Religious Activity Does Not Lower Blood Pressure.

You can blame that on bad decision making skills and the housing market if you want.
I think 1000's of churches closing down is pretty awesome, but that's just from my personal interpretation of it.
i'll give you a background on it.
I grew up in small-town ohio and the city I lived in(around 20k populuation)had about....30+ established churches in the area.
many being similar denominations.
it wasn't like there was one static church in each area for the quick and easy proximity of a church being close-by because there literally is/was one on just about every corner, all while more were being built.
the kicker of it is that most of these churches had about...i'd say filled up 1/4 to 1/3rd of each church in attendance.

I just fail to understand how it's fellowship by large when it's so separated.
I would understand more if each church was more on a geographical nature, but it's not and it's split apart between all the religious cliques in the city in question, and that's how many of the cities i've lived in/spent a good deal of time in/etc behaved.
that's one of my many personal reasons as to why i dislike how the churches operate.
seems a bit of a counter to say you are all about charity when you build a newer bigger church every time you get the funding to do so and you still don't have the attendance to validate even doing it in the first place...
sorry this is a rant i have kept in me a long time and i'll probably end up telling it to one of the old pastors I know if I ever happen to get a dialogue running with him lol.
i just have a massive disdain for churches in general lol.
good ole aetheists.

Without quoting your respective posts (mabrook and art) this decline came long before the economic hardships. If history teaches us anything its actually that people rally to the faith during hardtimes (they just put less in the collection).

Also @ Vinvv: I agree that less churches is a good thing for some same reasons and some different. I don't hold disdain for most organized faiths (I can't take scientology seriously.... sorry). If I had it my way we'd have one church in my area code that had thousands of people in it. The greatest part of church, to me, is the community.
I, however, am not the atypical christian you think you know. If you choose not to have faith then I couldn't care less (just leave me the *** alone about mine XD). If you DO want faith, I will be happy to answer any questions you have. I have "witnessed" or "evangelised" before but I'm not one to preach unless I get the impression that it's something that someone wants from me. My opinion is that if every christian shut their mouths and worried more about the example they set, they would be at least 50% more successful in spreading the Word.

My goal has always been to leave every person I meet in life with the impression that they are either: happier having known me, or their life has somehow been made easier/improved. You can say that rape, murder, hatred, persecution, etc has happened because of religion BUT.... I think it would be obnoxiously obtuse to let that overshadow what it means to some people. Even if we're all wrong, and the (insert mathmatically impossible number here) coincidences did occur just right to make a universe with planets capable of sustaining and creating life, the "crutch" of giving people a moral compass, or hope in dark times is a great asset to humanity.

True. Probably not the best choice of words, but I think endowing some of the ideals of religion, it doesn't matter which religion or denomination, is beneficial in youth. I'm just kind of upset at the assumptions that Refreshtwo makes, and how he constantly likens Religion to being in a cult.



Add Lutherans, Episcopalians and Methodists (although, I don't think the Methodist confirmation is as ceremonial as ours).

/Martin Luther sighs dejectedly at Ashman from Heaven

Jokes. :)

Question: Where have all these civilized discussions and brothers/sisters in Christ been the last four years?

It's also really easy to get caught up into the cult of not having a religion and thinking everyone who does is an idiot.

Then of course on the flip side you have the crazy Koran burning pastor...

G-d, please protect me from your followers.

/shrug

Oh I didn't try to hold any preconceived notions about your belief system.
I wasn't even fully aware that you were a Christian in the first place lol.
Past that, I think it's pretty cool.
You go about your beliefs the same way most of my Christian friends do.
I've been a non-theist since around mid-teens, though I defined it by different things through-out the years.
My moral compass is more based on the values instilled in me especially by my father. Honesty, self-reliance, and offering a helping hand when someone is in need...though I need to work on that last part more.

I don't even really think it has much to do with the ideas at all.
Many of these ideas are universal concepts that, as you said span over many different belief system.
I feel it's not specifically the ideals of religion that is beneficial, it's more the coming together of a community.
Because many of these ideal would be applicable without a religious focus IMO.
not saying the religious part of it is necesarily harmful, just not essential IMO.

they haven't figured out how to navigate web browsers OR they were going the "in person" approach.
which is a lot better than an online persona.

omg i love the way you said this. Im totally going to steal this and use it for the non-militant aetheists (and atheists)

Haha, I try not to speak for other denominations. I like all christians (on a whole. I do dislike individuals being only human) and would be happy to speak for them but i'd hate to say something out of line and make them look like idiots just because of me. Something about religion and "1 persons mistake reflected on everyone" etc.

Well said.

It's a Jewish thing. A way for us to not take His Name in vain.

Haha, I try not to speak for other denominations. I like all christians (on a whole. I do dislike individuals being only human) and would be happy to speak for them but i'd hate to say something out of line and make them look like idiots just because of me. Something about religion and "1 persons mistake reflected on everyone" etc.[/quote]
yup. a product of the tendency to generalize/speak for others would go in full circle in that case.
I.E.
You make a general but refutable statement on the behalf of a group, then the whole group is judged by a similar general but refutable assumption about the group, and then it starts to go round and round past that lol.

Isn't the formal name for God different for the Jewish faith in the first place?
Like Yahweh or something?
I honestly am not sure lol

I'm just going on my experiences with those examples. I live in Texas, also known as the ultra-mega, overbearing Baptist state, so a lot of my buddies were subdued Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians. That's the only reason why I know the similarities among those church practices. We had a couple of Jewish friends and a Mormon who were also tired of being solicited by the Baptist mob. It was fun! We all found camaraderie in rolling our eyes at nutty Baptists.

Isn't the formal name for God different for the Jewish faith in the first place? Like Yahweh or something? I honestly am not sure lol[/quote]

Technically... it's the Hebrew letters Yud, Hey, Vav, Hey. The Hebrew back then wasnt written with the vowels included, and if you try to read from an actual Torah or Hebrew bible , it's the same. So... Yaweh and Jehovah are two vowel conjugations that are possible with those letters. There is no "J" in Hebrew... so my name would be spelled with the letters Yud, Resh, Dalet, and Nun Sofit (which is a Nun at the end of a word)... so YRDN which in my case would be Jordan.

Random useless info.


And refresh... where are you in PA if you dont mind me asking?

If I was judging by the tone of the media, if I made a thread to discussing the rapture I have a strong feeling that it would be flamed until the end of the world, or May 22, whichever comes first.

Wait...what's going on here? I'm puzzled.

I'm not putting words in anyones mouth or anything but there is a smug sounding statement about magically being more open-minded due to refusal to be open-minded about religion, followed a page later by a broad generalization toward either: the people who work at mcdonalds/walmart or the people who attend church.

Even if his intentions were innocuous, there's still the implication that churchs only exist to "eat money". I may be getting old, but I believe that it is still refered to as ad-hominem when your entire debate contains thinly veiled insults and no real points. I didn't sleep the last two nights :| Ashy is very cranky today D:

In retrospect I didn't need to put words in his mouth.

In the event people want to get technical...

Malachi 3:10 (King James Version)

10Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

The whole concept of giving money to the "Church" didnt even come from the Church. It came from the Tenach (Old Testament)and it was G-d's way of making sure that the Rabbi's/Priests that serve him had food on the table, and money to do the work of G-d.

G-d then said if you do this, you will be blessed.

This applies to both Jews and Christians.

As with most people who are fast to purport that they have no hate, bias, or closed mindedness; are often very fast to prove themselves wrong.

I thought that's where this was going, and it's nice that he just reaffirmed what everyone was thinking about him in the first place. LOVE IT!

Only thing with churches that are there to "eat money" are people who make a living off of the church(i.e. full-time pastors)
I just never found it right that one in a group of 20 or more stands a-top a pulput and preaches to the crowd.
that's actually my main beef with organized church honestly.
i think we'd be a lot better off with a decentralized approach more liken to a bible study rather than having one guy sit in front and preach to groups and groups of people sitting on comfy pews(many of them falling asleep, me included way back in the day)...but much of this is for personal reason(i attended one of the many local pentecostal churches who primarily preached fire and brim stone hell sermons and get political at every chance they get)

soooo yeah...a lot of my opinions are sourced from my experiences with that church, and they are emulated by my experiences with area churches, and even further out area church camps so on and so forth lol.

so many insincere people.
again that doesn't reflect everyone...but it's funny how many of those that i knew act holier than thou and then live on the rumor mill 24/7...hell i recently heard a rumor about the pastor at that church having an affair with one of the attendants.
funny thing is that's not the first pastor i have known that had ended up that way in the first place i dunno.
i apologize if i missed something that may have generalized for something, if you spot something just tell me and i'll clarify.
i guess i just know a good deal of self-serving preachers and i'm pretty sure we have a good stock of those in the good ole USA lol.

We just went over this. Storehouse was a pre-Moses term for a place that took care of all the widows and priests. There wasn't a local church, as groups met with the priest in someone's home to go worship. This concept was of course replaced by temples and later churches

Wow, that's a gigantic failure on your part.
I ain't part of any "cult" (lol). I've been non-religious my entire life. I didn't "jump on a bandwagon" in college.
There may be some people out there who "become" atheist to gain access to a social group ... but those people are probably VERY few and far between. After all, if someone wanted to gain access to a larger social group, it would make a LOT more sense to join a religion ... not denounce religions.

And, you're right (duh), it doesn't make someone "jump up 40 IQ points" by denouncing modern religious dogma.
You've got it backwards:
Denouncing religion doesn't make one intelligent.
However, intelligent people tend to denounce religion.

As for the "atheists are the closed-minded ones!!" argument. Yeah, well maybe they are. However, your completely failing to recognize that the VAST majority of non-religious individuals are NOT atheists.
But back to my original point: you can say I'm stereotyping until you're blue in the face. I'm not. My opinion on this matter stands the test of time, for CENTURIES of modern human history. Religious dogma and the inherent cultural prejudices it produces are responsible for an unfathomable amount of hatred, violence, murders, and civil unrest over the past 2000 years ... touching almost every corner of the globe.