Christianity you have now overstepped the mark and I now declare war upon you

reply to post by moocowman


I have read your thread twice. I understand you completely.
If there is a way of home schooling and you can pull it off, then do it. Do what you believe in. Do what you believe is best for your kid.

If you make an attempt to discuss anything with these people, remember the following excerpt. I used it in a different thread.
It is an excerpt from the book Holographic Universe:

When people with set beliefs converse with others, they try to justify their opinions by espousing and defending their opinions. Their judgements seldom change as a result of any new information they encounter, and they show little interest in allowing any real conversational interactional to take place.

A little imagined scenario:
Eighty percent of the people cannot think. Twenty percent can think, but fifteen percent has chosen not too. You need to find the remaining five percent. You need to talk to these 5%. Darn it. I have always been trying to talk to these 5 percent too.

Good luck.

Greetings

PS: Star & Flag


[edit on 8-3-2009 by TheWriter]

Originally posted by Melissa101
There is nothing in the Bible that is contradictory, It is your inability to comprehend the Bible that makes it seem contradictory to you. If you want to prove the people of God wrong study the Bible with open heart like a child, then maybe you will only prove yourself wrong.

Well, I'll take my reading and comprehension ability over the 'out of context, you got it wrong, you have to consider it this way' disclaimers that seem to ooze out of these books.

Whether it is the qur'an and killing infidels for the glory of allah, or the bible getting things wrong like who joseph's father was, how many animals of each sex noah was told to take on the ark, or whatever else seems to not quite fit until you put the 'believer' helmet on, I've been there and have no inclination to force myself to believe things that simply make no difference in this world.

To me, it is nothing more than finding patters in clouds, and as some witty muslim said once, "Brother you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me."

Jesus Christ: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself... Do not hinder children from coming to me."

moocowman: "I now declare war upon you."



Slap me across the face if you will. They nailed Christ to a cross for the same reason.

Originally posted by pause4thought
Jesus Christ: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself... Do not hinder children from coming to me."

My understanding of that quote is that it's about not stopping children from moving towards Christianity under their own volition; if they're drawn to it, don't get in the way.

However, that's not what's actually happening here. It looks to me like the children are being 'brought' or 'taken' to Christianity, which is a very different thing.

reply to post by pause4thought

Christ's message is truly beautiful, but it is unfair to take Moocowman's statement out of context. I understand what you're trying to say to him, but in the context of his situation it's just not fair. He's venting, albeit a bit condescendingly at times, over a very real injustice done to his daughter. If he has presented the situation accurately, she is being actively discriminated against for presenting her own views.

It is of course part of our duty as Christians to bring our own children to Christ and certainly to get out of the way when Christ himself draws children to Himself. But let's be real here, teachers punishing a child by lowering her grades on a written assignment because she's not dutifully parroting back what they want to hear? That's wrong. That's also crappy teaching. Moocowman has every right to be angry. He just needs to uh, narrow his aim a bit.


Christ wanted his message to be shared and accepted freely and willingly. He didn't want his sacrifice to be accepted out of coercion. That's one reason when I do witness my faith, I don't say accept Jesus or burn in hell, heathen. Gospel is GOOD news. I try to share it as such.

reply to post by Merriman Weir

Oops, sorry, guess we were both thinking along the same lines but you were much more concise!

I find it intriguing - if not predictable - that the vast majority of people responding to Moocowman negatively are North Americans*. The religious climate in Britain and amount of influence that Christianity has here generally is so very different than in America.

Yes, I get the idea that the Christian God knows no borders and all that, however the role of religion in this country is radically different, to the extent that I genuinely think it negates a lot of the comments made in this thread by North Americans.


*I'm even factoring the preponderance of a North American demographic in ATS membership.

You act like you own these kids! You didnot CREATE them . GOD did!! We are all GODS children! If HE wants to kill us than thats HIS busyness! If HE wants to send all kids to war against the hethens than you better just shut your mouth. I carry THE SWORD OF THE LORD SO I KNOW WHAT IM TAKING ABOUT!! I HAVE BEEN ANNOINTED BY GOD ALONG WITH JESUS TO CARRY THE WORD TO ALL HIS CHILDREN WETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT. And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. -Genesis 15:4

Originally posted by Xtrozero

Originally posted by bloodcircle

It is this very ARROGANCE that made me realise how disturbing christianity really is.

Shhh, I'll tell you a secret...

I'm All Ears !!!
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fe43099ac339.jpg[/atsimg]

Don't tell anyone else, but religion is not disturbing its people that are disturbing.

Oddly enough, it was people that created religion in times when they feared everything. Soon they realised that this fear can control the masses with ease. How best to control people than to make them fear something that can never be proven, then to make them 'Believe' it is the truth and their choice.

If someone is using religion in a disturbing way it is because they are using it as a tool for their own purposes. Christianity doesn’t teach all the stuff that people do, they are just people doing what people do. If a priest rapes a boy it has nothing to do with his religion no matter what he might say. If a church decides to look the other way then the blood is on their hands and god (if he exists) will deal with it.

I agree to a point. There are many things that people in this sort of debate equate directly to the faith of someone, rather than the fundamentally weakness that defines humans in general.

I do believe however, that it's use as a basis for many of the bad things perpetuated by those who follow it, goes hand in hand with the mindset of someone who follows blindly something that should be personal to them and have no impact on anyone else whatsoever.

And as such they can't be dismissed as mutually exclusive. Religion and fanaticism are often directly tied together, due to the blind faith involved.

I say the same for islam too by the way.

If your parents beat religion into you then once again it is on them. Just because we humans corrupt much around us doesn’t mean religion is corrupt, and whether you believe in a god or not most religions have a lot of wisdom imbedded in their writings that work for both religious and non-religious alike.

Yet here we are in a thread where the more religious members are portraying a holier-than-thou attitude towards others for their choice to NOT believe in invisible sky beings.

To believe is fine. To express an attitude of superiority because you hold those beliefs, is in my humble opinion, arrogance. That was my point.

I do get what you're saying, but this canvas was not intended for the broad brush strokes of religious debate in so much as it was intended for the smaller strokes of sneaky religious teachings in a secular school environment.

reply to post by Merriman Weir

That's fascinating to me. I've never had the fortune to visit Britain, though I have had acquaintences and coworkers from Britain. Religion never came up as a topic of conversation.

I don't think regional differences really play into this, however. To me it's a matter of reading comprehension. A lot of the negative posts are from people who are reacting to the strong wording of Moocowman's post. They stop in their tracks right there and fail to see the real issue he's trying to get at. And so it becomes a matter of trying to defend Christianity and we get into the fruitless back and forth arguments that always crop up when Christians and Atheists resort to disrespectful jabs at each other.

That's why I told him to please stop using the demeaning and denigrating terms to label Christians. I can certainly sympathize with his desire to employ them given his plight, but those would only detract from his perfectly legitimate concerns.

reply to post by JESUS is coming


I think you need a glass of lemonade.


reply to post by Merriman Weir

My understanding of that quote is that it's about not stopping children from moving towards Christianity under their own volition; if they're drawn to it, don't get in the way.

However, that's not what's actually happening here. It looks to me like the children are being 'brought' or 'taken' to Christianity, which is a very different thing.

Declaring war on those who tell children about Christ is about stopping children from moving towards Christianity. That's the whole point of the OP.




[edit on 8/3/09 by pause4thought]

moocowman, I fear you are a seriously confused person.

Religious education is a subject taught at most schools all around the world to varying extents. The religious beliefs of human beings throughout our known history comprises a significant chunk of the historical and social directions we have collectively traveled in. By demanding that such teaching be completely omitted you are not saving your child from brain-washing, but allowing her to fall behind with her academic progress.

Secondly, you have a problem with the institution which you personally chose for your child to attend, now you have a problem with their curriculum, which you should have been informed of as a parent, so now you blame... Christians?

Sorry, but I don't see how these two things are related at all; the curriculum of the school you sent your daughter to, and your hatred for Christians...

Hatred can never bring peace. If you really want to bring an end to religious institutions the best thing you could do would be to advertise non-belief through love, not hate. If you want to carefully pick and choose what your daughter learns, then do more research into the school you send her to and actually engage with her teacher/principal when an issue arises that you, as a parent, are concerned about. Have you even bothered speaking with the school about this?

I do have some personal experience with this.

As a child, I too was in a "secular" primary school here in the UK, and had Christianity rammed down my throat every single day of the year (and others, but not to the same extent), and if I made an attempt to question it, I was fobbed off.

The end result is that I ended up believing it because, even though I didn't particularly to start with, my young (read: not brilliant) willpower was quickly eroded by what amounts to fanaticism.

The horrific thing is that following that primary school experience, I went on to a cathedral school, and I received less indoctrination from them, and eventually I came out of it and sorted my mind out and made my own decision.

I am personally extremely worried about the state of primary education in the UK in general, not just to do with religion, but general pressuring stops children from expressing their creativity, and instead moulds them into being exactly the same.

I do have some personal experience with this.

As a child, I too was in a "secular" primary school here in the UK, and had Christianity rammed down my throat every single day of the year (and others, but not to the same extent), and if I made an attempt to question it, I was fobbed off.

The end result is that I ended up believing it because, even though I didn't particularly to start with, my young (read: not brilliant) willpower was quickly eroded by what amounts to fanaticism.

The horrific thing is that following that primary school experience, I went on to a cathedral school, and I received less indoctrination from them, and eventually I came out of it and sorted my mind out and made my own decision.

I am personally extremely worried about the state of state primary education in the UK in general, not just to do with religion, but general pressuring stops children from expressing their creativity, and instead moulds them into being exactly the same.

[edit on 8-3-2009 by srsrecords]

reply to post by JESUS is coming


Now there goes another one over stepping the mark again.

Screaming ignorant words and quoting irrelevant passages from an overrated book.

Finding faith is and should be a personal journey and, ironically, it often seems to me that Christianity has nothing to do with faith.

If a secular educational system want to teach our children about religion then they should teach them all, equally.



[edit on 8/3/09 by Horza]

christianity has done more harm than good. i'll wish you luck in debunking the whole religion. It deserves to be smashed, the whole belief. in my eyes christianity dumbs people down. what jesus taught is what should be upheld, not what a bunch of false authority and church figures made up along the way to keep their people in check. It is the longest running scam, but scientology is the most profitable running scam. both religions alike need to be dismantled.

Originally posted by SheepleFlavored
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

That's fascinating to me. I've never had the fortune to visit Britain, though I have had acquaintences and coworkers from Britain. Religion never came up as a topic of conversation.

There's a very good chance that it never came up because it's rarely an issue in Britain.

Britain doesn't have a 'bible belt', Britain doesn't have a 'Religious Right' and 'TV evangelists' are really only something we see in reference to American culture and tend to appear in spoofs and parodies as opposed to reality. Whilst we do have a 'Church of England' - something, like a lot of things, is often misunderstood or misconstrued by people across the Atlantic - it has incredibly little influence on people's daily lives and it hasn't done for a long time.

A case in point is the trouble John Lennon had with the bigger than Jesus quote over 40 years ago - a quote that was completely misunderstood or lost on many thousands of Americans. The point he was making, and he made it quite clearly, was that Christianity was declining as a cultural or moral influence in people's lives over here. That was an undeniable fact. The youth of Britain were more interested in the Beatles than Jesus and Lennon wasn't even saying that was a good thing either. It's not as if he was smug or glad about it, he was making a considered observation about modern culture.

However, like a mirror to this thread itself, Americans go crazy and it results in public burnings of Beatles merchandise (how very 1940s!).

Yet here we are in a thread where the more religious members are portraying a holier-than-thou attitude towards others for their choice to NOT believe in invisible sky beings.

To believe is fine. To express an attitude of superiority because you hold those beliefs, is in my humble opinion, arrogance. That was my point.

Well yes, that's absolutely correct and hitting poor Moocowman upside the head with a holier-than-thou attitude is something I don't care for, either. But surely you know to Christians that our Lord is far more to us than an invisible sky being, so that's quite a put-down. Judging from your statement you abhor arrogance in others. So please accept that I am respectfully pointing out you might be exhibiting a tad bit of it yourself by that dismissive comment. Maybe you do not respect Christians for many valid reasons. But please show some courtesy and those of us with half a brain will try and respond in kind. And those of us who are idiots will rant about damnation because they're totally missing the point of this whole blasted thread.

Originally posted by JESUS is coming
And if you dont agree than ye`r a fake CHRISTAIN!

My keen eyes spotted a huge typo: CHRISTAIN
I would never spell something wrong I would die for.

Oh, and I don't even need to read what this other person wrote.
A statement of yours is a paradigm of intolerance.
"If you dont agree..." but hang on, intolerance is a religion itself.

Greetings

[edit on 8-3-2009 by TheWriter]