this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Sitting on a bench near a bus stop some guy sits a bit too close to me. Starts asking general questions. Then asks me if I know about Jesus. Told him I know Jesus didn't harass women at bus stops. Asks me what I was reading. It was a book by Albert Schweitzer. He told me to burn it. Told him to stop harassing me and I just got up and walked away.
Absolute lunatic.
He is cordially invited to go burn himself.
I was stunned. I have never heard a person in real life say to burn books.
that's different
does anyone know who Schweitzer is nowadays? he was a xian theologian who won a Nobel Prize for developing an ethic of humanitarianism called Reverence for Life . If you've ever watched The Fifth Element that is the ethic. "good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil"
I don't think there is anything arbitrary about the evil of slavery or pedophilia.
There are cultures in which practices that could be termed those things are considered both necessary and right.
Do I agree? No.
My profession requires discarding personal perspectives as far as possible.
And emergency toilet paper. If needed, we started with the Murdoch section.
Nasty scratchy stuff, but better than chancing poison ivy or it’s ilk
I would have said yeah wasn't Jesus gay?
Good job standing up for yourself.
Many years ago, was on the 64 tram and reading Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. An elderly gent in full hasidic dress opposite me leaned forward and told me I was going to Hell for reading such a book.
It's actually about the counter-reformation and the decline of the witch cult (as imagined at the time).
I'm not sure elderly gent actually knew that - but must have seen the picture on the front with an alchemist's laboratory as imagined by a 17th century artist. Lots of alembics and stuffed crocodiles and mystik diagrams on the floor and nekkid wimmen holding said alembics. All very symbolic. Gave him a death stare but didn't say anything.
That made me laugh. Brilliant.
Because what could he say. 😂