__________________
Rectitude--Courage--Benevolence--Respect--Honesty--Honor--Loyalty
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
"Why do we fall? So we might learn to pick ourselves up."
"It’s not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us."
It does get annoying, to a degree, to Christians that we have to "hide" our beliefs to make everyone else happy...We are expected to take our beliefs, our symbols, our words out of everything so that everyone else of a different religion, or lack thereof, can express their beliefs/non-beliefs....
There was a case around here where there was a nativity scene on public property that was put there by the person that owned the place for Christmas...there was such an uproar about it that it had to be taken down..why??? It wasn't hurting anyone, it was there to symbolize the holiday. If you don't believe, or believe something different, why can't you just ignore it's existence and go on your happy way??? I just don't get it....
I absolutely agree with this.
Why should Christians hide anything? Why should Christmas be called "Winter Holiday" LOLOLLL
They put up HUGE menoras in Santa Monica during December. It's awesome. No one cares. There's a Christmas tree too. Awesome. By the pier, there is a Nativity that done in a story. Things are shared well.
But I do agree that Christians are made to somewhat repress their beliefs while other people can flaunt theirs.
I really don't see the big deal. I'd love to celebrate all holidays. Diwali, Channukah, Christmas, Solstice, Yom Kippur, etc,etc.
And people should be able to do what they want in regards to showing their religion. My mom puts a HUGE STAR on her house during December. It's great.
There should be NO SHAME in what people believe. There shouldn't be a feeling of embarrassment to say what you believe. Not in the United States of America, anyway.
Why should Christians hide anything? Why should Christmas be called "Winter Holiday" LOLOLLL
They put up HUGE menoras in Santa Monica during December. It's awesome. No one cares. There's a Christmas tree too. Awesome. By the pier, there is a Nativity that done in a story. Things are shared well.
But I do agree that Christians are made to somewhat repress their beliefs while other people can flaunt theirs.
I really don't see the big deal. I'd love to celebrate all holidays. Diwali, Channukah, Christmas, Solstice, Yom Kippur, etc,etc.
And people should be able to do what they want in regards to showing their religion. My mom puts a HUGE STAR on her house during December. It's great.
There should be NO SHAME in what people believe. There shouldn't be a feeling of embarrassment to say what you believe. Not in the United States of America, anyway.
I agree totally, if we would stop trying to push each other down, all of us, Christians included, and just embrace and respect our differences, this country would be a much happier place!!!!
It's kinda like how I feel sometimes being white. Like I have to apologize for every butthole who has a prejudice thought. Or when they say it's "Reverse racism" if another culture hates on whites. That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard! REVERSE RACISM!? So only white people can be racist?! Unreal...
So with Christianity, it's this shameful word. I do not understand why. On a base level, most religions have some magical man/woman in the sky that no one can see, but faith plays a huge role. Why should Christians feel wrong to believe in their God?
If someone says they are Hindu or Jewish, then that's a conversation starter. Oh, interesting! But if someone says they're a Christian, it's almost like this weird silence happens and everyone changes the subject.
So to tie it back to my racist comment...Christians carry a heavy burden because it's like they have to apologize for every stupid Christian that ever did anybody any wrong. For every war fought in the name of the Christian God, etc.
I dont' care for majority of the Christians that I know personally. My best friend is a devout Christian though, and she's awesome. We have tons of good, insightful talks about religion because we are not threatened by others' beliefs.
I will say that many people feel like they have to walk on eggshells around Christians. With many Christians, talking about religion turns into a huge argument because that Christian got SO DEFENSIVE and OFFENDED that they cannot even have a decent conversation.
Mind you, this is all on my own experience in my 36 years on this planet. I may be talking out of my ass...but I digress...
I am a recovering Catholic. I have been agnostic most of my life.
I do not believe in bashing down on peoples religions.
Christians included. That is just plain rude. Like it or not while we move forward there is a past.
I am sorry that the US is just so far behind the rest of the world where everyone is free from pursecution. yes we need to move forward BUT please do acknowledge the history. The good with the bad.
Quote:
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression "You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley ... rightly foresaw that any such regime could break but could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.
I like the above quote. So by wiping out history and rewriting it ... only then can people be blissed out. You may say that this has nothing to do with anything, but I say that when you start talking about a better world ... a utopian society, where there is no religion you have to forget what got us here today. Like it or not Christian principles helped found this country. I am not so naive as to think that it was much more than this, but it was a part in it. How these same man could own slaves makes a mockery of this of course, but again you have to look at history with the good and the bad. It got us here. I am not defending slavery. Could this country have gotten where it is based on some other religion. I don't know. I wonder. Look around the world. You be the judge as where freedom reigns and where it is crushed. Religion does not exist in a bubble. It is about beliefs. While I believe in separation of church and state, a country s based on beliefs as well.
__________________
Rectitude--Courage--Benevolence--Respect--Honesty--Honor--Loyalty
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
"Why do we fall? So we might learn to pick ourselves up."
"It’s not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us."
Last edited by Entropy3000; 02-22-2012 at 09:15 PM.
It's kinda like how I feel sometimes being white. Like I have to apologize for every butthole who has a prejudice thought. Or when they say it's "Reverse racism" if another culture hates on whites. That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard! REVERSE RACISM!? So only white people can be racist?! Unreal...
So with Christianity, it's this shameful word. I do not understand why. On a base level, most religions have some magical man/woman in the sky that no one can see, but faith plays a huge role. Why should Christians feel wrong to believe in their God?
If someone says they are Hindu or Jewish, then that's a conversation starter. Oh, interesting! But if someone says they're a Christian, it's almost like this weird silence happens and everyone changes the subject.
So to tie it back to my racist comment...Christians carry a heavy burden because it's like they have to apologize for every stupid Christian that ever did anybody any wrong. For every war fought in the name of the Christian God, etc.
I dont' care for majority of the Christians that I know personally. My best friend is a devout Christian though, and she's awesome. We have tons of good, insightful talks about religion because we are not threatened by others' beliefs.
I will say that many people feel like they have to walk on eggshells around Christians. With many Christians, talking about religion turns into a huge argument because that Christian got SO DEFENSIVE and OFFENDED that they cannot even have a decent conversation.
Mind you, this is all on my own experience in my 36 years on this planet. I may be talking out of my ass...but I digress...
Ha! Sophia from Golden Girls always said that, but I digress, hahaha I love that show, me and my friends always said that would be us when we get old haha
But I do agree that a lot of Christians get defensive and offended when you are talking to them, I find more around my area it's the old school Christians. I avoid even talking to some people in my own church about certain things because they get all weird on me about it....
And for the record, I'd totally hang with Jesus. On a personal level, he seems like the kind of hippy, philosopher, liberal that I could have a cup of coffee with and shoot the ****...even if I don't agree.
Ha! Sophia from Golden Girls always said that, but I digress, hahaha I love that show, me and my friends always said that would be us when we get old haha
But I do agree that a lot of Christians get defensive and offended when you are talking to them, I find more around my area it's the old school Christians. I avoid even talking to people in my own church about certain things because they get all weird on me about it....
My mom is queen of Defense. LOL If I say I don't want to go to church with her, she replies, "Why do you hate Christians?"
I don't. I'm just tired. Sunday morning church is my quiet time.
But yea, many Christians drive me crazy. I hardly talk about religion/beliefs unless it's safe. I don't argue about what I believe. I believe what I believe and no amount of arguing will change that.
And for the record, I'd totally hang with Jesus. On a personal level, he seems like the kind of hippy, philosopher, liberal that I could have a cup of coffee with and shoot the ****...even if I don't agree.
John Lennon ... sigh
I do get what many people are saying. I have had knock down drag-out arguments with folks on both my side of the family and on my wifes side. Catholics on my side and my wife three country pastors on her side.
They are all good folks and all think ther religion is the only way. But I do not let it bother me. Most religions are really that way. And the fifth crusade is probably still being fought on this planet. Who will blow the world up first in the name of God?
My Catholic upbringing gave me a great appreciation for women who wear plaid ... and is probably responsible for me being a Nice Guy. I do feel responsible for all of the unrest in the world ...
__________________
Rectitude--Courage--Benevolence--Respect--Honesty--Honor--Loyalty
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
"Why do we fall? So we might learn to pick ourselves up."
"It’s not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us."
Last edited by Entropy3000; 02-22-2012 at 09:24 PM.
My mom is queen of Defense. LOL If I say I don't want to go to church with her, she replies, "Why do you hate Christians?"
I don't. I'm just tired. Sunday morning church is my quiet time.
But yea, many Christians drive me crazy. I hardly talk about religion/beliefs unless it's safe. I don't argue about what I believe. I believe what I believe and no amount of arguing will change that.
I won't even argue that, I have a hard time on Sunday mornings...I love my sleep and am up on the weekdays at 6 or 6:30, and I'm a night owl so I average like 5 hours of sleep during the week....Saturday mornings I either get to sleep in or get up super early to take the kids to whatever sport...come Sunday sometimes I just can't do it, I give in and stay in bed....
I like that...I believe what I believe and no amount of arguing will change that Should be the motto of our country regarding religion lol
Right. Because no one makes fun of, say, $cientology (see what I did there?). Or centers jokes around any other religion. And Bill Maher certainly only singles out Chriatianity for ridicule.
No...I'd say that it might only SEEM like Christianity is the only religion made the butt of jokes because they not only don't seem to have a sense of humor about themselves, but very vocally don't have such a sense of humor, while most religions seem to get that a joke is just a joke. Posted via Mobile Device
Both my brother and I had some pretty funny moments in our weddings because of different religions involved. My wedding was mostly protestant, but a native american friend (comanchee) led the service. You could hear the gasps from my wife's family. My brother married into the Catholic church, but the priest missed the rehearsal, and I was his best man. I stood when they sat, and sat when they stood. Same priest forgot to show up when he was going to show me how to behave in the christening of my god-daughter. He tried to get me to promise to raise their child in his religion if the parents died, and we had a short discussion on semantics before I would agree, and the whole congregation laughed.
Throughout the course of my life, I have drifted from being a practising Catholic with doubts (even as a child) to an agnostic and to atheism. Over the past few years I find myself becoming increasingly anti-theistic.
I have less and less patience for all supernatural belief (including paganism....sorry to the OPer) and I do think that on balance religions of all kinds cause more human misery than it alleviates.
I do notice that in English speaking countries Christianity is openly attacked with greater relish by middle and left of centre pundits. I think there are two reasons,
1) By a chance of history it was the religion of the European nations at the time of their global expansion so it has accumulated a worse track record than some other religions. Of course a Canaanite victim of the Israelite genocidal wars or any of the victims of Mohamed's wars of expansion would have a different view of the "worst" religion.
2) White Liberal Guilt/Cowardice. As wonderfully illustrated by South Park, Islam sometimes escapes direct informed attacks because of the fear of Islamo-facists. Thus those speaking out against Islam are usually the reactionary Islamophobes of the right. Since WW2 Judaism is often spared direct attack on theological grounds because of the fear of being accused of antisemitism. Other faiths are usually just too purely understood to be criticized.
So would it be fair to say this is your belief that you wish others would adhere? Would you consider this "pushing" your views on others? I guess I do. They don't want to do it your way so if you really believed in not pushing your views on others you wouldnt be here complaining that they aren't doing it your way.
Sorry, couldn't follow. I'm saying that I'm happy that no religion is being pushed in courtrooms now and would like it if religion was abscent from places of government. Never did I say I want a certain religion to be used or that people should stop practicing it, just stop pushing it in others faces. I'm asking questions for a debate like topic, not pushing anything. If you would have read the first post you would have know that though.
In his documentary Religulous, Bill Maher shows equal examples of followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam all being equally ridiculous. Posted via Mobile Device
I guess my sarcasm didn't translate to the written word. :-) Posted via Mobile Device
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Re: Minority religions being attacked in the US. 
