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The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

meghanboilard.substack.com

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Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#131

Post by [deleted] »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #52
flocciput wrote: post #50

Is it just me or has HN as a whole become... more Christian lately? A lot more defensive comments here than I would've expected, and I've seen in other threads people actually openly recommending religion/Christianity specifically as something that solved their problems. What's the deal here? I would've thought this would be a relatively atheist/agnostic community, if not one that eschews discussion of religion entir…

> I would've thought this would be a relatively atheist/agnostic community, if not one that eschews discussion of religion entirely. Briefly, why?

[deleted]

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#132

Post by schumpeter »

duped wrote: post #115
gadders wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply that rule equally to all religions, or just the ones that aren't likely to kill you/get you fired for expressing it? //edit//And I say this as an atheist.

I'm generally intolerant of the intolerant, religion doesn't get a pass for being religion.

Lucky for you, the most intolerant wins: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#133

Post by ck2 »

smithkl42 wrote: post #7

I wish the author was a little less over-wrought in her descriptions of the Green family's religious commitments. I've heard complaints before about the Green's artifact acquisition process, and they've had to return some manuscripts: it's a story worth investigating and telling. But it distracts from the author's main point when she's making snide comments about their faith. Yes, they're Christians who are successfu…

Of course religion should be treated with sarcasm

It singlehandedly has held back the world for centuries, caused the suffering and death of millions if not billions.

It's completely made up, thousands of years before anyone knew anything about anything and then as science is learned the world is bent to its superstitions and not the other way around because it can never ever change because some ignorant dude said so way back when.

The only way religion survives is indoctrination, it makes ZERO sense to anyone who learns to apply the smallest amount of logic to it.

And Christianity might be the very worst of all abrahamic-rooted nonsense because it basically stole all it's practices and beliefs from every other religion at the time.

They didn't have microscopes, telescopes or even eyeglasses but yet not only do they insist on somehow knowing a specific exact god but all the rules and why such an all powerful being would give a damn about anything.

It's control, manipulation and very often a profit seeking scam.

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#134

Post by lurk2 »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #108
sigzero wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus does not condemn wealth. If that is what you are taking away from his interaction with the rich man, you would be wrong. Wealth itself is never condemned in the Bible (Old or New Testament). God often blessed his servants with wealth.

Jesus very explicitly condemns wealth, in a directly quoted passage that cannot be misunderstood. Jesus as quoted in Matthew 19:24 is very very blunt: "I'll say it again - it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god!" I.e. wealthy people who don’t give it all away will go to hell.

> I.e. wealthy people who don’t give it all away will go to hell.

Did Job go to hell?

> And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

> [11] Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house; and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.

> [12] And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses.

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#135

Post by duped »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #99
duped wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some beliefs deserve to be looked down upon and disrespected because they are backwards. I wouldn't call them "silly" because they're very serious. I don't believe in treating religious fundamentalists with compassion and empathy anymore. That's how we got the nutjobs in power, by not deriding them enough in public and private. There can be no tolerance of hate, and the people you are talking about are motivated by h…

Look, in many ways I agree with you, but I guarantee that mindset is essentially doomed to failure if you want to win elections in the US where 68% of Americans identify themselves as Christian in some way. The problem is not so much wanting to coddle up to the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. It's that a lot of people who used to have what would be considered "standard", middle-of-the-road religious views have be…

This thinking is a memetic poison created by the exact people that need to be shamed out of the public discourse. I used to agree with it, but seeing how it's been coopted by the bigots, I reject the premise entirely.

No one is calling Christians stupid. The nutjobs that want to tear down our secular society and replace it with a white Evangelical ethnostate are telling Christians that their political rivals are calling them stupid. They're the suckers for the conmen, and at this point, it's not worth attempting to rationalize debate.

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#136

Post by watwut »

MrMcCall wrote: post #97
Arainach wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no relevant contradiction. The entire New Testament is Jesus preaching love and forgiveness, Jesus practicing love and forgiveness - and not just to his followers - and explicit condemnation of wealth and instructing his followers to care for others. Anyone who takes that message and instead lobbies to destroy healthcare and welfare and to push hate and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them - and anyone…

Beautifully said. To expand on that beautiful theme: Animals compete, human beings cooperate. Animals take advantage of others, human beings care for others by helping them and protecting them from harm. May compassion rule our hearts for the benefit of one and all and the Earth, herself. We can choose to end suffering. As the "$6 Million Man" intro said in the 70s, "We have the technology." The world has already lea…

> Animals compete, human beings cooperate.

Animals do cooperate, a lot and frequently. Including predators like lions. There are solitary animals, but cooperation is not rare.

> Animals take advantage of others, human beings care for others by helping them and protecting them from harm.

Animals do help others and try to protect them from harm.

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#139

Post by boomboomsubban »

wrp wrote: post #128

Many upvotes here due to the political/religious aspect, but there should be some comment on the archeological issue. From what I've gathered in the past, the main points are: 1. An organization with very deep pockets sets out to collect Near Eastern antiquities. 2. Due to turmoil in the Middle East, many relics of dubious provenance are hitting the market. 3. The org decides to buy as much of this stuff as they can,…

Hobby Lobby openly admitted to falsifying documents to smuggle in artifacts. I've never seen anything suggesting they take your fourth point seriously, at least not before the courts got involved.

And, as mentioned in the article, point five would be that they're effectively using this as a tax avoidance loophole.

Re: The great Hobby Lobby artifact heist

#140

Post by settsu »

themaninthedark wrote: post #111
settsu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from what I called out in my sibling comment these two are pretty snide to me - "Snide" is subjective. - It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report. - The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the motivations is reasonable.

A snide comment is one that disparages or belittles another person, so I don't think it can be subjective. Edit add: I find this entire line of reasoning to be odd: >It's a blog post not a news article or scholarly report. - The topic is a business run by people who ostensibly make decisions based on their faith to justify actions which cause various harm to others. Taking a critical view of those actions and the mot…

One person's "disparagement" is another's valid criticism. You can see this come up constantly in lawsuits.

All I'm saying is it's a random site on the internet for a person who is a "Certified Bonafide Expert of Miscellanea"—no one is asking you to "trust the source material". If you think that aspects of the post bring into question the validity of the point being made, that's your right. I just think it's a weird expectation. The author even speaks to that: https://substack.com/@meghanboilard/note/c-102976235

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