| Jul 22 @ 7:47 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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bevrice
Posts: 11,144
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Awww, heaven, you just went to the wrong churches, talked to the wrong people. I know good, honest people, but then, I go to little tiny churches where people live what they believe, they give and expect nothing in return. None but God is good, you know. They are REAL people, I love real people, there are fakes everywhere, not just Christian ones.
I grew up in towns where not much bad went on, I guess I was blessed, but then, the south has always been behind. I am not saying that bad things didn't happen, they always have, just not on the magnitude of things today. Ask any teacher who has been teaching for many years.
Kids today are taught much more technical stuff than we ever were, and yet our SAT scores were much higher. Nothing is like it should be. The quality of life is not what it used to be.
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| Jul 22 @ 7:51 AM |
How are you raising your children? |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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If there is a supreme being, I really need to believe that He (She) is not so narrow in love to condemn someone for not believing. That is just me though. 
Wouldn't god present himself to people based on their demographics? People in different parts of the world have different challenges and requirements in order to exist.
The OT was an attempt to bring morals to savage deserts tribes in what we now call the middle east. Why can't we accept that the same god worked in different ways with let's say the Anerican indians? Why would people even think that the American indian worshiped a different god?
Why is it that people cannot accept that god persents himself to people based on their needs?
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 7:58 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,360
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Why is it that people cannot accept that god persents himself to people based on their needs?
Not all people Sail - that's what I've beleved for some decades now. Even if God didn't exist, different people would have to invent him...and since God, pretty much by definition, is unknowable, I don't think it matters if he/she/it exists or not. I choose to believe what feels best to me, always knowing that I might be way off the mark, but I don't think it matters a tinker's damn. If it feels good, do it - the prime directive exists in all of us if we pay attention - do unto others, etc. And my own corollary to that is that if someone brings out the worst in you, you need to stay away from them.
Awww, heaven, you just went to the wrong churches, talked to the wrong people
I went to the church that I was born into, and stayed in it until my teens. I went from there to reading the bible and attending a number of different churches. Living in NY, there weren't a whole lot of holy roller churches so I never experienced that, but none of it made me feel satisfied that I'd found the truth as much as just going out into the desert and listening to the wind singing that we're all one, and it doesn't matter what you name it, or even if you believe it. It's true.
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| Jul 22 @ 8:09 AM |
How are you raising your children? |
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bevrice
Posts: 11,144
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Lol, heaven, you and I both missed the best churches growing up. I never went to them either, but wish I had been brought up in a good one, but then, back then, most of those were way too strict, that was before the charismatic movement, so, maybe I don't.
Sail, we condemn ourselves, you know, like most things in life, we are responsible. We are given chance after chance after chance, it is our decision to believe or not believe, and in that perspective, we condemn ourselves.
Just like the law, we can choose to follow it or go to jail. If we choose not to follow the law, then we are responsible for being in jail, we did it to ourselves. We knew what the law said, dictated.
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| Jul 22 @ 8:14 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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The Bible tells Christians that the only way into the kingdom is through Jesus. This type of dogma only polarizes people into opposing groups and is the biggest threat to peace and harmony for "all".
There are a lot of Christian denominations to choose from, and some of those think they are the only one. And what do you think?
Is it so hard to put faith in someone who came to set you free, to reconcile you with God, to take your sins on Himself? Is it so hard to believe that other religions follow the same god but in a different way? Is it so hard to believe that god presented himself to different peoples of the world based on their needs?
Don't you sometimes have this empty place inside you that nothing can fill? All men have this 'God place' inside, a void that only God can fill, that is inate with mankind You christians are so full of yourselves! God's spark is in everyone, it is our higher self. All we have to do is awaken and experience it.
Your dogma teaches that god is selective. He is bigoted. That his love is conditional. Your dogma is for people that are full of themselves and think that they are god's special people. You isolate yourselves and consider all other people inferior and destined for eternal torment from your loving god.
Your dogma is sick and dangerous to mankind.
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 8:17 AM |
How are you raising your children? |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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The other thing that I think about is the fact that the most devious, underhanded, sly and dishonest people I've met in my life have been the ones who talked most about God. I've gotten to the point where I'm immediately suspicious when people talk about how 'good' they are, as I've found that those who really are good (or godly, which is where the word derives from) don't need to tell people they are.
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 8:26 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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I don't think it matters if he/she/it exists or not. I choose to believe what feels best to me, always knowing that I might be way off the mark, but I don't think it matters a tinker's damn. If it feels good, do it - the prime directive exists in all of us if we pay attention - do unto others, etc. And my own corollary to that is that if someone brings out the worst in you, you need to stay away from them.
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 8:32 AM |
How are you raising your children? |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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Sail, we condemn ourselves, you know, like most things in life, we are responsible. We are given chance after chance after chance, it is our decision to believe or not believe, and in that perspective, we condemn ourselves.
Like I said:Is it so hard to believe that other religions follow the same god but in a different way? Is it so hard to believe that god presented himself to different peoples of the world based on their needs?
You don't even realize how full of yourself you are. Talk like this is also bigoted. Based on a book of fables, you categorize people into groups that are right and wrong. Yet you and other christians cannot substantiate your beliefs.
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 8:36 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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bevrice
Posts: 11,144
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Sail, God loved you enough to die for you that you might stand sinless before Him and be reconciled with Him. That is the only way into the kingdom. Now, you can receive that or not receive that, that is up to you. It is the word and what we believe and have found to be true. He moves in our lives, we have wonderous, beautiful answers to our prayers. Most every Christian can tell you of the miraculous in their lives.
Now, whether you are condemned or not, that is a choice YOU make. We don't make it, God doesn't make it, YOU make that choice.
Now, you can believe that or reject that, here again, that is YOUR choice, and you have every right to do that, but don't blame God for your own choices.
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| Jul 22 @ 8:56 AM |
How are you raising your children? |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 8,601
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Sail, God loved you enough to die for you that you might stand sinless before Him and be reconciled with Him. That is the only way into the kingdom. Now, you can receive that or not receive that, that is up to you. It is the word and what we believe and have found to be true. He moves in our lives, we have wonderous, beautiful answers to our prayers. Most every Christian can tell you of the miraculous in their lives.
Now, whether you are condemned or not, that is a choice YOU make. We don't make it, God doesn't make it, YOU make that choice.
Now, you can believe that or reject that, here again, that is YOUR choice, and you have every right to do that, but don't blame God for your own choices. Only a sick mind would believe in a dogma that preaches such BS.
Listen to what you are saying!
Why would an all loving god have such a sick, egotistical, and evil disposition?
If that is what god truthfully wanted, he would have chosen the "dog" as his special creation and never created man.
Peace
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| Jul 22 @ 9:17 AM |
How are you raising your children?
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hammertime
Posts: 14,071
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A god that dies? How can a god die? Well then its not a god, not really. Human sacrifices never worked any magic. They were priestly blood lusts. They were barbaric acts. Jesus represents this barbaric act of stupidity and ignorance and its obviously by the mentally ill people who it attracts.
Yet Jesus probably never existed because if he did exist someone would have wrote about him. Someone would have seen all the miracles, raising the dead, making the blind see, feeding the multitudes, hanging out with prostitutes and having naked young boys hanging around him. Someone should have seen all that and wrote about it. But no, he either didn't exist or just wasn't that important and so he died and will stay dead and no hallucination can do anything about it.
Jesus is a myth, nothing about a real flesh and blood historical man but everything about mythology copied from Mitras, Dionysus , and Horus.
But since god can die we need this old sick myth gone for good including the father too. A sick religion that is barbaric, stupid, ignorant and evil.
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| Jul 22 @ 5:32 PM |
How are you raising your children? |
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BandTMom
Posts: 28,448
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Bev said:
Don't you sometimes have this empty place inside you that nothing can fill?
Not a bit. I am a complete person.
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| Jul 22 @ 6:19 PM |
How are you raising your children?
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j_goose
Posts: 1,952
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Did you know that there is a copy of the Bible that was written leaving out God and all the supernatural events?
Makes it more of a believeable, morally guideing Book.
Do you know who the author was?
THOMAS JEFFERSON...one of the FOUNDING FATHERS.
It is a misconception that this country was founded on the basis of Christianity.
It wasn't.
Most of our founding fathers were agnostic or athiest. Try an American History class sometime, Bev.
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| Jul 22 @ 6:48 PM |
How are you raising your children? |
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Loreli
Posts: 20,319
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Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers # of
Founding
Fathers % of
Founding
Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
TOTAL 204
religious affiliation
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| Jul 22 @ 6:51 PM |
How are you raising your children?
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j_goose
Posts: 1,952
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Kids today are taught much more technical stuff than we ever were, and yet our SAT scores were much higher
Irrelevant.
There is so much more knowledge taught in school today than back in the 1920's, Bev.
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| Jul 22 @ 7:02 PM |
How are you raising your children? |
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j_goose
Posts: 1,952
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http://www.skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id9.html
The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New testaments.
Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9
Some of the founding fathers were undoubtably Christian of various denominations. Some were outright athiests. Benjamin Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club, an intellectual organization that scorned and opposed organized and established religions, including Christianity.
The Deist view was accepted as an argument for Liberty that was compatable with all the various founders' religious views: simply that mankind was created by some sort of divine power and was MEANT to be free.
The misconception that Deism is an offshoot of Christianity may be a result the non-Christian founders' efforts to convince the Christians that they were all on the same team.
Ironically, the idea that individuals were meant to be free was not embraced by all Christians at the time, as the Spanish Inquisition was still underway and was not officially ended until 1834.
Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and George Washington were deists. All of the aforementioned names wrote in books and letters they authored an utter DISBELIEF in the bible as the word of God, they all also stated on numerous occasions their disbelief in the deity of Jesus Christ, and the trinity.
My favorite Jefferson quote......
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
A bunch More.....
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| Jul 22 @ 7:12 PM |
How are you raising your children?
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j_goose
Posts: 1,952
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DP...{Double Post, perverts!}
It was during Adams' presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." This treaty with Tripoli was written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington's administration.
See?
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| Jul 22 @ 7:25 PM |
How are you raising your children? |
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,360
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Hi Goose - about Deism, I like this about Ben Franklin:
hiccup...
[Edited on 7/22/2008 7:29 PM]
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| Jul 22 @ 7:25 PM |
How are you raising your children?
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,360
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Lor, I think that might be what they were originally christened, just as I could be counted as a Catholic even if I don't believe a word of it. Franklin, in my triple post below, was actually born of a Puritan family and christened a Calvinist. Similarly Washngton and Jefferson were avowed deists, no matter what their original religions were.
[Edited on 7/22/2008 7:31 PM]
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| Jul 22 @ 7:28 PM |
How are you raising your children? |
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Heaveninawildflower
Posts: 15,360
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Hi Goose - about Deism, I like this about Ben Franklin, he was not only a Freemason but a Freethinker...bottom line that we each need to find our own path and let others do likewise:
Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin became disillusioned with organized religion after discovering Deism. "I soon became a thorough Deist."[37] He went on to attack Christian principles of free will and morality in a 1725 pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.[38] He consistently attacked religious dogma, arguing that morality was more dependent upon virtue and benevolent actions than on strict obedience to religious orthodoxy: "I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me."
In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion:
“ As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble....[8] ”
Like most Enlightenment intellectuals, Franklin separated virtue, morality, and faith from organized religion, although he felt that if religion in general grew weaker, morality, virtue, and society in general would also decline. Thus he wrote Thomas Paine, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it." According to David Morgan,[39] Franklin was a proponent of all religions. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as the "INFINITE." John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Whatever else Benjamin Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." Ben Franklin was noted to be "the spirit of the Enlightenment."
Walter Isaacson argues[40] that Franklin became uncomfortable with an unenhanced version of deism and came up with his own conception of the Creator. Franklin outlined his concept of deity in 1728, in his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion.[41] From this, Isaacson compares Franklin's conception of deity to that of strict deists and orthodox Christians. He concludes that unlike most pure deists, Franklin believed that a faith in God should inform our daily actions, but that, like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma. Isaacson also discusses Franklin's conception that God had created beings who do interfere in wordly matters, a point that has led some commentators, most notably A. Owen Aldridge, to read Franklin as embracing some sort of polytheism, with a bevy of lesser gods overseeing various realms and planets.
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