God is not Dead!

Iscah

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You're welcome!

Also every time I see the topic title I want to sing. "God's not dead (clapclapclapclap) He is alive!"....anyone else? Is that a common song? Just Salvation Army? Just me? (Can't remember any lyrics beyond repeating that phrase a few times...)
 

dwayne1115

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You're welcome!

Also every time I see the topic title I want to sing. "God's not dead (clapclapclapclap) He is alive!"....anyone else? Is that a common song? Just Salvation Army? Just me? (Can't remember any lyrics beyond repeating that phrase a few times...)
I'm not sure I know that song but has anyone seen the movie God is Not Dead?
 

snichols1973

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Here's a one-liner from the lighter side:

"You have to question any period in history in which people are saying that God is dead and Elvis is alive."

---Robert Orben
 

D'Snowth

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the government (as per separation of church and state) isn't supposed to side with any one religion over another (we'd have to allow equal time for every religion if we did that, and really, in schools, government meetings, and so forth, who has time for that?).
I can actually remember when I was a kid in school, only Jewish students and faculty members were excused from school on Jewish holidays such as Passover and Yom Kippur and such, but apparently since then, they let all students and faculties off on Jewish holidays as well.
 

fuzzygobo

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I'm not sure I know that song but has anyone seen the movie God is Not Dead?
Yes. Saw it in the movies, and just came out on DVD. I wish people who don't know God could understand that he is not about following rules, rituals, and living up to impossible legalistic ideals (Never sin! Impossible, by being human, we've all screwed up).

God is about loving.
God is about healing.
God is about bringing people together, not to separate them.
Forgiveness, compassion, and understanding.
Opening your heart. Otherwise Jesus' death on the cross was meaningless.
 

Drtooth

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The issue as I see it (being a secular pantheist, which means in terms of any sort of personal, supreme, anthropomorphic gods, I would be considered an atheist) is that it's well and good for people to practice their religions personally (something I have zero problem with; it's a free country, after all), but the government (as per separation of church and state) isn't supposed to side with any one religion over another (we'd have to allow equal time for every religion if we did that, and really, in schools, government meetings, and so forth, who has time for that?). And I don't see how atheists and atheist organizations putting billboards up is any different than religious groups doing it, or for that matter, any company advertising.
I hate the fact that American Christians have no idea what real persecution is. It ranges from the totally made up War on Christmas stuff loudmouth paid opinionheads like to drag out annually, to "we're being persecuted by losing our right to persecute others." In other words, bullcrap and hate. That's not persecution, that's the equivalent of jumping in front of cars to sue them. Meanwhile, certain parts of the globe, you get slaughtered for being Christian. THAT'S persecution. Yeah, there are atheists that are complete jerkwads about what they believe, but that's what happens. It's reactionary extremism. One extremist side becomes to loud and powerful, and a polar opposite gets created as a result. Like how we wouldn't have had the freaking Religious Right Moral Majority minority had it not been for Hippies.

I'm going to call it. If religious types want to stop feeling "persecuted," they need to loudly, vocally, and publicly call out extremist branches of their religion and marginalize them at every cost. If atheists want to stop looking like dinks, they need to respect respectful religious types, but go after the nasty hate groups disguising themselves as righteous. Religious and non-religious types have the same enemy. Why antagonize each other when you can join forces to discredit extremism? We're all on the same side here, we just have to give up a little to get things to work. And that "little" doesn't mean giving up on religion. At least, not completely.


Now, that's true. And I've come to realize that WBC is getting more laughably desperate to have someone, ANYONE in the media pay attention to them (if it weren't so pathetic, it would be comical) that they insert their Insane Troll Logic-based rhetoric into any, and every, news story under the sun.
They're a joke. Hate groups find them distasteful. They're only around because they're that freaking insane and inbred with their beliefs. And like I always say, if these kinds of people are so religious, how come they pretty much forget everything but some idiotic footnote? They have an entire way of life essentially to help shape you into a better, nicer, kinder person, but they throw it all away based on one little freaking idiotic thing. And that freaking thing is so freaking important that all the love each other, help the less fortunate, God is the only one with a right to judge stuff goes out the window for "X is a sin. Sin is something we're told to hate. So X = hate it" logic. It's like that Indiana Pizza place that refused gay customers for those exact stupid selfish UNChristian reasons (guess they miss segregation that much they needed an outlet) that got rewarded on Kickstarter or something by other religious types that feel persecuted because they no longer can hate without looking like complete butts. Oh, forget the starving people dying on the street or in other countries, these people willfully refuse money on the grounds of aforementioned unimportant footnote. They're persecuted just like Fox News says we are.

And while I'm on the subject, you know those violent psychos that hate the US so much they want to blow everything up? HEY! I got it. if you want to make the US look bad, why not build a society on love and tolerance and help those around you, devoted to a life of charity? Nope. Blow stuff up because something somewhere somehow sort of justifies it despite the fact the rest of the entire religion says not to. Yep. So why do people hate religious types so much again? AH! Because they successfully destroyed anything good about their own religion. Way to go. Extremists of any religion successfully destroyed everything that's supposed to be good and pure about religion, with the side effect of lumping anyone who's a respectful religious follower in with your batcrap insane group. Let's say there's a certain religion created by...oh... let's say a subpar sci-fi writer. And let's say that religion is essentially made to sucker money out of everyone. THEY'RE not as batcrap insane as the extremists.
 

CensoredAlso

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Meanwhile, certain parts of the globe, you get slaughtered for being Christian. THAT'S persecution.
Agreed 100%. It's terrifying and so frustrating because it feels like nobody's doing anything about it. And clearly it's a lot more serious than anything Christians face in the US.

By the same token, while it is foolish and backward for US businesses to deny same sex couples service, our problems do not compare to what is done to homosexuals in the Middle East (such as Iran, you know, that country we just made a deal with). Yet you rarely hear about that on the news. We are far too terrified of offending Islam. No other religion is given this kind of pass. Many moderate Muslims want us to challenge these problems and think we are insane for tip toeing around them.

Religious and non-religious types have the same enemy. Why antagonize each other when you can join forces to discredit extremism?
Because to many atheists, all religions need to go away. They don't distinguish between moderate and extreme. In fact they're annoyed at the moderates for giving religion an excuse to exist.
 
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aebthegofer

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I believe that if you are going to call yourself a Christian, you should stand for your beliefs. And I don't mean that you should shove your beliefs down others' throats. I mean that when people have been around you, they should be able to tell from your actions what you believe. I once heard a preacher say, "If someone were to accuse you of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict?"


~Aeb:wink:
 

Drtooth

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By the same token, while it is foolish and backward for US businesses to deny same sex couples service, our problems do not compare to what is done to homosexuals in the Middle East (such as Iran, you know, that country we just made a deal with). Yet you rarely hear about that on the news. We are far too terrified of offending Islam. No other religion is given this kind of pass. Many moderate Muslims want us to challenge these problems and think we are insane for tip toeing around them.
To be quite honest, I have a problem with all ultra-conservative, hyper-orthodox religions. The whole "everything that is written down is to be taken to a literal extreme" thing is exactly what's wrong with religion. It's not that there aren't more liberal, progressive Muslims that are looking for reform and acceptance. It's just that, much like here, leaders love to pander to the older, scared of their own shadow crowd that thinks any change of any kind is high blasphemy. Most sane, young people want reform and change in any religion. It's easier to win elections or take over power by scaring people than giving them a sense of hope and love. Look at Africa. The far right Christian zealots who have finally started to be marginalized moved over there and dumped their losing rhetoric on the public like losing Super Bowl Team Shirts (to paraphrase John Oliver).

As for the "Freedom of Religion" act? Oh booooyyyyyyy... Religion ain't got bull to do with it. It's yet another "corporations are above the law" legislation disguised as Patriotic buzzwords. Remember the big thing about how Hobby Lobby refused to pay for birth control for their employees on religious grounds? That was a huge pile of an entire farm's worth of animal waste. Regardless of what anyone's stance on birth control is, it had NOTHING to do with their religious beliefs, but everything to do with the same, stale "Obamacare's gonna bankrupt us or something! We shouldn't pay taxes because we're a business! Ayn Rand Ayn Rand Ayn Rand" mindset. They totally had birth control covered on their own health care system. But big scary government regulations came about that would have had them lose a small amount of money in the short run, so they decided to make up religious nonsense excuses to basically say "the government is making us do this, let's act like spoiled five year olds in a supermarket." So this bull legislation passed to protect businesses from any legal action that arise in hateful, stupid, entitled actions.
 

CensoredAlso

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As for the "Freedom of Religion" act? Oh booooyyyyyyy... Religion ain't got bull to do with it. It's yet another "corporations are above the law" legislation disguised as Patriotic buzzwords.
Agreed. Frankly, I don't think you can be a Christian and a businessman/woman at the same time. If you want to stand on beliefs, then you may have to sacrifice your livelihood. No man can serve God and money. (Nevermind I think Christians take a couple random passages on the topic in the Bible far too seriously.)

By the same token, I laugh when any company makes a big show of supporting same sex marriage. That's not about morality or freedom there either. It's about what their customers want to hear.
 
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