the truth?

[heavens_angel]

Samuel Thompson wrote:

I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December.

I don't agree with Darwin, but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his theory of evolution.

Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game. So what's the big deal? It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game. "But it's a Christian prayer," some will argue. Yes, and this is the United States of America, a country founded on Christian principles. And we are in the Bible Belt. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect-somebody chanting Hare Krishna?

If I went to a football game in Jerusalem, I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.

If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad, I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.

If I went to a Ping-Pong match in China, I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha.

And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit. When in Rome...

"But what about the atheists?" is another argument. What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer. Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's foundations.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us just to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying. God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well..........just sue me..

The silent majority has been silent too long.. it's time we let that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard, that the vast majority don't care what they want.. it is time the majority rules!

It's time we tell them, you don't have to pray.. you don't have to say the pledge of allegiance, you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him. That is your right, and we will honor your right.. but by golly you are no longer going to take our rights away .. we are fighting back.. and we WILL WIN! After all the God you have the right to denounce is on our side!

God bless us one and all, especially those who denounce Him...

God bless America, despite all her faults.. still the greatest nation of all.....

God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God...

May 2003 and 2004 be the years the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions.

Keep looking up...... In God WE Trust

If you agree with this, please pass it on. If not, delete it!!


WE DO HAVE TERRORISTS IN THIS COUNTRY and THEY WORK FOR THE aclu!


This was posted a year ago, yet the silent majority hasn't been heard as louds as Samuel Thompson had hoped for. The 2004 election had hte biggest turn otu of chirstian in history...why? B/c christian wanted to be heard and we still do. but it take one person to start that fire. Are you willing to be that spark? are you willing to stand up and be put down over and over again to be heard? are you willling to fight fo eht battle of God and save the world?

 

[cubedbee]

When I was in a public school, I prayed all the time. The Bible club met each morning at breakfast in the cafeteria, where we had a small devotional, and prayed aloud for each other. I prayed to myself all day long for continued strength from God. At lunch, we would boy our heads and pray for the food. Me and my Christian friends were never prevented from praying

What we did not, and could not do, was to lead the entire student body in prayer. Not only is this unconstitutional, but why would we want to? Prayer is a holy communication with God. Why lead a public prayer amongst unbelievers? Prayer should be a personal and private things, share by the family of God, not something broadcast to the world for everyone to hear. "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. "

 

[Quath]

Keep looking up...... In God WE Trust

You can trust in God, but please don't try to force me to do so...

Quath

 

[Blazin Bones]

Who exactly forced you to believe in God, Quath? As far as I know you still don't. Who is forcing you to be in fellowship with the Christians here?

Will the three of you please check in as is suggested by the opening announcement so we know a little more of what you are about.

 

[cubedbee]

Don't lump me in with the non-checker-inners! I already posted in that thread. I must be too inconsequential for anyone to notice or take the time to read it. :

 

[Blazin Bones]

My apologies Cubedbee. You have checked in. :-D

 

[Quath]

Who exactly forced you to believe in God, Quath? As far as I know you still don't. Who is forcing you to be in fellowship with the Christians here?

No one can force, but they can try to force. If I want to be patriotic and pledge to my country, I have to go with a different pledge because the official one tries to get me to say I am "under God." If I use money, I am passing a pledge that I trust in God.

Until recently, many states would not allow for atheists to hold state offices or serve as jurors. My tax money does not go towards fighting crime or building parks, but to erect a statue for a religion I do not support. A religious organization participating in a faith based program uses the money to print Bibles.

Quath

 

[Blazin Bones]

What statue is being erested that promotes any specific religion? I may just be in the dark in this Case..

 

[Quath]

For the most part it is statues of the 10 Commandments. There are also crosses on government property which is being maintained with taxes.

None of this stuff bothers me if it is on private property or if it makes an attempt to include all faiths.

Quath

 

[Nocturnal_Principal_X]

I don't believe in Santa Claus

I wonder why not? Santa Claus was a real person…he just went by St. Nicholas.

The original Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, was born in the ancient southeastern Turkish town of Lycia early in the fourth century. To show his piety as a child, he adopted a self-imposed twice-weekly fast (on Wednesdays and Fridays). Then, upon the early death of his parents, he fully dedicated his life to Christ, entering a Lycian seminary. It was on a boat journey to Palestine that he is supposed to have extended his arms and stilled a violent sea, the first of many miracles. Later, he would become the patron saint of sailors.

....

Two aspects of St. Nicholas’ life led to his becoming Santa Claus: His generosity was legend, and he was particularly fond of children. We know this primarily through Roman accounts of his patronage of youth, which eventually led to his becoming the patron saint of children. Throughout the Middle Age, and well beyond, he was refereed to by many namesâ€â€none of them Santa Claus.

Children today would not at all recognize the St. Nick who brought gifts to European children hundreds of years agoâ€â€except perhaps for his cascading white beard. He made his rounds in full red-and-white bishop’s robes, complete with twin-peaked miter and crooked crozier. He was pulled by no fleet-footed reindeer, but coaxed an indolent donkey. And he arrived not late on Christmas Eve but on his Christian feast day, December 6. The gifts he left beside the hearth were usually small and disappointing by today’s standards: fruit, nuts, hard candies, wood and clay figurines. They were better, though, than gifts later European Santas would leave.

During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, St. Nicholas was banished from most European countries. Replacing him were more secular figures, such as Britain’s Father Christmas and France’s Papa Noël. Neither was known as a lavish gift-giver to children, who in general were not at center stage at that point in history. Father Christmas, for instance, was more the fictive sponsor of adult fetes concerned with armor.

The Dutch kept the St. Nicholas tradition alive. As the “protector of sailor,†St. Nicholas graced the prow of the first Dutch ship that arrived in America. And the first church built in New York City was named after him.

The Dutch brought with them to the New World two Christian items that were quickly Americanized.

In sixteenth-century Holland, children placed wooden shoes by the hearth the night of St. Nicholas’s arrival. The shoes were filled with straw, a meal for the saint’s gift-laden donkey. In return, Nicholas would insert a small treat into each clog. In America, the limited-volume shoe was replaced with the expandable stocking, hung by the chimney with…expectations. “Care†would not come until 1822.

The Dutch spelled St. Nicholas “Sint Nikolass,†which in the New World became “Sinterklass.†When the Dutch lost control of New Amsterdam to the English in the seventeenth century, Sinterklass was Anglicized to Santa Claus.

Much of modern-day Santa Claus, lore, including the reindeer-drawn sleigh, originated in America, due to the popularity of a poem by a New York theology professor.

Dr. Clement Clarke Moore composed “The Night Before Christmas†in 1822, to read to his children on Christmas Eve.

....

It was in America that Santa put on weight. The original St. Nicholas had been a tall, slender, elegant bishop, and that was the image perpetuated for centuries. The rosy-cheeked, roly-poly Santa is credited to the influential nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast. From 1863 until 1886, Nast created a series of Christmas drawings for Harper’s Weekly. These drawings, executed over twenty years, exhibit a gradual evolution in Santaâ€â€from the pudgy, diminutive, elf-like creature of Dr. Moore’s immortal poem to the bearded, potbellied, life-sized bell ringer familiar on street corners across America today. Nast’s cartoons also showed the world how Santa spend his entire-year constructing toys, checking toys, checking on children’s behavior, reading their requests for special gifts. His images were incorporated into the Santa lore.

Above quoted from Panati’s Extraordinary Origins Of Everyday Things Harper & Row Publishers, New York 1989.

So Santa Claus is a real person it is just his legend that is a fairytale.

 

[Ironhide]

Who exactly forced you to believe in God, Quath? As far as I know you still don't. Who is forcing you to be in fellowship with the Christians here?

No one can force, but they can try to force. If I want to be patriotic and pledge to my country, I have to go with a different pledge because the official one tries to get me to say I am "under God." If I use money, I am passing a pledge that I trust in God.

Until recently, many states would not allow for atheists to hold state offices or serve as jurors. My tax money does not go towards fighting crime or building parks, but to erect a statue for a religion I do not support. A religious organization participating in a faith based program uses the money to print Bibles.

Quath

I have told you before Quath; you can leave anytime you are ready. I am sure Canada, Africa, or Europe would accept you.

 

[Blazin Bones]

IronHide, I'm glad to see that you are interested in posting in the college forums, but as the other users have, Please check in. Thanks. 8-)