The New "Am I the Only One" Thread

Uh...your history needs some revising, Snowth.

All the things you list in the first paragraph there do fall under the idea of separation of church and state -- that is, that we as a nation shall not favor any one religion over any other (or lack of one) -- NOT what that idiot Santorum seems to think it means.

And the hyperreligious have indeed tried to block that notion at every turn, insisting this nation was "founded by Christians" -- really? a bunch of Deists, agnostics, and at least one avowed atheist (Tom Paine) were "Christian" in the same sense that these zealots proclaim themselves to be? The guy they profess to worship would be disgusted with them. Laws still on the books in many states forbid certain types of intimate intercourse, or women having the absolute say over their own reproduction, or nonbelievers holding government posts, and other such nonsense based solely on THEIR interpretation of THEIR holy book.

I have nothing against believers. Do what thou wilt, an it harm none, right? My problem begins when someone else tries to legislate their narrow belief system onto MY back. That's the whole debate...not who's "right" about a deity; whether laws based on those beliefs have standing over people who refute that belief system, period.
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Most schools have a moment of silence in which you can either sit there and do nothing or pray to whatever god you believe in :/

This is true, a lot of people don't realize that about the Founding Fathers.

Like I said, it's the trouble of extremism. I've met both religious and atheists who would love nothing more than to dominate the country with their respective ideologies. And again it's hilarious because they're ultimately more alike than different in their zealotry.

I've said it before... but the fact that Christians think they're persecuted so horribly in this country when such horrible things happen to them overseas. What persecution? Passive Aggressive sarcasm? I have a problem with the pseudo-Atheists that just outright hate religion for the wrong reasons (many do for the right reasons, but even some religious people hate that as well).. but lemme just say this.

If they were really as horrible as Fox News and far right extremist Christian organizations, they'd get something done. All they manage to do is write pressure letters to city halls to make sure they call them "Holiday trees," only to have city hall get even MORE protesting letters to go back to calling them Christmas Trees.

Face it... Christians are not getting rounded up on trains to be lead to Concentration Camps, they're not getting thrown to lions for sport, they're not getting shot on sight... they're just getting passive aggressive barbs by Bill Mahr (who is so gee golly liberal, that his best friend really IS Far right nutwad Ann Coulter... no foolin). There are horrible things happening to Christians around the world to this day, and OUR religious leaders are up in arms that they can't use their Footloose town values to make sure women can't get contraception... despite the various health benefits that it also has that I can't talk about here.

That's the war on religion... that religious organizations can't persecute people who haven't believed what they believe since I Love Lucy went off the air. But only a Communist fool thinks there's a war on women, considering a LOT of far right males basically agree with everything Limburger said.

Playing the victim is what loudmouths who make their living selling books and vomitting their points on radio want Christians to do. If there's no outrage, they can't feel powerless when, let's face it the immoral minority of the "Moral Majority" still have a horrifying stronghold on the country.

If Christians are victims of anything, it's the far far right, married to the government types that make us all look bad, ignorant, and knuckledragging.

Heh...even MORE ironic when one knows the custom was originally pagan, possibly Norse adopted by the Romans!

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Yeah as a Christian I'm not that interested in protecting the Christmas tree as it's not particularly religious nowadays. On the other hand I think calling it a "Holiday tree" is PC nonsense and a sign that our 1st world country has far too much time on its hands.

I'm so surprised I've never been punched in the face when I get into religious disputes. People probably think I am some hardcore atheist or even satanist. (I've started telling people I'm a deist XD) I just LOVE pointing out things like this to those uber christians that have to shove their religion at me.

But honestly, I don't know what I believe these days. So many people have their own version of religion that they think is right, and you can't make anyone happy. It makes me sad that I have to be so confused about my beliefs

On the contrary, it's probably the smartest way to be.

They literally get MORE complaints from religious organizations than PC thugs and fake atheists. In fact, I'm really starting to believe it's an inside job on the part OF far right Christians to make it seem like there's an outrage every single year. The war on Christianity, such as it is, is the creation of the far right and a certain "news" organization.

Like I said before, if the secular were that organized and had that much power, there wouldn't even be this bullcrap over contraception, let alone taking the "under God" that wasn't there out of the pledge of allegiance.

There is far too much legislation based on interpretations of what people think are in the Bible, like Newsman said...

And much, much more.

The problem isn't the followers, it's the leadership. On the one hand, you have well meaning people who actually believe this stuff, on the other hand, you have sinister forces that want to remake America in the image of old law created during biblical times that are only in the bible for matters of historical establishment. Ones that rule through fear and hate because it's just so easy to play off of people's beliefs. And yet, they still turn to people like this when they thinned out a mess of them in the 80's due to various scandals involving sex and or ill gotten money... breaking at least 3 or 4 commandments in their wake. Anyone remember Jimmy Swaggart?

Religion needs to evolve. That's why people still follow it despite a lot of scientific findings that disprove some of the beliefs they held back in those days. They incorporate those things. So why not dump that idiotic Levitican law stuff (that we don't follow anyway unless we're Kosher) and focus on the positives? Than everyone will be happy.

The thing is there is an all too prevalent school of thought among some religious groups that religion is not about being happy.

Martyrs?

Not exactly. More like the fire and brimstone crowd.

Ah, Baptists.

Or giving you something to believe in, something to inspire you, or basically anything religion is actually beneficial for. I mean, really.. you don't even need to believe in God to get the full philosophy of different religions.

Nope... It's all indoctrinate, vote for who we want you to vote for, spread that to your babies. And they wonder why everyone hates them. They just don't get it. It's THAT kind of attitude that created atheists. The bleeding complete knuckledragging Kirk Cameron crowd.

Am I the only one getting sick and tired of whenever one kind of social media site comes out, there's suddenly all these other carbon copies of it? First we had MySpace then we suddenly had to have Facebook; then we got Twitter (one of the most pointless things ever) and ended up with Tumblr and now Pinteresting... and what is this 4Square thing?

I always thought of tumblr as more of a blog site. Never heard of Pinteresting. Don't forget about formspring!

I was under the impression it was essentially Twitter, only for posting pictures.

It's new, it just started, and apparently, it's supposed to be exactly like tumblr.

I can't keep up with all this crap.

I don't know about tumblr (I've never used it), but Pinterest is awesome. I am constantly finding new recipies to try or craft projects to do with my students. I would suggest checking it out before bashing it.

Am I the only one who appreciate's Sam Eagle's deep desire for culture? I mean, silliness has its place, but sometimes people go overboard. Maybe I'm just becoming lame...

Oh yeah I mean, culture is great, we need more of it. The problem with Sam is that he makes it a judgmental thing where only "certain" people get to decide what qualifies as art. And he misses out on great things because they don't fit into his narrow definition of quality.