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Joe King's avatar

𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑠

That makes no sense. Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how can it be beautiful when there's no one to behold?

This is the same kind of weak argument that that bigots use when trying to come up with a non-religious justification for prohibiting marriage equality. If preserving the beauty of the shoreline during the morning hours of Sundays is so important, why isn't it just as important the rest of the week? Keeping the beach closed until noon every day would have been a real asshole move, but would have strengthened their beauty argument from insanely bad to just ridiculously bad.

Public property is for the 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰, not just the local cult.

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Linda's avatar

The cross shaped pier is hideous. Form follows function?

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Maltnothops's avatar

Hemant mentioned that the cross part no longer exists. I thought he meant the cross beam. But I just looked at google and it turns out that the entire light colored part of the pier no longer exists. Also, the photos in the OP must have been at high tide. The google pic shows that what is left of the pier doesn’t even make it to the water.

ETA: Interestingly, Google identifies the pier as the “Cross Pier” even though the photo clearly shows nothing cross shaped. Some of the pilings where the cross portion was are still there.

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Mark Carpenter's avatar

"But I just looked at google and it turns out that the entire light colored part of the pier no longer exists."

Hurricanes and nor'easters have a NASTY habit of taking out piers! Just by virtue of the type of construction: a cross-shaped pier is BEGGING for waves to demolish it!

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Psittacus Ebrius's avatar

What's left of that pier needs to be demolished and removed. It's sullying the beach.

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Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz's avatar

One o't'crossbeam's gone out askew on treadle.

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Psittacus Ebrius's avatar

Do you suppose it even registers with these zealots that a cross was used by the Romans to torture and execute people? Find another symbol. And to this group in particular, pool your funds and buy your own island.

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Linda's avatar

🤣

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Whitney's avatar

I suspect that the real problem with Christian symbols is twofold. First, there are so many different sects of Christianity they have a serious identity problem. Second, they've used so many symbols down through the centuries they don't know the meanings of any of 'em anymore. Probably it doesn't help that Christian churches have a nasty tendency toward hijacking symbols from other faiths as well, in what I consider a pitiful attempt to co-opt those faiths by theft.

I mean, I once saw someone claiming that the unicorn is a Christian symbol. I'm no expert, but I must admit my poor brain locked up at that one.

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ericc's avatar
2dEdited

I'm okay with it. But then I think in practicalities: that shape affords more space for fishermen than just a straight line. Many piers adopt an 'L' shape just for this reason.

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Linda's avatar

I see it as a way to insert their symbols into nature or as in to prop up or replace the simple beauty of nature itself. Serving no real purpose other than this. It adds to the symbols that already dominate the beach, except it’s slightly more permanent. In my opinion, it shows a disrespect for nature in response to the quote Joe mentioned above.

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Boreal's avatar

Current photo of Ocean Grove xtian residents.

https://ibb.co/Zpmt0ff4

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Hannah's avatar

I fell for that.

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Septuagenarian Contrarian's avatar

🤣🤣🤣

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Paulie's avatar

I was Rick Rolled! 😂

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Jelly's avatar

Furthermore the beach is empty 7-8 months of the year. There’s plenty of time for unsullied beauty if that’s what they are truly after.

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John Smith's avatar

I have to say again and again: I AM UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO RESPECT ANY PART OF YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS; NOR AM I UNDER ANY OBLIGATION TO FOLLOW ANY OF YOUR RELIGIOUS RULES!!!!!!!

If you don’t want to go to the beach on Sunday that is your right, you don’t get to dictate what everybody else does. Christians always seem to think every space they walk into they own it. And they (only they) can dictate how the space is used. We need to continually push back on that notion, otherwise Christians will start to think they own other people’s private space (such a person home/apartment, etc; and can dictate what can be done in that space as well). We can’t let them get away with it!

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oraxx's avatar

Once people become convinced they're operating under divine sanction, they can justify just about anything.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

They might have an argument if the beach was privately owned by them. They do not have such an argument. It's a public beach, accessible to all.

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John Smith's avatar

My point was public or private (other person property) as soon as a Christian walks into a space they THINK they own it and can dictate how it can be used! That is the problem I have with Christians!

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ericc's avatar

Yet another example of the issues associated with public/private partnerships...at least in cases where the government does not make it part of the contract that the private entity running things for them must obey the same rules the government would.

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Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

Since they received nourishment it has to be open to the public. That is a kerfuffle one of our beach communities is going through now. ". . . the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which now requires all beachfront property owners to grant ongoing public access to their property." That or no renourishment for their property.

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐲𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬

https://www.tbnweekly.com/pinellas_county/article_a1ad0444-5e05-49b5-bf5b-dcb38b5e9249.html

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Holytape's avatar

And Jesus said to the crowd, "Blessed are the petty, for they shall make the trivial a mountain. And blessed are the small-minded, for they shall cover the world in their ignorance. And blessed are the vendictive, because fuck you that's why."

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

No, he said blessed are the pretty for they are a sight to behold, but not on Sunday morning before noon.

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larry parker's avatar

Cheese makers are not petty, small-minded or vindictive. (And can spell. : )

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justifiable's avatar

What a friend we have in cheeses!

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

Forcing the beach closed during church time is an admission that even their followers would rather not attend services if there is anything at all else to do.

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Kukaan Ei Missään's avatar

I usually describe the Scottish scenario on articles like this, but here is a different take.

I did my doctorate in North Wales, where chapel (https://geirfan.cymru/capel.html) is the place the local Welsh Methodists used to go on a Sunday.

The town I was in, Bangor, was "dry" on a Sunday, i.e. no alcohol was supposedly sold, and one had to go up to Conway if one wanted a drink. I say "supposedly" because there was no shortage of people drinking in the RAF club (Bangor must have had a huge number of airmen).

Conway has a nice castle, as does the neighbouring town to Bangor, Caernarfon. In the former town you could get a drink, while in the latter you could not. So, where do the tourists go?

By the time I left, the local traders had prevailed over the Methodists, and you could have a meal with a glass of wine or beer on a Sunday.

(Aside: this was the time that there was a push to label everything in Welsh. We had a visit from a guy with a clipboard who told us that they were finding out the names of all the rooms, to that they could produce signs in Welsh and English. He asked us what the room we were in was called, to which I responded, "the Microwave Spectroscopy Laboratory". We never did get a sign)

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Matilda's avatar

Bangor Uni! If you go to the Llechwedd slate caverns, open to the public now to show the harsh conditions that slate miners endured, you'll see a table in the corner of each cavern where they ate their lunch. And a jar in the centre where miners put a ha'penny a week to found Bangor University - and that was a sacrificial sum for them. In the 1880s, thousands of them marched through Bangor at its opening. My grandad was one of those. Like all miners he didn't want the next generation to have a grim life in the quarries. and knew education was the way out, otherwise it was an early death from Emphysema leaving your family destitute. My dad graduated there in the 1930s. In 2000, my daughter graduated, winning the top prize for her first class honours degree. How proud her grandfather and great-grandfather would be to know that!

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Kukaan Ei Missään's avatar

"Bangor Uni! If you go to the Llechwedd slate caverns, open to the public now to show the harsh conditions that slate miners endured"

We used to have friends who lived in Bethesda, so we saw quite a lot of the quarrying at Penrhyn.

We recently travelled to Seil, one of the Slate Islands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Islands,_Scotland), staying at the "Tigh An Truish" (the spelling may be different, but the words aren't too dissimilar, this is the "House of Trousers").

https://ibb.co/rRn8ZXtv

https://ibb.co/kgbX2spH

Like Bethesda, slate is everywhere. Also like Bethesda, it is raining.

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Matilda's avatar

Yup, I loved my visit to the Isle of Seil. I had 3 academically inclined daughters who passed welsh as a 2nd language GCSE with top grades, but then ignored the language - cos, after all, studying it at uni, would commit them to living in this small rather insular place for the rest of their lives. And as one said, when she got a Saturday job at 16yo at Marks and Spencers, our big store chain and was asked to speak welsh to welsh customers, 'No way am I going to say in welsh to a woman looking at bras, 'Can I help you find the right cup-size, madam? Would you like me to measure you up to be sure? '

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Matilda's avatar

Well well! Greetings to you from my village next to Conwy! Far from dry now of course, but bi-lingualism is mandatory and students must take the welsh as a second language or welsh as a first language GCSE exm at 16yo, as part of the National Curriculum. That doesn't mean the number of welsh speakers is growing. It's the opposite. I recall that when the last UK census was taken, only 3% of the population locally replied in welsh.

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Kukaan Ei Missään's avatar

"That doesn't mean the number of welsh speakers is growing. It's the opposite. "

It is the same with Gaelic, here in Scotland. While it is one of the three official languages of Scotland (English and Lowland Scots being the others), usage is falling.

The last set of census data showed that 57,000 people in Scotland spoke Gaelic, and most of these were in the Western Isles (Eilean Siar). Only 0.5% of the population speak Gaelic at home. Compare with the 54,000 people who speak Polish.

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Matilda's avatar

I want to comment on your reference to chapel too. For those who don't know, for centuries here you were either born 'church' - anglican, or 'chapel' - nonconformist. Chapels hated each others' guts, poached the best singers from the choirs of other chapels in order to win the prestigious singing prizes at local Eisteddfodai and boasted about the superior quality of the apple pies served at their harvest suppers and split and split again over doctrine. Example: Zion Chapel here closed, but Bethel Chapel, just around the corner was open when my neighbour's MIL was dying. She'd been a member of Zion for decades. She now said to her DIL, 'When I die, don't take me into Bethel' - i.e. for my funeral, 'Take me into the church.' IOW, I've hated Bethel for years as well as the church, but those baby-baptising anglicans are preferable to Bethel which was always our rival and worthy only of our hatred! (I could recount several more such conversations on this topic!)

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larry parker's avatar

It took a while, but OGCMA couldn't pass pier review.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

Xtians really need to keep their hands off things they don't actually own.

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Kay-El's avatar

I find it interesting that the cross portion was wiped out during a hurricane. Divine retribution for being mean spirited and judgmental? :D

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larry parker's avatar

Signs signs everywhere signs.

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Troublesh00ter's avatar

♫♪ Do THIS, don't do THAT / Can't you read the SIGNS? .♪♫

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dammit barry's avatar

A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.

Austin Smith, 30, pleaded guilty in mid-November to charges of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, and illegal signing of election petitions. He had acknowledged trying to use petitions with forged signatures that he knew were false and forging a dead woman’s signature on a nominating petition.

https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/612145268_1199818145633868_382117482020903737_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640_tt6&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=laNgE7RIgCQQ7kNvwFG9XnE&_nc_oc=AdlYBq-xwyRL01mDJcwN5SQO-1kpmxDrVbIVRgp2zoPPm31IyVc6r_E1uTkRtAbraeg&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-1.xx&_nc_gid=CCEJqQl37TBP-nMArkH1ZQ&oh=00_AfpXCHLt6d5rEbMwvun8WtX3ut4RHY8onAqihkXyJlqopQ&oe=69648345

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NOGODZ20's avatar

Each and every time we see a genuine instance of voter fraud, it's always by a Republican. NEVER by a Democrat.

Party of Law and Order? Given what's going on with the GOP controlling everything, that claim is an even bigger joke.

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Troublesh00ter's avatar

How many times have we said it? Every ACCUSATION is a CONFESSION.

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Boreal's avatar

Lock him up.

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John Smith's avatar

Or hang them by their tiny balls!😇

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Boreal's avatar

OT:

Unarmed that I know of and shot in the face by Nazi thugs.

ICE agent shoots and kills a woman during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ice-agent-shoots-kills-woman-182329003.html

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Joan the Dork's avatar

And per fucking usual, the camera footage totally contradicts the taxpayer-funded murderers' official account of the event.

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Whitney's avatar

Yeah, I think most folks have seen at least some of the footage by now. Honestly, I don't blame that poor woman for being scared, I'd be terrified too if men in dark colors with face masks tried to open my vehicle door.

This violence the government is practicing will beget more violence. Be careful out there, folks, and try to stay safe in a world gone crazy.

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Joan the Dork's avatar

𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯: "I don't want to play in the sandbox right now."

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮: "That's your choice, sweetie; nobody's going to make you play in the sandbox."

𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯: "But I don't want anyone else to play in the sandbox either!"

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮: "Sorry, sweetie, but that's not how recess works."

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

“”During this 0.5% of the year, the view of the ocean from the OGCMA’s boardwalk and pier is of sublime natural beauty without the visual elements of beach umbrellas, tents, and masses of people,” Badger wrote”

So, if no one’s allowed to access this sublime beach when it is at its most beautiful, then what is the point? Who gets to view the beauty? It’s like a rainbow. A rainbow doesn’t exist if it is not perceived by eyes, if you restrict the eyes from looking at it, then it isn’t there. The beauty of a beach isn’t anything until someone perceives it. So if no one is allowed to be there to see it, it doesn’t exist.

There’s my philosophy for the day. This church is just selfish and greedy. Which is a defining feature of church, it seems.

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ericc's avatar

The fact that that was the legal best they could come up with shows their case is clearly bullflop. Honestly I've never heard anything so silly. Geez, could they not simply bull***t a bit about erosion and the need for downtimes to let the beach recover?

Also, the fact that the beach wasn't technically closed (they just made you walk to it from a another entrance), shows that they weren't serious about preserving this natural/undisturbed state. As Hemant alludes to, putting the entrance unnecessarily far away functions as nothing more than a discriminatory barrier against visitors with limited mobility.

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

It is sad that this was their only secular argument.

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larry parker's avatar

The rainbow is still there, and the egg came first. Don't get me started on trees falling in the woods. 🌈🥚🌳

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

The rainbow is everywhere, it doesn’t exist as a rainbow until it is perceived. The spectrum of light is always present wherever light exists, but a rainbow has to be perceived in the right angle to be an actual rainbow, and everyone who sees the rainbow, sees a different rainbow than each other, since each person is at a different angle.

The egg came before the chicken, of course since there are innumerable animals hatched from eggs, and many that predate chickens. And if we are specifically talking about chicken eggs, which is not clearly defined in the question, then the egg came first because the animal whose genes were mutated to become the chicken had to lay a the egg that produced the first chicken.

Trees falling where no humans are around make noise, sound waves exists whether they’re perceived or not, besides other animals are in the forest and they can hear it fall. The words no one in the question “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make noise?” implies person not any animal, so if no people are around to hear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t make noise, it just means that people are narcissistic and self important.

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larry parker's avatar

You are looking at a rainbow and blink. Does the rainbow exist when your eyes are closed?

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ericc's avatar
2dEdited

The photons do not require anyone's observance to exist in the pattern that they do.

If you're talking about rainbow-as-experienced-by-the-human-mind, then of course that requires a human observer...but since that's tautological it's not a very interesting philosophical statement.

Same thing with the tree falling in the forest; sound-as-air-compression doesn't need us, sound-as-human-experience does but that's not an interesting claim since it's gone and stuck the conclusion into the premise.

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Lynn Veit's avatar

It's a defining nature of Christianity itself.

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Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz's avatar

What about a rainbow in the dark?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PrBUjXaRSUQ

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oraxx's avatar

I think there are are a lot of Christian leaders who dream of a world where just about everyone needs their permission for just about everything. I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that what this chruch was trying to do was clearly illegal, and putting a stop to it a no-brainer.

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Brianna Amore's avatar

Yeah and that world looks more like The Handmaid's Tale than anything else.

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John Smith's avatar

Or early medieval period!

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Brianna Amore's avatar

Also known as the DARK Ages.

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Boreal's avatar

"Those special rules, however, are what gave them the ability to construct the $2 million Christian pier that opened in April of 2023. The original one was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy over a decade ago."

Seems even their god thinks they are dicks.

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Joe King's avatar

It takes one to know one. According to their holy book, their god is a dick.

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Tony Lentz's avatar

Bible Humpers. Hypocritical Lemmings & Sheep, eagerly being sheared, worshiping a Great Make Believe 🎅 Claus In The Sky. All the while parroting verse from 1 of the 3 biggest elaborate works of fiction, written by man, to subjugate man.

Did I mention they're Sheep?

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Boreal's avatar

"written by man, to subjugate man."

It's a cookbook!

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dammit barry's avatar

God, the most unpleasant asshole in all creation.

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John Smith's avatar

Bible humpers, Christians having sex with their bibles; getting a paper cut down there would be very painful to say the least. It would take the phrase: “words can cut painfully deep to a whole new level!” 🤔

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Bensnewlogin's avatar

This whole thing sounds like special rights for the people who are always accusing other people of demanding special rights, like having the same rights that the people who demand special rights like control over a public beach.

It’s very special.

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larry parker's avatar

I pretend to be special by carrying brass in my pocket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H6re3PCP3E

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