You are espousing the view that anybody who is of faith and teaches that faith is a fraud and should be in prison. THAT is what makes you a jackass. Sorry you cannot understand that. I should read my audience better next time. You obviously have no clue regarding the freedoms that we have in this country. Either that or you simply stopped reading the Constitution before you got to the First Amendment. What a tool.
83% of Americans view themselves as Christian I guess you want 83% of Americans outlawed and those who dare to teach these beliefs to their children should be jailed. You are a jackass.
there is nothing wrong with believing and being religious. I myself am a big believer there is EVERYTHING wrong with a televangelist getting on TV and claiming to have spoken with "the lord" last night and he told him that the end is near, so give me 10% of your money as a donation. These guys are a bunch of frauds who have cult-like following. Those followers are willing to believe everything those idiots say, from claiming that Obama is the anti-christ to calling Islam a "demonic religion" and stating that this nation was founded to destroy this "false religion". (by the way, the guys I refer to are John Hagee and Rod Parsley, just to name a few)
True... BUT, the OP specifically called to outlaw parochial preschools and finds incredulous that parents would teach religion to their children. You make a good point. Unfortunately, that is not at all what the OP is saying.
then deal with those frauds as is appropriate, don't attack an entire segment of the population simply because they choose to believe differently than you. Not every christian is a money grubbing charlatan jsut like not every muslum is a bomb weilding lunatic. and stonegate archer.....tone down the rhetoric or you will be joining your compatriot Yugorocketsfan in bansville rather quickly. You have a problem with some religious folk, i get that and even agree to some degree....but your mode of arguing tells us you arent interested in actual discussion....an dif that is the case you become a simple troll...posting jsut to piss people off, and THAT will get you banned rather quickly.
76%. Here's some updated info: http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
Fair enough. The fact remains that you put 4 people in a room and the OP has done his best to alienate and degrade 3 of them.
Surprising that the non-religions/agnostic are flattening out over the past few years. Big surge in the 90s though. I figured it would be a pretty steady curve.
Where do you get that from? They are the fastest growing demographic according to that study. Christians are the slowest growing.
At the very least, science and religion can be considered human constructs that serve as tools. Whether someone abuses either for good or bad doesn't disprove the usefulness of either. One example would be early Soviet Union. They believed that science would transform their state into a rationalistic Communist utopia. Everything was centrally planned with the help of scientific analyses, and they churned out engineers to rebuild their agrarian state. They didn't need religion as a method for control, and actually the soviets did pretty well rebuilding before and after WW2. With Stalin, there was the prime example of cult of personality. Much later, the planners of the Soviet Union eventually became bogged down by complexity because even though they were successful in creating a stable middle class, that middle class decided that they wanted more than the predetermined choice of items that they were given, such as the same 3 toothbrushes in every market. The bureaucracy made it difficult for the planners to quickly adjust to make more toothbrushes. Lately, the flaws of social science should force us to question the public's over-reliance upon models and numbers. The financial industry allowed quants to form formulas upon base assumptions and the industry's (with it's customers) implicit trust of those formulas inevitably set the stage for financial excess and ruin. It's not that the incorrect formulas were the proof of mathematic or scientific failure, but rather it was the failure to understand what those proofs actually meant and the limitations it held. We assumed simple models were capable of handling a complex world. This assumption is very similar to our individual understanding of the world: "Every effect demands a cause. If something happens, there has to be a reason." What's hard for most people to cope with is when **** happens, or when the causes doesn't have to involve you to change you deeply. "Observation, application, review, repeat" would be great if it could be applied all the time, but we all hedge and we aren't always consistent or disciplined to follow through. The choices we make could change with remembering a bad memory or even trying to memorize some random numbers while making the decision. Facing uncertainty and coping with the consequences of living has been a part of this topic's ideal discussion, but the focus of this thread mostly based upon a God personified and one who plays favors with acts. Not all Christians practice this type of Christianity, even if that form is distinctly American as apple pie.
fascinating. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1iMmvu9eMrg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1iMmvu9eMrg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
I know I'm late but thought I'd chime in on these posts: I believe you're describing a form of unjustified religious intolerance rather than religion here. Whether Christianity or Islam (I'm not sure about others), no human has the right to condemn another person to hell. They can think what they want, but in truth God didn't give us the tools to do His job. Even IRAN doesn't ban beliefs (obviously they don't treat all equally though). I'm sorry we gave you this impression. I'd like to apologize on behalf of everyone who gave you this impression, but it's not my place unfortunately. I am mostly sorry that your understanding of religion makes you feel like it's adversarial and requires shrewd attacks just to make a point. If I could just make one comment for you to consider: Just like you wouldn't want anyone to paint all atheists with the same brush, try not to do the same with religion. For example, there are lazy brokers, aggressive brokers, cautious brokers and sensible brokers - they all believe in return over risk, but don't show it the same way. Great great stuff. I hope you don't mind if I want to pick your brain sometime and imitate your "business" model .
If you don't believe in Hell though why should it bother you that much? Should it bother people who don't believe in Karma if someone tells them they will be stuck in the Hungry Ghost Realm for not following the Dharma?
Great point. Religion and science need not be adverserial except in the most shallow interpretation of either.
Sure there are certainly plenty of frauds and criminals who use religion to take peoples money. That said there are also a lot of people looking for something more than what the material world can offer them. There are many people looking for a sense of comfort and peace out of a world where they don't think they can find anything. Would you suggest we also lock up pyschiatrists, therapists and counselors since what they do can't always be quantified?
