Posted on 10/20/2005 11:09:48 AM PDT by Millee
An Ellettsville family whose home is decorated for Halloween contacted police after someone placed on its porch a flier that suggests Halloween praises the devil.
Dalene Gully told Indianapolis television station WRTV that she took offense to the flier, which was placed outside her home by the House of Prayer Church of Bloomington.
"I started reading it, and I was very, very upset by it. I found it very accusatory and very threatening," Gully said.
The church's pastor, Larry Mitchell, said the people who left the flier would have preferred to talk with Gully, but she wasn't there.
Mitchell said the church didn't intend to upset the Gully family, but rather tell people that Halloween isn't harmless fun.
"Halloween is not fantasy," Mitchell said. "We're training up our children, and obviously this lady was trained up in this. Halloween seems like it is taking just as much prominence as Christmas."
The Gully family filed a complaint with the Ellettsville Police Department. The incident also prompted the family to install an alarm system at the home, the station reported.
"This is my home, and I like Halloween. If I want to decorate my home, I have every right to decorate my home," Gully said.
Actually, as far as I know, the Orthodox Paskha is always within 2 weeks of the start of the Jewish Paskha. The Catholics switched to the Gregorian calender and that knocked everything off from the original Julian calendar.
I just leave the
BEWARE OF WIFE
sign up and no problems LOL
There is no "spiritual or moral significance." The idea children get is that they get to dress up once a year and get goodies. That's all.
SD
So what the Treat or Trick routine means? I guess if you do not make a sacrifice to the spirits they will do damage to you.
SD
Haloween is more about the fall harvest, at least in my interpretation. The costumes are just the fun. Some do get gross though.
Are you sure that there are no spirits involved in putting the idea "give me some candy, or I'll vandalize something" in child's head? Does not look much better than Diversity Celebration.
We do. Crumple and toss the objectionable flyer and go on with your day.
God did not write the Bible. No religious scriptures were written by any divinity. They were all written by men and through the filter of their own cultures and beliefs.
A religion is "true" because its followers say it is. That does not make it true.
Do you think one religion is as good as another? Which one or ones are the best and why
Certainly, some religions are worse than others. The Aztec religion required thousands of human sacrifices, forcing the Aztecs to go to war to acquire captives, and making enemies out of every other tribe in the valley of Mexico. I would say that'a not very polite religion. As which ones are the best, I can't answer that, except to say that if it respects the integrity of other people, its ok by me.
What about goddess Kali or Allah?
How does praying harm anyone, whether it's to Kali, Pacha Mama, or the Great Pumpkin???
If no praying could harm, then no praying could benefit anyone. And this looks true only for the atheist.
But even in atheist perspective (like the one of Feuerbach/Marx) or secular like the one of Weber, the way how we worship/believe or to whom we pray has fundamental importance. More, every civilization grows out of a particular religion and civilizations do differ.
Read my tagline.
Probably getting more followers. This country has had religious revivals before, so I guess it would include them too.
What is the spiritual or moral significance of birthday celebrations? I'm wonderful just because I managed to work my way out of the womb on this day, so give me stuff? What is the spiritual or moral significance of an Easter egg hunt? If we are nice to rabbits we get chocolate? We do these things because they provide FUN family time. Halloween is fun. Does every childhood experience have to have moral significance?
Do we cancel events because there are those that abuse them? There are rowdy drunk fans at football games, but most people enjoy them without such behavior. The vast majority of children do not vandalize on Halloween and the vast majority of neighborhoods experience no problems. Vandalism is a teenage issue and the result of lax parenting; those are kids who will cause trouble somehow, regardless of the situation.
Kids like dressing up. They like candy. As for sigificance, I would say carving a pumpkin with mom and treat or treating with dad is pretty important bonding time.
Heck, if you don't want to let your kids trick or treat, fine. But it appears you would ban the holiday if you could and that is what is bothersome.
Could you show me where that point was raised in this thread and the post you were responding to with that one?
I don't think Christians say that God Himself physically wrote the Bible. Not sure where you read anyone saying Christians make that claim you are asserting, that's not what they teach.
It sounds like you are just trying to make a case that Biblical Christianity is bad and whatever religion you approve of is good. That's okay, but just be upfront from the beginning.
Why don't you go back and read the entire conversation between the two posters?
Right. That is why it is better to celebrate the namesday instead in honor of the patron saint.
What is the spiritual or moral significance of an Easter egg hunt? If we are nice to rabbits we get chocolate?
The significance is to trivialize the most lofty and glorious holiday.
We do these things because they provide FUN family time. Halloween is fun.
Fun is a bastardized form of joy or pleasure.
I understand that you do not think God wrote the Bible.
Christians have never claimed that God literally wrote the Bible using His own pen. Christians believe that men wrote the scriptures as they were moved to do so by the Holy Spirit of God.
I suspect why you chose to ignore the point you were responding to. The point was that your claim was wrong regarding Christian doctrine and Christians believe the Bible which does not support your position. So in order to critique Biblical Christianity you need to find out what the Bible says; the point had nothing to do with authorship, although that could be a separate issue.)
You quoted this: Most Christians disagree...the Bible certainly doesn't teach that.
That post you quoted, addressed to you, was correcting you about what Christians believe based upon the Book they use, (not what you think they should believe or what book you think they should or should not use). Christianity is based upon the Bible, so if you make a claim about the nature of God, of truth, of good, of evil, the Bible should be considered.(Again, authorship is another discussion and was not the point of the post; you ignored the point of the post, 'what Christians believe and what source they use for doctrine' and instead jumped to the separate issue of authorship.)
So in summary, while you had been championing moral objections to Christian doctrine, when corrected that Christians do not believe what you claim, you dropped your moral objection (without admitting it) and instead jumped to the different issue of authorship.
If you are going to attempt to critique Christian doctrine, you first need to understand what the book they use for doctrine says about the doctrine you are attempting to critique.
There was an article on the History Channel website about Halloween. Basically it stated that Halloween fell about the time of the Celtic New Year. They believed that as the old year passed away and the new year opened it was a time when the spirit and mortal world were open. They would dress up so as to confuse the spirits.
I was told a story with no documentation that it was based on the idea of the harvest, and the chidren of poor families went to the farmers houses dressed to conceal their identities to receive part of the different farmers harvest. Early time welfare??? Who knows.
Do you have a copy of the letter or some other news article that shows the church left a threatening letter?
I don't see that in the report above.
It was a flyer, it was opposed to Halloween, it was from a church, and I will guess that it told people they were against God if they were for Halloween.
A threatening letter says "I'm going to break your arm, injure you, something...
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