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I have, I was cross addicted, and I have been in recovery for 30 years. Did they give any evidence of how God may have done it? If there is no proof to be offered, then it's merely opinion without validation.
Did you ever wake up in a back alley after an all night praying section?
True Christianity solves the problems of the individual. It can, but not necessarily help solve problems in the wider society. It's a huge problem when you have a lot of people professing Christ who are in no way or manner Christians.These people do a lot of damage to both the church and the general society. Take for instance the American "Christian right". I would estimate that less than 5% of these folks are actually Christian at all. They fail the smell test completely. Most of the views they hold regarding government and society in general are decidedly anti Christian. Hate, greed, warmongering, racism, violence in it's many forms, elitism and a whole host of other worldly behaviours and the antithesis of everything a real Christian holds dear to his heart. Love, selflessness, care for the poor, the disadvantaged, the sick, the prisoner, these are the things the true Christian cares about.
I agree, but I'm also a believer that there are useful things to be learned from other sources which is why I doubt I'll ever be able to truly believe there is only ONE WAY. I place a lot more stock in how one lives their life 24/7 than in what they may/may not do on their Sabbath of choice.
I don't believe the Church bears responsibility for those problems occurring, the hierarchy should however be held responsible for the way they were handled.
As do most people... Placing stock in a persons actions vs ones citation.
One should also draw information from as many credible sources as they can find.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,353 posts, read 54,549,829 times
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Originally Posted by whogo
The 1st Amendment puts religion in play. That is not debateable. Even liberals support certain prohibitions on the free exercise of religion.
No one is compelled to follow anyone else's religion. Are you referring to individuals who try to compel business owners to violate their religious beliefs in order to provide services they wish not to perform?
No, I'm referring to those who tell us the First Amendment doesn't guarantee freedom from religion.
But I think a business should be required to obey the laws governing business. As I think the owners of Hobby Lobby speak sanctimonious BS when they claim to be so moral yet have no problem selling a bunch of cheap crap from a country with abortion on demand and a long list of human rights violations, the kind of 'morality' they claim to be so offended by, for highly inflated prices. Bunch of damn hypocrites IMO.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,353 posts, read 54,549,829 times
Reputation: 40820
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stymie13
As do most people... Placing stock in a persons actions vs ones citation.
One should also draw information from as many credible sources as they can find.
Perhaps my mind was poisoned in my youth, in Roman Catholic Sunday school we were threatened with eternal damnation if we even set foot in a church of a different flavor. That was not an isolated incident as I've met several other people from different parts of the country who told the exact same thing.
Congratulations to the church! Nothing else could have been more effective in driving me from organized religion.
Faith like politics can be a potent addictive for many, failing to recognize this and ensuring a balance is maintained is where people start to have problems.
As I've said, I believe there are natural laws such as not stealing, not killing, etc. that were in place long before the invention of any religion, so what's to say those religious laws you'd have us believe the country was founded on weren't in place before the religion existed? Are we to believe that before the days of Christ or whatever your God of choice that men stole from each other, killed each other, etc. with no repercussions? As if it took some man-made religion to tell them the error(s) of their ways?
I don't believe going back 227 years is anywhere near far enough to learn what shaped human behavior nor do I believe it took the Ten Commandments or anything like them to shape much of accepted behavior.
Again, that's a conflation of philosophical questions one can debate to the end of the universe or look at it from simple historical progression.
Our laws are based off religious tradition. That is history. The rest is up to an individual in regards to who, what, where, why, and how.
That's cool you want a complete divorce, or argue right and wrong before the 'invention' of religion. That's another argument/debate.
True Christianity solves the problems of the individual. It can, but not necessarily help solve problems in the wider society. It's a huge problem when you have a lot of people professing Christ who are in no way or manner Christians.These people do a lot of damage to both the church and the general society. Take for instance the American "Christian right". I would estimate that less than 5% of these folks are actually Christian at all. They fail the smell test completely. Most of the views they hold regarding government and society in general are decidedly anti Christian. Hate, greed, warmongering, racism, violence in it's many forms, elitism and a whole host of other worldly behaviours and the antithesis of everything a real Christian holds dear to his heart. Love, selflessness, care for the poor, the disadvantaged, the sick, the prisoner, these are the things the true Christian cares about.
This is why Roger Williams--the Puritan pastor who founded the first Baptist congregation in America--was also the man who coined the phrase that Jefferson later cribbed as "wall of separation between church and state."
Williams had written back in the 1600s that failing to maintain a "hedge of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the World"--when it was socially necessary or even merely socially advantageous to be known as a member of the Church-- the inevitable result was that the pews would be packed by people merely seeking that social advantage. Williams--writing not long after the religion-based European Thirty Years War and very shortly before the religion-based English Civil War--traced the history of Christianity entangled with government since Constantine and noted that it was always a bad thing.
Williams was a remarkable man. He was an evangelist to the Indians in the northeast, but his gospel was "Jesus is real, but those guys want to steal your land." He was also the first American Abolitionist. When he got kicked out of Massachusetts for holding those subversive views, he founded the colony of Rhode Island explicitly as a colony of complete freedom of and from religion. In fact, his writings explicitly included freedom for the "Musselman" (Muslim) and the atheist in Rhode Island.
And after the writing of the Constitution, it was Williams' Rhode Island that single-handedly blocked ratification until the First Amendment had been written and first ratified. It was to Williams' Baptist spiritual descendants that Jefferson had to promise the new federal government would include a "wall of separation between Church and State."
Religion is still more important to Americans than people from various other First World democracies.
Some Americans have argued that the "irreligious people" are to blame for America's social issues. However, the world's least religious democracies have either eliminated or managed these social issues much better than what the United States has.
People seem to be overlooking that. Some of you aren't even addressing what the thread is about.
Why is there a higher homicide rate in the United States than in Scandinavia's super secular nations?
The fact is, I never implied that religion is bad. What I argue is that being a religious nation is not essential for social prosperity (as indicated with the data samples in the OP) – and that blame for social issues is misattributed to "irreligious people."
Blame should be attributed to crony capitalism, corporate welfare, divisive politics and so on. Look at those issues and their impact on the American people before you consider ranting on about how secularism or irreligion is destroying America.
That's my additional two cents. Thank you!
Last edited by Kool Krab; 03-11-2016 at 08:11 AM..
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Religion won't solve America's problems
