
Maybe better questions to ask when someone dies are: “Did they make the world a better place? Did they create beauty? Did they inspire? Did they speak truth to the world?”
Tina Turner gets a yes to each question. Ray Comfort gets a slow, sad shake of the head.
Obviously, ray ‘xtian terrorist’ comfort is NO COMFORT to anyone. These aholes always have to dump their fictitious religious bullshit onto every issue.
I wish Tina Turner could dance on his grave! She was a strong, decent person who always earned our respect. (see what I alluded to there, Aretha?)
What an idiot.
It’s more accurate to say fundy christians want “comfort women” than to comfort women.
If Christianity were true, Ray Comfort would burn in hell for his arrogance and lack of kindness. But he doesn’t realize that (and such bone-deep stupidity is not a mortal sin).
I’d say that if Trump has nothing he needs forgiveness for, Tina Turner will be OK on that score.
It strikes me that the central tenet of Christianity is: the quality of the life you lead means nothing. The whole of your eternal existence comes down to whether or not you can believe that a guy 2000 years ago did a bunch of impossible stuff. With the stakes so high, you’d think we’d get judged on more valid criteria.
You can even live a shit life, do whatever you want, and then convince yourself on your deathbed at the last minute that you believe, and that will get you into heaven. I seem to recall John Wayne doing something like that, prompting National Lampoon to run a piece about how he would only be allowed into Heaven at the last minute of eternity.
These people know nothing of Tina Turner. These people know nothing of art. People like these gave us Christian rock. I think that sums it up pretty well.
“All the money that Tina Turner possessed, all her fame, all her awards, and accolades now mean nothing.”
Baloney. They still mean a lot to a lot of people, and they will for quite some time to come. Great artists have staying power. I frequently listen to music that’s 3 or 4 centuries old. How much staying power do you think you’ll have, Mr Discomfort?
feralboy @ #12 — “You can even live a shit life, do whatever you want, and then convince yourself on your deathbed at the last minute that you believe, and that will get you into heaven.” Largely what Eusebius of Caesarea did for Constantine I, although whether Constantine was convinced at the last minute or just declared Christian post-mortem by Eusebius of Nicomedia is another matter of history we will never resolve…assuming any of this true at all. The early church fathers had an amazing ability to lie for Jesus.
When Tina’s death was announced, many said, “Oh, damn!” or similar.
When Ray drops dead, the universal reaction will be, “Oh, good!”.
Perhaps, that should be his epitaph.
Oh, how sweet! He gets to say something nice about a black person. Now we totally know that you and your co-religionists aren’t racist.
Liberal Christian: “You meanie atheist bad-bad! Ray Comfort isn’t a REAL Christian(TM)! Jesus would have wanted legal abortion, and carbon credits, and gun control, and reparations for slavery, and trans rights, and a higher capital gains tax rate, and the liberal position on a bunch of 21st century political, cultural, and economic issuers that an illiterate, possibly schizophrenic, cult leader from the early Iron Age would total know about and understand! How dare you call Comfort a Christian! This is why you atheists are no better than he is! I’m going to tell my Interfaith group on you!”
Sins are better than evil.
Akira @12: Your little strawman is getting a bit worn around the edges.
@ 14
Not as worn as your tired defense of… I’m sorry Just what bunch of hypocritical scum are you defending? Liberals or Christians?
Fortunately for all of us, the only thing that really matters is not that, but actually is the effect that a major cultural influence has had on the people who heard her and the world that continues after her life is done. As evidenced by the fact that a bozo like Ray Comfort found her significant enough to ejaculate a tweet about her. Even if her stuff wasn’t to your taste, she made a real mark on a real culture in a real world, and what’s sin got to do with that?
@15: You know there are Christians in the commentariat, right? They seem to have a lot more patience with knee-jerk twits like you than I do.
@Rob: In what way is that relevant? And how is Akira’s commentary strawmanning when we have all heard comments exactly like what they posted? (minus the obvious snark)
@ 15
Awwwwww… the poor supersticous, primitive trash. Someone telling them that they are contemptuous barbarians who don’t belong in a civilization that spit the atom and landed humans on the moon would hurt the magical-thinking fee fees. It’s not as if they get their way all the time!
Fuck you die, Rob.
Oh, and that “fuck you and die” applies to all those “Christians in the commentariat” and their families.
I’m pretty sure that crossed a line, Akira. Stop it. Get help.
@Artor: You’ve heard comments like that, therefore Akira wasn’t strawmanning? So if I characterized atheists by comments made by the likes of Dawkins and Harris, I wouldn’t be strawmanning?
Good luck with that, and with defending Akira.
WMDKitty @21: Akira enthusiastically catapulted himself far beyond the line long ago.
We can always count on Rob to point out that poor, put-upon Christians are the true victims here.
Ray Comfort is right that none of that matters after death. He’s wrong, of course, about any further consequences in an imagined afterlife.
Yes indeed, particularly as many of those involved in those endeavours were… Christians. I have a hunch you haven’t achieved anything comparable, any more than I have.
Akira @19:
Much of that work was done, and its foundations laid, by theists. You know, the scum who should fuck off and die, with their families.
Don’t worry, you can keep on spewing. The tolerance (nay, encouragement) around here, for some things, is amazing.
@ 21-26
It seems my list of people who need to fuck off and die has grown some.
beholder @24: We can always count on a lot of commenters here to ignore Akira’s hateful rants, and instead question the motives of those who point them out. Feel free to explicitly endorse everything he says. You’ve already done so implicitly.
I don’t see any of you hypocrites condemning PZ for say he “despises Christianity.”
And no, you can’t separate the religion from the person. Saying so is as disingenuous as the “love the sinner, hate the sin” line the Bible-fuckers use when justifying their homophobia. Christianity isn’t some ephemeral being, it’s held in the minds of certain stupid, superstitious people. You can’t attack one without attacking the other!
Edit: …for
sayingwriting…@28 Rob
If you’re trying to rouse indignation from me, it won’t work. I’m enough of a free speech absolutist to shrug off a meltdown in the comments section.
No, it’s more worth my while to tell you you’re full of shit. Christians are not facing persecution here on FTB.
Akira @29: It’s the difference between hyperbole and genuine, rancid, hatred. Most adults can distinguish them.
beholder @31: A diatribe from Akira doesn’t rise to the level of persecution. It’s not about poor, put-upon Christians. It’s about the acceptance hereabouts of the toxic crap Akira regularly vomits out. Silence is complicity, right?
Toxic?
I’m the one standing up for reality. You’re the one defending superstitious, reality-denying, savages who pretend to enlightened; the people who are ruining the world.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Won’t anyone think of the rights of those poor strawpersons, who are so incessantly abused against their will?
“All the money that Tina Turner possessed, all her fame, all her awards, and accolades now mean nothing.”
I guess the same thing can be said about Ray Comfort.
No, I’m not “toxic.” I’m fed up.
I’m fed up with lies like religion, and the idiots who think believing lies is somehow virtuous.
I’m fed up of being treated like a pariah because I reject the filthy superstition and belief of the supernatural and will not surrender to the shits who believe in the demonstrably WRONG!
I’m fed up of reading and listening to atheist blogs and podcasts that warn us of impending theocracy, but no one is doing anything to stop it.
I’m fed up with liberal theists trying to whitewash centuries or millennia of nonsense and tyranny. Ignoring and gaslighting us about their blood soaked history and what their holy books say just to stay relevant.
I’m fed up with driving down the street and seeing more churches than libraries or museums.
I’m fed up with living in a shit hole country , surrounded by primitives who think that magic and spirits exist!
And I’m fed up with being vilified by shitstains like Rob for being fed up with religion AND the religious!
Take it to The Thunderdome.
Wankers.
Bite your tongue, chigau. :)
OK.
ouch
When Ike Turner died, did Ray Comfort ask if Ike was repentant regarding his sins, including his year’s long abuse of Tina?
Nahhh! Of course not!
Ray is probably miffed that even though Tina was brought up in the deep south, she found inner peace in the second half of her life through Buddhist meditation.
What a long-winded. vain asshat has appeared. Initials AM
Change the world for us all! Bore us into submission!
Ray Comfort is trying to use Tina Turner’s death to promote his own agenda.
Being a better person than Ray Comfort should not be a high bar to reach, and yet some people are failing.
Wow, how long was he waiting for the only opportunity he’d ever have to feel superior to Tina Turner?
I guess we can let him have his tiny moment of “triumph.” Some people just need to latch onto a famous person, if only for a few seconds, just to make themselves feel relevant.
Tina Turner was a Buddhist. She had no need for Christian’s worrying about her. She figured it out and was a soul at peace.
That’s still Ray’s framing of value to the world only being while you’re alive to witness it.
Do their contributions persist and still make the world a better place? Hope so.
Randall @41
Great point. Not that I follow that idiot Comfort, but I don’t remember him ever saying anything about the deaths of evil scumbags such as Rush Limbaugh, or Jerry Falwell.
WTF
Clearly they mean nothing to an asshole like Ray Comfort.
I’d like to point out that Tina not only took care of her own two sons but she also adopted and raised Ike’s two sons by other women. That alone makes her a better person than a useless turd like Ray Comfort will ever be.
She was a rare talent.
I’m glad she found someone who truly loved her in her later life. (Nothing says “I love you forever and above all others” like donating a kidney to your spouse.)
Ray would be an asshole whether he was a Christian or not.
Ray also doesn’t have the balls to have an opinion without a convenient cover–in this case, his so-called Christianity.
He’d still be an asshole if he was using the Quran or the Torah as a fig leaf justification for his hate.
BTW, Tina Turner was a Buddhist.
Buddhism is a religion too.
It’s just one that doesn’t have a creator deity.
So.
Squamous, but not rugose. Fair enough.
All religions are religions, all religionists are religionists.
Superstition has many forms.
(Tautologies are tautological)
To the tne of : Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do with It?
What’s sin got to do, got to do with it
What”s sin but some Christian bullshit notion,
What’s sin got to do, got to do with it,
Who needs that crap when Tina’s music’s unbroken?
If you read the part (previous thread) where the director of Mad Max talked about his experiences with Tina Turner, you know she was a good and caring person, offering her support to people who needed it.
If she believed in buddhism, who cares? She never stoned anyone or burned people on a stake. She didn’t buy assault rifles as birthday gifts for her nephews. She was that rare thing, a celebrity without anything that needed being swept under the carpet (glares at Kanye West).
I think Ray Comfort and Tina Turner have just one thing in common. They’re both public personalities who frequently use words written by others to express themselves. And I think they both try to tell us a bit about their truth while they do so.
From there, the two diverge quite a bit. Ray doesn’t seem very impressive while Tina seems like a pretty remarkable person. Ray is very adamant that he’s a christian. And the golden rule about treating others as you’d like to be treated is core to that faith tradition. So I’m going to assume this is how Ray wants to be treated. When he dies I guess we have his implicit permission to snark about it for clickbait. Not the send-off I’d wish for but to each their own. When you go, dude, I got your “Did he ever really do anything good or meaningful at all?” right here ready to go. :)
He is right about one thing though, I guess. I don’t really care much about how famous Tina Turner was or how many awards she received or how much money she acquired. I’m a casual fan so I appreciate the areas where her music and my weird music tastes coincide. Her being a genuinely decent human being is just an outstanding bonus.
I think Old Ray wants to splash his christian BS around due to his need to seen prancing at the forefront of his small but deluded group of sycophants. Are you a bit jealous Ray? Tina Turner was a talented strong black woman who overcame terrible adversity to become a much beloved icon to the world. Ray what will your legacy be, even if anyone remembers you? You are doomed to pass into obscurity with maybe a few rude jokes about your pointless life told by the few people who even remember that you were a disgusting human..
If that is the question, Comfort, do you have the answer? Or a way of getting to the answer? Or are you just wanking?
The human mind, when enlightened, uses internal mental discipline to honestly engage in careful observation of the complete context of an issue and utilizes critical, analytical thinking and logic. The primitive human mind, relies on ignorant, emotional, superstitious, fantastical beliefs to explain things. That madness is what spawns religion. James Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove the supernatural exists. After many decades, no one had even come close. Religious beliefs fall into the category of fantasy and delusion. My organization rejects superstition and beliefs including religion. And, we find those gullible people who use superstitious beliefs and religion to guide their lives to be pitiful, irrational and often arrogant, disgusting and often violent in their desire to force their stupidity on others.
PZ states: Another example of why I despise Christianity.
I agree with him.
Akira can be harsh and snarky, but at least is not a foolish believer in sky fairies.
Akira can be harsh and snarky, but at least is not a foolish believer in sky fairies.
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blockquote>
Thanks, shermanj. A few things people have to know about me and why I react the way I do toward the right and religion:
1) Up until my mid-twenties, I was once a right-wing Catholic. I know what these fuckers think and just how evil they really can be.
)2 I live in a VERY Red region of Wisconsin (i.e. Waukesha Co.). I am surrounded by MAGA-hat wearing chodes who make their disdain for anyone who isn’t like them be known loud and clear.
3) Because of my poverty and inability to find a job that pays enough to live on my own, I’m stuck living with my Right Wing Catholic Nut-job father; a man who despite being 5’10, 135 lbs, and 75-years-old is still a perpetually angry bigot with no temper whatsoever. I have to listen to his racist, homophobic/transphobic, his insane comments about politics, and the WWII German martial music he lives playing (!!!) without criticism of complaint. The last time I tried, October of 2020 over the upcoming election, I had to live at my mother’s* apartment for three months until he’d let me come home. I can’t wait for him to fucking die!
With that in mind I think I deserved the right to be snarky and harsh.
*And she’s not the picture of political or religious sanity either.
@51 StevoR You are a fiend!!! You’ve planted that song in my head and i can’t get it out! — Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do with It?
I talked to our organization members and they all agreed, the only way to quiet it is to go drink a half-dozen cans of Fosters!!
For those who care, <url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Buddhism”>Secular Buddhism also exists.
OK, it must have been my turn to mess up. Secular Buddhism
JFC, Akira, SAVE IT FOR YOUR THERAPIST!
anat, just do what I do. Reserve special days for messing up. Personally, I reserve days that end in ‘y’ in English.
Paraphrased ‘all her money fame and possessions meant nothing, but was she forgiven’
Was Ike forgiven? Tina walked away from everything when she left him. All her money, all her possessions, the rights to the music she had created, as well as years of abuse. All she took with her was her name.
Frankly Ray, I doubt she gives a flying fuck about your forgiveness, but to answer you Ray, yes, she was forgiven. She wiped the slate clean when she walked away from Ike. His sins though….
@58. shermanj : “@51 StevoR You are a fiend!!! You’ve planted that song in my head and i can’t get it out!”
Hey, its a good song but FWIW & hope it helps I recently saw this on Stephen Fry’s old QI show on removing earworms.
Huh. That didn’t work. Take II
QI segment on getting rid of earworms – 50 seconds long.
Huh. Still NOT working. Dunno why not. That’s annoying. Sorry.
Take III – different video of it – same segemnt, same length, different clip maybe this’ll work?
Or in non- audio visual moving pictures and sounds form :
Source : https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/qi/episodes/20/12/
Plus not from QI but perhgaps also helpful : https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558659/ways-get-rid-earworms-according-science
StevoR, I know you mean well.
First, QI is a comedy show.
Second, what I just quoted is just plain wrong.
(Nothing to do with the liking (or the linking))
—
Besides, in some sort of way, an earworm associated with the recently deceased seems elegiac. Not in the literal sense, but in the mood.
I guess it comes naturally to the followers of the crucified god, this ghoulish grifting on dead people more famous than they’ll ever be.
Dear StevoR, thanks for the thoughts and reference: I assume you meant this:
QI (short for Quite Interesting) BBC comedy panel game television show that began in 2003 created by John Lloyd, and hosted by Stephen Fry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_QI_episodes. Droll fun, that.
We are victims of ‘continental drift’. That is, I tend to be ready to ‘drift’ off to sleep when it is daytime for you.
I found a way to get rid of that earworm, I just stuffed a damp wash cloth into my right ear until I could pull it out of the left ear. Seriously, I’ve been involved in listening to, recording, performing and composing music for well over 6 decades. I can abolish an earworm with any one of a dozen musical genres from my archives.
But, I wouldn’t want to get rid of my appreciation for Tina Turner.
@61 The link doesn’t seem to be working. But yes, Buddhism is both a philosophy and a religion.
I’m just wondering why all the punching down on Christianity, and only Christianity, when most religions–and a disturbing number of people, for that matter–have some fairly loony ideas. Devout Muslims believe that fresh and salt water don’t mix (wtf, that’s oil and water, are there no 5th grade science teachers to be found in the Islamic world) and Buddhists believe in reincarnation. (If reincarnation is real, why are there thousands of people who remember their past lives as Cleopatra or some similar person but no one ever says “yup, I was one of the slaves who built the pyramids at Giza and was crushed to death by a stone block going astray during the building process. I remember it well”. Yeah how come that never happens.)
Tina Turner believed in some crazy stuff too, but she was a big enough person to admit that she made a mistake, and more to the point, owned it.
https://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/2019/02/20/tina-turners-transplant-love-story/
People believe in a lot of batshit crazy ideas, whether those ideas are religious (“I will be born again”–all three Abrahamic faiths plus Buddhism but the details vary), anti-science (“Vaccines cause autism!” um, NO) or just plain old garden variety batshit crazy ideas, like Wall St. quants thinking they had cracked the secrets of the stock market and that Social Security was a waste of time & money that should all be put into a 401k and then everyone would be rich. (A popular idea with a lot of traction with the public licking up the quants’ BS like it was sugar. This was around the time of Enron.) It’s a flaw in our species.
silvrhalide:
USA-based blog.
Yeah, well.
That others also have some fairly loony ideas does not mean Christians don’t merit mockery, does it?
Really. So, what are your personal batshit crazy ideas?
(I mean, you are human, no? )
Everyone owns their own mistakes.
(Look at Steve Jobs. Same thing)
@62 Seconded.
Speaking of batshit beliefs.
Heh heh heh.
I think this is Akira’s safe place to vent, making all of us here Akira’s therapists.
I don’t think Akira is alone in feeling safer here than in their immediate physical surrounds.
I despise christi-insanity too, as I do all the religions that produce multitudes of vacuous, nationalistic fascists. But I try to not allow my dislike of them cause me to become like them. This is not always easy.
Maybe reincarnation can be one-to-many, or fail to happen at all, and how many reincarnations a person gives rise to depends on how famous they were! OK, AFAIK no religion believing in reincarnation suggests this, but Buddhism at least is quite plastic in its doctrines, so could adopt it. After all, global population has increased a lot over the past few millennia, so it would explain where all the extra people come from.
I think Ray Comfort and Tina Turner have several things in common. They are both chordates, bipedal, and depended on an amniotic membrane during development.
Apart from that they might as well have been different species.
Ray does not seem to be capable of much original thinking. “Sin, ook, ook”.
@76 tuatara said: I don’t think Akira is alone in feeling safer here than in their immediate physical surrounds. I despise christi-insanity too, as I do all the religions that produce multitudes of vacuous, nationalistic fascists
I reply: that is my hope and desire, too, that what PZ allows here is a safer community for us, including Akira, than the insanity of social media. As I said earlier, Religious beliefs fall into the category of fantasy and delusion. That clearly implies that I and my organization target the insanity, not the person that subscribes to it. But, analytical thinking and logic will always lead to better results (emotionally and physically) than superstition, uncontrolled emotion and religion. And, we ascribe no credibility to superstition and religion. Admission of flaws and working to overcome them is a sign of rational intelligence. Though I do not always succeed, I try to be rationally intelligent.
@57. Akira MacKenzie : My sympathies that sounds absolutely hellish. You deserve better than that.
@37. Akira MacKenzie : Understandable and some good points. I can understand feeling incredibly frustrated and angry about that. I would too and to some extent do as well. I get where you are coming from I think – at least to some lesser extent.
@19. Akira MacKenzie : I have some really good friends who are Christian and despite that (they might even say because of that) work to help refugees among other things and are quite progressive. It seems absurd to have to say it but Christians like Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc .. are all individuals and whilst I strongly disagree with Christianity (or Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism etc..) as belief systems; these individuals are really wonderful human beings who I love & mean a lot to me. Yes, they believe in things that I don’t (& vice-versa) but still. I don’t want them to die or suffer. This okay with you?
Or do you want these good people I know to suffer and die because they believe in some false things that you and I don’t even though this is just one part – albeit an important part for them though not me – of their lives and what they choose to do with them?