I am not surprised. Religion seems to play such a big role in the United States. When I went to the States in the sixties, I looked for a job. To my astonishment, I was asked for my religion. I answered "catholic" and the guy who was interviewing me said: "oh well, why dont you go there(another place), they are catholic, they will help you! Heaven forbid! that guy was a baptist. And the United States want to be called a generous land of freedom?!?...

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Sorry folks, what is happening here is the pollution of all religion with the same kind of war religion despotic nations always use.

Can anybody imagine Jesus leading an army or murdering people with any kind of weapons? What nonsense! What we actually have here is routine wartime propaganda.

Don't fall for it. It's the most common confidence game in the world.

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I myself am not a christian (and proud of it!) One main reason is that in America (and other places) christianity is not christianity but people's manipulation of christanity. Religion is used as a means of control. I've known countless so-called "christians" that are under-handed in business, racists, they lie, they steal, they are adulterers, they beat their spouses, they beat their children and yet they hold a bible and ALL is forgotten. Then they look down on people who aren't acting/being christians while COMPLETELY ignoring their own actions. Why would someone want to be in the company of those people? In my life I have met very few true christians but the one's I did meet did not judge, and they did NOT try to force their religion on anyone. Many christians try to act like this is the path they follow when they couldn't be farther from it.

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Just as in the military, when an inmate is sentenced to Federal Prison one of the first people he must consult is the chaplain. The inmate must declare a religion, which now even includes Odenism at some prisons (this was added so that the White Supremacists would have a religion to counter the Nation of Islam and could thus hold "religious" meetings). This list does not include, and chaplains I have met will not include, atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism or any variation of non-belief.
When the inmate leaves prison he or she must again meet with the chaplain and he must sign a form for their release. Once they arrive at a halfway house they are then forced to participate in religious meetings and, here in Chicago, prepare a declaration of religious faith. Chicago Federal parolees are held at a Salvation Army facility and are required to participate in fundamentalist xtian Salvation Army services. The chaplain here in Chicago tells the inmates that there is a "battle between good and evil" and those "who choose evil put all souls at risk". Department of Justice employees hold regular prayer meetings at Federal facilities and on Federal time and many Federal parole agents wear large crosses or WWJD symbols.
Why do we tolerate "In God We Trust" on our money? Because xtianity rules! Enlightenment is still in the Dark Ages in the US.

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Raises hand~~~~

OH, YES THERE ARE!!!!

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Title kinda says it all. God Bless you and your family.

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...in 1960, I was drafted - - sent to Ft. Jackson, SC and told that I had to pick a church. I said that I didn't want to do that, so they assigned me a Southern Baptist church, and I was marched there on some nights and Sunday. It was just expected and accepted that I should go.

Didn't change me, but I did learn some great songs.

Churches and military seem to go together.

Ed Graham

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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

NOTHING in the 1st Amendment REQUIRES anAmerican to BE religious, but the fact is that ANY religion, however goofy its dogma, receives preference in American society and in the law, as applied by the right wing, over NO religion.

The notion that it's a "given" that it is a duty of a military leader to "pray with" those under his leadership is a violation of his,and their, civil rights, on its face.

Atheists abounded in ancient Rome's military. They made pro forma sacrifices to various applicable gods to keep up appearances,and to mollify their unschooled legions, but the better educated among them privately snickered and scoffed.

The informal Religious Establishment (any over none) calls atheism a "religion", although it is more accurately a belief system or philosphy, but they can't have it both ways: If atheism is a religion, then atheists should be allowed the "free exercise thereof". If it isn't a religion, ,atheists still have the right as "people" to "peaceably assemble".

Either way, this man deserves encouragement and support for his championing of the constitutional right to choose "none of the above" without penalty.

CA Congress Member Jane Harmon's H.R.1955 goes a long way toward authorizing the Federal Thought Police--can the Religious Police be far behind?

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and being forcefed Southern "old time religion" from birth has embittered me against religious faiths of all kinds. Okay, maybe the Buddhists and Quakers are onto something (it's called WORLD PEACE), but forget the rest of the religious establishment.

This "for God and country" Bushshit is just what it is: BS!

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For the life of me I can't understand why they say there are no atheists in foxholes. War is literally Hell. If I was put into the middle of a war-zone (thank God, thank the Lord, I have never been in the military) I might come out with the opinion that if God exists then God is utterly evil.
How could a good God allow this INFINITE EVIL known as war to exist?
That said, there is either no God (which I hope is the case), or God is worse than Satan.

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...one of their commandments to follow is "Thou Shalt NOT Kill," n'est pas???

Doesn't take belief in a religion to understand that.

Religions; what great gatherings of hypocrites, eh!

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when a bunch of men trained to shoot and kill think they have the moral authority to preach xianity to others

and to think, these are the people we are sending into the heart of a wartorn muslim country to make "peace in the middle east"

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Hey Christians, there is such a thing as an
atheist in a foxhole.
(Check it out by clicking the colored text.)

Sooo, wrong again. Yep.

I'll say this: If the theory of evolution is true and the principles of evolution do apply to all phenomena in the universe, it is indeed somewhat remarkable --at least upon first consideration- that your tradition still exists, seeing as how it is consistently wrong about almost everything.

I mean, that's what I think when I think of the Roman Catholic Church. Of coarse while claiming infallible, immutable, everlasting truth with it's main-man connection to God (the Bishop of Rome, the Pope), it is always changing it's ways (see Vatican II for ex.). And to the extent it doesn't, it is being displaced, members decreasing in numbers in many parts of the world. That's why the priests tell poor uneducated peasants to breed like rabbits.

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all religions are about control, power, and money and have given God a bad name. Jesus asked specifically that he not be worshiped, yet that is what christians do. i believe it is blasphemous to worship any person in place of God and to claim any religious guidance while engaging in murderous war, cheating, lying, stealing, etc., is about as far from God as could be.

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I was in the army during the Vietnam war, and wanted my records to say I was atheist. I was told, however,that the Army recognized only Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or No Preference. I said I have a preference, and that is Atheist. That was the beginning of my problems. When I got assigned to a permanent company, the CO, whose last name was Italian American, looked at my name, Irish-American, and told me I should be a Catholic. I politely told him I was an atheist. He less than politely told me I could forget about promotions of any kind because as an atheist, I had a bad attitude for the military. To nobody's surprie, I did not reenlist.

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What a rage against religions !
One cannot, of course, be denied the right to be atheist, or catholic, or protestant, or islamic.. whatever !
Dont you see that fanaticism and intolerance come from the heart ofr the people, not necessarly from the religion itself?
Once again I must say: american religious fanatics of any kind are intolerant and fanatics not because they are religious, but because they are todays americans !
All religions had they low and high points, related with the state of savagery the follwers had at a due time.
No one here is innocent, even atheism is guilty of tremendous crimes (see USSR).
So, think twice before going on this kind of blind criticism against religion and, particularly, christianism.
In spite of all parciality from other religions folks wich, by attacking christianism are doing the same sectarism as right wing american christians, you must see this: if you go straight into anti-christian sectarism, I cannot see any difference between you and these right wing fanaticists you so deeply (and correctly) loathe.

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Religion is caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental illnesses.
The truth about religion can be found in these books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

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As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework in Probability
and Statistics class may include figuring out when the second coming would be
required, assuming that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when
would the bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in
1965 was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in
Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he
visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to communicate with his high
school classmates because the Hungarian language had changed so much. The
correct answer is less than 25 years. The first gospel was not written down until
50 years after the alleged events and then in a different language. The people who
told the story were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean
Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played
the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers.
By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel
story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first
time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever
he wanted to. The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text
by reading it. Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion:
There is no truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to
know what "jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or
did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have
been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue.
Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like
animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the
consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there
is no such critter as "god.".] Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from
religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because
the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy
which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one
time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of
course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis,
iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".

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Without religion, there would be no god(s). You can't have god without a structure to define god. Some shaman 35-40 thousand years ago upon discovering a bunch of motherfuckers pissin' and shittin' all over themselves during a particularly violent thunderstorm decided to cool things down by explaining the then unexplainable, inventing religion. Natural phenomena by this point had become a result of one or another gods' pleasure, ire, displeasure, or what-have-you. That shaman and the long line of practitioners who followed him quickly learned the power over their fellow humans a direct link with the deity, who scared the livin' bejesus out of all the other folks 'cause this god was generally a mean motherfucker, conferred to those smart enough to manipulate fear and ignorance.

Ever notice how much like the society a particular god (or gods) arises from actually is. Forest dwelling people pray to tree and animal gods. The gods of the Romans and Greeks were just like them, hedonistic, artful, often drunk, etc. The God (or gods, depending upon the time frame) of the ancient Jews was a warlike, intolerant, angry sonofabitch just like the ancient Jews had to be to make it through to Wednesday. The gods of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, were mostly female because fertility to this agrarian civilization was vital to its survival.

By the time Christianity came along there were enough historical antecedents for the Christians to do a Mr. Potato Head exercise. Each different group drew on the Biblical past and invented a god that suited their particular fears and phobias, their prejudices and hatreds, a god that looked very much like themselves, which is why the god of each Christian sect is so different. The Catholic god, kind of austere and aloof, academic, and likely an ex-lawyer; The Unitarian god, pleased with cultural relativism, likes chicken salad-might even be a Vegan; the Southern Baptist god, drinks alone and never in front of any other gods, doesn't like the Jews all that much even though, oddly-maybe not, he acts more like an O.T. god than a New Testament one; the Presbyterian god is a hard worker, rewards hard work by his flock, and is a lousy tipper; and so on and so on.

God exists solely in the imagination of Man, in the curse of the struggle to find (or, failing that, invent) meaning by an intelligent species capable of abstractions, and in the awful fear of death and the horrible loss of that inevitability. Sad, but true.

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I had a very wise old uncle who, in his nineties, used to be bombarded regularly by Bible-toting folks out to save his soul before he kicked the bucket. His response, which I love, always sent them away muttering under their breath. It was this: "If there's a just God, I don't have anything to worry about. If there isn't, it wouldn't do any good to worry." The "Golden Rule" is a universal principle. It's all we need.

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