I saw this movie called Jesus Camp

[Tigerriot]

It is spelled "herd."

Thanks.  

you haven't said why i, as a rational-minded agnostic with a healthy respect for the constitution and the separation of church and state, should be more scared of radical muslims and their rare terrorist strikes on this country than the omnipresent evangelical christians and their desire to usurp my rights in favor of  heavy-handed religious doctrine.

I would contend that you're still painting all evangelicals with a broad brush.  Just because Bush has been one way, doesn't mean all the others will be the same.  Have a little perspective on this guy.  Bush was president during one of the more difficult times in recent history.  None of us really know how another president would have handled this stuff.  Even with someone like Gore in office, how do we know he wouldn't have enacted something slightly similar to the patriot act.  People just like to assume that because Bush was in office during all of this, that it would have all just been a peachy time if canidate "X" were in office.  

[brawndolicious]

when a president says god told him to attack saddam, you have a huge fucking problem.  not necessarily with the religion, with the individual person.

[Tigerriot]

when a president says god told him to attack saddam, you have a huge fucking problem.  not necessarily with the religion, with the individual person.

Here come the anecdotal quotes without context.

Yeah, I can remember that speach where Bush addressed the nation to say "I have heard from God, and I shall attack Saddam."  Yeah, thats how it went.  He just woke up one morning and it happened.  There was no talking about it for months on end, no U.N vote demanding that Iraq "disarm of face serious consequences" in the fall of 2002.  Nope, Bush just woke up and made it happen baby.

[TVC15]

So that justifies him saying it, then?

[Tigerriot]

So that justifies him saying it, then?

No, it's a distinguished mentally-challenged thing for any President to ever say he's doing something because God told him to.  But to say that that is why the U.S invaded Iraq, is just ridiculous.  I think quotes like that are the President paying lip service to his religious base.  They're not actual reasons for why he went into Iraq. 

[TVC15]

So that justifies him saying it, then?

No, it's a distinguished mentally-challenged thing for any President to ever say he's doing something because God told him to.  But to say that that is why the U.S invaded Iraq, is just ridiculous.  I think quotes like that are the President paying lip service to his religious base.  They're not actual reasons for why he went into Iraq. 

Probably, but it's not a good impression to give to the American people, that you are starting wars because god told you.  That's a terrible notion, and it tells the more delusional American people that it is okay to do things beyond the pale because god sez so.  It is not the job of the government to feed the delusions of the religious.

[Mandark]

This is the face of knee-jerk faux-centrism.  "I'm sure that people in both parties are just as likely to do bad things, and let's not judge an organized social and political movement based on the goals it's openly working towards!"

Has he even seen the movie?

[Flannel Boy]

God told me that he loathes fence-sitters. Come on Drinky, admit that you don't believe that god exists. Admit that you are a negative atheist.

[Van Cruncheon]

to make god happy, i will assert that he doesn't exist -- i don't want to go to whatever tier of hell is reserved for intellectual wafflers!

[Flannel Boy]

And where do you get this 75 million figure?  It sure seems like the other side of the fence here, (people like yourself) love to overstate just how many americans are evangelicals.  I'm sure as hell it's not 75 million or even close to that. 

http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/green-full.pdf

26.3% of 300 million = about 75 million

to make god happy, i will assert that he doesn't exist -- i don't want to go to whatever tier of hell is reserved for intellectual wafflers!

According to Dante, it's the level of hell where they stick your balls in a burning hot waffle maker for all of eternity.

[TVC15]

God told me that he loathes fence-sitters. Come on Drinky, admit that you don't believe that god exists. Admit that you are a negative atheist.

I don't believe god exists, but I don't like having to explain myself, and I really don't think one should have to display intellectual rigor on a belief when it is logical. 

To make things easier, in mixed public company, I just call myself agnostic, which makes the explanation "Whitey doesn't know; Whitey doesn't care" acceptable to all parties.

[BlueTsunami]

The Amish seclude their children from the outside world, provide them with a limited grade eight education, and indoctrinate them into the Anabaptist faith from the time they start crawling. They have to let their children decide whether they want to be Amish--not because it is antithetical to their religion--but because it is part of it. They're Anabaptists (meaning adult baptism)! Rumspringa is part of the Amish's religion not a sign of their tolerance. And if the children somehow decide to leave the church they will be shunned by their families and their community.


What choice do you have when you have been indoctrinated all your life, been provided with a poor education, been kept away from the outside world and will be shunned by your community if you don’t accept your faith and get baptized?

Wow, sounds like Scientology minus the Star Wars shit.

[Van Cruncheon]

what tvc said. the question of "is there or isn't there a Creator, or specifically, the Christian God" is so inane as to not merit legitimate personal evaluation beyond whatever's necessary to make sport of credulous idiots on the intarweb. why should I hafta assert -- replete with attendant logical arguments -- that I don't believe in alien unicorns from mars, as well? I refuse to give the notion of "God" any intellectual credence by exerting the necessary effort to dismiss it. the question ultimately has absolutely zero practical application in my life.

[Mupepe]

I want to go to Jesus Camp.  I bet there's alot of easy girls there.

[Cyanista]

To make things easier, in mixed public company, I just call myself agnostic

I do this, too.  You can't go about the south declaring yourself an atheist.  People will jump in your business like white on rice.

Somehow, me being an indecisive female is more palatable.

[Van Cruncheon]

mupepe, come here and recieve the "good word"

witness the release of the numinous and behold that which is ascendant

hallelujah

[Flannel Boy]

People seem to have less revulsion for agnostics since they have rationality and modesty on their sides. I used to claim that I was an agnostic when I was already an atheist. Often when I've engaged with theists about the issue they have tried to show me that agnosticism is more rational than atheism. This, as has been pointed out before, is a bit odd since both positions are more rational than the theist's position.

Wow, sounds like Scientology minus the Star Wars shit.

Well, at least the Amish don't try top convert.

what tvc said. the question of "is there or isn't there a Creator, or specifically, the Christian God" is so inane as to not merit legitimate personal evaluation beyond whatever's necessary to make sport of credulous idiots on the intarweb. why should I hafta assert -- replete with attendant logical arguments -- that I don't believe in alien unicorns from mars, as well? I refuse to give the notion of "God" any intellectual credence by exerting the necessary effort to dismiss it. the question ultimately has absolutely zero practical application in my life.

Yeah, it is rather silly. But people don't believe in alien unicorns from mars or use alien unicorns from mars to support their political and ideological agendas and so unitards don't need to be refuted. 

[Mupepe]

mupepe, come here and recieve the "good word"

witness the release of the numinous and behold that which is ascendant

hallelujah

do you love me?

[Van Cruncheon]

yeah, to the average christian proselyte, "agnostic" means "lost and confused and will ultimately find the lord." oddly, they very rarely harass you outside of an admonishment to attend church to find answers; i guess they just assume that your full-on return to the fold is inevitable.

[Saint Cornelius]

Speaking as a lapsed Catholic / lapsed Mormon, I have nothing at all of value to add to this thread.

[Van Cruncheon]

because, malek, asserting a belief that there isn't a god to these people gives the whole "GOD OR NOT" argument credence when, to my mind, it's just a silly permutation of "X OR NOT" where X is any random unprovable entity. I don't wanna discuss yer god! he's not relevant!

[Cyanista]

Who was it that said "I don't call myself an atheist.  I am also not an aunicornist or an afairyist"?  Or something like that...

[Prost]

the weirdest statistics in the movie are the ones I hope aren't true.

"There are 30,000,000 people in the evangelical group of America"

"75% of homeschooled kids are evangelicals"

It's just interesting that there are so many..... and you see the motivation in these kids so much that you're worried one of them will be really smart when they grow up, yet keep that deep meaning from when they were a kid inside of them.... and have some secret crusade to overtake our government or like start nuking muslim countries.

If ya haven't seen the movie ya can't really judge too many things about it.  The one thing you know for sure is this is one of the more extreme types of camps and they're so far to the right that they need a new measuring chart just to place them.

Isn't it kind of ironic that after seeing this movie you're more worried about Christian Evangelicals doing something crazy, than you are of extremist muslims, who have already shown a propensity to do such things? 

It's funny what a good piece of propaganda will do to a person.

well not to be mean but that's a really dumb thing to say.  I care more about the actions of Americans, than the actions of countries that can hardly hurt us.  how many years did it take them to kill 3000 people, and how quickly did will kill many times that number right after?  it's a matter of the fact that these extremists are here in America.  NEXT TO US.

I don't care about some muslim thousands of miles away, just his oil... lol ok that was low

[Prost]

It is spelled "herd."

Thanks.  

you haven't said why i, as a rational-minded agnostic with a healthy respect for the constitution and the separation of church and state, should be more scared of radical muslims and their rare terrorist strikes on this country than the omnipresent evangelical christians and their desire to usurp my rights in favor of  heavy-handed religious doctrine.

I would contend that you're still painting all evangelicals with a broad brush.  Just because Bush has been one way, doesn't mean all the others will be the same.  Have a little perspective on this guy.  Bush was president during one of the more difficult times in recent history.  None of us really know how another president would have handled this stuff.  Even with someone like Gore in office, how do we know he wouldn't have enacted something slightly similar to the patriot act.  People just like to assume that because Bush was in office during all of this, that it would have all just been a peachy time if canidate "X" were in office.  

people aren't disagreeing with the possible fact that maybe this movie shows the more hardcore side of evangelicals....

why are you getting so defensive, there was no bias in the movie at all.  Evangelicals could watch it and go "hell yeah, we know what's up!" and I can watch it and think "man that's fucked up!"

that's pretty much as in-the-middle as you can get.


you're being really weird, but i respect your right to post even though i disagree with pretty much everything you have to say

[Prost]

Speaking as a lapsed Catholic / lapsed Mormon, I have nothing at all of value to add to this thread.

well that's a start

[Phoenix Dark]

The movie is not propaganda. Granted the documentary wasn't totally fair; they didn't do a great job showing two sides of the debate, despite having the talk show host guy giving differing opinions. I would have liked to have seen a Christian family (or families) interviewed who did not agree with the evangelicals seen in the film. But at the end of the day, very few documentaries are totally fair so that's not a good avenue for criticism.

Not every evangelical is as fanatical as the ones seen in the film but it would be naive to deny that millions of these people exist in this country, and they want to create their own particular "new world order". I've debated with evangelicals who feel all Muslims in this country should be deported, who feel homosexuals should be incarcerated in order to stop the spread of diseases, and who seem to glide over the first amendment as if it meant nothing. And many of them are some of the nicest people I've ever met, which is even more distressing about the whole affair.

At the root of this issue is church and state. If these people want to pray for George Bush by using a cut out that's fine with me. The line should be drawn when they attempt to push their religious beliefs into the public square by influencing our political system. I'm a Christian, and there are certain political issues that I don't apologize for mixing religion into - but when it comes down to using religion to segregate people or take away rights, a line is being crossed. That's dangerous, and Jesus Camp merely served as a glimpse into it.

[Tigerriot]

the weirdest statistics in the movie are the ones I hope aren't true.

"There are 30,000,000 people in the evangelical group of America"

"75% of homeschooled kids are evangelicals"

It's just interesting that there are so many..... and you see the motivation in these kids so much that you're worried one of them will be really smart when they grow up, yet keep that deep meaning from when they were a kid inside of them.... and have some secret crusade to overtake our government or like start nuking muslim countries.

If ya haven't seen the movie ya can't really judge too many things about it.  The one thing you know for sure is this is one of the more extreme types of camps and they're so far to the right that they need a new measuring chart just to place them.

Isn't it kind of ironic that after seeing this movie you're more worried about Christian Evangelicals doing something crazy, than you are of extremist muslims, who have already shown a propensity to do such things? 

It's funny what a good piece of propaganda will do to a person.

well not to be mean but that's a really dumb thing to say.  I care more about the actions of Americans, than the actions of countries that can hardly hurt us.  how many years did it take them to kill 3000 people, and how quickly did will kill many times that number right after?  it's a matter of the fact that these extremists are here in America.  NEXT TO US.

I don't care about some muslim thousands of miles away, just his oil... lol ok that was low

When it comes right down to it, I simply do not share your fear of evangelical christians in this country.  Yes, there are certainly some pure whackos in the bunch, but overall I feel no threat from them, and their beliefs.  The ones with the truly wacky beliefs are simply too few to truly become the majority, ever. 

The differences I see between those people, and Al Qaeda, is that a much larger percentage of the muslim world seems to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda's actions, and beliefs.  There are a shit ton more radical muslims being raised right now in the middle east, and many of them live in countries where their future's are so bleak, they might as well join the fight against the western societies. 

So, when you get right down to it, I just don't believe those evangelicals are gonna cause me and my family any harm.  Maybe one lunatic will do something every now and again, but it's not the kind of organized thought that you see in many muslims around the world right now.