Tom Petty Is God
Offline https://music.yahoo.com/blogs/music-news/tom-petty-decries-catholic-church-playing-dumb-about-203906946.html
Tom Petty says something that is so dead on it should make Catholics every where quit the church.
"Catholics, don't write me," Petty tells the magazine. "I'm fine with whatever religion you want to have, but it can't tell anybody it's OK to kill people, and it can't abuse children systematically for God knows how many years… If I was in a club, and I found out that there had been generations of people abusing children, and then that club was covering that up, I would quit the club." He says he "felt that I was being asked to play dumb" and believe "that 'OK, well, they paid some money, so it's all over.' I don't trust that."
Right on man!
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He is right, so don't in other threads hide behind your political correctness. Religion itself needs to be taken away as an excuse. That is not the same as demanding we rid the world of it. His rightful condemnation of the church which you agree with and I agree with, is precisely why religion should be treated as the superflous and dangerous distraction it is.
Religion as human right should never be allowed excuses to cover up bad behavior. Understand our species flawed perception then you will understand why I do not give any religion a pass.
Don't let your evolutionary sense of empathy cloud your judgment. There is a huge difference between human rights, and the bad logic humans use that allow religion to be a cover for bad behavior. Otherwise you are simply pretending the volcano wont ever explode because it is dormant most of the time.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
As I was reading I actually thought I would get through it with out you talking about evolution but I was wrong.
LOL "evolution" is brian's code word for "i have no fucking clue but i'll never admit it."
BRIAN, YOU'RE A FUCKING COWARD.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I like Tom Petty. Good for him for speaking plainly about the long running sex scandals of the Catholic Church and their deliberate cover-up.
Hmmmm, I remember the year 1980 being an art major in my third floor dorm room at North Texas State University and first hearing Tom Petty's Refugee, Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker and Cars by Gary Numan. God I'm so old.
I think a religious order shouldn't be subject to the same standards we would apply to non religious community groups - the standards for religious orders should be far higher. Further, and rather tediously for regular readers, I would argue those high standards need to be applied doctrinally. As we all know, there is a core of believers in the monotheistic faiths that embrace literal interpretations and turn themselves inside out believing them true.
No moral ambiguity can be tolerated in a moral code that is often set above the law, notwithstanding the vagaries of language and subjective interpretation. How do christians unravel the internal contradictions of a doctrine whose central figure espouses concepts like 'Love your brother as yourself' and 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire'.
P.S. I remember hearing Cars in 1980, too. Somehow that album always reminded me of the film, Journy to the Centre of the Earth. The crystal sound, maybe. Think I prefer the bleakness of Are Friends Electric.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
A higher standard? Yeah, I think that is fair.
I remember first hearing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers while some kid had this giant boom box on the baseball field. The box was so big that he had to rest it on the handle bars but he couldn't go very fast because it kept sliding off. The songs were "You got lucky" and "Refugee" on the radio. I was like, "Wow! That band kicks ass". I also remember The Romantics being on after those two songs. The songs were "What I like about you" and "Talking in your sleep".
Those Romantics kicked ass - maybe it was the post-punk up-beat, or a drummer doing vocals, or the way the verses segued into the chorus. Funny the way music was in those days - I think many kids of that era connected to the same songs, there were fewer bands, fewer free access points, fewer overt genres. You sat by the Sanyo listening to 2MMM watching the VU needles bounce longing for your special song to play. I remember the switchover to stereo. It blew my fucking mind. I think you could play the top 50 selling songs from the second half of the 70s and the first half of the 80s and every then teen in the anglosphere would sing the words. A different world now.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
true. i'm from a later generation, but i would say things were still close to that in the mid-'90s. there was no napster yet (or at least not widespread, especially in our little podunk, dial-up town). no boy bands yet either. every kid loved bush, pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, nirvana, the gin blossoms, etc. and the music was good, goddammit! and it was on the fucking radio! then suddenly everything went to hell, and shortly after that i discovered prewar blues and retreated into esotericism and bitterness. now i'm accused of being a music snob, and i am, but dammit, the record companies forced my hand. there was a time when shit was good! i may wax poetic about buell kazee and blind lemon jefferson, but i'll still belt out "hey jealousy" with the best of them.
i know this will sound crotchety, but i don't care: i blame the internet. if i could go back to any time, i would go back to the '80s or '90s, before the internet but still a time i remember and can relate to, and see, knowing what i know now, just how different life was. i just remember the pre-internet world being so rich. remember painfully saving up for that casette you wanted, then learning every goddamn song on it just to get your money's worth? i used to know every word to every song on "a boy named goo." remember waiting all evening at home for a chick to call? remember when going out was the only way to socialize, and you looked forward to it for days or even weeks, imagining, in vivid detail, how you wanted every moment of that party to go? remember waiting all week for your favorite tv show and being surprised by it? the internet took all of that from us and i miss it, for fuck's sake. everyday life is just so fucking blase now. instant gratification fucking sucks.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
There's a lot of truth to what you say, mate. Maybe it's that you are getting a bit older - the ability to have anything you like within the bounds of reason does take some of that magical anticipation away - especially with something as affordable as music. Instead you find yourself hyper-consuming, reading AllMusic or Metacritic all day long and swiping songs to see if you'll like the album. The 90s was a great time for music - one of the best times in history, I think. I liked the 80s because I relate to it but 90s music was another animal altogether. The rediscovery of the guitar. Hell, yeah.
It's true about people not going out to socialise - these days I run through facebook and go home by myself. And even if you do go out, I think people have lost some of the capacity for social osmosis I grew up with. The Internet. When we started our business in '98 it was a clunky heap of shit. Now it's creating unity of thought. We are all outraged by MH17 but annoyed there's comparatively less coverage of the un-accidental Gaza. My 85 year old mother is reading Science Daily and my niece keeps sending me links to Cabin Porn. Makes me feel like I'm living in a fucking termite mound. One thing a hive mind might offer us, however, is globalisation of conventional morality. Kohlberg would be very pleased.
P.S. Waiting for phone calls? You technophile, you. I used to wait for the mail - and I still have every soppy love letter a girl ever wrote me. And on the topic of letters, has anyone else noticed their handwriting has gone to shit?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I always print, my cursive writing looks like the squiggly line a seismograph produces during a major earth quake. Plus I print really small, a habit I developed from taking notes in school.
I wonder if it is just me getting older, but the stuff I hear on the radio today sucks. There are some good bands but I can't stand to listen to the radio for more than a few songs. And don't misunderstand me but there was a lot of junk music back in the 80's, so I don't think the 80's are a gift to mankind.
I use a print/cursive style when I sign my name. I rarely write any more. 99.99% of every thing I do is printed on the computer.
Perfect post, you should get triple points.
When I was in the Marines phone calls and letters were a huge deal for us. Now they have Skype?
I remember saving up to go in to Peaches and purchase albums. I still have a stack of them in the corner.
What kills me is some records I didn't buy which now sell on ebay for $1,000's. Apparently some bands who weren't highly successful at first had their original albums tossed out but when they found success their "lost" albums became collectable.
I have a fondness for the majority of the new wave, art rock music from that era. Also Metallica was just getting started and put out what I consider to be their best work. I saw Motley Crue in Dallas back in 1985 at Reunion Arena and also saw a still very unknown Oingo Boingo ( think Danny Elfman ) at Six Flags Over Texas in 1983. I hate crowds now that I'm an old man but the last live performance I attended was to see Los Lobos.
My handwriting is attrocious looks like it was written by a child or someone with parkinsons unless I focus really hard. I type almost everything and I have found that I can type faster than I ever thought I could on my tablet. When I first got it, I avoided long messages, now I will even reply to Cap on it.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
I like the stuff coming out in rock right now, I think it is as good as it ever was. Some of the softer rock groups are pretty good too (eg Imagine Dragons, One Republic etc.) The top 40 and pop have gone to hell, and I never liked hip hop. Country has become terrible again.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
i'm not saying rock is bad now. it just doesn't get radio play like it did in the '90s.
I stopped listening to the radio in the early 90's, and I still listen to a new song I like over and over. So I'm certainly one to agree with many points here.
Every now and then I hear something good so I look it up and download some samples. If I really like the group I'll buy some albums if I can, but most of the music stores are dead so I don't often get the opportunity. Paying for digital copies is a shit system with too many limitations so I won't go there.
TV doesn't surprise me anymore but not because things were spoiled on the internet. I've become an expert at avoiding spoilers. It's just there's not many, if any, unique plotlines left for me to experience. Even the red wedding in GOT didn't surprise me as it might have because there was too much foreshadowing. Hell, my mom was reading in the room as I watched the first episode in the series and correctly predicted the general futures of every Stark kid right off the bat. Fifteen minutes into the first episode and she says Robb is going to die. I shudder to think what tv, books, and movies will be like for me when I hit her age.
I was never so much into parties that I'd look forward to them that much. The girl lived a few houses down so the phone wasn't necessary. Never liked the mail or the phone.
My handwriting was always shit lol. My printing too. I have to concentrate and put my wrist into cramp in order to write something for someone else to read. Probably doesn't help that my mom had a typewriter and school already had computers in my early memories (monochrome Apples but still), so I got into typing very early and always preferred it to writing.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
i grew up smack in the middle of a 900-acre cattle farm. our driveway was over half a mile long. so yeah, the phone was my lifeline, at least until i got my license.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Wow and I thought I had it rough.
There is no way to discuss life, much less human behavior without discussing evolution. If there were no atoms that evolved to become carbon based life, there would be no humans to either fact find or live in delusion.
Tom Petty was right, but it is because of bad logic and religion that gives humans an excuse to cover up crime. The real evolutionary reason those crimes exist is becuase the perp psychologically is filling a gap of insecurity by using power and control to fill that gap.
Neither the good or bad humans do is a result of a god or satan, or belonging to the wrong club. Our ability to be cruel or compassionate is in our evolution, not the clubs we invent.
You can find cover ups in other religions as well. You can find bigotry and sexism and power over minorities at an oppressive levels as well. Labels, not even "atheist" is atom based morality. All human behavior that is observable can be studied and understood through study, not through personal tribes or social norms.
Our behavior is universal both good and bad. Just like volcanos are both destructive and constructive. It does no good to look at a tribe or label and assume it is always good, just because we observe it.
You can accept the good in our species without buying into the nessesity of superstitions that or nothing but personal sugar pills.
You CANNOT rid the world of religion, but it should not have a place to hide either.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog