Christians pick on the wrong person

Yeah, man. Fuckin’ Christians, always looking down their noses at you and getting into fights over stupid shit. Like their beliefs. Or other people’s bumper stickers, OH WAIT. Heh.

I think what was wrong here is that your boyfriend sort of, took it upon himself to challenge these people’s beliefs. I mean, what the hell? That’s not a very nice thing to do. I mean, yeah, sure, he showed them up for the hypocrites they were, but fuck, man. Great job. One down, six billion to go. Christianity doesn’t hold a monopoly on hypocrisy, and they’re just trying to live virtuously like everybody else. So I dunno. Give your fellow human beings a break, their lives are just as confusing and fraught with pain as yours is without your rudely calling into question their basic beliefs.

Oh, and D.Crispin, lemme first say that I respect you deeply for your faith. I’m not Christian, but I know that faith is a powerful thing. It’s important to believe so truly that you know, just as powerfully as you know the sky is blue and the earth is round, that if you stay true to your faith, despite everything anybody ever says, good things will happen. It’s important to be captivated by something outside, far and above of the realm of humanity, and you seem to me to be like that. It’s rockin’, it’s rapturous, it’s like sharing ice cream with your best friend and lover, only they’re not actually there and it’s just you, basking in both the good feeling that would be had IF they were there, but at the same time there’s no judgment, no harm, you can feel exactly the way you want to, cause you know that Jesus loves you even if you’re making a fool of yourself.

Here’s the thing. Jesus believed in forgiveness, and Jesus believed in love. Like, infinite forgiveness, and infinite love. That’s why I hear you talking about “faith has always been exclusive and must always be exclusive, no matter who we hurt or offend.” But what. If you loved your friend, but thought they were doing something wrong, would you go up in their face and be like, “I’m right! You’re WRONG. If you don’t change you’re fucked. You better change RIGHT NOW. End of story.” No way. That’s not love. You’d try and help them, yeah, but if you truly loved them, you’d take it upon yourself to get to know them, and go through whatever pain and torture and questioning of your own beliefs were necessary, walk through the Dark Night of the Soul a thousand times and feel your ego nearly die a thousand times, to find a way, their way in which they might know the truths that you know. You can’t just say nonbelievers are bad and wrong. God doesn’t want His children to go to Hell, but every human being is different; every human being must find their way to God (and Jesus) in their own way, and if you love them, you will try to help them along their own path, even if you have to refine things out of your own beliefs, and not be all, “pluralism is bad! You gotta be a Christian the way I am a Christian!” Then, you’re just being silly - you’re talking to yourself and not to them, and the only person you help is (maybe) yourself (as only personal masturbation can).

Look. I’m not trying to argue with you. Religious arguments never go anywhere. I’m trying to discuss how we believers in God and in Jesus as a Very Special Person with Divine Qualities of Love and Vision (that’s about as far as I’m gonna go, lol) can go about helping our friends see the truth, and not just live on our islands of safety away from the people who don’t agree with us.

And lo, on the first day the forum members created the religious thread and it was good.

On the second day the forum members exchanged religions, and shared their beliefs and it was interesting.

On the third day the athiests began mocking the religious posters, and the religious posters began trying to convert the heathens and it was less good.

On the fourth day the posters began to quote bible verses they did not understand in order to reinforce their position and was bad.

On the fifth day the posters stopped listening to one another and merely concentrated on making their own posts as long and non-sensical as possible without respecting anyone elses beliefs but demnanding that their own be acknowledged as truth and it was terrible.

On the sixth day the forums were consumed in all encompassing holy flames and it was awful.

And on the seventh day the mods locked the thread, and it was good.

Thank you , CH.

Bumper stickers are statements. If you make a statement, it is not unreasonable to get a response. If you don’t like the response because it conflicts with your beliefs, you shouldn’t make statements that would draw responses that would call your beliefs into question, esp not the kind of responses that would embarass you and/or simply further demonstrate how you misunderstand your own beliefs. And the dude is lucky Eva’s bf didn’t break anything for the sheer fun of doing it given the lovely oppurtunity for “self-defense”. I would’ve.

Edit: Uh, fuck, sorry, I thought this was a pre-locking message. MY BAD. I’m not allowed to delete messages?

Double Edit: Wow, Sin. You’re such a mean person if you’d do that. :stuck_out_tongue: I see your point though. But it’s still mean, and ultimately fruitless, to point out the shortcomings in other people’s beliefs. I mean, what do you hope to get out of it? A quick jerk off? What? Yeah, it’s wrong to have beliefs that you can’t defend, but why should some random-ass guy come out and attack your beliefs? It just doesn’t make sense, unless said random-ass guy wanted to masturbate to his own sheer genius and cutting wit, in which case I have just as little respect for said random-ass guy as I do for the Christians who don’t know what they believe in.

Lo, I second that motion…goodbye.

In reply to #41
“Religious arguments never go anywhere”… so true. Sorry, I really didn’t intend it to go that far. I just get overzealous sometimes, and what I intend as short posts become long-winded essays. I hate it when I do this; I make myself seem so much more harsh than I really am. Maybe it’s the way I write. Anyway, there isn’t really anything more for me to say, and I can’t really dispute what you’ve said. I’ll bow out of this whole thing now.
(Sorry, I posted this when #41 was the last one. I was apologizing for my harshness anyway, so don’t be all too angry, please.)

I have no mercy for illogical trash that needs to use brute force to make himself feel better by attacking me for pointing out fallacies in his logic.

Here’s the difference in our perspectives: I see the bumper sticker as a statement. You don’t.

edit: its not about masturbating to one’s logic as it is defending one’s point of view in the event that one wishes to shove their own down one’s throat. You make it look like a chuckle or something along the lines constitutes as an assault on one’s beliefs. While bumper stickers aren’t strong statements, neither is the chuckle. If the bitch in the car wanted to make it an issue to express her beliefs further, she was the one who continued the debate which had started because of the sticker on her shit box.

That of Phelps goes to Canada now.

1- I actually fail to see the funny side of the story
2- Couldn’t agree more with zepp’s post.

And how the hell can you see a statement in abumper sticker :stuck_out_tongue: If I put a bumper sticker on my lunchbox saying “Touch my food and die” will you run after me and tell me it’s a threat and highly offensive and endangering the society or something? Puh- leeze.

If you have a stick on your lunch box saying “I hate jews because they’re scum and they should burn” , that’s a statement. As I already mentionned, if you’re going to argue that a sticker’s inoffensive, so’s a chuckle.

Not necessarily. Depends on the owner. Maybe I have the “I hate jews because they’re scum and they should burn”- sticker on my lunch box because it has pretty colors :stuck_out_tongue: Or because that was the last thing my best friend gave to me befor he died :stuck_out_tongue:

What can we do? Self-righteous hypocrites abound. But it’s ironic how most of the people who go around claiming to be paragons of purity turn out to have a lot of flaws and dirty little secrets. In particular, I’m thinking about the leaders of some pseudo-religious sects, who try to look like saviors, but are involved in all sorts of illegal and immoral activities, from drug dealing to who knows what, often using their so-called churches as a cover.

And overall, I can’t stand narrow-minded people who basically go around saying “Either you follow OUR beliefs, or you’re going to hell!”. What do THEY know?! It’s people like that who give religion a bad name. Until some higher authority comes down to earth to teach humans a lesson, who are they to decide which religion is right or wrong? It’s moronic.

I think they’re more interested in using their religion to make themselves feel superior to everyone else than in actually practicing what they preach. Religion is not some damn VIP club, for crying out loud!

We’re really not all like that…I’ve got my own (sorta) twisted version of christianity. I don’t go to church, since most of them just go for the social aspect (and most of them throw in some weird new sin, like dancing is a sin, consuming alcohol is a sin, etc). I don’t force my shit on anybody, and if someone doesn’t like my religion, then that’s their choice and I’m not offended. If someone snickers at ME, I’ll ask 'em what the prob is, but I don’t spatter my car with simplistic bumper stickers like that, so I’d never be in eva’s situation.
Bumper stickers like that remind me of “Free Hugs: One Size Fits All” stickers, the likes of which annoy me greatly.

Man, I work at walmart…don’t be hatin.

My pastor is an understanding man who doesn’t force his beliefs on anyone… I have had many a religeous debate with him and he has never brought out the, “well with these views you must be a devil worshiper” comment.

“Don’t judge non-Christians for what they do. If they are lost they will choose salvation by love before they ever choose salvation through hate. But, if you see a Christian who claims devout, don’t hesitate to inform them if they are doing something that is unlike what they claim. Only judge if you are perfect, and before you claim you are think of your mistakes, there is always room for improvement and change is hard, but as long as you continue to try, you are blessed.”

I can see where everyone is coming from, on this. I apologize if I was really blatant in my first post, and that gave everyone a bunch of ideas about how I/he feels/felt about religion. I must say, Im also out on the D-Cless back and forth thing (too deep for mine eyes).

But yeah, the main point I was gonna say here, is that my bf was just getting into his car and chuckled to himself. It wasn’t like he banged on the car and said “That bumper sticker is really hypocritical”, he just laughed and then girl overheard it and chose to forward it. I think I also mentioned before that my bf may have been out of line, but it all comes down to “What would you do in a situation like that?” He chose to be arrogant back, and really put the guy’s foot in his mouth. It may not have been the right thing to do, but well, that’s what he did, and I support him on that. The back and forth thing wasn’t anything like “hey you suck for having that on your car” it was “do you have a problem with Jesus?” “No, I have a problem with an arrogant judgement pasted to your car”.

But whatever, if some people see it as another type of hypocrisy, I respect that. I guess it all depends on how you view stuff like this.

And DT, if you had that on your lunchbox, one would have to assume someone would get upset over it. Maybe not to this extreme, but still.

And DT, if you had that on your lunchbox, one would have to assume someone would get upset over it. Maybe not to this extreme, but still.

LIKE I’D CARE :stuck_out_tongue:
Ok in this case I probably would have cared, because it’s disrcriminating, but if it said “I hate humans because they’re scum and they should burn, xept for me cause I rock” I wouldn’t.
…damn, that would be a cool sticker. I’m so gonna make one of those.

Being told you’re going to Hell by another typical bible thumper isn’t discriminatory/condescending? Just as much as antisemitic statements piss off Jews, idiotic christian statements are fair game for people who find them distasteful. For example, if I had a creationist with a sticker saying “evolution is bullshit, god is the only source of life” on his car, I’d probably walk by muttering to myself, shaking my head or something. Considering what I know about biology, if the dude chose to enter into a debate with me, however fruitless, I wouldn’t be intimidated into backing away from telling him why I thought he was full of shit because he chose to step up to the plate and start calling shit because he didn’t like the fact I didn’t like his sticker. Resorting to even further intimidation is shallow and idiotic.

Yeah, I’ve done that before too.

“Had a physical confrontation over religious beliefs?”

No - lied to my girlfriend.

Aww, fuck, a religious DISCUSSION came up.

:ulty: Yeah! Krispin, Cless, go to hell! … wait …

I’m so terribly sorry for that. I truly did not mean it to go so far. My apologies. And my apologies to Sinistral if I sounded like a bible thumper or any such thing; I really am not, though I assure you I know my theology reasonably well, at least in so far as the beliefs of the Lutheran church go. It just must be my debating and explanation that’s shot. Once again, I’m ever so sorry.
(But true to my word earlier, I will not comment on any way in this thread on what is now being discussed.)

I could give less than half a fuck about that sticker. Your boyfriend and that other guy were engaged in a my-penis-is-bigger-than-yours game. Shame.