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I am always curious to know how the knowledge of Bible is propagated through centuries. Do the people memorize the entire scripture and teach it to the kids or only the church/pastors do it?? Or its just through print its sustained??
No, for most of those centuries the majority of people couldn't read. The stories might be heard read by the priests, who were educated, but because the general population couldn't read, they were free to put their own or their benefactor's spin on things.
It doesn't matter, though. The scriptures are a guidepost. They don't have to be memorized.
No, it's true. In certain substance abuse programs such as AA and NA, the "higher power" is generally interpreted by members as the christian god. All they're doing is substituting their alcohol and/or drug addiction for an addiction to religion, and when god doesn't come through for them, and he never does, they're crushed and they relapse.
AA has been very successful for many over the years. No human institution has been 100% effective
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The same as any other religion: by government.
As soon as government stops supporting a religion, it collapses.
It has been a long time since our government has supported Christianity, yet it has survived
No, for most of those centuries the majority of people couldn't read. The stories might be heard read by the priests, who were educated, but because the general population couldn't read, they were free to put their own or their benefactor's spin on things.
It doesn't matter, though. The scriptures are a guidepost. They don't have to be memorized.
like lines on the bottom of a pool. When in a race, you may be looking but you are focused on swimming. when diving, a glance to get "close". When jumpin all about, just there as background for the players. lil guys swim down to touch the line. From those looking from above, all squiggly as a snake.
It has been a long time since our government has supported Christianity, yet it has survived
A long time? In 1840 in New England States, people were required to tithe 10% of their income to their local church, whether they wanted to do so or not. Not only were people forced to tithe, businesses were forced to tithe, too.
In 1954, your government added the phrase "under god" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
That was only 64 years ago, and your government forced students to say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools up through the present, which is now, the year 2018.
School prayer wasn't "barred" by a US Supreme Court ruling until 1962, which was only 56 years ago.
School prayer still exists to this day, as schools recite prayers before graduation and other events.
Congress still opens with a prayer, so government is still very much involved in the christian religion, in spite of your erroneous claim.
A long time? In 1840 in the New England States, people were required to tithe 10% of their income to their local church, whether they wanted to do so or not. Not only were people forced to tithe, businesses were forced to tithe, too.
In 1954, your government added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
That was only 64 years ago, and your government forced students to say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools up through the present, which is now the year 2018.
School prayer wasn't "barred" by a US Supreme Court ruling until 1962, which was only 56 years ago.
School prayer still exists to this day, as schools recite prayers before graduation and other events.
Congress still opens with a prayer, so the government is still very much involved in the Christian religion, in spite of your erroneous claim.
By your own admission, the last thing you have a legitimate gripe about happened over 56 years ago. Try to keep up. It is 2018. As for your concern about prayer, I can't think of a more pointless gripe. Given your probably atheist views, prayers are completely useless so what's the issue???
A long time? In 1840 in New England States, people were required to tithe 10% of their income to their local church, whether they wanted to do so or not. Not only were people forced to tithe, businesses were forced to tithe, too.
That may be, but it is not Biblical.
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In 1954, your government added the phrase "under god" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Is it still there?
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That was only 64 years ago, and your government forced students to say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools up through the present, which is now, the year 2018.
The pledge of allegiance is not religious.
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School prayer wasn't "barred" by a US Supreme Court ruling until 1962, which was only 56 years ago.
If the government was supporting religion, it would still be there and we know it has been forbidden.
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School prayer still exists to this day, as schools recite prayers before graduation and other events.
Not in all schools, not even in most and the government isn't sponsoring them or requiring them.
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Congress still opens with a prayer, so government is still very much involved in the christian religion, in spite of your erroneous claim.
That is traditional and does not support the government being involved in religion.
Since religion has been taken our of our public institutions, our society has become more violent. Do you not wonder why?
I believe that The Bible is very valid and that today even in modern times " BLOOD CRIMES ARE REAL. "
Especially when there are no cures, nothing but death and suffering to whomever You infect by behaving dangerously.
In the Bible days, there were no treatments, tests, medicines and antibiotics, cures, surgeries and modern advanced technologies. Once You catch a disease You and everyone that You infect are doomed to suffer a horrible, painful and excruciating, torturous and agonizing Painful horrible death. - with no painkillers, no treatments, and medicine.
The Jews were being constantly attacked and were in a constant state of war. They were always on the run and living and surviving with all of Your neighbors attacking You is nearly impossible especially when Your neighbors are also spreading diseases in the water supply and by having sexual contact with people in Your Own Neighborhoods. Leviticus has explained many of the details of the violent, evil behaviors of the neighbors of the Israelites who were allied against Israel and attacking them.
Even if You or I do not believe in a deity – we can still read The Bible Stories and see what they were dealing with and what they had to do to survive and keep from being infected with widespread diseases, plagues and symptoms
By your own admission, the last thing you have a legitimate gripe about happened over 56 years ago. Try to keep up. It is 2018. As for your concern about prayer, I can't think of a more pointless gripe. Given your probably atheist views, prayers are completely useless so what's the issue???
It's barely been a generation. Do try to keep up. I never said nor implied that religion would end over-night without government support.
However, I did, apparently, make an unreasonable assumption, assuming that people were intelligent enough and knowledgeable enough of history to know that those religions which lost government support all fell by the wayside after a number of generations or several centuries had passed, and are now characterized as "myth and mythology."
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Originally Posted by omega2xx
The pledge of allegiance is not religious.
It became religious after Congress inserted the phrase "under god."
Congress didn't have Shiva, Allah, Thor or Yahweh in mind when they made the change, and the change was in response to "godless communism."
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Originally Posted by omega2xx
Since religion has been taken our of our public institutions, our society has become more violent. Do you not wonder why?
It has nothing to do with religion. Neither ethics nor morality require religion.
The amount of violence has more to do with urbanization. You fail to recognize that 90+% of the population lived in rural areas and engaged in agriculture up to 1930. It wasn't until 1964 that 51% of the US population lived in urban areas, and the other 49% of the population still lived in rural areas engaged in agriculture. As of 2017, 80.7% of America lives in urban areas and while 19.3% of the population lives in rural areas only 2% of the population are engaged in agriculture.
Calhoun's rat utopia experiment is instructive:
Dominant males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. In certain sections of the pens, infant mortality rose as high as 96%, the dead cannibalized by adults. Subordinate animals withdrew psychologically, surviving in a physical sense but at an immense psychological cost.They were the majority in the late phases of growth, existing as a vacant, huddled mass in the center of the pens. Unable to breed, the population plummeted and did not recover. The crowded rodents had lost the ability to co-exist harmoniously, even after the population numbers once again fell to low levels. At a certain density, they had ceased to act like rats and mice, and the change was permanent.
[emphasis mine]
Sources:
Calhoun, J. B. 1963. The Ecology and Sociology of the Norway Rat. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare.
Pines, M. 1971. “How the social organization of animal communities can lead to a population crisis which destroys them,” in Julius Segal (ed.) National Institute of Mental Health; Mental Health Reports – 5; U.S. Department of Health Education & Welfare.
Coupled with the effects of urbanization are the government's liberal policies related social welfare programs, coupled with American's penchant for substance abuse, which has led to the increase in violence.
By your own admission, the last thing you have a legitimate gripe about happened over 56 years ago. Try to keep up. It is 2018. As for your concern about prayer, I can't think of a more pointless gripe. Given your probably atheist views, prayers are completely useless so what's the issue???
C'mon, Mystic, we've been over this before.
Mircea is absolutely right.
In fact, the Supreme Court just recently allowed businesses to refuse to offer contraception as part of their health insurance -- for religious reasons.
As if corporations like Hobby Lobby have religions.
Just recently, the Supreme Court upheld the right of business owners to discriminate against gays due to their "sincerely held religious beliefs."
Roughly 5 years ago, the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security made it a CRIMINAL OFFENSE to not give God the credit for any terrorist attacks they stop. You can spend as much as a YEAR in jail for failing to invoke God as the real reason for stopping the terrorists.
President George H.W. Bush openly stated that he wasn't even sure atheists were American citizens, but they certainly weren't patriots because "this is a nation under God."
State Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore of Alabama said -- three times -- that Constitutional rights were for Christians only. No one else.
Three GOP presidential candidates including Ted Cruz attended -- and gave speeches at -- rallies that advocate the legal murder of all gays because the Bible says they should be put to death.
There are the 8 states that still require you to believe in God -- or at least a Supreme Being -- to hold public office, and yes, there have been recent cases when various governing bodies tried to uphold those rules to keep atheists from being seated within their respective offices.
And Mircea is right to see all of this prayer nonsense in government as an endorsement of religion. After all, who do you think they're praying to? The FSM? No, it is a tacit endorsement by the government that Yahweh, God of the Book of Horrors ... erm, I mean the Bible ... is the one true and FORMALLY RECOGNIZED God. It doesn't matter whether prayer actually does anything or not. It's what is written between the lines that you should be paying attention to.
I remember when Obama took more crap than the entire Chicago sewage system for failing to slather his Thanksgiving Day speech with references to God -- because, you know, if you're thankful, you better be thanking Yahweh and not Allah or Shiva or anyone else, dammit! Obama was the first president in American history that did not speak exclusively to Christians and that was just one more reason why he was hated.
The fact is -- if NOT for activists who are ensuring the Constitution is upheld in regards to religious encroachment upon government, by now, prayer would be back in our schools, creationism would be in our science classes -- and religion would have been slipped in through the back door any which way they could do it.
Because, rest assured, the fundamentalists and evangelicals don't give a DAMN about the freedom of others in this country and they certainly don't give a damn about the Constitution -- which, to many of them, is just an incovenient obstacle to be circumvented if at all possible.
You've read enough of my posts to know that there is still a really big problem in this country in regards to religion being where it doesn't belong -- and many people are still paying the price for it, whether it's people who want to "die with dignity" but can't because of religious views on doctor-assisted suicides to the fundevangalists selling their souls to Donald Trump in the hopes of getting abortion criminalized.
In fact, the Supreme Court just recently allowed businesses to refuse to offer contraception as part of their health insurance -- for religious reasons.
As if corporations like Hobby Lobby have religions.
Just recently, the Supreme Court upheld the right of business owners to discriminate against gays due to their "sincerely held religious beliefs."
Roughly 5 years ago, the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security made it a CRIMINAL OFFENSE to not give God the credit for any terrorist attacks they stop. You can spend as much as a YEAR in jail for failing to invoke God as the real reason for stopping the terrorists.
President George H.W. Bush openly stated that he wasn't even sure atheists were American citizens, but they certainly weren't patriots because "this is a nation under God."
State Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore of Alabama said -- three times -- that Constitutional rights were for Christians only. No one else.
Three GOP presidential candidates including Ted Cruz attended -- and gave speeches at -- rallies that advocate the legal murder of all gays because the Bible says they should be put to death.
There are the 8 states that still require you to believe in God -- or at least a Supreme Being -- to hold public office, and yes, there have been recent cases when various governing bodies tried to uphold those rules to keep atheists from being seated within their respective offices.
And Mircea is right to see all of this prayer nonsense in government as an endorsement of religion. After all, who do you think they're praying to? The FSM? No, it is a tacit endorsement by the government that Yahweh, God of the Book of Horrors ... erm, I mean the Bible ... is the one true and FORMALLY RECOGNIZED God. It doesn't matter whether prayer actually does anything or not. It's what is written between the lines that you should be paying attention to.
I remember when Obama took more crap than the entire Chicago sewage system for failing to slather his Thanksgiving Day speech with references to God -- because, you know, if you're thankful, you better be thanking Yahweh and not Allah or Shiva or anyone else, dammit! Obama was the first president in American history that did not speak exclusively to Christians and that was just one more reason why he was hated.
The fact is -- if NOT for activists who are ensuring the Constitution is upheld in regards to religious encroachment upon government, by now, prayer would be back in our schools, creationism would be in our science classes -- and religion would have been slipped in through the back door any which way they could do it.
Because, rest assured, the fundamentalists and evangelicals don't give a DAMN about the freedom of others in this country and they certainly don't give a damn about the Constitution -- which, to many of them, is just an incovenient obstacle to be circumvented if at all possible.
You've read enough of my posts to know that there is still a really big problem in this country in regards to religion being where it doesn't belong -- and many people are still paying the price for it, whether it's people who want to "die with dignity" but can't because of religious views on doctor-assisted suicides to the fundevangalists selling their souls to Donald Trump in the hopes of getting abortion criminalized.
Tsk. Tsk.
Wow. Now I know what it feels like to get a Shirina Shellacking! I certainly hope that none of those horrible things will result from the use of prayer. I find it quite comforting. Sorry, Shirina.
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