Hypathia

It's interesting that we have to guess at the birthdate of Jesus. You'd think that the early christians would have absolutely known the actual date. James the brother of Jesus would have most certainly known it and shared that information ..... unless God didn't want us to mark or recognize the date for some reason known only to Him. And now we have assigned Jesus' birthday to that of pagan gods.....and everybody is just fine with that but when you think about it it's kind of insulting. artsylady, I was reading your quotes, Thomas Paine wasn't an atheist and he did not "recant" on his deathbed and that was exposed shortly after this fake story was spread. There's been a lot of "fake quotes" put out over the years especially in the last 20 and these fake quotes are circulated for public consumption and people repeat them thinking they're true. You might want to double check your other quotes there and try verifying them before posting them as a signature.

I suggest you do a little research Axxman and please use some non-evangelical source. The Catholic church banned the celebration in the very early days because of it's pagan connections......only to put the stamp of approval on it later when they couldn't manage to squash it. The Puritans also tried to ban it for the same "pagan" reasons. The Winter Solstice and the worship of "sun gods" in many cultures (Saturn, Mithras who was Sol Invictus and Helios) was the real reason for the season. You can celebrate it anyway you want to these days but to try and claim it as an original christian holiday just isn't true; the roots are totally pagan. But, not to fret, once Christians got control they murdered a whole lot more pagans and other christians than was done to them. Doesn't that just give us all the "warm fuzzies".

If you are not convinced in your heart that putting up a tree, or celebrating the birth of the Saviour, is acceptable in God's sight, it is a SIN. (Ropmans 14:13-23) I don't celebrate the birth of Jesus at this holiday season. It wasn't his birthday. I just eat, open presents and enjoy some quality family time....no sin in those things. The bible doesn't "not" say to celebrate Christ's mass? Of course it doesn't, the bible doesn't say "not" to do a lot of things and it certainly doesn't touch on christ's mass because the catholics hadn't come up with that label yet.

Even if they are talking about shaping an idol out of wood, the holiday and it's trappings are still pagan and heathen and the bible warns against adopting those ways. But, we like it, it's fun, I just prefer not to try an assign a "religious context" to it which, in my mind, isn't an honest thing to do.

That's not what the verses say vickilynn. They're pretty specific. What he's attempted to do is make it okay. I prefer the more honest approach. I have my "heathen tree" up and decked out with ornaments and beautiful lights because I like it, but I'm not gonna try and whitewash the bible in the process or rewrite ancient history. I'll celebrate the holiday as a secular holiday, a human holiday, just for having fun. BTW - Many cultures celebrated the winter solstice which occurs on the 21st. The Romans adopted many elements of those various traditions and called it Saturalia which lasted the entire week culminating with the birthday of the Persian Sun God Mithras on the 25th. (See Zoroastrianism).....that's why the 25th was adopted by the early church for the birthday of Jesus. They didn't know when Jesus was born (which is odd in and of itself) and the pagans refused to give up their big annual celebration so the church basically "stole" it from the pagans and changed to name to "Christ's mass" when they were unable to squash it. The Puritans banned it in their colonies but like the early church they had no lasting success because it's just too much fun and who wants to watch everyone else having fun when you're not having any.

For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. " That sure sounds like they're cutting down a tree with an ax, nailing it to something to hold it steady then decorating it. On the one hand people say, "follow the bible"..."do what the bible says".....except when it inteferes with customs and traditions people like that are forbidden by the bible.....then it's time for the "spin doctors" to make it a-okay. Are people really so stupid or just gullible that they accept the excuses. Why not just be honest and say, "yeah, the bible says not to do it" but I like to have a holiday tree and by golly I'm going to put one up in spite of the bible. Pick and choose, pick and choose.

You must be God if you presume to speak for everybody. Then again, God gave us free will so it's not likely that even he would presume to speak for everyone. Unless Everybody is a friend of yours, perhaps you should speak for yourself. Let's ignore the tree for a moment here. That topic is being hashed out in another thread. The point of the post was to recognize that the government signed bills acknowledging Hindu and Islam and yet the "separation" activists only care to fuss about how we name a tree. They are more concerned with the name of a tree claiming that continuing to call it a Christmas tree somehow "establishes" a religion or becomes the Governments endorsement of a religion. I didn't claim to speak for everyone; I didn't claim to be God; I simply stated an historical fact. I'd have to look another soucrce besides fox in order to know if their presentation of this story is even correct because they're frankly not a reliable source.

Maybe somebody needs to e-mail this to faux news and while you're at it pass it around to your pastor and other "saved" friends. Jeremiah 10 2: Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3: For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4: They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. C'mom guys, everybody knows "christ's mass" is just a relabeling of a much older holiday that celebrated the Winter Solstice.

I'm new here, so please excuse me if I do this all wrong but I feel I have to say something. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, so in the beginning Golgotha was already in place to serve as Jesus' place of death. He gave us free will from the beginning with Adam & Eve all the way down to Judas. It's what We do with our free will that causes the pain and distruction or the joy that we create in our lives and the world around us. God created Judas, he didn't have to be the one to betray Jesus, he could have prayed just as easy as Jesus...let this cup pass from me, but he chose to take the money. If this gunman had stayed on his knees and close to God then Satan would never had a foothold in this man's life to cause him to do the things that he did. As for the people dying, how sad and awful that is, but they were in church, praising and worshipping our Lord and Saviour can you imagine praising him one minute and looking into His eyes the next? Sometimes, I say we can't blame Satan for everything that goes wrong, but then I think he has only a limited amount of time left and then he is done. He is about his business, taking souls to hell with him, and he does his job extremely well...if us Christians would do our jobs as good as satan so many of these horrific incidents that are taking place would not take place. We want to blame God but how much am I or you really doing to stop satan? But the bible overwhelmingly states that god predetermined everything; those verses far outnumber the verses that talk about free will. Praying for god to come into your life and the lives of your children is asking God to do that and the bible says that if you ask god for anything he will do it. Even in the bible 'Lucifer' doesn't kill anybody except in the book of Job and even there he has to ask god's permission; he didn't act on his own free-will and the whole Job thing was some cruel cosmic bet. Bottom line, after those those people praised and glorified god, they died. God made satan, that is, if the story is even true. I'm doubting at the moment whether anything in the bible is anything more than man-made stories minus any factual truth.

If death was a mercy from God then everybody would pray to die today, you wouldn't need prayer requests or prayer circles when someone gets sick; you wouldn't have had so many people trying to keep a feeding tube in Terri Shiavo last year to prolong her suffering if people "really" thought that death was a mercy from God. People say all this stuff but deep down they really don't believe it. --- The best option is to not kill people, do as much good for your fellow man as you can while you're here on this earth and just enjoy the brief life that we have. I guess I'm feeling rather "suspicious" and cynical today......I'm on the cusp of realizing something I may not want to acknowledge because it's so sad.

Where in Isaiah does it say that? Satian can't create anything...he was created himself by the one and only creator, GOD. He created him to glorify Him but God also created him with his own free will just like He created every single one of us. satan rebelled against God and ever since then, satan has been trying to PERVERT God's perfect creation. The gunman going to shoot these people in the church was never God's will...that's murdure and God hates murdure. So why are things on earth happening outside of God's will? Because corruption came into the world through sin and made a mess of things. God did stop this gunman, through His servants at the church. You will find that God is always going to work through someone...He always has and he always will. As for the gunman, God couldn't work through him because obviously the gunman wouldn't let Him. I believe that God told him not to go in and start shooting...but he had his own free will and it went against God's will for him so he worked through the gaurds and the vetrain to stop him. That's how I see it. It is hard to handle these things when the true nature of God is not fully understood. I'm not saying that I have a perfect understanding of it myself. I still have tons of questions myeself, but what I do know...I'll tell you Walking in victory J Isaiah 45:7 says God created evil....not satan (you misunderstood that part of what I was saying). If God hates murder then why did god murder so many people in the bible and why doesn't protect those who ask for his protection. We're taught that he does if we ask and yet he doesn't do it in reality so we end up making excuses. Maybe God is there but the bible wasn't written or inspired by god and that's why we get so confused about things....we're always trying to see god thru a false belief system? I bet that gunman had been saying his prayers for years just like Andrea Yates and that Amish schoolhouse gunman last year and many other who've sincerely prayed for god's guidance and yet, it doesn't work. It's too easy to blame it on the person praying to get god off the hook. It's getting increasingly harder for me to do it especially since my fundamentalist/evangelical husband deconverted. Maybe there's just nobody out there or up there at all; maybe that's the honest, cold, hard truth after all.

Take it back for Christ? This nation's government is secular and always has been and was intended to be.

Everytime something like this happens I start to doubt. Why didn't "God" stop the gunman if he's good and powerful and if everything is in "his" will. How could something this horrible be part of a plan by a good and loving god? When the smoke clears and the big ballgame is won people say it was "god". But where was "he" when people are going "crazy" and thinking about doing these things, why does "he" allow those who pray faithfully to die at the hands of a gunman. Why would someone from a deeply religious family with aspirations of being a missionary become a gunman? We can blame it on satan but then.....god made satan and god says he creates evil (Isaiah). What if there isn't a god at all and we're just kidding ourselves. This whole thing is just depressing.

As far as Michael Moore goes, I'm in favor of good old fashioned torches and pitchforks... Unfortunately something like that could become reality if we ever lose the separation of church and state. And unfortunately "true" christians (as they would describe themselves) would be all too willing to carry out such barbarism. I hope MM points out the hypocrisy among the faux pious religious right when it comes to their condemnation of homosexuality because of God's word, and their willingness to overlook God's word when it comes to divorce and remarriage.

My husband was a meteorologist when he was in the military and he definitely believes humans are affecting global warming. He says the planet goes thru cycles (as does the sun) but 6 billion+ humans can and do affect those cycles through their actions and lifestyles. Speeding it up is something we definitely don't want to do and we should do everything within our power to postpone it as long as possible. I think people can postpone it if we start working on it; after all, look at how many cities have improved in regards to pollution.

if I can get the link to work for you; you may have to cut and paste it in your toolbar to see it: http:switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=n It's powerful!

No surprise there, Who is Dr. William Gray: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...04/gray-on-agw/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Gray

In ancient Greece Lucifer was also the name for the planet we call Venus. First, there was the moon in the orbit nearest the earth, and next the sun, in the second orbit above the earth; then came the morning star and the star sacred to Hermes, moving in orbits which have an equal swiftness with the sun, but in an opposite direction; and this is the reason why the sun and Hermes and Lucifer overtake and are overtaken by each other. From Plato's letter to Timaeus http://www.greektexts.com/library/Plato/timaeus/eng/582.html

Rush Limbaugh hasn't overdosed yet?

They're using Halo in one of the local 'mega' churches here. They have "halo" parties up at the church on one of the youth nights. -- It seems like this one church has something going on there every night of the week and one lady told me she had to curb her son's attendance because he had no time left for homework. When she did that one of the "youth pastors" accused her of not "loving Jesus".

Did you guys see the Bill Moyers show last week? They showed a lot about John Hagee; it was very informative and I think all evangelicals should watch it: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch2.html

I was reading about this this morning; I think it's terrible. I don't like it that they're paying big bucks for "contractors" to do things that the military used to do. Another example from a few years ago is when they contracted out the cooking (what army cooks used to do) and it turned out that the company that got paid to do it was feeding our troops dirt cheap, poor quality food (some of it way past the expiration date and no longer fit for human consumption). Of course the company was making big money courtesy of the U.S. Taxpayers. I think the military needs to resume the duties that Blackwater and other high paid crony contractors have taken over. btw - Did you guys know that Blackwater has major ties to the religious right and the President? http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054744.php You can read the whole thing at that link but here are just a few paragraphs: Erik Prince is 37 years old. He founded Blackwater in 1997 with money he inherited from his father, Edgar Prince, the head of Prince Automative. The elder Prince and his wife were major Republican and conservative activists and funders. And Prince himself co-founded The Family Research Council with Gary Bauer and apparently provided the key early funding for the group. According to Bauer, "I can say without hesitation that, without Ed and Elsa and their wonderful children, there simply would not be a Family Research Council." .....> In addition to running Blackwater Prince also serves on the board of Christian Freedom International.

What if your parents shouldn't be obeyed or honored? What if your father molests you? What if your parents are abusive? Most parents don't do this but I don't think this always has anything to do with our lifespan. I do believe some deaths are "untimely" whether it's a car accident or a kidnapping murder or like what happened recently where that pervert went into that Amish schoolhouse and murdered those poor little girls.

I can't stand Pat Robertson but I do love a good movie and this one sounds very good; I'll have to make a mental note to see it.

Isn't that what the evangelical right has been trying to do for years. I prefer Hilary's non-religious idea to that of James Dobson or Pat Robertson. This idea of Hilary's is less dangerous for everyone and could be very beneficial for the posterity of the country. Keep in mind; Christian schools and Universities would still be free to operate as they always have been.