bbgun

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Well, he is a believer you know.........it's just a tad bit different than what rcaldw is talking about. SP has a different path to salvation and someone's pissing all over it.

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Liberals don't believe in God/Heaven, so their goal is to create paradise here on Earth .. with other people's money. If there's anything worse than a true believer, it's a secular utopian.
 

Dodger12

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Liberals don't believe in God/Heaven, so their goal is to create paradise here on Earth .. with other people's money. If there's anything worse than a true believer, it's a secular utopian.

I've come to the realization that's what's done is done and there's no going back. God and Christianity has been taken out of every day life. It's being stripped of the very fabric of our society. The Constitution has become just another document and an obstacle for liberals to try and get around, as opposed to a model for other nations to follow.

I'm shocked that having lived (and been born) in another country, that we are so quick to try and model ourselves after a European socialist culture that has failed miserably and is on the brink of collapse. What's even more shocking is that it's happened so quickly.

I have a feeling that when SP grows up and gets a career job (if there are any left), as opposed to the drive thru at McDonald's, and has a family, children and responsibilities, things will become a bit more clearer.
 

superpunk

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Liberals/atheists taking over, read the writing on the walls grandpa. Noone wants your outdated economic ideas and fairy tales. Get on board or be left behind.
 

Jon88

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Athiests and Agnostics (like myself) are taking over. Only 3% of people ages 18-33 attend church in the US today.

You can only bullshit, scare, and guilt trip people for so long.
 

Dodger12

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You can only bullshit, scare, and guilt trip people for so long.

You've missed the point of church and religion, IMO. In years past, the church was the center of communities and a foundation for families to build on, especially immigrants. I'm not "born again" or the model "believer," but I never looked at church as a scare tactic. In Obama talk, the church was the original community organizer for families........
 

bbgun

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Athiests and Agnostics (like myself) are taking over. Only 3% of people ages 18-33 attend church in the US today.

You can only bullshit, scare, and guilt trip people for so long.

Tell that to the gun grabbers and climate alarmists.
 

Jon88

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They definitely aren't anymore. Things change. We live in an information-based society. Time is also more valuable now as life is more fast paced. Most people just don't have time for church anymore.
 

Bob Sacamano

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Back in the day it was cool to believe in God. Nowadays it's cool to not believe in Him. So, if you think about it, you agnost/atheists/fag gets are mindless sheep conforming to the crowd.
 

VTA

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They definitely aren't anymore. Things change. We live in an information-based society. Time is also more valuable now as life is more fast paced. Most people just don't have time for church anymore.

That's an interesting misconception for this generation. It believes that an abundance of opinions, ideas and talking is information. That communication itself is information. Unfortunately it's anything but valid information. With the death of publishing costs as an inhibitor and the advent of everybody and anybody having a voice, be it through internet news sources, a blog or whatever there's no longer an obligation to be absolutely pure in the disseminating of information because no one is accountable.

This generation pretty much functions under a belief that prior generations were communicating with smoke signals and it has cornered the idea of spreading the news. All it's doing is spreading false news, ideas and opinions and it's much harder to get the actual truth and you have to apply quantum leaps of faith because now information is a buffet menu where you can pick and choose what suits your tastes better. It's custom ideologies for people who want to believe what they want to believe, be it political, religion, international affairs, there's something to assuage every mind set into apathy.

Not that all news is false news, but that the overabundance of communication masquerading as news has muddied the waters and have provided no clarity what so ever for a generation that thinks it's the pinnacle of a civilization.
 

Jon88

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There is a lot of false information out there VTA, but for the most part this generation thinks for itself and has a hard time with people who tell them how they need to think, which is exactly what religion does. That's my problem with it and why I don't go to church.

I really have a hard time worshipping someone who would throw me in hell for eternity if I don't follow his son who was sent down here because of something he screwed up - as the story goes.

Why does God need to be worshipped anyway? Does he have that big of an ego?
 

VTA

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This is going to be long. :)
And I'm sure it will lead to other questions.


I'd honestly question the notion of this generation thinking for itself. It's the first generation entirely born out of rampant advertising in all forms and it's not entirely reasonable to think that that doesn't have it's consequences. Advertising isn't simply the hit and run ads we see on TV and magazines and billboards. It exists in long form through entertainment and the parody of information called 'news'. And it's amazingly successful. It is shaping ideologies.

You're right about religion in a sense. Religion is man made, or at the very least man corrupted to mirror everything else man discovers has an impact on human lives. Find anything that people will respond to en masse and it's instantly a commodity, using truths, lies, myths and analogies to propagate a system of leaders and followers. Haves and have nots to seduce with multiple forms of the carrot and stick approach.

The popular notion of the church is exactly what is described above. It's a congregation born of psychology and marketing strategies and the biggest perpetrators of this are the largest and most popular religions. They misrepresent faith in God, knowing full well that people will, as you'd said above, have no time to invest in proper study and will be easily misled. But really a simple study of the bible would have masses questioning just what the hell each and every 'denomination' thinks it's doing saying half the shit it says. Questioning the teachings and behaving the ways that they do.

If you're going to believe in God, does it make sense that you can leave the understanding of Him in the hands of total strangers? If there is a God, a God that made you, set limits on you and will abandon you for ignoring them, does it make sense to give Him such little attention and take it on faith what others say about Him? Especially when it's obvious they're getting rich off of it? But this is what we have. We don't' have a generation devoid of faith, we have a generation of misplaced faith. Counter clerks proclaiming science, despite never spending a minute in a lab or on an archaeological dig, taking on faith what sounds plausible because it's sold in the wrapper of 'anything but God'.

That's fine, because God is the exact opposite of church. He doesn't tell you what to think. He doesn't demand you worship him. He gives each of us complete and total autonomy. His argument is presented via his word, historically and archaeologically through a small number of people, but universally heard. You can choose what ever you like and the eternity without him is part of that choice. Jesus intentionally describes himself as the good things in life as a message. He is light, truth, water, physical sustenance. Reject him, you reject the source of those things. He made you, he sustains you if you want to reject him, he's not throwing you to the center of the earth, you are letting go of the very thing that sustains you.

Understand the Son bit for what it is. Jesus is God. God didn't copulate, have a son and send him to earth to clean things up and force you t worship him. It's a metaphorical characterization to speak on terms man would instantly recognize, but unfortunately people are taking it too far and relating to God as though he is a man. Jesus is God, not a creation of God. He came down to live amongst those He created and to make it painfully obvious that one, everything the prophets said was of divine origin and two, that man cannot govern himself no matter how big he feels about himself.

And your idea of worship is limited by the world view which has been given you through the above mentioned advertising. We think of worship as foot licking and ass kissing, yet over and over God in the bible makes it clear that you can't flatter him. Doing right is worshipping God. Being charitable, not wasting whatever gifts and talents he had given you is worship. bringing others to a greater understanding of him is worship. Eternity won't be a big slob languishing with an innumerable host to feed him grapes and cool him with giant feathers. That's the earthly image of being worshipped.

Anyone being honest will have to sometimes answer 'I don't know' when it comes to every question concerning God, but we know whats critical and what's pertinent and first and foremost, God requires faith. It seems the easiest and probably would be, if you were living in isolation, but for us living in the world with oppositional ideas and opinions it's the largest test you'll ever face.
 
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VTA

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Bless you my son. Now go say 3 hail mary's and 1 our father and the Lord shall forgive you.

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