In 1992, the much-regretted Bill Hicks said the following:
I don't find it ironic at all-Christians for the death penalty. 'Cause after all, if it weren't for capital punishment, we'd have no Easter. F**k it, that's a three day weekend where I come from.Funny, right? Except guess which presidential candidate has made the exact same argument?
“Interestingly enough,” Huckabee allowed, “if there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, ‘This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency’.”That's crazy.
By the way, speaking of Huckabee, LTG left a comment below that reminded me of one of my all-time favorite moments from The Colbert Report ...
5 comments:
What an idiot Huckabee is. Jesus did not need clemency, nor would he ask for it, because he was innocent. He wasn't quibbling about the penalty, but the conviction.
OK, I'm an atheist so I shouldn't be shooting my mouth off about points of theology but doesn't equating the crucifixion with a case of cruel or inhuman punishment, or wrongful conviction, or convinction under an unjust law or something like that, miss the whole point?
Just askin'...
I do love conservatives arguing from silence in the gospels. Jesus didn't condemn capital punishment per se, so it's okay. Goodie. He also said nothing about premarital sex, abortion, or gays. Nifty. I like to think that when Jesus said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's," he would have classified your life under the latter, not the former.
I think most conservatives would agree with LTG that people owe their "lives" to the state.
Yes, looking at the bible, Jesus seemed to say nothing overtly about any of the things that LTG mentions, yet religion today is obsessed with them. We always seem to obsess more over that which is missing thus missing what is actually in front of us.
Jesus, if indeed I get him, was a pretty tolerant guy with a pretty simple message.
If I were going to quibble, I might point out to conservative, family values voters that Jesus encouraged people, mostly men to leave their families to follow him. He seemed to tolerate prostitution. In fact, what he seemed to most abhor where conservative pharisees who used religion as a means of controlling people and blocking them from true spirituality and a individualized relationship with God.
I never got how the Catholic Church could look at me with a straight face and say Jesus was a man like all men, but then in the same breath say he never sinned, never had sex, never got mad, married, or sick because he blessed by god. Call me crazy, but that doesn't sound too human to me.
As for sex, Jesus did say love thy neighbor as thyself. Oh, how that can be interpreted by a liberal, Freudian mind.
Sorry if I seem flip, but it's Friday.
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