Your knowledge of what a Christian is or is not is quite humorous. You have very wittingly shown that all of the founding fathers were a bunch of nutcases. The caricature and generalization that we are all a bunch of blood thirsty crusaders is even more laughable. Then I remember the lake of fire and it’s not so funny to think about real people going there. Unfortunately, some misguided people (not sure if I would say they are Christian) have apparently posted emails that they hope you burn in hell. Any Christian with any belief at all would not wish this on you. Moreover, the judging is for Him not us so I wish you would have a Christian response page and a crackpot response page.
Anyway, I cannot prove Jesus saved the world any more than you can prove great, great….grandma is a monkey. So, either conclusion is in the realm of possibility, including the FSM, for the non-believer. However, if I am right, the creator of the universe will judge justly.
If I am wrong, the only thing I have lost is a life that came to live by the 10 commandments and better understand the beauty and wisdom of our founding fathers by understanding their faith.
I have also come to understand the FSM philosophy. That is, make fun of believers. My friend, you are in the majority of today’s mainstream media, news, education elitists, and federal courts. But, it hasn’t always been that way so take some time to really consider the path of righteousness. Don’t let this pop culture pluralist society prevent consideration of Him as a real savior rather than an object of ridicule. No person can ever convince you that He is real any more than you can figure out how you know you are in love. I do know that any person that seeks Him will inexplicably find His love.
God Bless Rob
Jesus transcended into a body of light, never to be seen or heard from again! But our Sphaghetti lord can be consumed and visited at every meal, if one wishes. How’s that for a tasty cracker?
>>”So, either conclusion is in the realm of possibility, including the FSM, for the non-believer.”
No. You don’t get it. WE BELIEVE that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is our lord and creator. Please stop insulting our religion and our God by calling us “non-believers”.
It is YOU who does not believe and it is YOU that will suffer the wrath of the Flying Spaghetti Monster when the time comes…
I will pray for you.
In all seriousness, Robert, I think that religion is a beautiful thing and prayer has been proven to help in some of the most dire of circumstances. I guess one of the things that turned me away from Christianity was the “Judgement” factor that you speak of. There seemed to be quite a lot of judgement being passed from the members of my church when I decided to admit that I was gay. After all, God loves me right, and he created me this way, right? Then why did was I called an abomination openly from my local Priest? That kind of hurt and public humiliation turned me away from Christianity because I feared the hate and judgement of the followers of Christ. I think Christ would be truly be ashamed of his lackees today. On that note, I’ve decided to go with a religion that tastes much better than stale cardboard-like wafers.
Pascals sucker bet again. I want to applaud you though, you didn’t get nasty (other than the basic Christian assumption that everyone who has a different belief system is going to hell)and your post is legible so thumbs up to you. Now I want to talk to you about these ten commandments of yours, are you following them to the letter? Not the Nice Ten Commandment that promise you things if you do them, but the real ones that punish you, by death usually, if you dont follow them?
My guess is you’re not, how are you sure you’re not going to hell then?
I think I’ll leave the founding fathers issue to someone who lives in america but as far as I’m aware you trying to get close to them by christianity is laughable.
Anyway, in closing I would like to hail Eris and the FSM because they’re buddies and remind you ever so gently why this site was created. The point is There Is No Place For Faith in the science class room. Thats all the FSM was created to point out. Not to lampoon your faith, but its followers.
The founding fathers were pretty agnostic in so far as I’m aware. If you turn out to have been wrong then you’ll have lived a lie; your one and only existence on earth would have been viewed in such a flawed way that you were unable to appreciate it or even contemplate it fully. But you’ll be too dead to know that.
Plus I should note that the latest multimillion dollar study shows that prayer actually has negative effects on those who were being prayed for. How’s that for the benefits of prayer?
“Then I remember the lake of fire and it’s not so funny to think about real people going there.”
NEWSFLASH: This is what you BELIEVE. Get it through your thick, brain washed skull that not all people believe this!
If I get sent to hell after I die, so be it, at least I didn’t live a lie believing in an upgraded version of Santa Claus.
“If I get sent to hell after I die, so be it, at least I didn’t live a lie believing in an upgraded version of Santa Claus.”
If only these christians would pay attention!!
There’s a great story I heard about Benjamin Franklin’s religious beliefs. He was Christian, but just couldn’t believe in the concept of miracles (probably that damn “science” getting in the way). So he created his own bible where he actually cut out all references to miracles and pasted it together. That’s the way it was with most of the “founding fathers”, they had their own beliefs and didn’t wan’t anyone telling them they were wrong and going to hell. They were also thinkers.
Sam, that was actually Jefferson. He wrote the Jefferson Bible. He always claimed to be a Christian insofar as he believed Jesus’ moral code; the oft-unfinished quote “I am a Christian” attributed to Jefferson actually reads, in context: “I am a real Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.” His Jefferson Bible not only cut out any references to miracles, but also any references to Christ being at all divine or supernatural. As for Franklin, he himself was a pretty well-confirmed Deist.
Sam, like you I follow the ten commandments, but I am not a Christian. I applaud you for a letter excluding of any curses, as it seems your Christian brothers and sisters thrive in it (I have to go to church someday to see what the heck they are feeding you people). If I knew Christianity contains so much flagrant cursing and violence I would have converted years ago.
Back to my point, the third commandment says:
“shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earthâ€
That being said, if you go to church and pray to any statue, whether it be Jesus, Mary, Joseph or any other saint, you are breaking the ten commandments.
So one could argue, that Christianity is an invention of Satan to make Jews pray to statues, break the commandments and go to hell.
Hey…it’s a valid theory, just as any other theory you verbalized in your letter.
My point is that there are no absolutes, have you ever considered that?
“My point is that there are no absolutes, have you ever considered that?”
Not even Monty Python? o_O
Correction, there are no absoluts except Monty Python.
Thanks Niklas.
Hmm ..it’s an unusual e-mail, to be sure ..
The ‘Crazy’ factor is scaled way down, it’s only a bit judgemental (but still manages to sneak in a shot, calling us “unbelievers”).
All in all, I can only rate it a 2 on the crackpot scale. We need more threats to really crank up that rating.
“My friend, you are in the majority of today’s mainstream media, news, education elitists, and federal courts.”
Oh yeah, christians sure are a persecuted minority in today’s America! Boo hoo!!
Akusai, thanks for the correction, I wasn’t real familiar with the story. The point remains valid, though.
“Sam, like you I follow the ten commandments”
I’m more of an athiest
“..as it seems your Christian brothers and sisters thrive in it..”
I was an only child
“That being said, if you go to church and pray..”
I try to avoid that
“
oops i posted twice
Dooooooooooooh nooooo not the Pascal shit again.
“If I am wrong, the only thing I have lost is a life that came to live by the 10 commandments and better understand the beauty and wisdom of our founding fathers by understanding their faith.”
This “stance” has been disputed so many times.. by so many people.
Basically.. one argument is.. “if the only reason you are following your “god” is because of a silly little rule that you will go to hell otherwise, you are not a good christian”
Another points out that this is actually a “sucker’s bet”.. If the christian version of hell were the worst of the lot, then you would have a point. But there are other branches and dogmas with hells that are far worse. So the SMART BET, in that sense would be to follow the tennets of THAT faith/dogma/belief system and leave all others behind. Since that is the SUREST WAY to make sure you don’t spend an eternity in the most “hellish of hells”.
The founding fathers had a far greater understanding of their faith, and the faith of others, than you do. Most importantly they (with a few exceptions, such a John Jay) understood the shortcomings of religious dogma insofar as defining and maintaining a free and equitable society are concerned.
They may have had their shortcomings in some areas, but in the area of religious freedom they were positively inspired, if you’ll pardon the pun.
I object to the association you draw between your religious beliefs and the ideas by which our great nation was founded. Our founding fathers were no more religious than they were the stiff, oil-painted characters we picture them as, which makes sense, for without such a high degree of religious tolerance our country could not have the level of religious freedom that we all enjoy today.
Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man, the first man to name “The United States of America,” and the first man to propose American independence wrote, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.”
Thank FSM that some of use remember history class. Our founding fathers were in fact Diests, just like all of the other bright, intelligent, open-minded people of the time all over the world. Look at the Declaration of Independence, it’s full of Diest ideals. Get over yourself, our founding fathers promoted slavery, illiteracy, and materialism…come to think of it though, so does your bible! I think next time you should be a little more educated in the truth before you start promoting it.
Thank FSM that some of us remember history class. Our founding fathers were in fact Diests, just like all of the other bright, intelligent, open-minded people of the time all over the world. Look at the Declaration of Independence, it’s full of Diest ideals. Get over yourself, our founding fathers promoted slavery, illiteracy, and materialism…come to think of it though, so does your bible! I think next time you should be a little more educated in the truth before you start promoting it.
I can prove we’re all descended from apes. Seriously. No, I really can.
Okay, so let’s look at this here - there are organelles in all of your cells called “mitochondria”, which are actually not human at all, but instead a seperate organism, a symbiote of all animal life that metabolizes our carbohydrates for us in return for a home in our cytoplasm.
They reproduce when our cells split, and we pass on our mitochondrias’ “children” to our own children. Since mitochondria are asexual reproducers, they make little clones of themselves with the exact same DNA.
Except for one thing. Unlike animal DNA, mitochondria do not have nuclei to protect their DNA from mutation. Ambient radiation and random/common mutagens that our DNA is shielded against will cause steady, predictable genetic varience in mitochondrial DNA. How do we know the exact rate of mutation? We’ve studied mitochondrial DNA in human, chimpanzee, lab rat, turtle, and pigeon populations over successive generations, giving us a solid basis for comparison. Since obviously these populations are varied in diet and environment, we have a better understanding of what stimulus causes what kind of mutation.
Now if you took a mitochondrial sample from your own skin, and one from your mother, the two should be nigh identicle - perhaps a single mutation if you live in a modern metropolis, and that would even be rare. Your child will share his or her mother’s mitochondrial DNA as well.
Certain mutations in mitochondrial DNA are known as “markers”. The aboriginies of Australia have been isolated for so long that anyone who has aboriginal descent in their maternal line will have a mutation at a certain point in their DNA that is unique to their ancestry.
Modern science has been able to prove our lineage to apes. Through these markers we have created a timeline - from modern humans to proto-hominids (who have fossilized mitochondrial DNA deep within their bones) and then down to ancient apes.
You see, ancient apes are not chimpanzees - chimpanzees have been evolving away from those ancient apes as long as we have. But we split with the chimpanzees much more recently than, say, gorillas or orangutans. We know when this split happened because we have the same amount of time (according to the mitochondrial algorithm) between modern humans and ancient apes, as well as between modern chimpanzees and ancient apes.
So you see, I can prove it. I have proved it.
Your turn.
I really don’t appreciate the namecalling. I’m not calling Christians snide things even if my personal experience has caused me to think that. Don’t label me, an educator and truth seeker, as an elitest. That’s just not nice.
HEY!
Great(Great? ad nauseum) grandma WAS a monkey you dumb twit … and yes it HAS been proven.
Evolution is a matter of easily and well-documented PROVEN facts taken from real evidence
Well, what was I thinking, proven facts just don’t count for diddly when it comes to you “Pounders” and you heretical beliefs.
Personally, I’ll stick with the “Pirate Spaghetti Theory” as it at least has some useful humor attached to it.
“Live Short and Defecate”
Doc
you say we cant prove the FSM, but we can see spaghetti. can you see god?
It always makes me laugh when people whip out the big words when they want to sound like they’re teaching a lesson. Quite humorous, indubitably.
One point: Christianity was not the religion of the founding fathers. Get your facts straight.
The Reverend speaks! I guess I knew all that on some level, but you expressed it so elegantly, yet succinctly. It almost brought a tear to my eye. Thank you.
I asume he was takeing about evalution. But thats wrong lets look at the evidence. I have a book “proveing” humans evloved from monkeys. 1 To monkeys. You have a book “proveing” Jesus. 1 to Jesus. Whe have fossils proveing monkey evolved into humans. 2 to monkeys. Whe have genetics proveing monkeys are closely related. 3 To monkeys. I would post more but the simpsons is almost on. Any way i hope you enjoy hell with its sour beer!
1: f***ing fundies fail to fathom the founding fathers’ faithless free thought (this is a neat way of saying that the founding fathers were not all that theistic, the founding fathers set up the separation of church and state, which is all Pastafarians are really after, and that I like alliterations)
2: I’d like to point out that all of the “blood thirsty” crusades were carried out by Christians and that the general Christian populace never objected.
3: there is a Christian and a crackpot section for the hate mail. They just happen to be the same section. I suggest that you look up “Synonym” on Wikipedia.
4: you seem to think that if christianity is wrong, then nothing is right. What if christianity is wrong and the ancient Egyptian mythos is correct? Then not only did you deny yourself a bunch of fun and delude yourself into thinking that you knew what beauty was in life, you pretty much not going to have much of an afterlife.
5: the philosophy of FSM is more like, stop hating people with a different belief as you, because your belief probably is just as silly as theirs. Also, if you can’t provide any evidence of something, it ain’t science.
6: I think we have all at least considered one or more other religion/ lack thereof. How many other religions can claim that? Anyway, after this consideration (probably a lot more of it than any christian ever gave christianity) we decided to keep our intelligence intact.
It’s true. THEY WERE DEISTS, YOU FUCKING MORON. THEY WANTED NO RELIGION IN THE GOVERNMENT BECAUSE THEY KNEW RELIGION IS FUCKED UP.
RAmen