Religon and the World Around It

Every day there is a new discussion about religon and God, or the lack thereof. Our dashing leader George W. Bush recently said on the topic of homosexual marraige:

"Don't try to take the embers out of the eye of others, when you have a log in your own."

The log doesn't go in the eye, buddy.

There is a huge amount of tention building with homosexuals, and the sin of it all. Dear, it's so bad that Arnold Shwartzanigger pretneded the sound equitment wasn't working on a certain early morning talk show.

Your God is your decision, and if not everyone believes in the Bible, then why should everyone believe that homosexuality is a sin?


But there is so much more to this than just homosexuality. Faith, they all say. Faith in the Lord. Since when has it mattered any what you have faith in, rather than just the fact that you have faith. There are many many people out there, and if you're not dead yet, then chances are whatever is worrying you now won't kill you. Relax and enjoy yourself. The world is big enough for the all of us, and as Charles Darwin so wisely said: "Evolution will pick it's own course, and if we're too smart for this world, then we shall move on to the next."

This is all just a joke farm if you ask me.

Have you heard all these jokes about that guy on the 700 club wanting people to pray for the speedy death of liberal supreme court judges?

Screw praying for a cure to cancer or for war to end in the middle east.

"Dear God, I still want a puppy, I hope that my uncle gets better, oh, and can you kill those supreme court judges so that gay people can't marry?"

I feel bad about religion when "spiritual leaders" are the ones who go back on their own word by forcing their ways on others... Jesus must be rolling in his grave

PS: If I offended anyone with my loose joking, I apologize.

All I want to know is whatever happed to the idea of seperation of church & state?

Seperation of church and state is a joke... (more of a concept to make america "free" Public school taught me that much...

erg... I don't want to get deep into my views on such things, because I know I'll lose at least some friends...

True enough, true enough. Same here.

Yeah, I know what you mean Dio, but not only do I have very few friends, I'm also impulsive so hear goes:


If God is seeing everything we do from day to day, he must be saying "What part of 'Thoust shalt not' don't you understand?"

As someone who has been an atheist for my entire life (I was raised christian reformed but I have distinct memories of being in sunday school when I was 7 or 8 years old and thinking "you people aren't actually buying this crap are you?!" I am deeply disturbed by Bush, Ashcroft and the rest of his christian cronies. When the next election rolls around we all need to go out and show with our votes that we want a democracy, not a theocracy!

To hear Bush stand up at his podium and talk about the "sanctity" of marriage (meaning he supports a constitutional ammendmant to ban gay marriage) was appalling. Sanctity is a religious definition and has nothing AT ALL to do with legal civil definitions of marriage. So the long and short is that Bush is trying to interject religious definitions into the constitution.

I'd like to travel back in time and slap the founding fathers silly for not wording the second ammendmant a bit more clearly! If you try and argue separation of church and state with religious people they'll immediately point out that the consitution protects freadom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. In other words they see nothing wrong with polluting the public square with their mythology and cramming their beliefs down the throats of non-believers. The Alabama justice Roy Moore who erected a giant monument to the ten commandmants in the courthouse at taxpayer expense was sued over it and told that it must be removed. He's now saying he might ignore the court ruling. The state of Alabama will be fined $5000 a day as long as it remains, at taxpayer expense. The arrogance of these people astounds and sickens me.

Then you've got Michigan legislators trying to make it so Michigan schools have to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution in science classes, and to have disclaimers put in science textbooks that evolution is an unproven theory. LOL. It boggles the mind. Wasn't the Scopes trial like 60 years ago?! Since that would require taxpayer money to make the stickers I propose instead that religious students be allowed to stick their fingers in their ears whenever evolution is spoken of and go "lalalalalalalalalalala I'm not listening!" They've all been doing it for thousands of years already.

I have a t-shirt in SL that I made the other day. It says "God WAS my copilot... but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat him." If anyone wants one just ask... you can have it free of charge

Well said Chip!

I saw a t-shirt once, it both entertained and bedazzled me, but then I lauged and thought it would be fun to share it with you.

Poor?
Hungry?
Eat a republican.


Man, I can feel the flames under my feet already.

LOL. I love it. I saw a great bumper sticker the other day. It said "I don't hate Jesus... just his fans"

Honestly I have nothing against people's right to believe any irrational hairbrained thing they want as long as they afford me the same respect. I have no desire to force everyone to think as I do... I only wish that religious people didn't have a mandate to "save" the non-believers. And when it comes to making laws that effect us all, it would be nice if they were based purely on rational and objective facts, not subjective dogma.

And Darwin, don't worry about the flames. I have so much empathy for gays because atheists are an equally persecuted minority. The gay community has made great strides towards gaining greater acceptance from society because they've been outspoken. Atheists aren't very vocal and it's time we started.

The last time seperation of church and state was under this kind of sustained heavy attack was back in the 1950's at the height of the McCarthy era. Most people don't know that it wasn't until then that the national motto became "In God We Trust." Before then it was "E Pluribus Unum" or as we say in English "From many, one" It's fitting, because this country started with the idea that people could come live here and be free to worship or not as they choose and pursue happinness in any way they wanted so long as they didn't trample anyone else's right to do the same in the process. But "in God We Trust" pretty well sums up the way it is now... as Bush would say "You're either with us or against us."

The Pledge of Allegience didn't originally contain the words "under God." It said simply "One nation, indivisible." It was written after the civil war and the line was about not letting the south split off into a seperate country. "Under God" was added in the 50's after heavy lobbying by the Knights of Columbus. Guess they wanted to make sure no one mistook us for those "godless communists." So now they're at it again, and Ashcroft bears a rather strking resemblance to McCarthy. Hmmmmm, coincidence? I think not.

Hey I think we're forgetting Jerry "Jesus would drive a Hummer" Falwell. What a lovely, understanding, tolerant person he is.

But yes Chip, I know what you mean.

The world is a big place, and there are many many colorful people. To agree with them all is communisim, and to be agree with none of them is tyranny

Man Chip, i coudn't agree with you more. I've come along way from being a Christian basher, though I've become very wary of this administrations ablitity to blur the distinction between what is Christian dogma and what is proper for leadership to be spewing out.
Those folks, Bush, Rice, Rumsfield, etc amaze and frighten me daily. Sometimes I get to where i just can't bear to watch Cspan/cspan2. I think it all started when I watched the house discuss the Patriot Act.../shudder.

Man, it really is scary.

Almost as scary as when I heard that a republican called a democrat a fruitcake, then the democrat challenged the republican to a fist fight. Wow, tention can do some strange things, eh?

Dont forget to VOTE

Looks like some people woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!

I hope we all agree that toleration is a good thing. I see precious little of it in the first few posts to this thread however. What I see is a mob waiting for someone with an opposing view to come out into the street so they can bludgeon them. the Off-topic area I think was primarily intended so that arguments or discussions about things not directly related to SL could be carried out. It was not intended to be a bash-fest.

What I see here is a group of people who consider themselves victims, in search of someone to be a victim of. Go look elsewhere please!

There are many public forums, newsgroups, and web sites where people would love to argue with you until your blue in the face... go there and have at it . Come back here after your all worn out and prepared to enjoy other peoples company. When you go off to have your debates though, please check your facts (and your spelling!). Out in the big Internet world you will be hounded to death for your carelessness:



religon -> religion
marraige -> marriage
tention -> tension
seperation -> separation
equitment -> equipment

Handy Reference Chart - print out and tape to your monitor
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

for more visit: http://memory.loc.gov/const/bor.html
(or countless other sources)

The words "separation of Church and State" like so many words and phrases that are thown around today don't appear in the founding documents. The word "privacy" doesn't appear there either although clearly IV is in that general direction. "Judicial activism" has allowed many new "laws" to be derived by the courts by loose interpretations of the words in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Regardless of your political persuasion, this is a very dangerous thing. While you may have gotten your way on an issue via one of these decisions, you could just as easily be the loser on another issue. There is very good non-partisan coverage of this on CSPAN, I urge anyone who wants to debate these issues to go view it.

Also, for an understanding of how the country was founded, read through the Federalist Papers which laid the groundwork for the above. I wouldn't recommend going back in time and attempting to slap the founding fathers. They would either shoot you, or beat the crap out of you, and frankly, you would deserve it. These were great men to whom we owe a lot, and some of us don't appreciate their work being trivialized.



I respect your right to be irrational and harebrained (more correct spelling). Have a nice day.



Yes, good idea, so why did you start this thread?

PS:

I forgot to mention that our hero Neal Stephenson in his second book (I think) "Diamond Age" has an excellent discussion on hypocrisy. As with "Snowcrash" he weaves other themes into the story so well you almost don't notice. But in this case, he spelled it out, and changed my view on the subject.

Mac, I actually started this thread according to something rather disturbing that I witnessed and luckly was not deeply involved in in-world. This was a sort of message to the party(s) involved.

As a side note, how the country was formed has all too little to do with how it is actually run today. Also, your pointing out of our spelling errors, however irrelevant it was, was much appreciated.

You know Mac, I usually really enjoy reading your posts. They're generally thoughtful, diplomatic, and interesting. But in this case you're just being patronizing. I don't see a bash fest at all. I see personal opinions being expressed. It's odd to me that people so often take that as a personal attack simply because they disagree. And while you may be right that this discussion may not belong here, you and any other reader can simply choose not to read or participate in the thread. As is so often the case when these topics are discussed people jump in and try to silence it by calling the participants bashers, hypocrites, poor spellers, un-american, or what have you. That serves no purpose whatsoever. It doesn't advance the discussion. It's a cheap way of making yourself sound superior without actually adding anything of merit to the conversation. I guess someone woke up feeling holier than thou this morning.



See above.



Spelling errors, and mistakenly getting the amendment number wrong do not change the substance of the discussion in any way... nor does your pointing them out. If you're only interested in bashing people for their spelling or mixed up facts perhaps YOU should go look elsewhere and then come back when you can have a discussion without resorting to patronizing people.



That's correct. They come from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut in 1802. It was later used in a court case (Reynolds v. United States) that is still used as precedent for seperation of church and state today. In the letter he declared that it was the purpose of the First Amendment to build "a wall of separation between Church and State." Chief Justice Waite characterized the phrase as "almost an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment."



Nice how you word that so that it implies that the founding fathers are on your side, while I'm simply trivializing them. The effects of that vague bit of wording in the first ammendmant have been anything but trivial to me in my life. You, however, are most definitely trivializing the opinions expressed in this thread.



And thanks also for implying that I'm a hypocrite. Who's bashing who? Have a nice day Mac.

Darwin, there's a career for you in diplomacy for sure! *grin*

No problem. It WAS actually meant as constructive criticism. My spelling is HORRIBLE. So I usually type my posts in on a notepad type program that includes a spell check. I still end up with too many typos though no matter how many times I proof-read.

If you get your spelling, grammar, and factual parts of your post straight the first time, it allows you to get on with the heart of the argument, rather than waste time on trivialities. Besides, even dumb mistakes allows people to write your opinions off as ill-informed.

If you post was in reaction to something that happened in SL, or something even remotely related to SL then I think it would be fine here. I think this section was first formed along the time that Tcoz and I were arguing the merits of Windows vs Linux, which you have to admit is a bit SL related. It might be usefull to hint about what the incident in SL was, I think my reaction to that would have been different than to an incident on TV (I HATE TV).

As far as having an argument on issues involving current events, why not have them in-world? I think such things make interesting conversation, with people able to speak off the cuff typos and all. I'd rather see the forums reserved for more carefully though out issues (preferably SL related) and not for rants. If you want rants here I'm sure I could easily fill the server all by myself

I do say everything chip had to say made some damn good sense. I agree with chip 100 %, I'm atheist too.

And what side would that be? I generally don't talk about my sexuality or party affiliation on-line. My trivializing of the previous posts was to do with their tone, and sloppiness, not their point of view. I think in any on-line community there should be an honest effort by people on all sides of an issue to get along. I also think that political differences in real life should be handled there, in real life, not by play-acting them out here on-line.

I'm old enough to have accepted and rejected a number of conflicting points of view in my life, from Das Kapital and the Saying of Chairman Mou to Nietzsche, Kant, and the Bible. I read widely, and I have to admit, there are a lot of subjects on which I just don't KNOW what the answer is.

I also resent the lumping of Republicans (or Democrats) into categories, that can be described with a few hostile words. Both parties contain good people and bad, and the amount of overlap in the two parties is far greater than the difference. People who overly obsess over which party won the last election will ultimately fail to achieve their own agenda (whatever that is). Political shifts in this country have more often been made by shifts in BOTH parties, and more importantly, shifts in the thinking of individuals. The arguments therefore should be directed at IDEAS, not parties, and they should be conducted as conversations, not rants. If you want to rant, get a blog, and invite people to read it. You don't alienate people that way. It's much more effective.

One of my favorite pundits happens to be a gay, HIV Positive, Catholic, Republican:

http://andrewsullivan.com/

Go read him for a while and then come back here and try to categorize people. It doesn't work, it divides, it accomplishes nothing.

Thanks Mac for taking the heat for the opposition.


My thoughts on Bush's wish to ban gay marriage. I support him for this one reason.

If we are talking about religious marriage then you have no right to allow some hack minister who is violating his Church to allow homosexuals to be married. It is against God's laws so a religious marrige should not be allowed.

As to Civil Unions, or whatever legal marriages are called... If they are fully legal and civil and not religious in any way then I would have to say in the interest of tolerance we'd have to let them occur and i would not raise an objection.

The whole point is christians believe homosexuality is wrong, that is their view, you must be tolerant of that. So don't force their churches to marry them.

As to the Bush bashing, get a clue, get some real facts not from NPR or some liberal stereotype fact slaughtering web site. I have yet to see an actual valid claim against Bush, that isn't based on political motives and lies and then parroted by many people feeling they had come to this unique conclusion themselves.

As to seperation of Church and State. Bush is christian nowhere in any law or the constitution does it say he has to give up his religion to become President. I would not care if some muslim president mentioned Allah all the time.

oh and by the way i'm an athiest too, though I have large respect for religion and sometimes wish i was brought up religiously.

The ammendment in the constitution meant that we can not declare a state religion or persecute others based on relgion. It has been twisted though to mean that no public official can show their religion in anyway regarding their job....

But oh well, SL is haven for liberals, send the attacks and flames... I'm used to it.

JV

In other words, exactly as I characterized them.



And belittling people serves that purpose how exactly?



Excuse me? Play acting? How exactly is expressing strong personal opinions play acting? Care to add anything else patronizing? Sheesh Mac.



Perhaps I missed something but I don't recall a single generalization about repulblicans, or even religious people, anywhere in this thread.

The one thing I do agree with you on is that this thread is probably inappropriate for this forum, and I apologize if I offended anyone. I do not, however, apologize for my opinions.

I mentioned republicans and democrats but I don't recall lumping. I do agree with what you say nonetheless. There are good and bad republicans, there are good and bad democrats. Yet what is good and what is bad? Simply an opinion to the onlooker. I hope I made my point.

Civil union is all gays are after. They just want equal rights to be able to share in the same tax breaks and other privelidges that other married people can have. To me, denying them that is discrimination. We don't let employers do it so why do we tolerate it from our government?



No one is suggesting that.



If there are specific claims made about Bush in this thread that you think are false or less than factual feel free to point them out. Otherwise you're just doing the same thing you're compaining about to liberals.



I'm not suggesting Bush should give up his religion. He has every right to believe in and practice it. But I feel that religious rhetoric has no place in government. To me every time Bush invokes scripture or namedrops Jesus and God it's like he's saying he represents Christian views with favoritism. I would be equally unhappy if he constantly mentioned Allah or Buddah or Xenu. Government should be secular because it should represent all people, not just those of the same faith. I'd love to have a president constantly talking about Allah though, because you can bet that a lot of christians would be up in arms about it, which would be hugely hypocritical... and predictable. Of course a muslim could never get elected. Neither could an atheist.



That's really interesting JV. I've never heard an atheist say that before. If you ever feel like chatting about it in game I'd be very interested to hear your reasons for it.



What I object to in Bush's constant Christian rhetoric is that it gives the impression that we already have a state religion and that it's Christianity. And there's a lot of things going on that seem to back that up, like giving federal money to churches in the "faith based initiatives" program and trying to make it legal for religious charities to hire and fire based on religious belief... in other words, freedom to discriminate, and John Ashcroft having himself annointed with oil before swearing in... I could go on and on. I respect their right to be religious... I don't believe they should be quoting scripture in public statements. A religious government cannot possibly equally represent everyone. Government has to remain secular, and public officials need to keep their religious beliefs to themselves.

If anyone wants to discuss any of this more, feel free to look me up in game.

Ok, I'm not going to get into what Jonathan said about his opinion regarding gay marriage because I need my blood pressure to stay where it is



You said it, Chip. I'm fine with Bush being a devout Christian, but I really really don't support his waving of it in his office as President. Our country is NOT a country of Christians, whatever others might want you to think. It was built on the ideal of freedom and equality for all, and one of those ideals is _religious freedom_.

By constantly (what you said) quoting Scripture as well as using it as a Reason to do things -- that just doesn't go with the aforementioned ideals.

*snipping rest of rant because Chip said it better than me* (won't get into Ashcroft, either, because I need to not have indigestion)