Destruction of barabbas` and the Religious Life

[10:08] <RenaissanceMan> My ancestors, in the 1880s. My great grandparents. They lived in small towns in Wales. Eastern England. In a country and a time where their church controlled eductation. Welsh Methodists. And because the church controlled education, they only learned what they needed to further their religious beleifs.
[10:09] <RenaissanceMan> So everyone who went to school (which was not actually everyone)... Everyone! Everyone who went to school learned how to read. But only how to read one book: the bible. And only in Welsh. No arithmetic. No science. No history. Just the bible.
[10:09] <RenaissanceMan> But everyone could expound beautifully (in Welsh) on the finest points of theology, at great length, by the time they were finished school. Couldn't add. Or subtract. Or multiply. Or divide.
[10:09] <RenaissanceMan> So the owners of the mines they worked in couldn't promote any of them into management positions. Instead they imported Scottish men to manage the mines, since Scottish Presbytyrians were allowed to study arithmetic in school.
[10:09] <RenaissanceMan> Average age of a Welshman under Welsh Methodism: 42. Living a life of horrifying poverty. Working every day of the lives from the age of 12 to the day they died in the mines. But, boy they sure could tell you a lot about the bible.
[10:10] <RenaissanceMan> A grim life lived in the desperate hope that things would all be ok once you died. That's what life looks like living in a theocratic society. Not a life I am remotely interested in living.
[10:11] <RenaissanceMan> Lest we forget what life looks like before secularism became ascendent.
[10:11] <fred__w> renman  you think that is a grim life  when in fsct  it could be in their view a rich life
[10:11] <NuzzlePaws> What's a good, low budget, meal that can be prepared in very little time that I can eat at college for lunch?
[10:11] <NuzzlePaws> Hopefully something that doesn't taste like poop
[10:12] <RenaissanceMan> barabbas`: It's all good now. Because people like you constitute only 3% of the general population. And have no power. But if you did have real power, there's no question in my mind that you would run the world the same way you run this channel.
[10:12] <Sparkbutt> RenaissanceMan, agreed.
[10:12] #christiandebate Cannot send to channel
[10:13] <RenaissanceMan> barabbas`: So it's worth remembering what the world would look like if people like you ran it. Because it was not taht long ago that people like you did run the world