CoffeeTiger

The vibes:

Salty thinks I hate Christians, but I really, honestly don’t. A large majority of my family and acquaintances are evangelical Christians and I get along with them all perfectly fine. I also occasionally go to Church with them and have no issues participating in the services, putting in the collection play, fellowshipping, ect. I just may sometimes sound very anti-religion on here because this forum is honestly the only place in my life that I’m fully honest about my current disbelief in religion, and is also one of the few places that I feel like I can have more or less free discourse and discussion about religion. I like the back and forth. To everyone else in my life I am either still a devout Evangelical, or I just don’t talk about religion much.

You tickle my pickle, Salty!

True. violence and laws/government enforcement shouldn't be used to stop or prevent people from freely practicing the religion they choose. certain Religious beliefs do sometimes have to be imposed on for the overall betterment of society and adherence to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Sometimes peoples Religious beliefs violate the rights of other people around them and that can't be accepted in a legal sense. For example, gay marriage. A lot of people believed it was a violation of their religion or beliefs for the nation they live in to allow legal gay marriages. Back in early America, many slaveholders (like most of the population in general) were Christians, and many especially in the South believed that owning human slaves was condoned by their religion and was actually beneficial to society as it resulted in millions of Africans being exposed to Christianity and possible 'salvation' through the American/European slave trade. Some religious people believe that any kind of vaccine is against their religion, but in most cases they must be vaccinated against some of the most horrific diseases as too many unvaccinated would result in a 'rebirth' of these suppressed diseases that could then start spreading again and negatively impact society. Since religion can be anything and religious people can believe in literally ANYTHING...nobody can guarantee that laws will never violate anyone's religious beliefs or convictions.

Everyone on this forum is similar in that we all believe that 99.9% of all the Gods and Religions that have existed throughout human history have been man made creations. Some of us just take that belief 0.1% further than others. but seriously, if you want to believe in God or the Bible then obviously you wouldn't want to listen to me or Homer. Believe whatever you want to believe as long as you don't try to impose it on others through force, violence, or politics/laws.

Right. That's essentially what my 'diatribe' was saying. God is and can be whatever any individual person thinks he is or wants him to be.

I strongly respect Churches who use the money they collect in real charity efforts. Churches do a lot of good work out there. It's also true that a lot of these charitable donations given by Christians are used to construct large, grand Church building complexes, pay their staff, and sometimes languish in church saves/investment accounts.

I mean, this is just saying that a person is justified in believing literally ANYTHING about themselves and their identity as long as they outwardly say that they are ascribing their beliefs to their version of God. Since God is a silent, dormant entity whose whims and beliefs only exist within the minds of each individual person who believes in him. Each person can decide, independently, for themselves what God believes, wants them do do, or approves/disapproves of, and there's no one that can tell them differently because God is the 'ultimate' judge and he's not going to say or do anything supposedly until some future day of judgement.....sometimes people have likeminded ideas of their version of God and form into different groups.....this is why we have thousands of different denominations that all define God a little (or a lot) differently and interpret the words of the Bible differently. And like I said, no, the Bible is not a good source for ascertaining Gods wants, beliefs, and commands since humanity has never been able to agree on what the correct interpretations or meanings of a vast majority of the book really is. Everyone interprets the Bible differently and nobody can ever prove any interpretation or version to be right or wrong because the books writers, and the only people on the face of the earth who have supposedly ever been able to truly 'know' Gods intentions, died thousands of years ago. (assuming you don't believe in any of the denominations that believe God has had more recent modern day prophets that have spoken for him outside of the Bible.) (and also assuming you aren't in a denomination that believes the modern Christian Bible isn't the full or correct version of Gods word)

Read that this morning. Very good essay.

Democrats : Pass aid for Ukraine and Israel! Republicans: NO! Not unless the border is addressed! Democrats: Ok.....it's taken some time for, but here is a bi-partisan Border security bill written by both Dems and Republicans that will help strengthen the border....now can we get Ukraine aid Trump: Nah....don't pass that Bill..it'll make Joe look good. Republicans: Ok...so Trump and MAGA said we can't pass the Bill, so no...no aid for Ukraine and we wont agree to your border bill either. Later: Republicans eventually pass Ukraine and Israel aid anyway without ANY action on the border. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Republicans and MAGA showing their excellent negotiating abilities as usual. They must have taken lessons from reading "The Art of the Deal"

People talk about the need for a strong 3rd party presence in American politics, but I agree with, but man....these 3rd parties...the Independents like RFKjr, Cornel West, the Green party, Libertarians..... The 3rd party options always seem to be even more crazy and 'out there' than the bad options that the Republicans and Dems give us.

Dems may need to spend some advertising highlighting RFKjr's weird conspiracies and how the Kennedy family at large supports Biden's campaign, but I don't think it'll hurt Biden too bad. RFKJrs campaign certainly seems to be specifically targeting voters of the more...right wing persuasion lately.

In 2017 there were protests happening in St Louis after a Black man there was shot to death by police and was acquitted by the courts. This group of white police officers shared messages with each other stating that they were looking forward to beating up and getting in fights with the protestors at the upcoming demonstration, and that they could do anything cause they'd be in riot gear and unrecognizable. So the cops picked out a Black man from the crowd and started the beat in up with their batons and such claiming he was resisting and a was threat to them. Ended up being that Black man was himself an undercover police officer that had been planted in the protesting crowd. The dude had broken bones, and other internal and external injuries that needed hospitalization. The white officers then tried to cover it up, tried to get the black officer not to cooperate with the investigation, tried to alter documentation and lied to the investigators and even under oath to a grand jury. The officers even had the nerve to admit to one another that they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't of been a cop they abused. That cop has now been awarded $23.5 million in damages and the cops have served some jail time and probation for violating his rights. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/black-undercover-officer-beaten-st-louis-b2531716.html https://apnews.com/article/st-louis-officer-beating-235-million-award-e02ff1a30667a4872afea1a0675b4c77

The funniest thing happened about a month ago. The Bee posted an article making fun of inbred white supremacist and that peeved off it's readers hard, and the bee started getting attacked by its Anti-Semitic followers accusing the Jews of taking over right wing media. lol