Posted on 01/26/2005 9:46:21 AM PST by 7thson
When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention. I’m sure he was also seeking to elicit anger from people of faith. The anger helps the atheist to justify his atheism. And, all too often, the atheist gets exactly what he is looking for.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
The best place to look is the people who knew him best. The early church.
Rodney Clark
I'm not sure where he's getting his information or if you are quoting him correctly, but it just doesn't jive. Look at the following link. Early America was predominently Protestant Christian.
My atheism comes from that study of religion.>>>
Have you ever read Huston Smith's "The World's Religions" ?
When I use the term "atheist" I am speaking to those who deny God altogether.
An "intellectual agnostic" to me is one who has unresolved questions. And to those who would be inclined to dismiss agnostics as "lost" - I would remind: doubting Thomas was an Apostle, too.
> The atheists would just shrug and go about their business, leaving the name-calling to others.
Most would. But there'd be the Newdow's of the world out there making life hell for the morons who enacted and unthinkingly supported the blasphemy laws....
> The military even has a symbol for atheism.
BWAAA? What is it?
That type of bumber sticker says more about the fact that the car owner is a jerk than it does about his religious beliefs.
Thomas appears to be the patron saint of scientists.
;-)
Yes Malakhi I could I Choose.
I wasn't forced to beleive in GOD..I found him, I sought him out I read the Bible.He became real to me in prayer.
I Choose to live the life GOD planned out for me not the one I planned, I did that for a long time and it didn't work.
I know this, though: If every church in every community were absolutely full every Sunday morning, attendees would represent a small minority of the population. The rest are nominal Christians. If you ask them if they are Christians, they'll probably say yes. If you dig a little deeper, you'll discover that they are only nominal Christians, who give little thought to that name.>>>>>
That is true. I like people who challenge their own faith. Not those who blindly numbly follow.
"Have you ever read Huston Smith's "The World's Religions" ?
"
Indeed I have. It was one of the first books on comparitive religion that I ever read. It was the textbook for a "Religions of the World" class my Freshman year of college in 1963. The book was relatively new at that time, and was adopted by the professor as the text for the class. It turned out that he had not read it before assigning it. He blustered frequently in disagreement with some of the text. He was a Southern Baptist minister, teaching the class part-time, and often became very uncomfortable in his teaching of the course, sometimes reverting to preaching sermons, rather than sticking to the subject. It was the cause for much merriment at his expense, I'm sorry to say.
Later on, I attended Syracuse University and got a chance to attend a lecture by Huston Smith. A very gentlemanly sort of fellow, who was always interested in a friendly discussion.
First of all I am not Angry.
MM said he is going to turn to dirt forever upon his Physical Death he said that..And if his loved ones die and are with the Lord and he's not he will be forgotten because he chose his own path.
VARIOUS DEFINITIONS OF THE WORD "RELIGION" (NONE ARE TOTALLY SATISFYING)
Problems with definitions:
The English word "religion" is derived from the Middle English "religioun" which came from the Old French "religion." It may have been originally derived from the Latin word "religo" which means "good faith," "ritual," and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin "religãre" which means "to tie fast."
Defining the word "religion" is fraught with difficulty. All of the definitions that we have encountered contain at least one deficiency:
Some exclude beliefs and practices that many people passionately defend as religious. For example, their definition might include belief in a personal deity or some supernatural entities. This excludes such non-theistic religions as Buddhism and religious Satanism which have no such belief.
Some definitions equate "religion" with "Christianity," and thus define two out of every three humans in the world as non-religious.
Some definitions are so broadly written that they include beliefs and areas of study that most people do not regard as religious. For example, David Edward's definition would seem to include cosmology and ecology within his definition of religion -- fields of investigation that most people regard to be a scientific studies and non-religious in nature.
Some define "religion" in terms of "the sacred" and/or "the spiritual," and thus necessitate the creation of two more definitions.
Sometimes, definitions of "religion" contain more than one deficiency.
Our compromise definition:
This website's essays use a very broad definition of religion: "Religion is any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, a philosophy of life, and a worldview." Thus we would consider Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Native American Spirituality, and Neopaganism to be religions. We also include Agnosticism, Atheism, Humanism, Ethical Culture etc. as religions, because they also contain a "belief about deity" -- their belief is that they do not know whether a deity exists, or they have no knowledge of God, or they sincerely believe that God does not exist.
Of course not because I found GOD out just like I know who you are on FR, I know you by your screename. Do you deny someone you met?
Atheists have never met GOD so they can deny him, they have Chosen to do that.
Yes, they have. Why does that make you so angry?
I just wanted to clarify something here. When I said "yes, they have" I was referring to your assertion that atheists have chosen their own path. However, I don't think that they believe in God and are choosing to turn their backs on him. They can't scorn something that they don't believe in.
I love Huston Smith.
He is quite a character in real life.
For him studying the world's religions has continously led him to state of multi belief bliss.
The following are statements of his regarding both atheism and the value of religion:
Q: One of the most important roles of spiritual practices has been to help us behave decently toward one another. How would you respond to those secular humanists who feel that Freud, Marx, or Darwin are teachers enough in terms of showing us how to behave decently and find meaning in this world?
A: I would not say that ethical behavior is not possible for the atheist or agnostic. It is. A couple of pretty good examples are Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, I will have to say that if we take the human lot as a whole, these two men must be seen as exceptions.
I don't want to justify religion in terms of its benefits to us. I believe that, on balance, it does a lot of bad things, too -- a tremendous amount. But I don't think that the final justification of religion is the good it does for people. I think the final justification is that it's true, and truth takes priority over consequences. Religion helps us deal with what is most important to the human spirit: values, meaning, purpose, and quality.
Historically, religion has given people another world to live in, a world more adaptive to the human spirit. As a student of world religions, I see religion as the winnower of the wisdom of the human race. Of course, not everything about these religions is wise. Their social patterns, for example -- master-slave, caste, and gender relations -- have been adopted from the mores of their time. But in their view of the nature of reality, there is nothing in either modernity or postmodernity that rivals them.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/1997/11/snell.html
PAX
MM was a Believer ask him he was very much part of a Church
he CHOSE to give GOD up the worst Sin of all.
GOD LOVES US ALL
PAX
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