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Did you marry your wife at City Hall? The civil ceremony vow goes like this:
"I, (Groom), take you (Bride), to be my wife. In this moment, I promise before these witnesses to love you and care for you all of our days. I accept you with your faults and your strengths, even as I offer myself with my faults and my strengths."
Sounds as unconditionally binding as "for better or for worse till death do us part, so help me God."
When I looked it up, the words used at a civil ceremony are quite varied, and often written by the couple. In some jurisdictions, the law requires the couple to declare their freedom to marry one another, so words to that effect are included. Other that the part that might include such phrases as "God's holy ordinance" or "so help me God," the vows look pretty much the same as those used in church weddings.
(One other thing I noticed. The civil ceremony vows did not include the word "obey.")
Secularism is a load of bull. Their atheist humanist values and relational ethics are all appropriated from Christianity. Talk about intellectual property theft.
Perhaps you can explain what humanist values and ethics you think atheists have appropriated from Christianity. As far as I know, the morals and ethics promoted by Christianity are a reflection of the morals and ethics of society, not the other way around.
What I mean is that, using the ten commandments as an example, society recognized the authority of parents over their children, prohibits murder, recognized adultery as grounds for divorce, and prohibits theft of another persons property, and requires a person to tell the truth in court. These things are pretty much the same in societies around the world, no matter what religion is predominate in any particular society, so they are a function of human society. We live together in groups better when we expect people to refrain from stealing and killing each other.
So, what morals and ethics have atheist appropriated from Christians?
Secularism is a load of bull. Their atheist humanist values and relational ethics are all appropriated from Christianity. Talk about intellectual property theft.
1) There are no 'atheist values'. I suspect you can't distinguish between what atheists believe (that there are no deities - period) and concepts that predominate in modern secular liberal democratic systems.
2) Christian values were hardly anything new when the ignorant bronze-age goatherds were inventing it. Christianity did not originate 'don't take things that belong to others' or 'don't kill other people' and the like (ex: the Code of Hammurabi), nor did Christianity invent the long list of convenient (to Christians) exceptions that allowed taking stuff and killing people.
3) Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to vote. The right to not be enslaved. The right to a jury trial of one's peers. The rights of security and privacy and marriage. And many other rights common to modern secular liberal democratic systems have absolutely no origin whatsoever in Christianity.
4) You clearly haven't the foggiest idea what 'intellectual property' means.
I'm genuinely impressed by all the demonstrably false nonsense you packed into a mere two sentences.
And I demonstrated on the balance of spirit law, how light causes things to rise. And yet, not all light is righteous light. You can't have it both ways.
You did the same thing in putting me down while declaring yourself to be enlightened. While simultaneously claiming light has no drawing effect on the rising growth of living things. And you used the gravity of the balance that you use to do it.
I thought we were talking about light. Light that causes plants to grow the way they do...
Now you are apparently talking about righteous light. I recall nothing about righteous light when I studied botany.
As for the rest, I'm afraid your ego is getting in the way of the sort of discussion I prefer. If this fact puts you down as well far as you are concerned, so be it. If so, best we part company I think. Best of gravity to you as you go forward to wherever you're headed.
One can say the same thing about Divinity, it exists whether one knows about it or not, theist, agnostic, or atheist, the burden is to maintain a sure footing.
It's the Religion and Spirituality forum. I can be an atheist and be spiritual. The title doesn't specify what religion has to be here (Wiccan is a recognized religion) and it doesn't say what you have to be spiritual about.
Christians like to gatekeep when it comes to religion and I'd like to take this opportunity to remind them that religion doesn't always equal Christianity. There are other religions out there. The question should be, why wouldn't I be in the Religion and Spirituality forum?
It's the Religion and Spirituality forum. I can be an atheist and be spiritual. The title doesn't specify what religion has to be here (Wiccan is a recognized religion) and it doesn't say what you have to be spiritual about.
Christians like to gatekeep when it comes to religion and I'd like to take this opportunity to remind them that religion doesn't always equal Christianity. There are other religions out there. The question should be, why wouldn't I be in the Religion and Spirituality forum?
Sometimes I think I may be more spiritual than the posters claiming to be spiritual, because I am not trying to be spiritual; I am not blindly following some old text on faith; I am not asserting a web of woo; I am not trying to make it all about me, I can sit under the trees in our garden and just observe the world in peace, or look at the night sky and realize just how insignificant we all are.
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