Do you believe in a Higher power?

[woodbuck27]

He scares me

Nutz:

http://bedsidesurprise.ytmnd.com/

The Horror - the Horror - Oh ! The Horror of it !

[Jimx29]

Charting the unchurched in America



State by State breakdown of religious backgrounds





From USA Today

[the_idle_threat]

Higher Power?

[the_idle_threat]

I laugh out loud --- literally --- every time I see this pic.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Higher Power?

I'm not sure people know how bizarre the Rastafarian religion in Jamaica is. It started back around 1930 when the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selalsi, was paying a visit to the island. He was driving along in his motorcade, waiving to the jamaican people, and somebody reported seeing some miracle, an apparition, like a halo formed around his car or something. Rumor spread that a prophet from God was on the Island.

I think Haile Selalsi's was given religious name of "Rastafari."

So a new religion was formed around a mix of African religions, smoking weed, some Judaism. And Haile Selasi was the new prophet at the center. It was suggested he was descended from Hebrew Kings. This is real "Life of Brian" type stuff.

[Fosco33]

Charting the unchurched in America



State by State breakdown of religious backgrounds





From USA Today

That's very interesting. I've travelled a lot more than most people my age and find the general breakdown of non-believers as follows (and no surprise):

West Coast/Upper NW - 20-25%
Midwest, Plain States, Mid Atlantic, Florida, Most of Upper NE Coast - 15%
Deep South - 7%

I also found the relgious choice interesting - to see where various religions congregate. Much like language, religous beliefs can be tracked in an anthropological type study (example - we say bubbler in Milwaukee only - everywhere else in the world its water fountain). I'm gonna read more about this phenomenom but here's my early guess:

- Most blacks are religious and tend to be a higher % of the population in the South where they've lived through slavery and the effects of post slavery (thus needing community support, etc).

- Jews congregated in NY (upper NE coast) and CA (LA specifically) for various reasons; much like 7th Day Adventists when they came from countries like the Phillipines (to be w/ people like yourself, etc.) and of course our Morman friends in Utah

- The progressive nature of the West Coast has led people to non-belief despite a high percentage of illegal immigrants (very high % of belief) - beginning w/ gold rush entreprenuers and risk takers

- Elsewhere (Midwest, Plain States qnd the Upper NE coast) have arguably the best education in the country (by stats) and possibly the world. The puritan foundation of this country has led to a long held family style tradition of religious beliefs (you believe what your parents tell you is correct).

- An anomoly of belief percentage is N Dakota (93%) vs their neighors (Montana 80%, S Dakota and remaining boarder/regional states are 85%).

Anyone else have a theory???

EDIT for clarity...

[woodbuck27]

Higher Power?

I'm not sure people know how bizarre the Rastafarian religion in Jamaica is. It started back around 1930 when the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selalsi, was paying a visit to the island. He was driving along in his motorcade, waiving to the jamaican people, and somebody reported seeing some miracle, an apparition, like a halo formed around his car or something. Rumor spread that a prophet from God was on the Island.

I think Haile Selalsi's was given religious name of "Rastafari."

So a new religion was formed around a mix of African religions, smoking weed, some Judaism. And Haile Selasi was the new prophet at the center. It was suggested he was descended from Hebrew Kings. This is real "Life of Brian" type stuff.

Here it is:

When, in 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen, great-grandson of King Saheka Selassie of Shoa, was made Emperor of Ethiopia and proclaimed Negusa Negast (King of Kings), Jamaica's slum-dwellers and rural poor, for whom Garvey had been something of a gallant oracle, regarded this event as the fulfillment of a prophecy of deliverance. Indeed, Ethiopia had symbolized all of Africa for the slave-descended Jamaicans since as far back as 1784, when American Baptist minister George Liele founded the Ethiopian Baptist Church on the island. These "Garveyites" were awed by newspaper and newsreel accounts of the pomp of Selassie's coronation in Addis Ababa and took note of the sybolism in the choice of his formal title, Haile Selassie being an honorific meaning "Power of the Holy Trinity." Selassie, they knew, claimed to be directly descended from King Solomon, so they reasoned that he must be the long-awaited savior of the planet's far-flung African peoples.

In Africa, Selassie was hailed as the greatest of modern monarchs and a symbol of the continent's vast potential. In the United States, residents of Harlem jammed movie houses to watch the newsreel footage of his coronation. And in the Caribbean, as elsewhere in the West, the advent of Selassie's reign was taken as shining proof for all downtrodden people of color that, as the back-to-Africa Garveyites and the firebrands of the syncretistic Rastafarian cult had foretold, the day of Deliverance was at hand.

To the Garveyites, Haile Selassie I was a hero without peer. To the Rastafarians he was the Living God of Abraham and Isaac, He Whose Name Should Not Be Spoken.

In Jamaica, as elsewhere in the world, the 1930s were years of social upheaval. Labour unrest on the island culminated in the vicious suppression of striking sugar-cane workers in Westmoreland: four strikers were shot dead, and dozens rounded up and jailed, including Alexander Bustamente, the leader of the new Jamaican labour movement.

It was a perfect context for the rise of a band of islanders who divorced themselves mentally from an oppressive social system. This cult, Rastafarianism, thus became cast as a religion of the dispossessed among those who failed to acknowledge the intellectual rigor of many practitioners (the depth of Biblical and historical knowledge displayed at a Rastafarian reasoning is intense).

In the hills of eastern Jamaica, Rastafarian encampments sprang up; a life of asceticism and artistry became the armour of the religion's followers against Babylon. Leonard Howell, one of the island's chief propagators of the religion, founded the Pinnacle encampment in an abandoned estate between Kingston and Spanish Town. Howell eventually decided that it was not Haile Selassie who was Jah but himself. In 1954 he was thrown into a mental home, and Pinnacle was closed down.

The dreads, as Rastafarians became known colloquially, spilled out into the ghettoes of west Kingston. Around the time of independence in 1962, there were a number of violent incidents involving fire-arms between Rastas and the police, making headlines in the Daily Gleaner. The movement was now traveling with the speed of a bush-fire into the popular psyche of Jamaica.

On 21 April 1966, an event of extraordinary significance was to occur for all followers of Rastafari.

His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, was due to arrive at Kingston airport. Away in Delaware at the time, Bob Marley had written to his wife Rita: 'If possible, go and see for yourself.'



From her vantage point on Winward Road, which leads in from Palisadoes airport, Rita Marley had what was perhaps the most profound of many remarkable, God-given experiences she would enjoy in her life.



Seated in Governor-General Clifford Campbell's purring official limousine, Haile Selassie was driven into Kingston. Rita eased her way to the front of the crowd on this section of the Winward Road and stood in the warm, light rain, waiting for the car to come nearer. Rita was anxious. She had made a secret pact: if, somehow, she saw the sign she was looking for, she would accept the divine status of Haile Selassie.

As the Daimler limousine drew parallel with her, Rita's thoughts were not positive. "How is it they are saying that this man is so great," she wondered, "when he looks so short, with his army hat over his head in such a way I can't even see his eyes."

"Then I said to myself, 'What am I even thinking about? Jesus is a spirit.'" At that exact moment Haile Selassie raised his face: he looked directly into Rita's eyes and waved. "And I looked into his hand and there was the nail-print. It was a mark, and I could only identify that mark with the scriptures of history, saying, 'When you see him, you will know him by the nail-print in his hands.'"

"So when I saw this, I said to myself that this could be true, this could be the man of whom it was said: 'before the year 2,000 Christ will be a man walking on this earth.'"

[HarveyWallbangers]

- Elsewhere (Midwest, Plain States (less N Dakota)) and the Upper NE coast have arguably the best education in the country (by stats) and possibly the world.

What do you mean "less North Dakota?" North Dakota ranks very high in education. There are many ways to measure, but they rank high in most key categories--like high school graduation rates (1st), test scores (1st in SAT test scores, generally top 5-10 in ACT test scores), percentage of college graduates, high school graduates with college acceptances (1st), etc. There's no way to absolutely rank states on education (various reports differ, depending on the criteria), but it's clear that North Dakota ranks near the top in education.

Much of what you wrote is true, but you lose credibility with a statement like that.

The only thing they rank poorly in is the amount they spend/student (like many rural states), and that's about the most assinine criteria to go off. Just look at the difference in teacher's salaries and cost of living (e.g. it takes a lot less to build and maintain school infrastructure), and that will explain away most of those differences.

[the_idle_threat]

Alrighty then.

[woodbuck27]

Rastafarian Beliefs, Practises and Sarements

Rastafarians acknowledge that their religion is the blending of the purest forms of both Judaism and Christianity; they also accept the Egyptian origins of both these religions.

In affirming the divinity of Haile Selassie, Rastafari rejects the Babylonian hypocrisy of the modern church. The church of Rome, and even the council of Rome, are considered to be particularly Babylonian: was it not from this city that Mussolini invaded the holy land of Ethiopia in 1935? Religions always reflect the social and geographical environment out of which they emerge, and Jamaican Rastafari is no exception: for example, the use of marijuana as a sacrament and aid to meditation is logical in a country where a particularly potent strain of 'herb' grows freely.

Marijuana: The Weed of Wisdom



In fact, the herb "ganja" (marijuana) was regarded as "wisdomweed," and Rasta leaders urged that it be smoked as a religious rite, alleging that it was found growing on the grave of King Solomon and citing biblical passages, such as Psalms 104:14, to attest to its sacramental properties:

"He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth."

[HarveyWallbangers]

Alrighty then.

Have to set the record straight. If I came on and said Wisconsin's education system was poor, I'm sure there would be a boatload of folks setting the record straight. We're damn proud of our educational standing in North Dakota--just like folks from Wisconsin and the other Upper Midwestern states are.

[woodbuck27]

Alrighty then.

Have to set the record straight. If I came on and said Wisconsin's education system was poor, I'm sure there would be a boatload of folks setting the record straight. We're damn proud of our educational standing in North Dakota--just like folks from Wisconsin and the other Upper Midwestern states are.

That's not all you should be proud of Harvey:

[HarveyWallbangers]

Funny, Woody!

My wife was Miss Northern Lights, I believe.

[the_idle_threat]

Alrighty then.

Have to set the record straight. If I came on and said Wisconsin's education system was poor, I'm sure there would be a boatload of folks setting the record straight. We're damn proud of our educational standing in North Dakota--just like folks from Wisconsin and the other Upper Midwestern states are.

This is true. From the sound of it, ND has plenty to be proud of in its education system.

[woodbuck27]

Funny, Woody!

My wife was Miss Northern Lights, I believe.

Northern Lights. Yaaaa . . . that's the joint.