Feng Shui and Karate Practitioners Sued by Atheists?

You are right in that HOLY DAYS have become secularized. I was not so much addressing that as I was the atheists hypocrisy. NO ONE IS FORCED to believe in that which they do not want to believe in America. It is not the Jews or the Christians forcing anyone, it is the Islamists who force religious practices on others but atheists ignore that danger quite well. Don't see them suing againts the Islamist who impose sharia law in Dearborn MI. Many pagan religions also are honored and the benefits of their contributions are not attacked, such as my examples of oriental thought and practices stemming from their religions. Perhaps secular modern man does not realize how much of civilization stems from 'religious' thought? But the atheist wants to pretend at being 'offended' by Christian and Jewish HOLY DAYS with their attending practices and the moral law that has given us our most cherished freedoms and ideals. Perhaps they do not fully realize or want to admit that the Judeo/Christian ethic is what made western civilization so strong for so long. And that the throwing off of that ethic is what is leading us down the path to collapse and ruin. America of all the nations of the world, excepting Israel...allow for freedom to think and believe as you wish. And I can not see any need to persecute, and that IS WHAT it is, Jews and Christians under the guise of 'freedom from religion' and yet still accept non Judeo/Christian religions to flourish.

As an Atheist I respect the weekends or HOLY DAYS - When else am I going to indulge in gay loving, promote abortion and generally sin sin sin? The Atheist around the World tend to respect religious holidays and pratices - IT IS CALLED RESPECT - Maybe yourself as a christian could show a little respect also. I suspect that the SUE capital of the World does have a problem with people litigating for petty reasons

Wow, talk about assuming. WHO said sharia law was in the Quran? It IS in the Quran, but no one said it was in the Quran, so what if it WAS? (The sources of Islam on which all beliefs, principles and rulings are based are represented by the two Revelations: the Qur’aan and Sunnah. This is what is implied by Islam being a divinely-revealed religion: its pillars are based on infallible texts that were sent down from heaven, which are represented in the verses of the Holy Qur’aan and the texts of the saheeh Prophetic Sunnah) Sharia law IS religious law and when incorporated into our legal system would defy the 'separation of state and religion' the atheists are so fond of reminding us of. Why no law suits forbidding it's being used in our courts, but lots of law suits keeping Christian prayer, Holy Writings and practices out of any governmental body? Do you realize that sharia law can be used by banks doing business with Islamic countries? Do you realize that sharia law is considered in family courts in America if the parties agree to it? http://godfatherpolitics.com/2554/sharia-law-deciding-american-court-cases/ You can do what you want on any day of the week, that IS the point of this. YET, the government made it law that you not be REQUIRED TO WORK more than 40 hours a week, (now 30) and MOST non service industries have taken that to mean Sat. and Sun. off as it was agreed that people should have their day of rest off and the people were mostly Christians or Jews. http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question83938.html http://www.strangequestions.com/question/1050/Why-is-the-weekend-Saturday-and-Sunday.html How am I NOT respecting anyone? I am pointing out that some atheists want to dictate TO ME whether or not I can practice MY RELIGIOUS rituals and beliefs in the public forum yet TAKE ADVANTAGE of religious thought and rituals incorporated into our culture, when it benefits THEM. There fore, they are hypocritical when they say they do not want to see any religious display in public. Did I touch a nerve?

Actually, if there is insisted the public square be theist free, doesn't that declare atheism the state belief? (And since natural selection is a separation of traits present in DNA, not new traits 'evolved' the theory is noT proven as many seem to erroneously assume. Therefor it is merely a belief same as any other.) If there is Christianity claimed to be in the U.S. foundation, well, I sure see a lot of atheism expressed.. which yes has changed society quite a bit, and as bad as I personally think that is progressing, being libertarian, I don't think atheism should remain hidden and strictly behind closed doors, as I do not believe government should "restrict beliefs or the establishment thereof" whatsoever.

Don't you know, IF you speak of your beliefs you are FORCING others to adhere to them? But then when THEY speak of their lack of belief, are they not forcing US to conform? THIS is exactly why no one has the right to say what anyone can or cannot believe. It is why we have such trouble separating somethings that were NEVER meant to be separate, morals/ethics and religious thought. Because no matter how much the atheists says he is NOT religious, his morality, his ability to think in moral ethical terms - stems from his nature which is indeed, religious, as this great article conveys: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995465-1,00.html

Perhaps it is that INDIVIDUALS within each group do not live up to the standards of the group...should standards then be villanized for the practitioners lack of ability or fortitude? I actually was speaking FOR honoring ALL religious thought instead of tearing it down based on the minority who do not strictly adhere. After all, should EVERY atheist be blamed for the few who take their silly offenses to court? When I was a child and learning about civilizations that have fallen, I was taught that they fell because they failed to live up to their own ethics and morals. I was taught that our distant ancestors began the long climb TOWARDS civilization when they began to contemplate their place in the universe, when they began asking those hard questions of where do we come from, why are we here and what do we do while we're here....and where do we go when we die. All religions attempt to answer those questions, there fore it is logical to assume that religious thought is responsible for civilization.

@Mike, upon further investigation I will conceed that early 'scientific thought' did NOT include the idea that the earth was flat. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-j-rossano/starting-a-war-with-a-fla_b_707471.html My bad, forgive me. BUT, I was pleased to know that the 'religious thought' garnered from scriptures did NOT teach the earth WAS flat either, thereby putting to rest the idea that it was the church that held back scientific theory on this question. In fact, Jewish scriptues describe the earth as being 'round' or as a circuit, and hanging on nothing. @Rigel4, concerning Einstein and his thoughts on God; Einstein rejected the label atheist, which he associated with certainty regarding God's nonexistence. Einstein stated: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." According to Prince Hubertus, Einstein said, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views." Einstein had previously explored the belief that man could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in 1930 in G. S. Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great, Einstein, in response to a question about whether or not he believed in God, explained: Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things. I am quite the fan of Albert Einstein and have read several books on his life and ideas. He was HONEST about not knowing all the answers about God, he was not an atheist, he described himself more of an agnostic, someone who recognized that God CANNOT be proven or disproven. Truthfully, an honest scientist will agree that no one can know for sure God exists by scientific method, but also cannot prove He doesn't exist by scientific method. Einstein was such a man.

Karl W. Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, is hardly alone in holding both views (Francis Collins, who headed up federal Human Genome Project, is one widely-known example of a Christian scientist), but the nation's current cultural climate allows such a person to easily make a splash. Giberson has rejected fundamentalism, but remains a believer as well as a scientist. He has staked out a middle ground when it comes to the battle between Christians and Darwinists, stating that they can be reconciled with one another. He is sympathetic toward the motivations of creationists and scientists alike, though he is fed up with much of intelligent design as well as hard-core atheists. http://www.livescience.com/5195-god-evolution-exist-scientist.html In fact, the "creation or evolution" dichotomy is needless and false, based upon a category mistake. For example, if I held up an grapefruit and asked, "Is this fruit yellow or is it spherical?", the sentence would make no sense, because "yellow" and "spherical" are not contradictory, but complementary descriptions of the fruit. The question "Do you believe in creation or evolution?" has the same problem. Like color and shape, "creation" and "evolution" do not occupy competing categories, but are complementary ways of looking at the universe. "Creation" is a philosophical concept: it is the belief that the universe depends for its existence upon something or some being outside itself. As a philosophical term, "creation" is an empirically untestable belief that makes no claims about how or when the world came to be, or even whether creation was a determinate "act" or an event in time. It is a philosophical tenet compatible with the theological doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other monotheistic religions. (A contrary and equally untestable philosophical assertion would be that the universe is uncreated, or self-subsistent.) By contrast, "evolution" is in the scientific category. It is a statement about physical reality, not a metaphysical claim. Evolution, in its most general sense, is the inference that the universe has changed over time - that stars and galaxies and planets and living things on Earth are different now than they were in the past. In biology, evolution is the principle that all life is related through descent with modification from common ancestors. Science is the process of explaining phenomena by testing explanations against the natural world. The important element is testing, rather than accepting an explanation based on authority or personal preference. Science also restricts itself to explaining things through natural, rather than supernatural, mechanisms. Biologists cannot explain how the modern horse descended from a Hyracotherium-like ancestor by saying "God did it." They can, however, examine evidence from living as well as fossil horses and devise testable hypotheses about the relationship between them. To date, the hypotheses best supported by evidence are invariably those which agree with evolutionary theory. Of course, religious claims that are empirically testable can come into conflict with scientific theories. For instance, young-earth creationists argue that the universe was created several thousand years ago, that all the lineages of living creatures on Earth were created in their present form (at least up to the poorly-defined level of "kind") shortly thereafter, and that these claims are supported by empirical evidence, such as the fossil record and observed stellar physics. These fact claims are clearly contradicted by mainstream paleontology, cosmology, geology and biogeography. However, the theological aspect of young-earth creationism—the assertions about the nature of God, and the reasons why that God created the universe and permitted it to develop in a particular way—cannot be addressed by science. By their nature, such claims can only be—and have been—addressed by philosophers and theologians. The science of evolution does not make claims about God's existence or non-existence, any more than do other scientific theories such as gravitation, atomic structure, or plate tectonics. Just like gravity, the theory of evolution is compatible with theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Can someone accept evolution as the most compelling explanation for biological diversity, and also accept the idea that God works through evolution? Many religious people do. http://ncse.com/religion/god-evolution Forgive me if I see your DOGMA as every bit as dangerous to finding the TRUTH as those who are religiously DOGMATIC.

"Truthfully, an honest scientist will agree that no one can know for sure God exists by scientific method, but also cannot prove He doesn't exist by scientific method. Einstein was such a man." I think that's a little off base. An honest scientist--or any honest person who doesn't subscribe to a belief in one specific deity or set of deities--will probably agree that no one can know for sure if there's something unexplainable beyond the known. As that pertains to one specific god with a specific scripture and specific rules, etc, well, the simple answer is that we can know for sure. Unless, of course, that particular god's rules and regulations and divine words just happen to be wholly misinterpreted and wrongly written by man. Because if it's supposed to be divine truth in text, we can find that they are not true. This "prove/disprove" stuff doesn't have must of a place in the scientific community to begin with.

Some ideas on how 'religious' thought has benefited society. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/01/bg1064nbsp-why-religion-matters

I did lump them all together didn't I? But then, it is the extremists in every group who make life difficult for the rest of us. I agree mostly with you, except for the degree that religious thought has had on civilization. Philosophical thought/religious thought stems from the same area of the brain. And man seeks to answer his philosophical and metaphysical questions with ritual and law enshrined in its religions. The NEED for law systems stem from our belief that each person must follow a proscribed set of actions or refrain from some actions for the betterment of all. That was the shamans job, to figure out what was allowable and what was not. America as far as I know, is the ONLY country that does not have laws (or attempts to purge itself of laws) proscribing religous belief. The governmental body (that makes the laws) is prohibited from interfering in this most personal area of human behavior. YET, there is LAW stemming from our earliest religious stirrings as human beings; the idea that life is sacred and should be protected, the idea that the vulnerable should be taken care of and cherished, the idea that the poor were not to be exploited for gain....each civilization in the march of history had differing ways of dealing with these concepts, but they DID deal with them in their laws, and the priests and shamans were the courts and enforcers. So, in my thinking....religion is NOT about a supreme being as much as it is about LAW and ORDER in civilization.

The value of life does not stem from religion. Actually, if you've ever read the Bible, religion devalues life quite heinously.

You are correct. And thank you of reminding me that we have the religious folk of times past to thank for EDUCATION.

Which would make one tend to think that they WANTED mankind to THINK for themselves.

marriage is not a religious concept - When man and woman started to live together as communities, Man and woman wouyld be joined in a union or an arrangement purely for breeding purposes. Religion came along and tried to take credit for everything.

The POINT was that these exist due to man's religious questioning. We have judges because men do not always treat one another fairly. In fact, LAW itself came out of religious codes of behavior. We have Doctors because human beings began caring for the sick and infirm out of compassion. It is said by some paleoathropologists that the beginnings of civilization were when mankind began to believe in gods. The SHAMANS of ancient days were both holders of then scientific knowledge and legally binding taboos. BOTH of which have their roots in mankind attempting to answer religious questions of who am I, why am I here, and what is my obligation to others? NOW, there is a deffinate movement to slander the beliefs of many religions by removing all religious beginnings of both law and medicine. Not to mention, it was religious monks who saved the ancient writings of Greece and Rome.

Perhaps, or an evolution of thought stemming from this very discussion? slan·der noun 1. defamation; calumny: rumors full of slander. 2. a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name. 3. Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc. As to the need to develope structure, and it's obvious that man has a need for some sort of 'religous' structure? Even if he calls it something like 'humanism' or 'atheism'?

Well, yes, it's obvious that they exist in part because of religious questioning. They also exist because we had (and have) a very worldly need to develop structures that allow societies large and small to function. Ending that comingling is in fact the throwing out of bathwater and keeping the baby, to use your metaphor. I notice that you've gone from saying that "atheists are against any religion having an effect on public life" to talking about "slander[ing] the beliefs" That's a fascinating movement of the goalpost there.

Thank you for your response.

Thank you nezavisima. Your opinions ARE welcome, even if you do not think of yourself as an expert or such.

Jefferson believed that the government was to be powerless to interfere with religious expressions for a very simple reason: he had long witnessed the unhealthy tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religion. As he explained to Noah Webster: It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors . . . and which experience has nevertheless proved they [the government] will be constantly encroaching on if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious [effective] against wrong and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion. Thomas Jefferson had no intention of allowing the government to limit, restrict, regulate, or interfere with public religious practices. He believed, along with the other Founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination – a fact he made clear in a letter to fellow-signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush: The clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes and they believe that any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly. Jefferson had committed himself as President to pursuing the purpose of the First Amendment: preventing the "establishment of a particular form of Christianity" by the Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or any other denomination. Since this was Jefferson's view concerning religious expression, in his short and polite reply to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802, he assured them that they need not fear; that the free exercise of religion would never be interfered with by the federal government. As he explained: [i]Gentlemen, – The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association give me the highest satisfaction. . . . Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem. Freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religon.