Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament 1165
earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."
Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most "Jedi" are simply making a statement that belief in the force is no more rational than belief in any other religion.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
FUNNY (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Insightful)
there are a lot less rational things than Christianity.
Congressional equivalent (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US, I suspect a politician making light of religion in this way would upset a lot of people in The Bible Belt.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:1, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:1, Insightful)
Or did people not even think that he was making a satarical attack against the new bill that Labour are seeking to impose?
I read it, and then instantly saw the humour in it. Or did no one else think to read between the lines.
Again, the slashdot community attempt to do the javelin and 100m sprint events together.
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely different to claim to believe in Jedi and to claim to BE a Jedi. According to the books I've read and the movies, a Jedi is capable of performing these actions. They all have their "talents" but to be a Jedi you have to be able to manipulate the force in some tangible and demonstrable way.
The water to wine thing doesn't hold. It's not a commonly held dogma (leaving backwoods ministers from crazyville out) that Christians are given controllable powers. If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
Re:They Voted Him In (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is a smart guy using satire to ridicule the bill in a fairly subtle way. So yes, I suppose you could say that it does give insight into the type of people who get voted in.
And in case anyone is wondering about the obsequious thanks to Jack Cunningham in the speech, it is traditional to thank your predecessor in your first speech to the commons.
May the Force be with nobody (Score:5, Insightful)
That wasn't a Christian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They Voted Him In (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps he was voted in by an electorate who are concerned about the bill outlawing 'incitement to relgious hatred' that is about to pass through the commons and runs a risk of making various forms of satire and free speech (including your post) potentially illegal.
In any case, we now how cllr's from the BNP, I would rather see a self-proclaimed 'Jedi' in parliment than a nazi-wannabe.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I stood up in Parliment (if an MP) and said I followed the ideals of Hobbits of Middle Earth, and that that was my religious belief.
I mean, that's just something made up in a book...
(kinda like the bible)
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Insightful)
But as far as I'm concerned, ALL religion is made up and it's merely a matter of how long ago and how many people actually believe it presently that marks it as valid or invalid. As early as the age of 10, I realized that all of these other "dead religions" (AKA mythologies) were just as important to those who followed them 'back then' as contemporary religion is today.
I amaze myself even now to wonder if a 10 year old can realize this, then surely anyone should be able to. And from that I moved on to query that since all the others are "invalid" then what makes the "valid" ones different? "Nothing" I concluded.
In short, anyone who is religious is a fool.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I say that there has been so many certified false prophets, and so few reasons to believe accounts of events that took place 2000 years ago (formally chronicled in writing 300 years after the facts, on top of that) that there are precious few reasons to believe the few great prophets of the past have any more credibility.
It's like in a court of law, you can condemn someone solely on indirect evidences, if they overwhelmingly converge towards accusing the defendent. You don't necessarily have to have real evidences to form a judgement.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Than as a Christian, prove you are _like_ Christ.
- Treat all people no matter what their sickness or sexual conduct as God's children.
- Suspend your criticism of other's sins unless you are without
- Put other's well-being before your own
- Live a life of spirituality, not wealth
- Openly critize the leaders of your religion and texts
- Refrain from any anger at any time except in the case when someone is profiting from your religion
- Be willing to sacrifice yourself for what you believe in
Lots of people claim to be Christians. How many really are?
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
no, I actually completely agree with him. There's no such thing as the force, and there never will be :)
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, this is different from other religions how?
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they're just given powers; see the bible. Try drinking poisoning and living, and handling snakes.
Strangely, many christians are curiously reiticient to try these out. And if they don't buy that part of the bible, why the rest?Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, this is slashdot. The majority (or at least the vocal/mod majority) seems to be fairly negative towards Christians and Christian ideas. Witness any of the articles that even broach the topic of evolution, and how many posts are modded up for being anti-creationist and how many are modded down for pointing out that evolution is a theory, not a fact, etc.
Without getting into an argument about it, I just wanted to point out that it's unlikely you'll be modded down for what you said. The only time I've ever been modded Flamebait was for a sarcastic comment pointing out that you can believe in Creation AND microevolution at the same time. If it were all about the power of entrenched religions, I'd not have been modded flamebait, but instead Insightful, just because I defended Creationism.
Just a thought
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:4, Insightful)
This brings up something else that can be irritating about some Christians (and people of other Religious faiths)--many of them don't know anything about the religion that they claim to believe. I can respect almost anyone who is at least consistant and knowledgeable of their own beliefs. Otherwise, I am afraid I must consider them and indoctrinated fool.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
There were also numerous madmen starting cults and preaching this and that, sometimes asking followers to commit mass suicide, or dress in plain white robes to go beg in airport terminals. Those are usually not considered prophets either, apart by their followers. They're madmen. There has been plenty of them too.
Crooks and madmen don't go to crook-and-madmen school. They just are.
Now, ignoring whatever faith you may have in him, based solely on a neutral reading of the scriptures, even considering most accounts of his life are paraboles and not actual fact, what honestly makes you think Jesus wasn't either a crook or a madman? honestly? I can't see much difference myself, try as I might (and believe me, I tried)...
Oh and another thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Thomas did ask for proof, yes, and he got his proof. But Jesus castigated also him for it. Daring to ask for proof was seen as a much weaker for of faith than belief without seeing.
Such a philosophy goes a long way towards explaining the current climate in the US.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:1, Insightful)
What about Scientology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, it's still just BS, Mr. Smartypants.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, I absolutely love the idea of "substantial transformation". I am supposed to believe that this object in front of me has changed in a very profound way. Except that it is identical in form - meaning any physical or chemical test would detect no change whatsoever.
Frankly, if a change in an object is unable to affect ANY of that objects interactions with the world it, it is not much of a change in my book. And claims to the contrary start to sound a lot like snake oil to me.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's sad is seeing people who still believe in hokey old religions that don't make any sense, and they do it without proof.
Heck, if god came down in a burning chariot, and said Follow Me, well, I'd know which side I'd put my money on THEN.
Oh, but religion is worthless without faith, you say. Bull. Why should WE believe, when the people that were THERE had to be shown miracles and such in order to believe? That's not belief, that's just being proven there's someone that can do extraordinary things, or is a real slick huckster.
Well, you just send me every cent you have. No? Why don't you have faith that I will pay back all of your money if you send it to me? I can get AT LEAST 12 people to tell you how trustworthy I am.
You know, people used to worship the sun and moon, ancestors, the spirits of animals and ideas. Would you just call them superstitious primitives? They had just as ardent a belief as you do. The ones who worshipped the sun, the moon, the wind, and their ancestors at least had something concrete to worship, whereas you just have the word of people who existed a couple thousand years ago and wrote letters and ran a despised religion out of basements and catacombs.
Intellectual children, the superstitious, the desperate, or the confused. Those are the kinds of people that believe in a god.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:1, Insightful)
Take Dubya for example, nothing about his words and actions is remotely "Christian"
Fuck him, fuck you, have a nice day.
How long until a Congressional equivalent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Creationism has nothing to do with the Bible (Score:5, Insightful)
Your catagorical disbelief of evolution (as opposed to specific objections, like irregularities in the evidence) is not supported by the world around us, and it is not supported by the very book you claim to follow. It is illogical, irrational, extremely arrogant, and is modded flamebait for very good reason.
As for the "it's just a theory" horseshit, well, if you haven't figured out how worthless that statement is by now, you really are beyond all reason. Things like eletricity and gravity and relativity and nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are all theories, and have all field very real, practical results. Evolution, too, has shown itself to be real as best it can, but no one can prove it to be absolutely, unquestionably true any more than they could prove that an electrons are real by picking one up and showing it to me.
But you go ahead and keep believing that electrons aren't real because you can't observe them directly. Just try not to get hit by a bolt of lightning...
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Money Grab (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:May the Force be with nobody (Score:5, Insightful)
They lie about everything else, why not lie about their religion, too?
Re:A Jedi once bit his sister... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny story (Score:3, Insightful)
The pastor and all the elders died except one.
When asked why he didn't drink with the others he said "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Luke 4:12".
The problem is not a lack of "super powers" but a lack of understanding of the Bible.
When Christians don't understand what the Bible teaches they are bound to do stupid things "in the name of God".
Jesus said:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.' " -Matthew 7:21-23
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Insightful)
I happen to disagree with you. Try taking some Kung Fu classes, you'll soon enough learn otherwise. Better yet, try Tai Chi or Qigong.
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I'm really getting tired of the logic here: I don't understand it, so I will attribute it to God.
If you don't know how something happened, why is a common course of action to give credit to a god for something good happening, when it would be far easier and simpler to just admit you don't know.
I mean, really.... you don't hear many cancer victims blaming Satan for their illness, so why the other way around?
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Insightful)
There are further problems with claims such as you state can happen. The biggest that comes to mind is that you are very careful to use sufficiently ambiguous language so that any demand for emperical testing of a miracle can be headed off. Whatever the cause of an alleged miracle, there is going to be a physical manifestation, and that manifestation ought to be measurable, but you put so much wiggle room in, and it almost seems the reason is to stave off that sort of analysis.
The second has to do with the notion of faith itself. Christians aren't the only people who claim miracles. Many adherents of other faiths also claim that their deities (or other spirits and the like) can also produce supernatural feats. Is it your view that God gives non-Christians a helping hand to, or are the only legitimate miracles those that occur to Christians?
It isn't so much that some people discount claims, but rather that in analyzing any claim, the measure ought to be how extraordinary from every day physical interactions the claim is. If you have an extraordinary claim, then you ought to be prepared to provide extraordinary evidence. No claim, not even one made by scientists, ought to be immune from this. Now, in some cases, an extraordinary claim does have extraordinary evidence, in which case skepticism must be put aside, even if only on the basis of current evidence (with the realization that further evidence may change the situation substantially).
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We've already had Mormons (Score:1, Insightful)
If God created the world, he must not be native to it, thus he is by definition an extra-terrestrial intelligence. To say he isn't is to say he is terrestrial, negating the argument that he created the world.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
"To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom."
Hold the phone... how can it be "manifestly irrational" to criticize someone's race (and what he REALLY means is culture, not race, and we all know it) and yet NOT the same to do so when its their religion.
I reserve the right to mock Mormons, Hindus, hip-hop artists, those who woof, wear bling-bling, thow down 24" spinners on their Escalades, Bhuddists, and all types of niggas equally. The problem becomes when people ASSUME i'm talking about skin colors. I have absolutely no issue with your race - there's nothing you can do about it...
but i have also no issue rightfully criticizing the Mexican culture and its lack of educational discipline by bringing the US 10 million uneducated and pregnant illegal entrants...
i can also criticize white American culture for its inane love of NASCAR as a leitimate sport, belt buckles thge size of satellte dishes, and their insessent need to overfill their homes with crap made by Chinese slave labor.
Niether one of these makes any derrogatory comment about race... i've seen very pale skinned Mexican nationals bring 5 kids here to be clothed, fed, educated, and medicated by my tax dollars (and the money they save me in the price of lettuce doesn't come close to covering the bill, sorry), and i've met some absolutely humbling African people of tremendous stature, wisdom, and courage.
as John Cleese said.. Race "doesntenterintoit!"
I judge by the content of character, not on the content of skin...
but what Rowan says means that i wouldn't get the chance to call him the pasty simpleton cracker limey that he is... and that's just not fair.
Re:Answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about Scientology? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
And you would argue out of ignorance. All of those theories are based on observation and founded in mathematics. The concept of 'chi' has no such foundation, and has not stood up to observation.
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Insightful)
- Suspend your criticism of other's sins unless you are without
- Put other's well-being before your own
Absolutely. Not easily done though.
- Live a life of spirituality, not wealth
This is kind of vague. I assume you are referencing teachings such as "money is the root of all evil", etc. I know many Christians who have given up money and careers to serve others instead.
- Openly critize the leaders of your religion and texts
Huh? What should they be criticized for? Or do you mean examine to see if they are telling the truth? Or are you saying there are a lot of corrupt leaders? Not really sure what you are getting at here.
- Refrain from any anger at any time except in the case when someone is profiting from your religion
I assume you are referring to Jesus driving money changers out of the temple. The money changes had moved into an area of the temple that was to be used for worship. If I recall were also involved in business practices contrary to Jewish law. These money changers were fellow Jews who knew the law and should have known better, but instead they chose to turn God's house into a "den of robbers". They were not only profiting, but openly dishonering God in the temple and preventing others from worship.
- Be willing to sacrifice yourself for what you believe in
How about one better. Be willing to sacrifice yourself for other people even if they don't believe in what you do.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, your belief does not explain reikki. Maybe reikki doesn't work, but to those who believe it does, and there are a lot of them, your personal belief doesn't hold water.
Not commenting on Reikki, but this is a non-argument.
You're effectively saying that since one person thinks one thing is true and one person thinks it's false, the second person doesn't think the thing is true. To say it another way, you're claiming that if one person, anywhere, disagrees with you, to them, you're wrong.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you spent very much time thinking about this. Saying you don't believe in Chi is like you saying "I don't believe in love". If you have never experienced it, you won't believe in it, or have any hope of really understanding it. If you have experienced it, you don't need convincing.
Sure, doctors and scientists might be able to describe it in bland chemical and physical terms, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And when you do, you are missing most of the point.
Re:May the Force be with nobody (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm an atheist.
Re:Good for him (Score:3, Insightful)
If, instead of a mass of piecemeal laws, you simply stated in a single law "this is what (and who) is protected, this is what is prohibited", it would be very clear and very specific as to what was acceptable and what wasn't. Nobody would have to guess anymore.
My problem is that laws are so scattered and scatter-brained, that most people DO have to guess most of the time, to know what is OK and what isn't. Clarification would be a good thing, in that there would be less uncertainty by those who want (or need) to protest against what they see as wrong or unacceptable, but would also close the more dangerous loopholes created by uncertainty by abusers of the law.
The most dangerous criminals of all are not those who break the law - the law knows how to deal with such cases. The truly dangerous crimimals are those who operate entirely within a believable interpretation of the law, such that they can talk their way out of it. What you need is to divide the problem into three parts - what is definitely OK, what is definitely NOT OK, and what is an acceptable grey area that can depend on curcumstance and the like.
A written Constitution - such as that in the US - attempts to define the OK parts, although it generally does a pretty naff job of it, to be honest. It would be far better if the laws were more explicit as to what is intended to be protected (from the perspective of both sides) and what is intended to be illegal, with enough fuzz in the middle for Common Law to operate correctly.
This sort of system would be better than a Constitution, as Constitutions can be abused just as easily as laws but are harder to fix afterwards. (See Prohibition for more details. They added more amendments to fix the balls-up, because it was near-impossible to remove the balls-up.) Laws can be tweaked as necessary, should things change, which they will.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Chinese Medicine is no less strigent of a science and based on thousands of years of observation, and trial and error, with a quarter of the world's population! It's creation was dependent on careful observation.
But to refute your position that it has "not stood up to observation", I'll point you to 127 scientific medical publications on the topic, most of which would seem to support these theories:
References [nih.gov]I'm amused that you think a foundation of mathematics is a magic bullet; that somehow math magically makes hypotheses true. String theory is indeed based heavily on math, but it is far from achieving a conscensus in the scientific community on its "truth". In fact, there's plenty of debate on whether or not it even qualifies as science!
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest you think about it. Mathematical proof are proofs of logic and are inherently self-consistent. They are therefor about as 'true' as anything can be in this world. While mathematics doesn't necessarily have to reflect reality as we see (and measure) it, it just so happens that in many cases it does. If mathematics *didn't* serve as a useful tool to describe physical processes and observed phenomena, we wouldn't be communicating through the interaction of about 500 devices right now, none of which would be even possible to conceive of, let alone construct, without mathematics.
This is how science works:
f(1) = 2, f(2) = 4, f(3) = 6, f(4) = 8,
Your understanding of how science works is misguided. To use your (limited) analogy, it is more like:
We observe 2, 4, 6, 8
We postulate, f(x)=2x, x=1, 2,
We predict: f(5)=10, f(6)=12, f(7)=14
We measure again: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16
We conclude theory is ok for x=5 and look for physical reasons why it falls off, and attempt to refine the theory.