Ugh, stupid people with little knowledge giving Christians a bad name. Jesus was not born on Christmas day..by most historical accounts he was born sometime in the spring. The early Catholic Church established "Christmas" to compete with the pagan solstice worship and a major pagan holiday for the goddess Diana that occurred around that time of the year. People who want to "put Christ back in Christmas" fail to realize that he was never there to begin with. Besides, the Jesus only told us to remember his death and resurrection, not his birth.

 

Im gonna crash this thread with my opinion.. and that is,
religion is a private thing and if everyone would keep it private, and I mean private to the point where they also don't force it on family members or children- but let them choose themselves when they are old enough to understand.. then thumbs up, and a hellZ yeah to ya (no pun intended). But religion being brought into schools and education in general, in politics and anywhere really.. nope.
Thats my to cent..

 

Sounds reasonable in theory, but if religion really WERE private, then it would cease to exist. It is the communal aspect of it that makes it a religion in the first place. One person doing their own thing in private does not a religion make.

I teach in a Catholic school, so the choice to be subject to the teachings of one particular religion is up front when they register. Having said that, I'm more of a many-world-views kind of person myself.

 

Depends on what you mean by keeping religion out of schools. If you mean it shouldn't be forced on the students, I agree with you. If you mean religious students shouldn't be allowed to pray because it might offend students of other/no religions, that's just stupid. If other students don't believe in the religion of the praying students, then it should have no more effect on them than if the students are discussing a tv show that they don't like to watch.

 

I went to a small town football game on Friday to see my cousin's last game as a senior. Before they started they prayed over the loud speakers and I about choked on my drink. I wasn't offended or anything (I have no reason to be), but it totally took me by surprise. That shit would never fly in Austin.

 

It depends on how it's handled. If it's just allowing some kid to pray over his lunch or whatever, fine. If it's big histrionics and creating special pray areas in the school or whatever, I'm a'gin it.

 

"And we pray to our Lord
Who we know is American
He reigns from on high
He speaks to us through many men
And he shepherds his flock
We sing out and we praise His name
He supports us in war
He presides over football games"
– Don Henley

 

Raised Assemblies of God and Baptist so I kinda follow the general gist of what their business model put out.
My current view of God is that he's some kind of willful particle/wave thing.
Religion... meh. Bible says the perfect religion is to care for widows and orphans keep yourself unspotted from the world, everything else to me is a business not really a religion even though everyone calls them that.

 

I was raised as a Christian and am now an atheist that is unaffiliated with any religious teaching or belief. I started having doubts about the existence of God in my teenage years, and these doubts became even stronger after joining discussion forums like this one which usually have a diverse set of viewpoints to consider. A big question I saw raised in said forums and that lead me to where I am today was "Why is one religion anymore true than the literally hundreds of others that are out there?" Another common yet interesting point is that the majority of theists and religious followers are ATHEISTS when it comes to their beliefs in all the other Gods worshipped by humanity other than their own, so I and other "fully fledged" atheists only disbelieve in one more God than they do really (unless you're a polytheist :Grin.

Being an atheist and a realist actually, as well as a fan of television in general, are part of what initially got me hooked into TWD. Not only did they actually have a zombie outbreak that was completely plausible since everyone was infected and would turn upon death (don't try and tell me a disease that is only spread through biting would make the world and military fall), but it's also a world that simply doesn't care about your prayers, religious beliefs, or how much you hope something will happen. Pray for guidance and a miracle? Your son gets shot in the chest. Know against all odds that you'll find a missing girl alive and well? She turns up as a zombie. Main characters can die without warning, and hardly anyone has plot armor (except maybe Rick :zombies_lol:). There is no larger rhyme nor reason why anything happens, all of it just happens which is similar to the real world IMHO. None of this is to say, of course, that this is a world without hope, peace, and love. These things have existed in the show and will continue to exist for episodes onwards, but they never HAD to come from a belief in a higher power or "destiny."

 

Good to meet you, Brother AJ. I too find the God of my childhood has transmogrified into something different and those prayers have become little more than self-reflection. I do like stories about the after life though, and two very good series are Dead Like Me, about a young woman who, on her first lunch break from her first job, gets hit by a toilet seat—debris from a space station—and is vaporized on the spot, and discovers her new mission in life is to join a team of grim reapers. Another excellent series is Six Feet Under, a story about a family of morticians who must make sense of their lives after the family patriarch dies in the first five minutes of the very first episode. Intriguing stuff.

 

The creator of the 3 major world monotheistic belief systems can be debunked without effort -

"God is jealous, vengeful" "He is also all powerful and all knowing"

- The idea of a supreme universal being/entity/creator isn't an idea that's really that far fetched if you're privy to science and physics, but it would be beyond our current understanding. Who knows where evolution takes things. The major world belief systems have the idea of this entity being male, being petty -- being anthropomorphic with human like features and emotions.

A being of such high existence couldn't possibly be so petty or human like. The world's smartest humans grow beyond(to varying degree's) such things as jealousy and anger filled wrath, yet a being of infinite power and intelligence that controls all time and space has not?

No other debate is needed. /end

Unless: You want to get into science and physics, then that's even more ownage.

 

And now for something completely different.

Noah's Ark religious attraction to open in July in Kentucky

Hey, it's been a tragic day. I needed something to laugh at.

 

Then you should like this

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/weird-news/woman-allowed-wear-colander-drivers-license-photo-/npMwJ/

 

And you know, I actually clicked on the story and found out that she is a Pastafarian. So your post was on topic.

 

Not going to debate your other points, but you're dead wrong on this. People are people, there have been and will continue to be many very intelligent and still very evil people.

 

People are vastly different from all kinds of directions, there is no "people are people" except when dealing with the average, or below average.

I am not talking about "evil", I'm talking about "petty". The most intelligent, logical, evolved and of the highest statures in life are typically far less petty than the average. Not entirely gone, but that's why I said "to varying degree's".

IN relation to what would be a million steps up in intelligence and knowledge - a "God" - it's beyond ridiculous to think that "God" could be as described in any of the world's major religions.

 

Average is not a real thing though. It's just measuring something for a particular group, adding all the measurements together and then dividing by the number of subjects. And please show us one bit of evidence that states categorically that the more intelligent people are less likely to be petty.

 

Yeah, I'm not seeing it. As far as "people are people", it's true. Even the most highly intelligent or "evolved" person can be as petty as the cave dweller, just petty about different things. Intelligence doesn't necessarily change morality.

 

While working in Carefree, AZ, I have encountered may rich folks, who were very petty. Specially, soap opera stars. The 2 that comes to mind, were very narrow minded, and continuously put down the line of products, our store chose to sell.

We sold Ball Park and Oscar Myer hot dogs. They wanted National Hebrew.

 

Religions (plural) are nothing more than the propagation of belief systems that were (depending on the religion) created thousands of years ago to explain the world around us at a time when people had no way of knowing anything different. If you fill your head with the beliefs of bronze age barbarians then you have no room in it for truth when you hear it.