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Separation of Church and State 2007-09-06 05:09:38 To monitor comments posted to this topic, use . ...

I tried to believe, but... 2007-09-06 05:04:56 Sent in by JoshI cannot say I ever was a true Christian. I grew up fascinated by religions, and fascinated by the natural world. My family showed me Carl Sagan's Cosmos at age 5 and later The Demon Haunted World. I loved Sagan's expansive view of life, his respect and tolerance for the wisdom gained through religion, and his staunch support of empirical evidence and the scientific method. I consider myself thus a Sagan-style agnostic. Show me the evidence!Thomas Jefferson once wrote, optimistically:And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors. --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1 ...

Inconsiderate, unthinking and heartless... 2007-09-06 04:52:06 Sent in by Jo I was raised in the church by my mom, a single parent. We went to church most of my life, but not always consistently. Although my mom is not a "churchy" sort of personality, her faith in Jesus and God are very strong. So I was raised with an open minder parent but also a very spiritual and superstitious parent.Luckily I was always educated at school to think for myself. During elementary school I was in the gifted program. In middle school I left this program to be a "regular student." I didn't do so well as a regular student. I became a rebel of sorts, refused to go to church, experimented with all the taboos. Finally after my freshmen year in high school I decided to leave that behind, throw away the cigarettes and become a born again Christian. I studied the bible and was very dedicated to this life, that I genuinely felt saved me.My life was good for awhile, though I felt plagued by guilt and confusion over the things I read in the bible. My youth minister tried to ...

Pastor Says He's Victim in Sex Abuse Case 2007-09-05 13:06:20 A high-profile pastor from Kanawha County says he's one of the sexual assault victims of another pastor -- and he's written a letter to the public. Pastor Mike Lewis of the New Life Center in Cedar Grove sent a letter to local media outlets Tuesday night. In the letter, he says he was one of the victims of Sandy Martin Cook more than ten years ago when he was a teenager.Cook was and still is the pastor at the Shrewsbury Church of God.Cook was arrested by West Virginia State Police on Monday. He's charged with 3 counts of sexual abuse by a person of trust, and 44 counts of sexual assault in the 3rd degree.During his arraignment in Kanawha County magistrate court, Cook said, "I'm scared to death."According to the criminal complaint, the alleged crimes happened around 1994 -- and so far, three alleged victims have come forward in the case. All were between 13-16 years old at the time.One victim stated he developed a close relationship with Cook -- and that Cook told him it was "normal ...

Athenova, Freedoma or Freemas? 2007-09-04 12:39:13 By Bob PAmerica loves to invent holidays in recognition of great ideas and achievements. We have at least one official holiday for nearly every occasion and dedicated to nearly every group — except atheists. At 13-14% of the population, atheist Americans number between 30-50 million, making them perhaps the largest of any single identifiable minority. Atheists comprise a larger portion of the U.S. population than Blacks, Jews, or Gays, yet because of the social stigma cast by religion, atheists are largely invisible. Or worse, they are demonized and marginalized by buybull thumping Christians who equate atheism with immorality. Such fallacy! Many, if not most of the great scientists were/are atheists or at least, deists, rejecting a personal god.Where is the Atheist day of recognition? Perhaps change is in the wind. There are at least five new books on atheism, some of which have made the bestseller list. Atheism has been a recent topic on several of the major television networks. Th ...

Did I overreact? 2007-09-04 04:46:00 A question from Berkley H This past weekend I was relaxing on my lawn (NOT really all that visible from the road), mostly dozing off (as one might do on a weekend in nice weather), when I was awakened by an "evangelical Christian" who had decided that I should be preached to on the subject of saving my soul.Now, I have chased these idiots off in the past with verbal abuse. You would think that they would have gotten the word by now, but apparently this one hadn't.Being in a reclining position on a chaise, I reached up my hand as if requesting assistance in sitting up. The god-shouter reached for my hand with his fingers spread wide. Instead of grasping his hand in mine, or grasping his wrist, as he apparently expected, I grabbed his middle finger (it was his right hand -- the left was holding "The Good Book" and a bunch of Chick comics) and bent it sharply back. I think I dislocated it. At any rate, it caused him great pain, apparently, because he yelled very loudly. I released ...

Christian significance 2007-09-03 06:49:45 By Dave, the WMMy son was enjoying some time in a small city park near our home recently, when a scruffy middle-aged man, accompanied by a singularly obese 40ish woman, walked up and began to preach – at full volume. My son, IPOD ear buds embedded deeply in each ear canal, watched as others lounging on benches or in the grass, stirred to their feet to seek out a quieter perch. “The sins of the youth in this nation are stoking the fires of hell,” shouted the evangelist. “Repent and believe the Gospel before the time of reckoning!”My son, immune to such things from living over half his life under a strict, fundamentalist father, and the other half under a website building apostate, was entertained by the scene. He turned up his IPOD to filter out the noise, smiled pleasantly, and waited to see if there was more than one act in this show. The righteous monologue continued for another 30 minutes, the guy barely pausing for air. My son eventually decided to leave the lunatic to hi ...

It's just pure nonsense 2007-09-01 07:15:11 By Bill J:Despite all the claims of healing people make in church, I never saw anyone's arm regrow because god healed them. I was at a Vineyard Christian Fellowship church in California where this guy named Paul Cain was prophesying and calling people out of the audience. He supposedly revealed things about them that god told him. Years later I found out that he is a chronic alcoholic and closet homosexual. I just don't get it. Every week there is a new charge against a religious leader in the news somewhere in this country. I'm tired of Christians telling me that you have to look at Jesus and not at man. Well, isn't man supposed to change when they find Jesus? Where's the proof. People are always claiming they spoke to god and he/she answered them, but no two people can agree on what god said. I'm shocked that religious people can't see this. What's up with that? I don't go to church because I fail to see proof of the existence of god in church. People of other religions, fai ...

God has some explaining to do 2007-09-01 06:07:42 Sent in by Caleb"OK, listen and listen good. I AM NOT ANGRY WITH GOD YOU SIMPLE-MINDED MOTHER-F@#%ER!" This is what I want to respond with every time one of my Christian friends explains what is really going on in my head. The following is copied straight from an e-mail I recently received:"Caleb, I am most concerned about the fragility of your heart and soul. I believe you are angry with God because of your current circumstances, and I am praying for the Lord to provide a way out, but only if you want it. Just like He says- if you are a believer- He won’t give you anything beyond what you can bear. He is waiting for you, all you have to do is call on Him, test Him and see if the floodgates do not come wide open. I will personally be held accountable for your soul so please understand these are things I must do. I will not hound you, but know that I love you and pray for you daily..."Now I know it all sounds well-meaning enough, but this person is always looking for a circumstance ...

Pastor teaches daughters how to have sex 2007-08-31 05:45:48 A south Australian fundamentalist church pastor had sex with two of his teenage daughters to educate them on how to be good wives, a South Australian court has heard.The 54-year-old man, who cannot be named, was sentenced in the South Australian District Court to eight and a half years jail after pleading guilty to seven counts each of incest and unlawful sexual intercourse.The court heard that the man had sex with his daughters for nearly a decade from 1991 when they were aged 13 and 15 at the family property.The sex took place at various locations including in a shearer's shed, a paddock, on the back of a ute and, on one occasion, at the girls' grandparents house.The man told the court the sex was not about fulfilling his desires but about teaching his daughters how to behave for their husbands when they eventually married, as dictated in scripture.In sentencing, Judge David Lovell said the misrepresentation of scripture used to justify the abuse of the girls "defied belief", and ...

If God was a Tree; What Kind of Tree would It Be? 2007-08-29 14:46:41 By DagoodSI have recently been intrigued by the Baylor Religious Survey referenced in some discussion I was observing. I found the following statistical facts fascinating:- Almost 30% had attended their current place of worship for more than 20 years.- 23% attended weekly services, but of those, only 30% attended a Bible class or Sunday School weekly.- Exactly half (49.4%) only read their Bible twice a year (or less) outside of church!- 74% felt “Forgiving” described God very well, yet 67% felt “Just” described God very well. (73% felt “loving” described God very well.)- 33.3% disagreed or strongly disagreed with an atheist teaching at high school. (Close to the 37.5% that said the same about homosexuals.)The fact that approximately 2/3 of the people thought God was both Just and Forgiving (two concepts which are mutually exclusive) made me chuckle, thinking of exactly how much thought we put into our opinion of what a God is. As I Christian, I probably would have voted ...

Michael Shermer on the Colbert Report 2007-08-29 05:30:18 Buy Books by Michael ShermerSubscribe to Skeptic magazine.Michael Shermer (born September 8, 1954 in Glendale, California) is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating and debunking pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown and since April 2004 has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian, but according to his book The Science of Good and Evil, is now an agnostic and an advocate for humanist philosophy. -- WikipediaThe Colbert Report (IPA: [kol'b?? r??p?r]) is an American satirical television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m (10:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. central time) each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. It stars comedian Stephen Colbert, a former correspondent f ...

I can no longer force my heart to follow what my mind cannot justify 2007-08-29 05:02:56 Sent in by Chip SI was not raised in a Christian home. My parents had not made a conscious decision for atheism, I suppose. But their daily lives and lack of religious practice certainly would label them as non-Christians. They were always in that ambiguous category of people who simply had no time for theism or atheism. It was simply a non-issue.For a whole I attended church with a friend, in elementary school. Of course I didn't comprehend enough to understand what was being taught, let alone make a decision to subscribe to the beliefs advocated by that church. But I did learn enough to remember certain things... John 3:16, the claim that Jesus was God, etc. I had this vague understanding of the person called Savior.It was in middle school, which I now quaintly think of as the “Dark Ages� of my life that social awkwardness and intense depression led me on a search for more. Perhaps it was not as conscious of a search as I would now imagine, but a search nonetheless. I f ...

Humanity and its relationship to religion 2007-08-29 04:45:00 Sent in by Steven CodyI want credit for my actions. Good or bad I'd like to be acknowledged for what I do and accomplish. I'd thank all those in my life who helped me with any given situation of course. I want to be acknowledged as a human being who deserves better than what we have. We ALL deserve better. I am a human and so are you. We make choices and decisions every second of every waking hour of every single day of our lives. WE are responsible for the lives and deaths of our fellow human beings with every choice we make. We, as human beings, have total control over everything that happens on this planet. WE are responsible.I wish everyone could see and hear and understand what I'm telling you. Sadly, even though many will agree with me, still more will not hear me. We have ultimate control, but I think we got scared of all the responsibility -- so we out sourced it to an invisible bully in the sky. This will be the part where I think I'll lose a large majority of readers. Bye ...

Xian Brainwashing 2007-08-28 14:56:00 Sent in by NZC70 I've been a reader of this outstanding site for quite a while, and I've made it part of my daily reading. I've been wanting to participate more, but time hasn't allowed it. However, I've come across a new (at least to me) xian disturbing method of brainwashing that I just had to address.Here's a prime example of how some xian preachers are now re-enforcing the hold they have over their "flock". They have the congregation hold up their bibles and repeat the following: "This is my bible: I am what it says I am; I have what it says I have; I can do what it says I can do. Today, I will be taught the Word of God. I'll boldly confess. My mind is alert; my heart is receptive; I will never be the same. I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living Seed of the Word of God. I'll never be the same - never, never, never! I'll never be the same, in Jesus' Name."Boy, talk about brainwashing! It almost makes me want to puke. The really scary thing is ...