Forgot the *
- = hyperbole, for those unable to distinguish.
Why don’t Presidents declare a National Day of Masturbation? We’d all certainly get more benefit out of it?
Which religions don’t have prayer?
You didn’t need to do that; I’m not reading this thread.
In Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court upheld the Nebraska legislature’s opening its daily sessions with a prayer from an official chaplain, paid by the state treasury, as not violative of the Establishment Clause. That’s quite a bit more entanglement than merely marking a day of prayer.
And the Court has commented on the Day of Prayer approvingly:
In Lynch v. Donnelly, the Court said:
The practice clearly is consistent with the Constitution.
I can not think of more then one right now, but hell, even one is enough to prove my point.
Buddhism.
Okay…the government doesn’t have to designate anything related to religion. He could have left it at “Day of Rememberance”. Obviously, people are free to go pray their brains out if they feel the urge. He should never even bring it up except at home or at church. Why is that so fucking hard to understand? Does anyone think the religious folks FORGOT they could pray to comfort themselves?
Yeah, it’s an endorsement of religion. Yeah, I’d prefer it if our government were more secular and didn’t do such things. But as governmental endorsements of religion go, this one’s pretty harmless. I mean, as long as they’re not forcing anyone to actually do anything.
Anyway, it’s all fine and well to bitch about this sort of stuff, but it’s a long-standing and basically harmless tradition, and there are far more important battles to be fought. Complainining about semi-meaningless governmental expressions of religion just furthers the impression that liberals are anti-religious, which only hurts our chances of getting people elected who can actually do something about the important issues.
sigh
Sure it does.
What is samadhi, to a Buddhist?
Sigh
Sure doesn’t.
It’s control over the functions of consciousness (According to them, not to me), not prayer.
It’s not like he said you WILL pray and it WILL be to Jesus. I’m not really offended by the idea of them saying, “It might be a nice idea to pray.” My problem is that I know this man apparently thinks that I’m going to fry in hell because I won’t pray to his version of his God.
At least, unlike him, I
It’s a state of prayerful meditation.
It’s a Wiki link, Scott. Most believable cite there is, right?
I think you’re going to fry in hell because you can’t complete posts.
So what?
It’s not like he said you WILL pray and it WILL be to Jesus. I’m not really offended by the idea of them saying, “It might be a nice idea to pray.” My problem is that I know this man apparently thinks that I’m going to fry in hell because I won’t pray to his version of his God.
At least, unlike him, I actually care about the people of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. If he’s an example of what conservative/fundamentalist Christianity does to one’s human compassion, I’ll just run screaming the other way, thank you very much.
I DID finish the post. The server crapped out on me or something.
That’s what you get, infidel! 
No, but that is why he made it a Day of Prayer and Remembrance.
So the religious 85% of us can pray, and the idiot atheists can remember that they don’t have to pray if they don’t want to.
Regards,
Shodan
Tell it to the Eternal Lake of Fire, pal.
Doesn’t sound like any kind of prayer I ever heard of. Take away that word, and it is just plain old meditation. Forgive me if I seem skeptical that the existance of the word word prayer is more then just a way to get westerners to relate to the concept, when reading that article.