Talk:Confession

Hey everyone I'm new here. I found rationalwiki through your article on Homeopathy. Can I say- it was perfect? It was both incredibly hilarious while also being informative and even a bit persuasive. Reading other articles, I was immidiately inspired to do this. I found "Confession" through "articles that need expanding." And did it ever! The stuff we got put through back in school, man, I'll tell you...

Writing this article, I can only say that I tried to follow the format in "Homeopathy" that inspired me so much. I don't think I did much persuading, but I did try to base every joke in the article off of actual facts about confession. In school we really did read manuals which listed things like "Assasination of a government official" as mortal sins. They were really that thourough.

I wrote a blub on Kirk's page asking for permission to edit, since I did remove his cool article to write this one, but another user assured me it was O.K. Powers (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the work. ADK ...I'll confuddle your street sign! 15:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Various Stuff...
Im new here, and the last thing I want to do is be uncourteous or get angry about changes to “my” article. But these are changes that make this article less effective, though they must have been fun to write. Because I’m new, I don’t feel like I’ve got a right to just go in and delete them, but I wanted to bring them up, and, if the people who made them feel like it, they can delete them.

What pagans/protestants do isn’t confession.

Okay it is. But when people think of “confession” they’re not thinking about that. They want to see an article on roman catholic confession, the sort of confession you see in movies like “Leon Morin, Priest” and “The Godfather.” Besides, its way scarier and more cool. Protestant confession is lame. Whats on the line? Its not like you’re going to go to hell if you don’t do it. No one wants to read about it. That’s so PC.

Masturbation is not a mortal sin.

I know this because, when I was a catholic, I confessed this to a priest and he reassured me. It’s a venial sin. The lust involved in masturbation can be a mortal sin, but the touching itself if not. Weird, huh? I know I really went after the catholic church but I tried to do it in a persuasive way. I tried to base all the jokes in reality. The church is the joke!

I’m trying to imagine a catholic looking at this article and saying “No way.” And then looking it up and saying “What? Really?” And then, maybe, reconsidering his life. If you put obviously untrue things in you’re just going to alienate him. Yeah, I put murdering your cat in, but the “murder” word is important. It implies a liberal, senseless act of violence. Your cat isn’t a wild animal, he means something to you, if you’ve gone through all the trouble of buying him and feeding him. Killing him really would be senseless, and it would require a level of deranged violence that would rise to mortal sin; after all, you could have just released him or taken him to the shelter. But maybe you were to greedy or lazy. Also a mortal sin.

Tattling on the church is also not a mortal sin. Its definitely not a sin at all. Its even encouraged (by the church, and the catechism i.e. by “Catholocism” not by priests obviously) so its totally NC to include.

Atheist priests are not “former priests”

Seriously. Theologically. Just ask them. There are a lot of them who have actually been rushed to the emergency room and given confessions. They might describe themselves as former priests in public, but, then, if its such a big deal to them that they’re talking in public about it, they probably work for Jack Chick or something and aren’t atheists in the first place. An atheist priest wouldn’t say “I hate the church and I’m a former priest.” He would just say (if you asked him,) “Yeah, that was something I used to do…” and then start talking about his clock collection or something.

Go after the catholic church and not after god.

Yes, the God of the bible is a real bastard. I used to tell him that in church and get angry at him and ask him to explain himself. But he didn’t, so I left. But God is a side point. In an effective argument, you have to pick your targets. This argument targets the catholic church, not god. Going for both at once destroys your persuasiveness and offends people un-necessarily. When you want to kill someone, you don’t shoot them in the heart then shoot them in the foot. The heart is enough. God is not the heart of catholocism.

02:12, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

"(...) murdering your cat" I would think it's more important whether an animal is killed painfully than whether it's your animal. Then I'm not a Roman Catholic. Proxima Centauri (talk) 11:24, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Kersey Graves
The webpage, Absolution, and the Confession of Sins, of Heathen Origin has the following quote. The Historical Documents section is provided for those doing research into the history of nontheism. It is not intended to be--and should not be used as--a source of modern, up-to-date information regarding atheistic issues. Please read the full Historical Library Disclaimer

Order The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors now. ATTENTION: The scholarship of Kersey Graves has been questioned by numerous theists and nontheists alike; the inclusion of his The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors in the Secular Web's Historical Library does not constitute endorsement by Internet Infidels, Inc. This document was included for historical purposes; readers should be extremely cautious in trusting anything in this book. Therefore I removed material based on that page from the article. Proxima Centauri (talk) 12:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)\

Cats, and trivia
We long ago decided not to have trivia sections. Add it into the article, fine. but it is bad mojo to just sit there. Secondly, Proxie, if you do not KNOW something, don't change it based on what you "think". --Godot RIP original "muahahahah". 1...2....3...4...muahahahahah 17:37, 2 September 2012 (UTC)