What I am saying is that most of the sins you talk about are really “thought crimes”. If I come to the conclusion by thinking and reasoning that Jesus was just a man that didn’t rise from the dead, I am guilty of a major thought sin. And just for thinking this way, I am condemned by a supposedly loving and merciful God to spend eternity in torment and agony. Just for thinking this way, and without doing anything. It just isn’t nice to condemn anyone for thinking thoughts which you think are sins.
No pretzel contortions. In all documents of this time period, the date was always written “in the Year of Our Lord”
Today it is in mm/dd/yyyy format. Also today if you tried write the date "in the Year of Our Lord … , you would be challenged. Several state Colleges had to take “in the Year of Our Lord …” off their degrees.
See, you just say stuff. It doesn’t have to be true, or accurate, or sensible, it just has to be what you want it to be at the moment. I will give you this much credit, you have owned up to it on several occasions when your absolutist declarations are shown to be false, but why make us go to that much trouble? Why put yourself through that much trouble, unless you just enjoy stirring things up with provocative yet untrue statements? If that is the case I am going to try harder to ignore you, because it is a waste of precious life. Its vandalism of these boards.
The date wasn’t written that way in the Declaration of Independence. It just wrote out the date, even though the document explicitly stated that our rights are from our Creator. Nor was it written out that way in the Bill of Rights. It just gave the date. Your statement if flatly untrue, and its not the only time. Not even in this thread.
Ok, so it wasn’t always written that way. So what? What does it mean in a secular America in 2018 in a godless society of laws not sins? Tomorrow morning Sunday I will take a walk through town where there are twelve churches of various Christian denominations including two Catholic Churches. There will be less than 20 people at services at each of them. Very few children. Mostly older than 60 years old people in each of them. The Episcopal Church is down to 8 members all in their eighties with an 80 year old minister. Where is Christianity in America headed? Is it going to be a regional thing in the South and Midwest, and gone in the NorthEast and West Coast? Is it aging out as Millienals leave in the millions? If trends continue, is Christianity relevant to the discussion anymore? It seems like the typical Christian is more and more like a None. It doesn’t seem like you can tell a Christian from a None anymore.
Yes I mention the Constitution a lot mainly because of Evangelical Christianity continuity to push their morality, their values, their ethics on the larger population who doesn’t hold these values any longer. It was okay when 90% of America was Christian. But now with Christianity waning in America, and with it so fractured into so many regional sects and groupings, they have lost any semblance of moral authority. On SSM, Abortion, woman’s rights, LGBTQ issues, and now even climate change and being anti-science regarding evolution and astronomy, the Evangelical Leaders look old and somewhat crazy. I am looking forward to seeing Tony Perkins trip all over himself trying to advocate the US position on all religions including freedom from religion and his evangelical Christian base.
You may find this 2016 article of interest: It’s Hard to Go to Church (The Atlantic, August 23, 2016, by Emma Green):
… Pew has a new survey out about the way people choose their congregations and attend services. While Americans on the whole are still going to church and other worship services less than they used to, many people are actually going more — and those who are skipping out aren’t necessarily doing it for reasons of belief.
There were at least three fascinating tidbits tucked into the results of the survey. First, people who report going to worship services less frequently now than they used to overwhelmingly say the logistics of getting there are the biggest obstacle. Second, a significant number of people who said they’re not part of any particular religion expressed mistrust of religious institutions, suggesting these organizations’ reputations have something to do with why people are dropping out of public religious participation.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the country seems to be split in half in terms of how often people get to services. Roughly 51 percent of Americans say they go to church or another worship service somewhere between once a month and multiple times per week, while 49 percent said they go rarely or never. But within that 51 percent, more than half of people said they go more often than they used to—in other words, about [a] quarter of Americans have gotten more active in their religious communities in recent years, not less…
Twenty-seven percent of people in the survey say they’re attending services more often than they did in the past, cutting against the country’s overall decline in religious practice. This was most common among evangelical Protestants, three-quarters of whom say they go to church at least once or twice a month. Half of the people who said they’re going to services more often explained the change in terms of their beliefs: They’ve become more religious; they found that they need God in their life; they’ve gotten more mature as they’ve aged. By contrast, relatively few said they started going to church more often for practical reasons. Belief brings people to worship, it seems, while logistics keep people way.
Re abortion: I would never criticize your decision. I’m so glad your son survived. I won’t go into details, but all I’ll say is that I’ve had a similar experience. However, the percentage of abortions that are performed for medical reasons is small. It would be absurd to argue that the only alternative to outright prohibition of abortion is abortion on demand. Most Americans support an intermediate position.
Yes, this is an interesting article. Church as a social community is still going strong in this part of the country. A recent Pew survey came out about church going in Europe.
Hi @Patrick,
Interesting article. I was surprised to read that 64% of Frenchmen and 52% of Swedes still call themselves Christians. Evidently religion in Europe is not as dead as I had assumed it to be. However, the last paragraph of the article was unintentionally amusing, and I had a quiet chuckle when I read it:
About a quarter of Americans (23% as of 2014) say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” similar to the shares of religiously unaffiliated adults in the UK (23%) and Germany (24%). But while secularization is evident on both sides of the Atlantic, unaffiliated Americans are much more likely than their counterparts in Europe to pray and to believe in God, just as U.S. Christians are considerably more religious than Christians across Western Europe. In fact, by some of these standard measures of religious commitment, American “nones” are as religious as – or even more religious than – Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany and the UK.
What will things be like in 50 years, I wonder?
In Europe? A lot more mosques and a lot more Europeans afraid to say anything bad about Islam. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Thank you. My thinking was highly affected by the experience. The more I look back at it, the more I feel that debate shouldn’t be in the public arena. It should be a private matter. Today, 93% of all abortions are done in the first 10 to 12 weeks of pregnancy by taking a pill at home. It is access to this pill that is being debated. Some say minors must have a parent’s permission to get it and others say that it should be open access including minors. Some say it should be inexpensive and freely accessible. Other say it should be restricted or banned or under government control. Regarding the other 7%, the surgical abortions between 12 weeks and as late as 28 weeks of pregnancy. This is where the public debate should not be involved. This is where the life of the mother, genetic abnormalities issues come in. These are excruciating difficult times for the mother. The mother, family, and medical practitioners should be left alone to work out what is best for them. No Government should be forcing anything on these individuals. It is private.
Science and technology has advanced considerably in this area of medicine. New genetic testing as early as 3 weeks into pregnancy finds genetic abnormalities earlier than ever before. In Europe, mandatory (and free) genetic testing at 3 weeks is norm.
The science is advancing so quickly that in the next decade, having a child the old fashion way (sex) will be deemed too risky. Prenatal genetic testing of both mother-to-be and father-to-be will be the norm as everybody has their genome on file. In-vitro of selected (and altered) eggs and sperm cells will be come the norm.
@vjtorley actually I was too skeptical with that last reply. It seems that God is doing some amazing things with the Muslims in Europe. Here a boring beefy Lutheran minister gives matter-of-fact accounts of how Muslims are coming to Christian ministers and saying “God told me in a dream to come to you and get instructed in the knowledge of God” and things like that.
Yes, they are calling themselves Christians and behaving as Nones sort of like Cultural Catholics in America. My favorite that I get when taking to many people today is "Yes, I am Christian but I don’t go to church as I am “spiritual”.
I am happy to hear that. Also happy to hear that God is making headway with ISIS also, in guiding those cruise missiles to their intended targets.
Note that in Europe, the whole origins debate among Christians is moot. Evolution is not debated but is pretty much accepted as fact.
I’m not a fan of morality discussions on these boards. Just my two cents.
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