Happy Christmas everyone!
Happy Christmas everyone!
Happy Midwinter!
Cause tomorrow is a brand-new day
And tomorrow you'll be on your way
Don't give a damn about what other people say
Because tomorrow is a brand-new day
This religion is even weirder than I thought
The Alawis, or Alawites (Arabic: علوية Alawīyah), are a sect of Shia Islam.[13] The Alawites revere Ali (Ali ibn Abi Talib), considered the first Imam of the Twelver school. The group is believed to have been founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century.
Alawites and their beliefs have been described as "secretive"[80][20][81][82][17]; some tenets of the faith are kept secret from most Alawi and known only to a select few,[48][83]
Alawite theology and rituals break from mainstream Shia Islam in several remarkable ways. For one, the Alawites drink wine as Ali's transubstantiated essence in their rituals[15]
Alawites hold that they were originally stars or divine lights that were cast out of heaven through disobedience and must undergo repeated reincarnation (or metempsychosis[89]) before returning to heaven.[81][90] They can be reincarnated as Christians or others through sin and as animals if they become infidels.[81][91] In addition, according to the Israeli BeginSadat Center for Strategic Studies they believe that God might have incarnated twice; the first incarnation was Joshua who conquered Canaan, and the second was the fourth Caliph, Ali.[92]
Other beliefs and practices include: the consecration of wine in a secret form of Mass performed only by males; frequently being given Christian names; entombing the dead in sarcophagi above ground; observing Epiphany, Christmas[93] and the feast days of John Chrysostom and Mary Magdalene;[94] the only religious structures they have are the shrines of tombs;[95] the book Kitab al Majmu, which is allegedly a central source of Alawite doctrine,[96][97][98][99] where they have their own trinity, comprising Mohammed, Ali, and Salman the Persian.[6]
In addition, they celebrate different holidays such as Old New Year,[c] Akitu,[d] Eid al-Ghadir, Mid-Sha'ban and Eid il-Burbara.[102] They also believe in intercession of certain legendary saints such as Khidr (Saint George) and Simeon Stylites.[103]
Ignore List (to save time):
Exarch, Coughdrop addict
Prodromos,
Isn't it amazing how men will grab onto anything to believe anything yet the one thing they cannot grab onto is Jesus as that only happens if God the Father draws them to Him to be born again of the Holy Spirit.
As if the ritualized body mutilation, cannibalism, and blood drinking of the bible is any less laughably insane.
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Son, Heir, and Wartime Consigliere of King Athelstan
Circumcision carries no medical benefit. Regarding cannibalism, if I remember correctly, you drink the blood of Christ and eat his body every time you receive communion.
Boldly stated, but objectively false:
Pros and cons of circumcision: an evidence-based overview
Circumcision benefits far outweigh risks, finds study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Which is not to say that there aren't reasonable ethical arguments to be made against the practice.
ok, minimal hygienic benefits that do not compensate for the procedure. (ethical arguments aside).
Actually, the sources I cited argue significant medical benefits relative to the risks. However, there is an argument to be made that in a modern developed society, the greater UTI and STI risk to uncircumcised men can be mitigated in other ways. This however would not have been the case in the ancient Levant and Egypt where circumcision was first practiced. People in the region suffered from a high rate of schistosomiasis, the symptoms of which there is evidence that the ancient Egyptians believed circumcision protected against, not that they could distinguish between schistosomiasis, UTIs, and STIs. They were right to some degree, even in the case of schistosomiasis, since it's apparently harder for the schistosoma eggs to penetrate scar tissue.
So, just like religions in general. Might have some use ages ago, now it's just barbaric practice.
I think there are people (in the United States especially) who also do it for aesthetic reasons.
In the US, 81% of males are circumcised, 91% of non-Hispanic white males are circumcised. That latter statistic suggests that it's not particularly correlated with religious belief, and probably more so with culture and having health insurance.
This is the official policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics:
I'm fairly indifferent to the procedure either way, but I do understand the objection to non-essential medical body modification of children. Although being American, most people I know who are vehemently opposed to circumcision also support gender reassignment of prepubescent children.Systematic evaluation of English-language peer-reviewed literature from 1995 through 2010 indicates that preventive health benefits of elective circumcision of male newborns outweigh the risks of the procedure. Benefits include significant reductions in the risk of urinary tract infection in the first year of life and, subsequently, in the risk of heterosexual acquisition of HIV and the transmission of other sexually transmitted infections.
The procedure is well tolerated when performed by trained professionals under sterile conditions with appropriate pain management. Complications are infrequent; most are minor, and severe complications are rare. Male circumcision performed during the newborn period has considerably lower complication rates than when performed later in life.
Although health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns, the benefits of circumcision are sufficient to justify access to this procedure for families choosing it and to warrant third-party payment for circumcision of male newborns. It is important that clinicians routinely inform parents of the health benefits and risks of male newborn circumcision in an unbiased and accurate manner.
Parents ultimately should decide whether circumcision is in the best interests of their male child. They will need to weigh medical information in the context of their own religious, ethical, and cultural beliefs and practices. The medical benefits alone may not outweigh these other considerations for individual families.
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Son, Heir, and Wartime Consigliere of King Athelstan
Accurate or not that sounds incredibly uncomfortable.
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Son, Heir, and Wartime Consigliere of King Athelstan
There is no doubt that Christianity has been tremendously influential on American culture, but is circumcision a traditionally Christian practice? It seems not. The Wikipedia page only talks about traditional Christian opposition to it, with the exception of the Coptic, Ethiopian, and Eritrean churches. The prevalence of circumcision is really low all over Europe, even in the countries that are still quite Christian.
This is interesting:
Kellogg, the cornflakes guy, also went around promoting it as a cure for "self pleasure" (I can't write the proper term without it being censored). So Victorian prudishness played some role, which you could argue is related to Christianity, though only narrowly so. Supposedly it was also considered high status, because of its association with having had a hospital birth.Until Victorian physicians discovered its medical and moral efficacies, circumcision was scarcely known in the western world. Edward Gibbon had referred to it as a "singular mutilation" practised only by Jews and Turks and as "a painful and often dangerous rite" which discouraged converts to Judaism, and the following century Richard Burton observed that "Christendom practically holds circumcision in horror". This attitude is reflected in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1876) which discusses the practice as a religious rite among Jews, Moslems, the ancient Egyptians and tribal peoples in various parts of the world. The author of the entry rejected sanitary explanations of the procedure in favour of a religious one: "like other body mutilations ... [it is] of the nature of a representative sacrifice". By 1910 the entry had been turned on its head: "This surgical operation, which is commonly prescribed for purely medical reasons, is also an initiation or religious ceremony among Jews and Mahommedans": now it was primarily a medical procedure and only after that a religious ritual. The entry explained that "in recent years the medical profession has been responsible for its considerable extension among other than Jewish children ... for reasons of health" (11th edition, Vol. 6). By 1929 the entry is much reduced in size and consists merely of a brief description of the operation, which is "done as a preventive measure in the infant" and "performed chiefly for purposes of cleanliness". Ironically, readers are then referred to the entries for "Mutilation" and "Deformation" for a discussion of circumcision in its religious context (14th edition, 1929, Vol. 5). As David Gollaher remarks in his fascinating exploration of the subject, by the late nineteenth century doctors made a sharp distinction between ritual circumcision (primitive, dangerous and bizarre) and the sort of preventive circumcisions they carried out (a rational medical necessity).
I'd think sand under the foreskin would really piss a guy off, but if the religious texts are any indication, circumcision didn't really chill anyone out.
Reminds me of this (obligatory bad word warning):
mishkin,
Yes the wine represents His blood and the bread represents His body which we take as a remembrance of what He did for us at the cross. Obviously it is figurative because we are not really eating His body or drinking His blood. Now some systems actually assert that it is really those things, this called unwisely transubstantiation. If it were true then one can say they practise cannibalism.