You’re actually serious, aren’t you?
This is very much the wrong forum for me to respond beyond that…
Oh for Christ’s sake, are you for real? You don’t think people can be moral without religion? Do you think that murder, and theft, and lieing, and cheating on one’s partner are viewed as wrong just by the religious? Are you saying that without the Bible you wouldn’t know those are wrong?
We can see in the current situation that some of the people pushing religion down our throats are huge hypocrites. Don’t want UHC? Just make up a bunch of lies. Don’t worry that bearing false witness is one of the moral principles your God chose to engrave in stone. A sin worse, apparently, than homosexuality which must have been the 11th most important proscription.
My friends who go to church cheat on their spouses, while my atheist friends have been faithfully married for 30 years. The world is full of skeevy people hiding behind the Bible while they solicit money from the elderly to build themselves mansions, or run for office while taking bribes, or just being the most hateful and loathsome people in the world. Some even go out and push abstinence only sex education while they and their daughter both got knocked up before marriage.
If you think that believing in your personal deity will save you from eternal damnation, that’s great. If you think people need to believe in a particular religion to be ‘moral’ then you are deluded.
When did we ever teach ethics? People today learn ethics the same way they always have - from parents and other family, friends, teachers, books and films, and, yes, religious leaders.
Religion does not have a monopoly on determination of right and wrong - but even with that being the case, children and adults can learn from faiths they don’t adhere to as easily as from faiths they do.
My parents read to me from a collection of Aesop’s Fables, from the Panchantantra, and from all sorts of other morality tales, including the Bible. That didn’t turn me into a follower of the Greek pantheon, a Hindu (despite my mother’s desire to do so), or a Christian.
How do you think atheists determine right from wrong, anyway? As with people of faith, we make up our own minds.
Most people who commit crimes are not atheists. Some of the most religious people commit the biggest crimes [cough…9/11…cough].
Religion, of any kind, is not required for morality, nor do all religious people lead a moral life, nor do all non-religious people act in immoral ways.
I have no idea what you’re even trying to say here, except that I THINK you’re saying that everybody screws around on their spouses after denying equal rights to others based on those others’ sexual orientations, or everybody defrauds the public of millions of dollars in investments that are Ponzi schemes, or…what?
Whose “we” and what do you mean by ethics? And I can guarantee you the majority of prisoners surveyed would say that they were raised in a religious faith. This isn’t a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior society, you know.
Again…what? Figure what out? That you’re saying that religion is the only way to teach morality, and that without religion there is no morality. Again, I would like to point out that a majority of Americans claim to believe in a religion of some kind, and it’s not the remaining minority that’s committing all the crimes.
By doing it. “Do not kill or deliberately harm other people,” “do not take things that do not belong to you,” “treat others the way you want to be treated” - NONE of those require a religious basis.
According to the Bible, nobody has to be taught right from wrong. Everybody already knows it, including atheists.
Moreover, if they don’t know right from wrong, then they aren’t morally accountable anyway.
Maybe you have to be non-practicing to understand. If someone describes themselves as non-practicing, that’s just a fancy way of saying “I don’t go to church, I don’t keep track of religious matters/opinions of the church, but I believe in god”.
Catholicism makes up the largest denomination in the US at 67 million members. If 35% are non-practicing, that’s almost 24 million people. Which is almost double the number of the next largest denomation.
While people may identify with a religion to pollsters and census takers, the number of people actively engaged in Christianity is shrinking quite rapidly.
I probably would have to be Christian to understand, but I get your points 
However, I fail to see how the shrinkage in practicing Christians (if that is the definition of deChristianized that we’re using) is the fault of the liberals.
They certainly do not.
I’m a flat-out atheist, but the fact is that saying “state” and “nation” are necessarily synonymous is simply illiterate. “State” is ONE of many definitions of “nation,” and some definitions of nation refer to to a state but to a population, or distinct people, as distinct from a state. A state can even have more than one nation within it, such as the United Kingdom . A nation can exist without a state; the Latvian nation continued to exist even when it was under the Soviet state. This can be figured out by simply opening a dictinary, which I’d suggest you buy; they’re very useful tools. There is no room for debate on the matter; the two words have distinct meanings and anyone who says they do not is wrong.
It is perfectly logical to state that the United States is a areligious state (or is supposd to be, anyway) but a largely Christian nation.
Whoever said it was? I’m just saying that the numbers show that the US is not as much of a “Christian nation” as it used to be. And that this shrinkage will likely continue.
My posts about the concept of America becoming deChristianized were started by Post #181
That’s what all of my posts have been discussing.
I think once a Christian always a Christian to some degree. Even if you become an atheist you still were raised with principals. You still have the values, just not a faith in God anymore.
I don’t think it is any political party’s fault. We are changing culturally as a nation. What is acceptable and unacceptable has changed drastically over the last 50 years. It is rare I meet someone that has a light on inside anymore. In their hearts. If someone truly great comes along we assassinate them or try to.
If Obama’s dream of change could have been realized he would have probably been assassinated. As long as he cowers to big government and relinquishes power to thieves he will be left alone. If our country goes bankrupt he will have served his greater purpose I really could care about Liberals or Dem’s or Republicans because it is that smokescreen that keeps us in everlasting ignorance. Mere pawns on the worlds chess board.
Christians are not the only ones raised with principals. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, and yes, even atheists, are also raised with principals. Again, morals do not require a religion.
While it is true that cultural values have changed over the last 50 years, many of us would argue that most of those changes are positive. Blacks can vote, women don’t have to suffer overt sexual harassment, gays don’t have to hide (as much)…there are many benefits to the changes that have occurred. Of course, there are some who believe that what they perceive as the negative changes are far worse than those positive changes. However, it is intellectually dishonest to fail to recognize both types.
And I have a feeling that your definition of “truly great” is much different than mine.
I’d respond to this if I could comprehend what you were trying to say.
“Self-identified Republicans”? Methdology fail right there
If anyone called me and asked me if I was a Democrat and could answer a few questions, the answer would be yes and the following facts would be recorded:
Obama is the Messiah. Literally! He is the Son of God come to save me.
Abortion should be mandatory in the case of Republican parents because clearly they are unfit parents for being pro-life.
Yes Obama was born in Kenya but that’s OK because Kenya is next to Montana I think.
He’s saying that Obama is bought and paid for by special interests and if he goes off the script he’ll be shot just like they shot Kennedy.
Tin foil hattery at its crinkliest.
They wouldn’t be asking you if you were a Democrat. That wasn’t the methodology. They used a list of people who were already self-identified as Republicans, not calling people and asking them for their affiliation. You wouldn’t be called at all under the same methodology. Your point fails. If you’re going to try to attack the methodology, make an effort to understand what it is first.
Really, do you think that moral principles (note the spelling) stem from Christianity? Japan isn’t Christian, do they not have moral principles? The US was majority Christian when we had slavery and then Jim Crow. Where were the Christian principle back then?
All cultures have moral principles, and despite different religious traditions they pretty much agree that theft, perjury, and murder are wrong. Only psychopaths need a list of instructions in a book to know right from wrong. Do you honestly think that if they found a new gospel tomorrow that said it was OK to take candy from babies that you’d say, OK, it’s in the Bible, let’s go score some candy.
The Bible is full of contradictory proscriptions and we just pull examples from it to justify our pre-conceived beliefs. Polygamists look to one piece of scripture and monogamists to another.
It may be hard to believe that there are well behaved people in the world that were raised as athiests, or Buddhists, or Sikhs and somehow gained moral principles without being beat over the head with Christianity.
You might also want to go back and see how few people went to church in the 1700s
First - it is principles. Unless you are in a family where the members run schools.
Second, while I was not an atheist when I was young, none of the moral or ethical principles I learned from my parents were justified by reference to God. I was Jewish, so there was no tradition of hateful so-called morals, but for Christians, how do you decide between church A which call for equal rights and SSM and chuch B which doesn’t, all appealing to the same Bible? I content that your choice is driven by your upbringing and environment, and is every much as atheistic as that of any born atheist. You decide on ethics first, and then find a religion to justify them, or decide which passages to accept or reject based on your decision.
Too bad Perciful seems to have abandoned this thread. I was interested in reading his attempts to defend his attitude that morals can only come from Christianity.
:smack: I blame…someone else.
Your all right. It is religions fault and Obama was infected.