The Bible is a book.

Well, that certainly definitively answers that question.

See above comments about this.

What was his education background again? Loyola, Pepperdine, Trinity Christian College? Or was it some vocational carpentry school?

You really do seem to be r e a c h i n g. Instead of saying "it is therefore expected" you should have said "it is ASSumed."

Briana Dawson

Jesus could do anything he wanted, walk on water, turn water into wine, gold into lead. He was a white anglo saxon born of a semetic mother. He was god, man, and man-god. He could speak Greek, Latin and English. He could shoot jets of acid from his tentacles. Recite Gunga Din centuries before it was written. He could count in French. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something?

The heads. You're looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far. He's the first one to admit it.

I think a big part of the problem is that the Religious right want to do more than things such as nativity scenes and 10 commandments in public places.

What they have is an agenda to legislate morality. The feel that secularists are in the way of them being allowed to do so.

There is a significant difference in secularist and aethist - since many secularists are even Christain the just dont beleive in this exercise of political power.

for example
Banning Gay Marriage - this is a legislated religeon.

School prayer - this is legislated time set asside to reflect on a higher power. Since Christaisn are by far the majority they know what higher power the children will be considering.

Teaching Intelligent design - this is of course legislated religeon. Since a higher power is the core component in intelligent design.


The fundamental reason the Bill of rights and Ammendment One exists is to protect the Minority from the majority.

Becuase no matter what they claim Christains are a clear and overwhelming majority in America today. Luckily the number who see governemnet as a tool to enforce their beliefs is a smaller Majority.

Fiction is full of such convenient contrivances.

One only needs to admit that the author of John 18:11 seems to have known the Socrates story well and assumed that his readers also knew and understood it.

Jesus was way cool
Everybody liked Jesus
Everybody wanted to hang out with him
Anything he wanted to do, he did
He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines

He walked on the water
And swam on the land
He would tell these stories
And people would listen
He was really cool

If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That's so cool

He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That's so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that's so cool
Jesus was way cool

No wonder there are so many Christians

1. Marriage is a religious institution, created from Religious beliefs. If the world's religions say it was created to form a family bond between a man and woman, who am I to argue the point. I think gays should seek to gain the rights to a secular agreement that the government would treat as a "marriage" pact.

2. Intelligent Design isn't a new thing, in fact it was taught to the founding fathers in the public school of their time, and they didn't see it as an evil.

3. The first amendment concerns the right of the people to practice religion freely, without Government intrusion, and to prevent the government creating a government religion, like the Church of England.

There is no constitutional protection that would keep religious beliefs from being discussed, argued, advertised etc. The only thing one can do to avoid religion is to stay indoors with the TV off and the windows closed. The right is for us to practice our faith, not a right to be shielded from religion.

I know you posted this to Kevn, but here's my answer:

No, my personal standards (religious or not) should not be a forced norm for all people within a country. But then, neither should anyone else's.

Society as a whole decides what the standard is for a country. If someone is against that concept, then they are against the concept of government, which is a central, stabilized law system for the good of society as a whole, regardless of what individuals within that society may personally think.

Not to say that governments work. That's a whole nuther subject. But the question you ask can easily be reversed:

Do you believe your NON-religious standards should be the norm for all within our society, regardless of their personal beliefs?

I'm not even touching the religion vs non-religion concept here. I'm discussing personal beliefs vs personal beliefs. It is interesting (and I think this has been brought up already) that those who cry most loudly that religious people are shoving their moral codes down the throats of everyone else-- are themselves often guilty of doing the same thing. Trying to force a "religiously moral" person to accept what he perceives as immorality is no different than a religiously moral person trying to force someone to accept morality. Two sides of the same coin.

You are making my point that it is legislated Morality. Marriage is a religeous institution that has been codified into law. The secular responsibility of governement should seek to either remove marriage or to remove the religeous connotations and definition.



AT the time of the founding fathers there was no sciientific body of work that showed an alternative to intelligent design. Your arguement is like akin to the world is flat theory - at one time most people didnt dispute that either.



I did not say there needs sheilding from religeous beliefs. The governement however has no business in any spreading of those beliefs.

The first ammendment is broader than your interpretation, however. It not only prevents the forming of a state religeon such as the church of england. It also limits power of a Trans-state body like the Catholic church. It further prevents a grass roots religeon from coming up and legislating all their morality on the rest of us.

If for example--

Many years from now a Religeon started up with was intent on saving humantity from over population. It advocates only homosexual unions and test tube children. Becuase of the problems of the world somehow this religeon gains a majority. They then decide to legislate their beliefs, Banning Hetero Sex practices.

Many cry that they can not , becuase there is freedom of religeon. But they are reminded that the first ammendment provides only a narrow protection from a State run church.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a Majority rule situation where politicians sponser legislation based on religeously held beliefs. There is no difference between a Majority Religeon and a state sponsored one.

And I've always found it humorous that some people believe there is no such thing as absolutes.

I agree, I at first found the term "Relativism" somewhat confusing. They likely could have come up with a better-understood term. However, I then began to realize that any other term might have been easily labeled P un-C, whereas this term actually fits pretty well.

"Relativism" is the philosophy that all things are relative, that there are no absolutes, and that "right and wrong" is the decision of the individual. It's a basic position of anarchy without society norms or constraints and without recognition of ultimate authority. Religion doesn't even come into the issue here; it's a matter of individual vs societal rule.

So I think the term pretty well fits.

To make my previous point clearer.

Belief what you want - about what you want. This is all fine

Start passing LAWS based on your beliefs to the deteriment of other peoples freedoms - and you are violating the spirit of the First Ammendment.

This is a simplification that does not help to answer the question of whether morality should be enforced by the body politic at all.

I just can't resist tackling this one.



Not an attempt I'd say. From what I have seen, it pretty well did codify the concept.



So by this statement then, Jesus and the apostles weren't "real Christians"? Because from what I've heard, they pretty much spoke about their beliefs to everyone, friend or foe, receptive or not.



Yes it has, even extensively so. No arguement there. But then, so has non-religion. Mankind's history has been brutal and bloody all through history. So-called Christianity has no lock there.



On the contrary, it's more likely that your position will not be remembered a hundred years. As far as I'm aware, Christianity and the various writers of its principles have been remembered going on two millenia now. (Again, I am by no means supporting modern day mainstream religions as a whole. Just making what I hope are factual, valid points). It's most unlikely all of that is going to be forgotten 100 years from now.

Does this mean you're for a man having four wives (Islam); or as many as he can support (old school Mormons); and group marriage (Church of All Worlds)?

And... since there are religions who perform religious marriage ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples, (Reform Judaism, Unitarians, a bunch of Christian denominations, but I forget which ones) then that's cool too!

Glad we cleared this up.

Wayfinder, you haven't been paying attention.

First, "attempt" is about as far as you can go, given the myriad Christian bibles and the myriad interpretations of the most simple Christian beliefs over the last two thousand years.

Second, Christ was Jewish, not Christian. Christianity didn't exist, except as a minor cult within the Jewish faith, until Paul - who was every bit as important to the religion as Christ was. As I said before - blame Paul for the expansionist and metropolitan traditions of Christianity; Christ had little opportunity to preach beyond the "clan". Paul, on the other hand, took the concept to the Greco-Roman world and beyond.

Third, and this point has been made a dozen times in this thread - what you believe Christ said or did is more a matter of faith than a matter of inarguable history. Your sources are terrible and have been much corrupted by "biblical scholarship", "popery", politics, and "Protestant revolution" over the last couple of thousand years. The earliest sources available to historical and scientific examination suggest a Jesus and a set of concepts that bear little resemblence to modern Christian perspectives in many important respects.

Fourth, I did not suggest that Christianity or its fundamental concepts would not be remembered a hundred years from now. I suggested that it is likely that neither your comments nor this thread would be remembered... even a week from now.

But more importantly, I suggested that one of the main reasons for organized religion has disappeared: good entertainment. I want to withdraw that statement. Clearly there are a lot of yuks in this thread.

Wayfinder, you haven't been paying attention.

First, "attempt" is about as far as you can go, given the myriad Christian bibles and the myriad interpretations of the most simple Christian beliefs over the last two thousand years.

Second, Christ was Jewish, not Christian. Christianity didn't exist, except as a minor cult within the Jewish faith, until Paul - who was every bit as important to the religion as Christ was. As I said before - blame Paul for the expansionist and metropolitan traditions of Christianity; Christ had little opportunity to preach beyond the "clan". Paul, on the other hand, took the concept to the Greco-Roman world and beyond.

Third, and this point has been made a dozen times in this thread - what you believe Christ said or did is more a matter of faith than a matter of inarguable history. Your sources are terrible and have been much corrupted by "biblical scholarship", "popery", politics, and "Protestant revolution" over the last couple of thousand years. The earliest sources available to historical and scientific examination suggest a Jesus and a set of concepts that bear little resemblence to modern Christian perspectives in many important respects.

Fourth, I did not suggest that Christianity or its fundamental concepts would not be remembered a hundred years from now. I suggested that it is likely that neither your comments nor this thread would be remembered... even a week from now.

But more importantly, I suggested that one of the main reasons for organized religion - good entertainment - has disappeared. I withdraw that statement. Clearly, this thread has a lot of yuks.

I wasn't real clear, Hiro, since I was trying a little sarcasm on Kevn, but that's pretty much what I said. And whether or not he knew Greek is germaine because Kevn seems to think that he did. It helps him skip over at least one translational step between the original sayings and modern English, but it's not working out too well for him.


Wrong. "Intelligent Design" is a recent attempt by Creationists to stealth their religious ideas into public classrooms. The "founding fathers", as you call them, may have been Creationists but that's simply because Darwin hadn't been born yet and nobody thought to ask why there seems to be so much continuity between different species. Darwin had the answer, not Creationists.

Now if what you're really saying is that I.D. is nothing more than Creationism dressed up in fancy robes, then I'll go along with you. Either way, it doesn't belong in public schools any more than the Qur'an or the Bible. It's only "evil" insofar as it perpetrates myth and superstition over scientific evidence.

That's what the Mithrans thought. Then a new religion rose up, stole all their traditions and called themselves "Christians". It didn't turn out too well for Mithra.

Or to see christian protesters with signs that say God Hates You at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

From a pure logic standpoint, let's consider some of these claims:



And a religious person might argue that others have an agenda to legislate immorality. Certainly secularists consider religious advocates to be standing in the way of them doing so. (You'll quickly see how the sword can cut both ways here. ).



And they would consider legalizing Gay Marriage as legislated immorality.



This one has been a question for a long time. Does a school classroom have the right to enforce personal religious beliefs on its students? But if we say no, then the question immediately rises, "Does a school classroom have the right to enforce political beliefs on its students? Does a school classroom have the right to enforce it's anti-religious beliefs on its students (such as evolution)? See... nothing here is black and white. All it boils down to is people enforcing THEIR ideology rather than the CURRENT ideology.

The question might be asked, "Does a school have the right to forbid students to pray, or does it even have the right to forbid giving them a moment to do so?" It's basically one personal philosophy vs another. Who has the authority to judge which is right?



As a note... the basic concept of intelligent design has nothing to do with religion (although of course, religion certainly embraces that concept). Intelligent Design is the belief that the physical universe and life on earth came into existence by plan (intelligent design) rather than by sheer accident (evolution). It might also be pointed out the the originator of evolution himself believed in God. He just believed that God used evolution to bring life on earth into existence.

Whether they call that intelligent designer "God" or not is up to the person. But personally, I've seen some very, very convincing evidence presented by true intelligent design proponents that had nothing to do with the Bible or religion at all. Their argument was based on pure science and biology and took the concept of evolution to task (in fact, it made evolution look just plain silly). Now, whether people believe that Intelligent Designer is God or not gets into the matter of religion. But Intelligent Design in its purest form as a concept sets aside that idea and looks at the matter from a purely scientific standpoint. It has nothing to do with faith; it has to do with empirical evidence.

Just a couple of facts for reference.



Does it? Or does it exist to protect the majority from the minority? (ie, the majority of citizens from the minority of government officials and power-mongers who might otherwise abuse it).

Just making a few replies to show the other side of viewpoints and why people are in such disagreement over these concepts.

And there are more religions in existance than christianity... some of which ALLOW gay marriage. Equal protection under the law, pal.



Well, it is. Keep religion in your home, and in your church, not in public school. My kid doesn't need to learn your religion to be a valid individual. Unless, of course, your a bigot.



And our legal system requires equal protection under the law. For equality to be truly equal, either all religions are treated fairly, or religion needs to be kept out of anything funded, supported, or endorsed by the government.



There is no need to avoid religion... but people really need to learn that there are multiple faiths, multiple paths, and if said people would follow their own damned belief systems... there would be no conflict.

I'm not skimming these threads, I promise you. Kevn is too fun to miss.

The actions of WBC are no more representative of Christianity than catholic priests mollesting little boys are representative of Catholisim. It's just a few bad nuts, and in this case insane paramilitary doomsday cultist nuts at that.

No part of Christs teachings support or condone what they are doing. Even remotely.