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Has it really now? Seems to me that people these days are a whole lot LESS kinder to each other. One only has to get one social media to see all the pissed off rants, venom and vitriol spewed out on a constant basis. Sucide and depression rates across the board are at all time highs as well. People are more stressed out and less satisfied with their quality of life than previous generations. We have more teens than ever before acting out violent fantasies like mass murdering their classmates. No, it's not a better place.
When was the last time you set foot in a church? Sorry, but judging Christianity from such a remote extremely biased only presents an incredibly distorted negative imagine. In the real world, every day, miracles happen, wonderful stories of blessings, acts of kindness and churches making positive changes in the community. Of course, you'll never hear about it in the media because sensationlism sells. They only get interested if a pastor gets caught in a sex scandal or something.
The embrace of gay marriage marks one of the most drastic moral shifts in American society. When you forge a path ahead thumbing your nose with disrespect at God then you can't expect your country to be fruitful in the future. History is ful of great empires ground down to dust because they turned their back on God.
Christianity gives hope to the hopeless and helping others goes beyond just a few random acts lke you mentioned. When my father was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, the youth of his church spent their weekend cleaning and mowing his yard. They did it out of love and desire to help a fellow church member. It's about being willing to put your neighbor's needs ahead of your own. If everyone did that, we really would have a much better society.
I like the idea of one Christian insurance company where all the members pay for the health costs of another member who gets sick. And then your costs are covered if you need help. White evangelical protestants support gettting rid of Obamacare which was an unconstitutional piece of garbage forced on hard working people that hurt many more than it actually helped. in an idea world, it would be great to pay 100% of the costs for anyone disable or elderly, but that's not realistic. Something has to give unless you want to tax everyone at 90%.
We elected someone who doesn't play the corrupt game of politics, who wants to fix real problems. I'm sorry, but something like gay marriage is not a serious problem for most American. Decaying infrastruce, cyberwarfare, nuclear threats, health care crisis, immigration, those are critical issues that have to be dealt with.
The most divisive thing in America was the alignment of "god's own party" with Christianity. Instead of Christians guiding politics toward Christ, it has been led by the nose by politicians. And the alignment began with that demon in the pulpit, Jerry Falwell. My own Southern Baptist denomination was hijacked by "god's own party" and Jerry and started their message of ugliness and exclusiveness, which is why, I, as a licensed SBC preacher, left the denomination and brushed the dust of my shoes.
We could pay for EVERYONE's healthcare twice over by dumping the border wall, slicing a defense budget that is 25% profit to private companies, and getting rid of insurance companies. Oh, did I tell you, I was in the insurance business for 30 years, most of it as a compliance officer and right after "god's own party" began the takeover of religion those insurance companies, health and P&C alike, began to CHEAT big time. I was personally asked to ignore one state law in making an insurance filing. I refused to do so and went from making $100k a year to making $10.50 an hour. That's how much my FAITH meant to me.
But people without faith are always worried about MONEY. It is their god. You cannot love people and love MONEY at the same time---because then you worry about 90% taxes rather than disabled people unable to find health coverage.
And your many posts, jeff, have shown you to be a dyed in the wool money lover.
And you don't really read your Bible carefully either. Jesus and Paul both were voices of opposition and faithful questioning of OT views of slamming people rather than helping them. Paul was an even more vociferous opponent because he had been a Pharisee using those OT beliefs to imprison and kill people. But once he was saved, he stuck up for them. And that is a good enough reason for me to doubt your "salvation."
If you would like to argue how the Bible is overwhelmingly a Bible of violence but with a few prophets and the NT in opposition with faithful questioning of the stance--start a thread. I'll be happy to show you not only the Bible, but current psychological studies showing that as a whole, conservative people are less empathetic with people and more self-centered.
1. Much of the cruelest treatment of their fellow man comes from evangelical Christians. And let's remember that many Christian denominations once supported slavery and segregation.
Never heard of Hitler, Kim jong un, Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot? (hint: they were not Christians and very very cruel) Also let's remember that many Christians worked to oppose slavery and supported the civil rights movement.
Never heard of Hitler, Kim jong un, Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot? (hint: they were not Christians and very very cruel) Also let's remember that many Christians worked to oppose slavery and supported the civil rights movement.
Actually, there is more going on.
Entire Christian faith center is being shifted to Armenian Orthodox church. As a part of The Great Armenia of the North project.
Where did the Pope go not so long ago? Armenia. First Christian country.
Two sermons in the senate of the USA by Armenian priests?
Never heard of Hitler, Kim jong un, Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot? (hint: they were not Christians and very very cruel) Also let's remember that many Christians worked to oppose slavery and supported the civil rights movement.
Of course. I was speaking of Americans since the topic of the thread is religious identity in America. And yes, there is cruelty throughout the world...which does not excuse cruelty in our own nation.
Jefferson Davis wrote that: "[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts." (Interesting, btw, how much his statement sounds like your own). Richard Furman, the President of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, wrote that, "the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." Southerners in the South who were Presbyterians were strongly in favor of slavery as early as 1837, and drove those against slavery out of their denomination. The Methodist Episcopal Church literally divided over slavery. As did Baptists. Many churches and people in the South were outspoken members of the KKK and similar groups. (That is a paraphrased summary of another part of Wikipedia).
And the others were dogmatic authoritarians. They are in no way comparable with what the religious right see as their political and spiritual opponents in the west right now. They are are jut handy 'atheists' to beat atheism with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ukrkoz
Actually, there is more going on.
Entire Christian faith center is being shifted to Armenian Orthodox church. As a part of The Great Armenia of the North project.
Where did the Pope go not so long ago? Armenia. First Christian country.
Two sermons in the senate of the USA by Armenian priests?
Signs, signs of things to come...
I shall watch with bated breath as the USA becomes Armenian orthodox...
Never heard of Hitler, Kim jong un, Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot? (hint: they were not Christians and very very cruel) Also let's remember that many Christians worked to oppose slavery and supported the civil rights movement.
Jeff, I see you still haven't read any history books since the last time we spoke. Still spewing out the same inaccuracies and false equivalencies.
This is the kind of nonsense that is causing our nation to spiral into the toilet -- too many people like yourself who simply deny facts and refuse to acknowledge anything that challenges their preconceived ideas and belief systems.
As I said elsewhere, the internet has made people dumber, not smarter, despite being hooked into the summation of all human knowledge. Thanks for proving my point.
Because it's easy to point to people like Hitler, Stalin, and the rest of them because they killed a lot of people in a short time. In addition fairly accurate statistics are available for those deaths ... AND ... they all had modern weapons that made killing people in large numbers rather easy. I also should point out the population difference between the last 150 years and all the rest of human history -- meaning there are simply more people around to kill.
However, much of the religious nonsense occurred over long periods of time with relatively small numbers dying -- but those small numbers add up quick when they keep dying over a period of thousands of years.
The Catholics killed hundreds of thousands of people -- if not millions -- in an effort to achieve religious dominance, which they ultimately were successful in doing. The Cathars, the Gnostics, and every other Christian sect was mercilessly butchered by the Catholics in those early days, not that your pastor or priest would ever mention that in church.
Ever hear of an event called the Bloody Verdict of Verdun? No, of course you haven't. It's when the Christian king Charlamagne gathered up roughly 5,000 shamans, holy men, tribal leaders, and other pagan clergymen and slaughtered them all wholesale for refusing to convert to Christianity.
In fact, ANYONE who refused to convert was killed on the spot -- which is what Charlamagne did. He conqured village after town after city and forced every man, woman, and child in those places to immediately convert or die. If you have ancestors from western Europe, it's almost guaranteed that your long dead relatives were once forced to their knees at the point of a sword and told to convert or die.
Millions more were butchered in this fashion one village at a time.
Then you have incidents like the Black Death which hit Europe in the late 1200s. Again, Christianity went amok, burning witches left and right, persecuting the Jews, torturing and tormenting women, and slaughtering innocent cats by the millions (and I love cats, so that really ticks me off).
This sort of thing has happened more than once, too, since there were plenty of plagues throughout the Medieval period -- and each one was credited to God's wrath which, in turn, caused scapegoating and the deaths of further millions. It is estimated that around 100,000 women were burned at the stake in what is today Germany in just two years thanks to the wanton fear and superstition your religion fosters.
Then there are the untold thousands -- tens of thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands who were sentenced to death, torture, or indefinite imprisonment for things like blasphemy, apostacy, and heresy.
Let's not forget about the millions more who died in non-stop religious wars that took place after the rise of Protestantism. You can argue all you want about how these were political wars -- and indeed there was a political element. But the root cause was religion as Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other in an effort to put a representative of their respective religions on the various thrones of Europe.
And then there were the numerous Crusades. Doesn't matter who started it, doesn't matter who was on offense and who was on defense -- each side was still fighting because of their primitive religious differences. Would it have mattered who ruled over the Holy Land if those rulers hadn't been Muslim? Of course not.
Whatever the case, if you're going to debate history, you need to learn more about it. I keep out of debates involving subjects I don't know much about -- and that's good advice for everyone.
Speaking of America's changing religious identity, how many of you are aware that we're about to elect a religious nutjob into the governorship of Alabama?
And that's because millions of Americans support this moron. And yeah, he is a moron.
His name is Roy Moore, and of course, he's a Republican. Here are just a few of the things he endorses:
Evolution is fake ... not just wrong, but an actual hoax, most likely to turn people away from God or some other stupid reason.
Gays and anyone caught practicing sodomy should be put to death. Seriously. This guy is a staunch ally of Rev. Kevin Swanson who literally wants to create an anti-gay holocaust right here in America. Moore is on this guy's side.
The First Amendment only applies to Christians. If you're not a Christian, you essentially have no freedom of speech or religion. Nor do you have the right NOT to have religion forced upon you.
He believes that "God's law" is higher than the Constitution and therefore the Bible should be the law of the land.
"God's laws are always superior to Man's laws."
“Sodomy is against the laws of nature,” he told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “Let’s say the court decides to get rid of the law of gravity and says you can jump off the Empire State Building. Can they do that? No, they certainly can’t do that.”
In a 2002 child custody case during his first term as Alabama chief justice, Moore called being gay “an inherent evil” and “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Moore has said he believes “homosexual conduct should be illegal” and that same-sex relations are akin to bestiality. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, Moore, who’d been reelected as chief justice of Alabama, instructed state judges to flout the order. In September 2016, he was once again removed from court for the remainder of his term.
“There is no such thing as evolution,” he recently told a Washington Post reporter. “That we came from a snake? No, I don’t believe that.”
Equally ludicrous to Moore is the idea that non-Christian faiths have the same religious legitimacy as his own. During a campaign stop this summer the candidate called Islam a “false religion” that’s “completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for.”
Moore has also suggested that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks happened because the U.S. has “distanced” itself from God. He claimed God was angry at Americans who “legitimize sodomy” and “legitimize abortion.”
He used the same logic in August to say that “shootings” are also a result of rulings against prayer in public schools and council meetings. “We’ve asked for it,” Moore said at an event on defending religious liberties. “We’ve taken God out of everything.”
Now, keep in mind that I really don't care all that much what this superstitious, crazy old sack of crap believes. He was obviously born 700 years too late -- and he apparently hasn't bothered studying the Middle East to see what kind of cesspools nations become when right-wing fundamentalist religion is allowed to rule ANYWHERE much less within an American state.
What really bothers me is that this guy is very likely to win the gubernatorial race for Alabama. It means millions of people are cheering for this fascist and bigot to win -- and achieve a modicum of real power in this country. What's even worse is that, by becoming governor, he's setting himself up to run for president. And after the Trump election whereby tens of millions of people outright ignored Trump's horrible past history, I have ZERO confidence that stupidity and ignorance won't once again win the day, allowing Moore to obtain the Oval Office.
This country is going to crap -- and I'd use a stronger word there if the censors woud allow it. My historical expertise lies in the eras of WWII and the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and I'm here to tell you that never in this nation's history have we been so close to "IT" happening here. And I think we all know what I mean by "IT." I know people have been saying for decades that a Nazi-like regime would never happen in America -- but all it really took for it to occur was to wrap fascism up in "olde tyme" religion and presto ... we discovered the perfect mix for an American "First Reich."
That seems to be the changing face of American religiosity. It's already been proven that America is an anomaly among First World nations in that this country is the ONLY industrialized nation with the same amount of rabid religiosity as most uneducated, impoverished Third World nations. FAR too many people in this land are superstitious, fearful of an angry god, people who run to their Bibles rather than to a library to find out about the world around us.
Too many people like Jeff who think their little First World problems -- someone being rude to him on the internet -- constitutes a sign of Judgement Day and the Second Coming of Christ. Too many people like him who wield the power of the vote.
I keep saying that these theocratic fascists keep wiggling ever closer to real power every time there's an election. All I know is that I keep my passport handy and updated because I sometimes wonder if people like me won't be fleeing this country in the same way many Jews cleared out of Germany before the real terror began.
That is why I found Trump a body -blow. I thought after Dubhya the people had learned something. I kept my fingers crossed that Palin wouldn't get elected. I Thought they'd see though Trump, too, but apparently not.
And there seem to be those that are fine with the continual leading of America around by the nose by religious lunatics, because at least God -believers are iin power.
It may be that Brexit was unfortunate. Fear of Muslim immigration tipped what was a close thing. But it has smashed our political system. Nobody really has any idea what is going on or what to do. All we can do is get on with out our lives at local level and let the politicians run around wasting public time and money on what has become totally irrelevant.
I have a theory ...no smiley this time. It's ceased to be funny - that getting rid of king and state church was a great step forward for mankind. But the lack of a head of the nation meant that Patriotism and Bible became the national ethos. Not King and country, by American and Bible. Thus disrespecting the Bible has become equivalent with treason, and despite Arach's scorn, I am sure that the Cold War and the McCarthyist hysteria has lead to a an almost atavistic loathing of anything liberal, which is only confirmed by seeming to be joined at the hip by rejection of God and the Bible and endorsing Satantic stuff like evolution and Gay cakes.
I was wondering whether to post some thoughts I has on Harry Potter and how the author saw what I only just realized - the Evils of Fudge and Umbridge I thought were just "make you baddies look as Bad as you can", but they show how the stuff we sorta love about Ol England.. greystone mansions, Gentlemen's clubs, cricket, cups of tea on the lawn. could so easily be Hi -jacked by the worst kind of Naziism. In fact it damn near did before the war, but we got rid of our king as well.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 09-22-2017 at 06:53 AM..
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