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5 Reasons America Is Not -- And Has Never Been -- a Christian Nation

The myth that America is a "Christian nation" is not only untrue, but promotes the pernicious idea that non-Christians are second-class citizens.

by Rob Boston

"Over the years, numerous scholars, historians, lawyers, and judges have debunked the “Christian nation” myth. Yet it persists. Does it have any basis in American history? Why is the myth so powerful? What psychological need does it fill?...
There are essentially five arguments that refute the Christian nation myth. I’m going to outline them here and then take a look at the history of the myth. From there, we’ll briefly examine the myth’s enduring legacy and how it still affects politics and public policy today."

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“Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?” -- Sam Harris

Paul said women should not braid their hair, wear gold or pearls, speak in church or pray with their head uncovered. (1 Tim 2:9; 1 Cor. 14:34-35; 1 Cor. 11:3-10)
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Christians, as victims of gay bullying. Daily Show clip.
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“The historical problems with Luke are even more pronounced. For one thing, we have relatively good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral home. And how could such a thing even be imagined? Joesph returns to Bethlehem because his ancestor David was born there. But David lived a thousand years before Joseph. Are we to imagine that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to return to the homes of their ancestors from a thousand years earlier? If we had a new worldwide census today and each of us had to return to the towns of our ancestors a thousand years back—where would you go? Can you imagine the total disruption of human life that this kind of universal exodus would require? And can you imagine that such a project would never be mentioned in any of the newspapers? There is not a single reference to any such census in any ancient source, apart from Luke. Why then does Luke say there was such a census? The answer may seem obvious to you. He wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, even though he knew he came from Nazareth ... there is a prophecy in the Old Testament book of Micah that a savior would come from Bethlehem. What were these Gospel writer to do with the fact that it was widely known that Jesus came from Nazareth? They had to come up with a narrative that explained how he came from Nazareth, in Galilee, a little one-horse town that no one had ever heard of, but was born in Bethlehem, the home of King David, royal ancestor of the Messiah.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

Three sentence smack down:


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QUESTIONS: Quit asking, and you won't be confused.

Religion's special corollary to "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies."

Guest speaker for our freethinkers?

The new leader of the Southern Baptist political arm says Christians have lost the culture and need to act accordingly.

"'The Bible Belt is collapsing," says Russell Moore. Oddly, the incoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission doesn't seem upset. In a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Moore explains that he thinks the Bible Belt's decline may be "bad for America, but it's good for the church."
Why? Because "we are no longer the moral majority. We are a prophetic minority."
On gay marriage, abortion, even on basic religious affiliation, the culture has moved away. So evangelicals need a new way of thinking—a new strategy, if you will—to attract and keep believers, as well as to influence American politics."
WSJ

When I get GTA V in a few weeks, I promise not to whack any digital people. For about five minutes.



"In the latest round of “Person Says Dumb Thing About Video Games,” Pat Robertson claimed that committing a sin like murder in a game is analogous to committing one in real life. He also admitted to never having played a video game, so he’s clearly the foremost authority on video game ethics.

Robertson said on his show, “If you’re murdering somebody in cyberspace in a sense, you’re performing the act whether you like it or not.”

Article and clip

"I've never played a video game." -- Pat Robertson, age 83"

This is the funniest thing I am going to see all week. And that's okay, because it sets the bar high:

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Chinese ‘paranormalist’ arrested for exorcising a ‘haunted vagina’ with his penis
BY BARRY DUKE – SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

A MAN who claimed he could could use his penis to rid a woman of ghosts that had taken up residence in her vagina, was arrested in China after performing the “sexorcism” for which he charged $3,000.

Huang Jianjun was arrested in the Guangdong Province after he convinced A Xin that he could remove evil spirits from her vagina by having sexual intercourse. A day later, Xin reported the incident to the police, and Jianjun was promptly arrested."

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Now that I've read the story and not just the headline, some parts of it aren't funny.

Excellent Pascal's Wager Chart



Maybe you can make this a proper size SAV?