I know a few who were helped by that. We have a friend who had a super shitty childhood and then went into the military, where he should have gotten some help, but he ended up in a super shitty situation where he ended up going to jail for someone else’s mistake. Then jail. That was super shitty. So, basically just a pile of shit on top of another pile of shit would be a good way to describe his life up to that point. Fast forward to him + Jesus and he now owns a successful company felling and chipping trees. He still have lived through way too much shit since his literal Come to Jesus moment, like having a teenage child killed in a car accident, but yes, Jesus loving him has kept him off of alcohol for many years and made a big difference in his life. He goes into prisons and ministers there.
I really don’t deny that there are a lot of people comforted by the idea that somewhere someone loves them no matter what. I have no issue with that. What do hate is people who think that ramming that idea down my throat is going to be of value to me.
Militant atheists are just another type of fundamentalist. Such “billboard battles” make everyone look one-dimensional, intolerant, and rather simple minded. Not a fan of Ken Ham and his merry band of commercial Bible literalists, but religion-free hecklers seem even more ludicrous.
If one does not believe in something,why even bother with it? I know the irrational motivations, of course. i also sorta get the freedom of/from religion arguments. Then there’s the public interest and taxation facets. All seems so small in the scale of real issues that deserve attention.
As a society and a nation, the US allows people to believe whatever they want. Or not. Religous institutions are deemed by the majority to be a positive thing…despite the stupidity and ugliness exemplified by some of their adherents. If constitutional rights are upheld, what’s the big deal?
Get worked up over something that matters, fer gawdsake.
Most people in those other religions didn’t read the bible either and likely only know a few excerpts from it so I suppose jhbadgers statement still holds true.
In my World Of Darkness RPG campaign, my PCs have the disturbing habit of using that sign as the drop off point for the bodies of evil antagonists that they’ve killed.
Overall I agree with you. And I find argumentative dawkins type atheists way more annoying and smug than Christian fundamentalists. I know a local dad who prides himself in letting his children decide what they want to believe about god instead of indoctrinating them. But every time he drives past a church with them in the car, they all say “baaaaa”. at his lead. He’s not letting his kids decide anything.
The only problem I have some religions – not all — is that some followers turn away from doing certain things. Sure, individual freedom rules here but disabling a curious mind by answering questions with “because God did it” is not good for society as a whole. We need curious people seeking answers in all facets of life. On top of that, you’ll have people praying instead of taking real action, and in (at least for now) limited scenarios idiots not allowing for life saving procedures (e.g. transfusions, vaccinations) because of their beliefs. And this is often imposed on captive audience children.
And the vast majority of Christians have parents who are Christian. Sure, there are converts, but they’re the exception, not the rule. So the idea that, unless you’re born into the right family, you’re probably damned going to be tortured for all eternity (unless you realize that obviouslythat group of people are right about everything), may be just the slightest bit harsh.
Problem is, they vet you upon arrival and if they figure out you’re not a True Believer they will deny you entrance. Which apparently they can do, despite receiving federal money. Because the Constitution doesn’t exist there, or something.
Do they really do that there? It certainly doesn’t sound like a very profitable or efficient way to run a theme park. It’s hard enough dealing with all the crowds without adding a bible quiz and/or baptismal font to the ticket queue.
Points taken. Such negative manifestations of “religion” are very much worthy of attention, I guess that’s the crux of the matter. Getting one’s knickers in a wad over Ken Ham’s creationist enterprises seems rather a waste of time. Challenging a “faith-based” practice that endangers people – especially children – takes the discussion outside of the “religious freedom” argument, at least according to US constitutional principles. Freedom of religion stops at the boundary of commonly accepted human rights. Some areas are neccessarily contentious (eg. “right to life” vs. women’s right to choose) and the ongoing debate is important to all sides. A big, honking replica of Noah’s Ark and simplistic renditions of Biblical history hurt no one.
Dawkins is an outstanding exponent of science and knowledge, but his brand of atheistic advocacy is just as obnoxious and silly as the objects of his ridicule. I’d be more impressed if he focused on things to be known rather than ranting “God does not exist.”
I don’t even think that a majority of Christians believe that JC is all you need - some feel as if the life you live matters as much as whether or not you welcomed Jesus into your heartmeats. Last rites and confession was deemed necessary by my dad at the end of his life, after decades of being away from Catholic services. Just “being washed in the blood of the lamb” wasn’t quite enough. Also, my grandfather spent much of his retirement years doing good works…
In which case they would have been better served by just saying, “Go fuck yourselves!” on the billboard, because that’s the message they’re ultimately trying to convey to the locals of that area.
That is an awesome, hilarious billboard and I want it. There’s an ironic t-shirt line to be made based on that. Though I also really like, “If you’re living as if there’s no Hell, you’d better be right!” I think of that one as the dumbass version of Pascal’s Wager. I love it because it’s so easily mockable - you could replace “Hell” with any fictional threat and it makes just as much sense (the Deathstar/Freddy Krueger/chupacabras/R’lyeh/etc.). I’d like to be the new “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
If I recall my religious history correctly, one of the things that distinguishes Protestant religions from Catholicism is that more Protestants believe that man is saved through faith alone, whereas the Catholics believe that faith without good deeds is empty.
My personal viewpoint on the matter (before I lost faith altogether) was that sure, in theory, faith might be enough to save you - but if you truly believed in Christ and his message, it wouldn’t make a difference, because you’d be doing good works anyway. If you were a “Christian” but not kind and charitable, tolerant and forgiving, then your faith wasn’t anything that could save you, because you were following some other guy, and not the Christ who demanded his followers be all of those things.
dawk is a racist sexist stooge for imperialism. liek the particular tradition of western euro scepticism of which he is a priest has always been fundamentally orientalist.
My view is 'Look at why God did it. Why make a system this way where it can run on it’s own instead of a very blatant ‘because God wills it? If the system can be understood without going ‘because God’ it is our obligation to find out why and how that works so we can use it. t odo otherwise is a Sin because God made the universe out of a bunch of mechanisms we’re able to wrap our monkey brains around.’
