Atheists

[upswife75]

Frightening. And sad.

It really is, upsmule. Of course, the same woman at the day care was also trying to force my son to write with his right hand even though he was left handed, telling him it would leave him open to demons entering his body. o.0 THESE are the kinds of things that bother me. I'm not some kind of militant atheist going around looking for someone praying in public to tell them they shouldn't, but damn it, don't tell my kids stuff like that and don't you dare tell my kid they are going to hell because they decided to stop going to your church, as a pastor did with my daughter. That WILL bring my claws out.

 

[Upsmule]

Worst part about people like that daycare provider is sadly epidemic in a country where no "believer" has an excuse to be biblically illiterate. Personally I believe it's insanely obvious why throngs of crowds followed Jesus....He was too busy meeting people and seeing people right where they were, having compassion for the lost not condemning them and hitting them over the head with their scrolls.

All people need to do - especially if they choose to say they are followers of the way, is remember what the apostle Paul wrote. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 says it better than a million knocks on anyone's doors. . . "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."


This is the single most important chapter to meditate on IMO. No days more than ever. And believe me.....I've got a long way to go....you'd know if you could see what I used to be.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I can't speak for MrFedEx, but living in the south, I HAVE had people try to shove their belief down my throat just while standing in line at the grocery store, walking through the parking lot just last week when some lady got all pissy about my Coexist bumper sticker, and more than once at school events for my kids. I had a daycare worker that was FORCING my son to pray every day at lunch time (not a church run daycare) and when I told her it needed to stop or I would find somewhere else for my kid to go, she informed me that she didn't want a child that was surely going to hell because his mother refused to have him saved (said right in front of my then 4 year old son). I found another daycare IMMEDIATELY.

When my daughter was about a year old, my (ex) wife and I were standing in a grocery store line and the lady behind us asked if she could hold our baby.

Uhh......no.

 

[cachsux]

If the JW's knock on your door start your own spiel about the really great benefits of the life insurance you can sell them.

Strip down quickly before you answer the door then great them and welcome them in as you stand back saying that your family is nudists.

 

[Upsmule]

If the JW's knock on your door start your own spiel about the really great benefits of the life insurance you can sell them.

Strip down quickly before you answer the door then great them and welcome them in as you stand back saying that your family is nudists.

Hope your wife is up for it instead for a much greater impression. No offense

 

[cachsux]

Hope your wife is up for it instead for a much greater impression. No offense

I'm trying to scare them off not get them to stay.

 

[upswife75]

When my daughter was about a year old, my (ex) wife and I were standing in a grocery store line and the lady behind us asked if she could hold our baby.

Uhh......no.

Wow. What the heck is wrong with people? o.0

 

[Upsmule]

Hope your wife is up for it instead for a much greater impression. No offense

I'm trying to scare them off not get them to stay.

Ha, right. But hey, it's her that just might set THEM free.

 

[MrFedEx]

If the JW's knock on your door start your own spiel about the really great benefits of the life insurance you can sell them.

How about selling them some Amway products?

 

[MrFedEx]

Strip down quickly before you answer the door then great them and welcome them in as you stand back saying that your family is nudists.

That might not stop them. My favorite for LDS is to offer them a Coke or cup of coffee. The JWs seem even more determined to save you. Perhaps saying you are a Satan worshipper and inviting them in to witness a human sacrifice might work?

 

[wkmac]

Wow. What the heck is wrong with people? o.0

Yeah I agree, to ask to hold a child is way over the top.

 

[upswife75]

Yeah I agree, to ask to hold a child is way over the top.

Well, as evident from the woman here in Florida that let the stranger walk off with her kid (who ended up being killed), people are dumb enough to fall for it. :/

 

[Upsmule]

Strip down quickly before you answer the door then great them and welcome them in as you stand back saying that your family is nudists.

That might not stop them. My favorite for LDS is to offer them a Coke or cup of coffee. The JWs seem even more determined to save you. Perhaps saying you are a Satan worshipper and inviting them in to witness a human sacrifice might work?

It would only encourage a faith that actually believes one can earn a free gift.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

It would only encourage a faith that actually believes one can earn a free gift.

Are you saying one must earn eternal salvation?

 

[Upsmule]

Are you saying one must earn eternal salvation?

No, I'm saying from what I've read about the door to door salesman faith, they do. I could be wrong though.

 

[wkmac]

I don't consider the article linked below as any evidence of a growth in atheism directly as claiming "no affiliation" is a few steps from claiming "no god" but it is a further sign to suggest that organized faith as we presently know it may be or will experience decline if not now, in the years ahead as boomers especially die off. I suspect organized religion will as it has so many other times just once again evolve and adapt to new societal paradigms but then this undermines the claims of the perfect, eternal word of god first off being perfect and secondly being unchanging. If Ravi Sacharias better understood this, he might also better understand Nietzche's "God is Dead" point in the first place, especially considering the knowledge of our world and how it really operates thanks to the enlightenment. Also someone tell Ravi it was Nietzche's sister Elizabeth and not his mother who cared for him. Please get the basics facts right but then considering who that message was really meant for, the factual details are irrelevant.

As we now laugh at anyone who quotes the bible as authoritative to say we should not mix fabrics in clothes or to send women on their periods to live in an outbuilding away from the family home so too will we see claims of treating same sex persons as outcasts. I do think we are a couple of generations from that very thing taking place and it may even happen sooner than later.

To those who can change and do, I applaud their efforts in at least understanding that the supremacy claims of the bible isn't what some claim or want it to be no matter how much they try and make it so. The bible has some good things in it, I wish christians would follow those more but at the same time there is a lot of horrific crap in the bible too. The simple fact is, the bible god is not good and he's often the biggest violator of his own morality so many want to claim he created in the first place. Instead of love he more often is the megalomaniac and take the Jesus manifestation of god out of the picture and most of you wouldn't touch the bible god any more than you would the Allah version. That in itself speaks that some level of humanity exists within you.

Funny how some within christendom now seem more fixed on making Jesus into the blood thirsty Yahweh and it seems to work too. Pretty easily I'm sad to say. Seems now however the harder they push, larger society is beginning to push back and that is a positive sign. We've seen several waves in this country of what are called great awakenings that often have led to religious excess that crushes the human spirit and freeedom. IMO we may be seeing a kind of opposite effect as thought and reason begin to emerge and push back.

As the religious waves swept through the nation, with each pass one could also argue a loss of liberty also followed suit so if a new age of reason might emerge, could a new age of liberty not unlike the ideals of Thomas Paine also follow suit? It's a question with no answer for the moment but looking across the planet and seeing millions in the streets of Egypt, many of those wanting a secular gov't, I'm seeing signs that are encouraging to those ends.

Gay Bashing by Churches Is Why a New Pew Poll Shows America Losing Its Religion

 

[Upsmule]

As we now laugh at anyone who quotes the bible as authoritative to say we should not mix fabrics in clothes or to send women on their periods to live in an outbuilding away from the family home so too will we see claims of treating same sex persons as outcasts. I do think we are a couple of generations from that very thing taking place and it may even happen sooner than later.​

/QUOTE]

Well we then should stop calling Jesus a "good teacher" as he obviously (by this standard that is) promoted "hate" by suggesting marriage "from the beginning was between one man and one woman" (Matthew 19) and on every occasion recorded, never condemn "sinners" but rather suggested that they "go and sin no more."

 

[wkmac]

Well we then should stop calling Jesus a "good teacher" as he obviously (by this standard that is) promoted "hate" by suggesting marriage "from the beginning was between one man and one woman" (Matthew 19) and on every occasion recorded, never condemn "sinners" but rather suggested that they "go and sin no more."

Well Jesus did teach hate. He even taught to violate one of the 10 Commandments in honoring one's father and mother. One old testament law stated if a child backtalked or showed hostility towards the parents, the child was taken to the city gates, judged and then stoned to death. Jesus seems however to encourage this behavior in direct opposition to the claim that he perfectly kept the law. Where's the god of love here?

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Matthew 10:34-36

 

[Upsmule]

Well we then should stop calling Jesus a "good teacher" as he obviously (by this standard that is) promoted "hate" by suggesting marriage "from the beginning was between one man and one woman" (Matthew 19) and on every occasion recorded, never condemn "sinners" but rather suggested that they "go and sin no more."

Well Jesus did teach hate. He even taught to violate one of the 10 Commandments in honoring one's father and mother. One old testament law stated if a child backtalked or showed hostility towards the parents, the child was taken to the city gates, judged and then stoned to death. Jesus seems however to encourage this behavior in direct opposition to the claim that he perfectly kept the law. Where's the god of love here?

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Matthew 10:34-36

"This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard. Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 21:19-21).

First off, this son in question is hardly and adolescent guilty of nothing more then stubbornly slamming doors and asserting stubborn independence. The son described above is old enough to be morally culpable of wicked behavior that threatens the health and safety of the entire community. As such, the prescribed punishment is not for adolescent decadence but adult degeneracy. For the modern skeptic to the moral high ground is the height of hypocrisy. Especially since our modern enlightened society more closely resembles that of Israel's neighbors who sacrificed their sons and daughters. Western society has sanctioned the systematic slaughter of children guilty of nothing more than being "unplanned" or unloved.

 

[oldngray]

Well Jesus did teach hate. He even taught to violate one of the 10 Commandments in honoring one's father and mother. One old testament law stated if a child backtalked or showed hostility towards the parents, the child was taken to the city gates, judged and then stoned to death. Jesus seems however to encourage this behavior in direct opposition to the claim that he perfectly kept the law. Where's the god of love here?

Out of context. He came not to obey the Commandments but fulfill them so trying to apply Old Testament commandments to the New Testament church is in error.