8 People Killed In Atlanta Massage Parlor Shootings

Dwarvenhobble

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You're the first one to even come close to bringing up such a claim in this thread...

Doth the lady protest too much?
You're the one protesting.

I'm just pulling back the veil on certain vague statements and allusions being made.
 

tstorm823

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You can do it in all other parts of the world, so why would the Levant be an exception?
It wouldn't be an exception. I don't think there are many places in the world where the current residents are a clear indication of what people looked like in that location 2000 years ago. People mix far too much to make that statement, I would say especially in a region that contested through history, but I wouldn't treat it as an exception to any rule. Cultures isolated enough to maintain an appearance in place for ~100 generations would have to be the exception.
Yes, Jesus would likely have looked like an average Israeli Jew. I would suggest a Palestinian ahead of an Israeli Jew because whilst the diaspora will have mostly interbred with Europeans, the Palestinians will have interbred mostly with their neighbours, and those neighbours will have looked more like the ancient Jews than Europeans. I am aware this is potentially a thin distinction, as I'm not sure people could tell many Israeli Jews from Palestinians by their facial features anyway.
No. I can't say Jesus did look like anything specific, I can't possibly know, but I can know your reasoning is cripplingly flawed. Forget Jesus. You can't say an average person from any group in that region looks the same as the average person from the same region 2000 years ago. I'm not making a religious claim, forget those. I'm not making a political claim, forget those. This is a purely historical argument, it's ridiculous to look at any modern person of any ethnicity and suggest them as a model of Jesus.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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If you want a good example of said christian radicalization: the continued argument that the historical figure represented as Jesus couldn't've possibly looked like an Arab, despite the fact that what Jesus *actually* looked like is entirely irrelevant to literally anything.

The "Evangelical" heresy has infected large swaths of America's Christian landscape and a lot of it either is or has become extremely bigoted. To the point that it's trying to export its ideology in the form of things like Uganda's "kill the gays" laws or the UK's recent ongoing issues with transphobia.
 
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Gordon_4

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If you want a good example of said christian radicalization: the continued argument that the historical figure represented as Jesus couldn't've possibly looked like an Arab, despite the fact that what Jesus *actually* looked like is entirely irrelevant to literally anything.

The "Evangelical" heresy has infected large swaths of America's Christian landscape and a lot of it either is or has become extremely bigoted. To the point that it's trying to export its ideology in the form of things like Uganda's "kill the gays" laws or the UK's recent ongoing issues with transphobia.
Heresy you say?

 

Agema

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No. I can't say Jesus did look like anything specific, I can't possibly know, but I can know your reasoning is cripplingly flawed. Forget Jesus. You can't say an average person from any group in that region looks the same as the average person from the same region 2000 years ago. I'm not making a religious claim, forget those. I'm not making a political claim, forget those. This is a purely historical argument, it's ridiculous to look at any modern person of any ethnicity and suggest them as a model of Jesus.
What Jesus specifically looked like is surely unknown. But odds are very heavy for dark brown-black hair, olive-brown skin colour; substantial for dark brown eyes, etc.

Let's face it, he will not have looked like Alexander Skarsgard, Chow Yun Fat or Donald Glover.
 

Agema

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(assuming he even existed and wasn't an amalgam of many itinerant preachers)
Depends what we mean. If we take the Jesus as appears in the gospels which were written down a few decades later, there is a fair chance stories that are about other itinerant preachers may well be in there, misattributed, along with other tall tales about miracles, etc.

However, if we mean Jesus was an artificial synthesis of multiple individuals created by some later theologian (such as St. Paul), I find that quite hard to credit because I can't see zealous cult followers junking their prophet for such a creation. Secondly, there are numerous Christian writings which seem to attest to the apostles going out and doing stuff with (despite factionalism) broadly common aim, such as St. Paul, Peter, James, etc. One could argue that they were a cabal who cooked up a fictional preacher, but it's much more likely there genuinely was a central person who provided inspiration.
 

Cicada 5

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Silvanus

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However, if we mean Jesus was an artificial synthesis of multiple individuals created by some later theologian (such as St. Paul), I find that quite hard to credit because I can't see zealous cult followers junking their prophet for such a creation. Secondly, there are numerous Christian writings which seem to attest to the apostles going out and doing stuff with (despite factionalism) broadly common aim, such as St. Paul, Peter, James, etc. One could argue that they were a cabal who cooked up a fictional preacher, but it's much more likely there genuinely was a central person who provided inspiration.
Or that (like Paine claims) the books of the New Testament were written by disconnected authors long after the events they are purported to show (and by writers willing to fabricate), and that as such the stories about what the apostles were doing aren't to be credited either.
 

BrawlMan

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Thank you for the news. I do love the son of one of the victims, Randy Park, that pointed out exactly what's wrong with the police.


He also says that the police department’s statement that the shooter was motivated by a “sexual addiction” is “bullshit.”
The killer even admitted it he wanted to kill all Asians. The fact the police are ignoring the statement and all the sudden they're taking his false words at face value, shows how little they care for people of different race or color.

Here is a companion piece.

 

Agema

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Or that (like Paine claims) the books of the New Testament were written by disconnected authors long after the events they are purported to show (and by writers willing to fabricate), and that as such the stories about what the apostles were doing aren't to be credited either.
The chronologically early NT books such as the epistles are written before 50 AD; some thus predating the gospels and are contemporaneous accounts of the early Christian community. These are in when Jesus' peers were still alive.

At this point, with Jesus's followers still alive, oral tradition across scattered communities would suffice. Then as they start to die and their memories with them, the early Christian cult realises they need to write things down and preserve the stories. Thus the gospels - each written by a community from the stories it had available to it from its members (despite evident wider community). Thus both similarity and difference, depending on what stories their members had to tell. There were probably plenty more - perhaps they were not written down or faded in popularity and were lost.

I'm sure plenty of the gospels and other material is untrue. As is the way with oral histories there were variations, and in the end some became canon and others not, so what we see is likely to contain a significant amount of misrecollections, exaggerations, fabrications etc. But the idea that there was no Jesus, no charismatic preacher that inspired dozens of followers and hundreds or even thousands of adherents to hold to his beliefs long after, seems very unlikely.
 

happyninja42

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How about we not derail a thread about a mass shooting into a biblical history lesson about the historicity of jesus, and what ethnic lineage he may/may not have?

It doesn't fucking matter what a possibly fictional dude from 3000 years ago would look like, and debating that shit is exactly the kind of misdirection that moves the focus away from a guy who clearly targeted facilities, traveling a significant distance to do so, when if this was just some kind of outburst killing, he would've gone after the nearest people. He went to multiple locations, all with one very significant thing in common. And I fucking promise you that the neckbearded fuckwad that killed those people, has never EVER considered anything about whether jesus might not be white, as that's frankly not something anyone other than biblical historians, actually fucking care about. Your average joe american christian, just sees him as the stereotypical white dude that is the most dominant image of him, and thus that is true to them. You think he's actually investigated the genetic migrations of groups in the middle east, circa the bronze age? Please.
 

Schadrach

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Seeing as you put it like that, clearly proof that women should be de facto denied medical degrees.
I...did not say that. What I said is that it was a practice that the US also openly engaged in for the same given reasons and Title IX was literally created to put an end to it. A surprising number of folks don't realize that, because it did it's work there a long time ago and they mostly think of sports programs and sexual assault when they hear Title IX. Hell, conduct between students wasn't even considered part of Title IX's purview at all when it was created, it gained that area of coverage through court cases.

Part of it is shame, and part of it is just their lack of rights. You don't have a right to a lawyer during questioning, you don't have a right to a speedy trial, you don't have a right to cross examine and the prosecution doesn't have to share evidence.

*snip*

but also there is a lot of pressure on Judges to always give a conviction, and this goes back to your shame point, its a shame on a prosecutors not to win, which in theory was meant to mean they do stupid due diligence for every case, but in reality just made the courts rubber stamp courts.
So *that's* where Obama-era Title IX sexual assault guidance took it's inspiration from! I say that half-jokingly, but most of those things had court cases fought over them under the Obama rules and that was the reason the DeVos guidelines specifically addressed several of those issues.

Cultural diversity is a good thing.
The irony being that most of the folks arguing with you would generally agree with this sentiment, so long as all those silly other cultures adhere to a view of race and gender that is completely in line with progressive western European or US ideals.

Before that the founding fathers took out abolishing slavery in the original drafts of the constitution because they believed it would die out naturally
...and they were probably right, the cotton gin just kicked that can a few decades down the road. Realistically industrialization of agriculture would have massively reduced the need for agricultural slave labor and had we never actually formally abolished slavery it would probably be seen today as a "quaint" thing that a few wealthy rural folk still had house servants and a couple of field hands, while the biggest slaveowner in the nation would be Amazon with all their fulfillment centers built in the South so as to leverage slave labor, and we just would avoid looking at or thinking about that too closely.

The thing is isn't it somewhere like Holland that is seem to be a country with lots of stuff put in place to prevent gender discrimination and allow women to have children and be CEOs etc with child care and no stigma about being a stay at home dad and all this. Only for them to find their society going far more towards traditional gender roles anyway even when there's really nothing at all meaning they should or have to.
The countries that are otherwise seen as having the most gender equality and the most social safety nets also tend to have the biggest STEM gender gaps. A big part of this is that they tend to be richer, so you have less women going into STEM because it's seen as the only reliable way to escape poverty.

E.G. the one who added "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" in his manifesto for example
Same one who claimed to have been radicalized by Candace Owens but that he "will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for are too much, even for (his) tastes", that he learned ethno-nationalism from Spyro the Dragon 3 and Fortnite trained him to be a killer. Those didn't come up as much in the coverage, because they didn't allow the media to attack a platform that many in traditional media see as an ongoing threat to their careers.
 
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tstorm823

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It doesn't fucking matter what a possibly fictional dude from 3000 years ago would look like, and debating that shit is exactly the kind of misdirection that moves the focus away from a guy who clearly targeted facilities, traveling a significant distance to do so, when if this was just some kind of outburst killing, he would've gone after the nearest people.
I mean, if you wan't to criticize derailing and misdirection, you might want to direct some attention at those who went out of their way to turn this into an accusation of racism aimed at Christianity in general.
 
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Buyetyen

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I mean, if you wan't to criticize derailing and misdirection, you might want to direct some attention at those who went out of their way to turn this into an accusation of racism aimed at Christianity in general.
"How dare you bring up a possible racial motivation in a killing spree targeting Asian spas!"

But hey, if saying Christianity has a racism problem is a bridge too far, surely you'll be willing to engage with a discussion of how its backwards-ass view of sex and gender is a big problem.
 
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BrawlMan

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I mean, if you wan't to criticize derailing and misdirection, you might want to direct some attention at those who went out of their way to turn this into an accusation of racism aimed at Christianity in general.
Christ, you are so full of shit! show some goddamn respect for the dead. You may not particularly care for the victims nor their families, but others do. if that happened to you or somebody you cared about you be crying your ass off right now. Crying screaming for justice. So do us a favor and stop with the whataboutism, thread derailing, making excuses, and either say something important or don't. Otherwise, don't say anything at all and waste everybody's fucking time!
 

tstorm823

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Christ, you are so full of shit! show some goddamn respect for the dead. You may not particularly care for the victims nor their families, but others do. if that happened to you or somebody you cared about you be crying your ass off right now. Crying screaming for justice. So do us a favor and stop with the whataboutism, thread derailing, making excuses, and either say something important or don't. Otherwise, don't say anything at all and waste everybody's fucking time!
You're wasting your own time typing a post like this. It's not respect for the dead to postulate on the theoretical racism of religions that the shooter wasn't part of and the victims very well might have been. Nor is it disrespect to disagree with people saying as such. You're perfectly ok with people who take the discussion from "shooter is part of highly political congregation in exceptionally racist denomination" to "Americans think Jesus is white", but you're upset at me for telling the people making that jump that they're poorly informed.

Edit: Seriously, you're blaming me for thread derailing? The post above you is someone challenging me to a debate on sex and gender in Christianity. I'm not the problem you're seeing.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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"How dare you bring up a possible racial motivation in a killing spree targeting Asian spas!"

But hey, if saying Christianity has a racism problem is a bridge too far, surely you'll be willing to engage with a discussion of how its backwards-ass view of sex and gender is a big problem.
No.
More a case of "How FUCKING dare you just run with a FUCKING narrative based just on personal bias alone and pure desire to see people you dislike as more villanous to justify you deep seated hatred and then also get pissy with anyone calling it out and even after evidence comes out to the contrary try to keep pushing the narrative and claim it doesn't matter and try to denigrate the person pointing out the evidence that the narrative is just that and based on nothing."
 

Silvanus

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The irony being that most of the folks arguing with you would generally agree with this sentiment, so long as all those silly other cultures adhere to a view of race and gender that is completely in line with progressive western European or US ideals.
Valuing a culture doesn't mean one has to endorse highly traditionalist, conservative attitudes held among a section of the population. It's not as if those attitudes are inseparable or universal; and plenty of Japanese people don't hold them. Cultures are not homogeneous in social attitude.

Treating a culture's most conservative attitudes as synonymous with its culture in entirety is highly reductionist. And interpreting "cultural diversity" to mean that one cannot be critical of poor practices or attitudes that individuals hold... I mean, surely we can all see the dangers in that.