Threads like this are making me lose interest more and more with this website. When I first found it, reading advice and tips was great.....now the majority of posts go off topic and people arguing and trying to push their beliefs on others or condemning them because you don't believe the same as they do.......sigh
Religion is doing what your told regardless of what you believe is right morality is doing what you believe is right regardless of what your told.
Grasshopper... this type of thread is not for all. You really have to beable to think outside yourself and the box all at once. You need advice or tips... well hell, tell us what you need... but you better be ready for the answers you'll get. Arguing you say???? We call it a discussion or advice or yanking your chain. OK, seriously, what type of advice would you come to a hunting site to get on a forum that's called the "Water Cooler"( where you can discuss anything not covered by the other forums. IF... and I say IF IF IF... you have these serious questions in life... well damn boy ask the quick. The sooner we start working on them... the sooner you'll be cured or humiliated. We really can help you.... but first we have to know what's wrong with you.
This. As an atheist, this is the worst. I wish I could just think that when we die we go to heaven, but I just can't believe in something that makes no sense.
I will give you that... but will differ with you on my life today. I was raised in a very strict/ ok religious catholic family. My uncle was a priest, my aunt worked as a house maid in a rectory for all her life. We did Saturday confessions, mass every Sunday, fish every friday and all the rules. That's part of the foundation. The biggest part of the foundation of me as I am was my parents. There was right and wrong and work and chores etc. There were friends which are still friends 65 years later. Then I moved off into the world. Then I went to war for a couple years. Along the way values or whatever changed. I raised my own family with the same values except it wasn't in the Catholic Church... that was the churches doing. When my wife and I decided to get married we had a problem... I came from a Catholic background and she came from a deep South Methodist background. So we went to the Catholic priest first with our problem. The guy was a jerk and told my wife I would go straight to hell and be excommunicated if she didn't sign a paper saying I had all rigits of religious upbringing. So then we went to the methodist minister. His advice.... whatever you do... do it together.... maybe even pick a different religion all together. Now how smart does that sound. So the Catholics tell me I'm going to hell before I've touched my childs life. Well in the end we did the Methodist and today... I do neither. There may be a power greater than myself and I call it good or bad luck. I've had a couple of moments in my life when I should have been dead. Really 5 where I could have and maybe should have. One of those times I was given up for dead. But here I am. I'm thankful, I think of those times often.... but I think it was just the way the cookies crumbled. I saw a lot of people that had their cookies crumble the other way. They really didn't deserve what they got. I know right from wrong... that's a product of Leo and Mary Miller. They instilled that in me. I know right, wrong, speaking the truth and honor and country. The last thought in my life will be of my dead wife and my boys from Vietnam. Then I'll rot in the ground.
In a thread full of bickering....that may be the most powerful post I have read on here David! Thank you!
Since this thread is fully derailed, and I don't want to create another topic, I'll ask this (sorry I'm can't resist a discussion when God/religion comes up :D ). One of my most difficult hurdles when discussing what happens after we die is simply a lack of evidence (physical). If we do exist after we die (obviously not in physical form), why is there no influence/communication between that existence and our own? If loved ones do "live" on in one form or another, why don't they influence, communicate (not necessarily verbally), or connect with their loved ones who remain here in physical form? I was reading a lot about NDE's a year or so ago, and while many have astounding similarities, psychology and modern medicine has a logical explanation for these occurrences. If it weren't for one small event that happened two years ago upon my mom's best friend's passing, I would have an even harder time swallowing this idea.
Great Response We do it all except Santa ... the rest is tradition with no white lie .... I don't know...like I said before, I know many that give Santa credit to their kids ... I have no issue with it for them ...I just didn't do it cuz it would be fibbing to them .. but that was me... just stay out of The Water Cooler and your disappointments and fears will fade over time :D. ... this is where deep thoughts are processed ... judgmental statements are made...lives are changed ...The Water Cooler :P PM me with an open mind to the possibility of God and I can give you some things to think about where hope and truth abound. BWAHAHAHHAHAHA! You.as well, Andrew.... pray, my brother....
I thought me & a few of my coworkers were the only people who've ever seen the movie "In Bruges". That is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jyCfRHumHU Ohhhh....hi! Somebody please give me the idiots guide to embedding a video.
I never told Zach about Santa... Mom on the other hand ... sheesh! Anyway when he was 6 I told him I was Santa but he wasn't to tell anyone... especially Mom... because she still believes in him. Every year for years when my wife would start talking about "you know who," Zach would roll his eyes and tell me "Dad... mom is talking about Santa again... when should we tell her you are Santa?" We finally had to let him know Mom had figure it out as well. Bt the way, the historical figure that became Santa Clause did some pretty remarkable things for children... maybe we should all strive in some way to be Santa to someone other than our kids this year.
So no one is going to tell me what the "true meaning of christmas" is that I keep hearing christians refer to?
From a sermon preached by C. H. Spurgeon on Dec. 24, 1871: We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas. First, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be sung in Latin or in English. Secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. 'Superstition' has fixed most positively the day of our Savior's birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. ... It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the Church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long after the Western Church had set the example, that the Eastern adopted it. ... Probably the fact is that the "holy" days were arranged to fit in with the heathen festivals. We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December. ... Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son.
