Unfortunately, yes. I could regale you with stories, oh, such stories, from my less-than-wonderful, yet wonderfully brief term as a member of a well-known organization I won’t name here. Hoo-boy, atheists can be as depressing and paranoid as Christians when in a group, let me tell ya.
I thought it fit right in because the whole song is clunky, simplistic, stupid, and, along with everything from their solo careers, evidence that somebody else wrote the songs credited to Lennon and McCartney before the white album, but YMMV.
Well, with the current generation of Li-ion laptop batteries we’ve got the ignition source taken care of.
Slightly less so, actually, even today.
And Jesus is quoted as saying,“Take up your cross and follow me”.
Of course the Christians would not like the symbols of all the other religions next to theirs, the square would have to be bigger to fit all the symbols. A person really living their religon would be far better than a cross or a manger scene. People want the 10 commandments posted, but when it comes to keeping them it is a different story…our Jails are proof of that!The cost of crime alone adds to our national debt.
I always thought it was in favor of religion, saying “Imagine” there was no heaven or Hell".To my mind it was pro-religion.
What about where it says:
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
In this thread about supposed persecution of Christians, y’all are actually bringing up the fact that a songwriter is asking his listeners to imagine something? Oh! The Horrors!
No, you’re right. It’s a silly tangent. I just wanted to point out that Lennon was expression opposition to religion.
But, really, I haven’t seen anyone come into this thread who actually believes that Christians are persecuted in America. And no one has tried to establish what “persecution” should mean in this context. Is it enough to cite a single anecdote? Or are we talking about something on a broader basis?
Because I can certainly find anecdotes of individuals being persecuted in America. This American Life (or a similar show) once featured a story of a white American woman who had converted to Islam when she married a Middle Eastern immigrant. After 9/11, her husband felt so persecuted he left the country. And the mother and her daughters tried to stay in their small town, but did experience what I would call persecution.
And there was another story of a young teacher who took a job in a small town, and her principal pressured her to declare a belief in god and allegiance to Christianity. That’s certainly persecution.
Criticism is not persecution. Being barred from using the government to promote your religion is not persecution. Any genuine examples of Christians being persecuted in America? Even anecdotally? And then if we get to the anecdotal stage, can we establish whether that’s something that can be considered enough to say that “Christians are persecuted in America”?
There is a well known poster who posted in this very thread who has stated numerous times that he believes that the GOP, if given full control, would round up and kill Athiests.
Of course, his viewpoints are… pitworthy, so there is that.
But I believe his claim is that a certain group would persecute atheists if given the power to do so, not that atheists are being persecuted in this country now.
Yes, you can go out and find stories about Christians being denied their religious freedom by the government in America. Or other faiths, or atheists. It happens. It is, however, very rare, and rarely severe.
Wait, they’re not persecuted? Then what the hell am I supposed feed these lions?
You’d lose the bet.
Turkey has gone vastly farther in wiping “religion from the public square” than the US and it remains a stable democracy.
Beyond that, a number of Arab countries without going as far as the US have drastically restricted the wearing of Hijabs and Burkas in public and often banned government employees and students from wearing them.
I know there’s a tendency to think that most Muslim countries are theocracies like Iran or Saudi Arabia, but those are the exceptions not the rule.
I’m curious what you consider to be ‘Christians being denied their religious freedom’, I’d like an example.
I’d sorta like to disagree with this. Persecution is too strong a word, to me it implies extreme measures, like being arrested just for being a certain religion. I don’t think Christians or atheists are being persecuted in this country. However, this comment makes it sound like atheists and Christians are on equal footing when it comes to antagonism, and that simply isn’t true. Atheists have to take much more crap than Christians on a daily basis. I’d like to think that this is obvious, but in case it isn’t I’d like to point out that this is ok, but this resulted in threats and was taken down.
Here are a few.
Not all these cases apply (not all were won), and not all are Christians, but it’s a decent list.
Scientologists.
I don’t know the name of this fallacy, but it’s common in these discussion. It doesn’t matter a shit in a sandstorm what would happen in any other country. That’s not even close to being an argument of any kind.
A single violation of First Amendment rights is not necessarily an incident of persecution. Why don’t you list the ones that you think constitute persecution?
I didn’t say it was persecution. Read the question I was asked please.