You get saved first, then become part of the body of Christ. You can’t receive spiritual gifts if you are actively and willingfully living in sin.
1 Corinthians 12
What does that have to do with being allowed to attend church? Are you saying there are no members at your church that are actively and willingfully engaging in sin?
I daresay no-one has ever received spiritual gifts, by that standard.
Well, maybe one.
“Awww, Mom!”
Nonsense. Christians make fun of people all the time, and always have. This is just a standard attempt to claim that Christian is synonymous with “nice person” without the slightest bit of evidence to back it up. Just because you claim Christians have a virtue doesn’t make it true.
NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God. You can’t get more atheist than that. How do we know there isn’t a God? We offed 'em.
I bet you have. Most atheists, unless asked, will never mention their lack of religious belief. That cashier at the convenience store who was polite and well-spoken? What (if any) was her religion? How about that nice young man who pumped your gas the other day? Did you ask him his religion? There are, no doubt, dozens of people you encounter every day who don’t have a “foul tongue”, who’s religion you never found out. There were almost certainly a few atheists among them.
On a separate note, several weeks ago, on this forum, I got into an argument with someone else who insisted I should determine who is a “true Christian”, and not lump any other self-described Christian in with them. Now you’re here doing the same. I’ve decided you’re right. I should judge you guys according to what the Gospels say Jesus taught. Know what I came up with? You both fail. So does every other so-called Christian I’ve ever met or read about. There are no “True Christians”. Happy, now?
The key words are “actively” and “willingly.” If you fuck your friend’s wife, and you feel sufficiently bad about it to let Jesus into your heart and “save” you, then you can go back to church. Once saved, you’re free to go back home and fuck your friend’s wife, because, got dayum does she have nice titties. Oops! Time to get saved again!
A gay person can go to church as long as they pretend to be remorseful for all the gay sex they’ve been having, but only if they’re not actively involved in gay sex at the moment they walk in the door.
Except Norman Greenbaum.
“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”
- Emo Philips
You sound alike a sock for Czarcasm. Just because you, Mr. Moderator, can’t make a connection with the anology I’ve drawn to explain how being offended for something taken away doesn’t mean you’ve been promoting that something, doesn’t mean I’ve strayed off topic. And if the OP strays off topic, whether you’re right or not, of what concern is it to you? I thought the whole idea of the concern with hijacks was to support the intent of the original poster.
Was the thread not going the way you wanted ?
Oh dear. Get a life.
I wouldn’t take it personally, if I were you. You’re supporting utter nonsense, of course you’re gonna lose.
Also, not teaching evolution isn’t an attack on atheists, it’s supporting theism. Everything we know supports evolution. The only reason people deny it is to prop up their baseless spiritual beliefs.
It might be because you tell every atheist you meet that they are horrible people and they are persecuting you. Just a thought. I presume that criminals rarely meet police officers who like them, but that doesn’t mean cops are all personally unpleasant.
Formal warning it is, then. I don’t know if you have participated in threads by GEEPERS in the past, but they’ve had a tendency to go very, very far off topic, creating a thread where many issues are touched and none are developed in any kind of depth. I am hoping to keep that to a minimum this time. You are welcome to discuss the tangents that interest you, but you have to do it in a thread separate from this one. In the meantime, mocking and insulting the staff is a bad idea, so please don’t do it again.
I said this topic belongs in another thread. That applies to you, too.
No. Tinker works in the other direction: it protects students from the school. It says very little about whether schools can put up religious displays.
This case is governed by the Lemon test:
Unless you mean the T-shirt hypothetical? In that case, yes.
Would the prayer have been OK if “Our Heavenly Father” were replaced with a more neutral formula, perhaps “O Mysterious Spirit which guides us” ? (I’m sure someone can think of a briefer and even more neutral lead-in to the prayer.)
Even those who don’t believe in a Supreme Being should be able to say such a prayer, perhaps addressed to their own conscience. No one would describe me as pro-religion, but I’m tempted to argue against the atheist here, given that the prayer is rather independent of specific beliefs.
There are religions which don’t even subscribe to the idea of a “mysterious spirit that guides us”, so no.
It does not look like that would have been OK with the Christians in the school. After all, it was suggested that the banner could go out without the “Our heavenly father” and the “amen”. This was soundly rejected by the Christians, who apparently wanted the tax-supported secular school to be forced to put their Christian message up.
So why do you think the Christians refuse to put the banner up without “Our Heavenly Father” on it? They are not interested in a “more neutral formula”.
I don’t know what a judge would say about it, especially if the wording is up in the air. But what the hell is the point? It has the exact same message if you take out “Our heavenly father” and don’t replace it with anything. A believer could say it as a prayer, an atheist could say it as a self affirmation, and just about everybody would agree on the values. “O mysterious spirit” is not overtly Christian, but it’s generic woo. I don’t think a mysterious spirit guides us.
It’s not a question of ability. As long as your mouth works, you can say anything whether you believe it or not. The question is whether or not we would choose to say it and whether a state institution should get involved by broadcasting it.
Yes, that’s what I meant. The obvious parallels between the armbands and the t-shirts are what made me think of it. I realized after I posted that I had been ambiguous, but because I haven’t gotten a response until now, it seemed unnecessary to clarify it.