No Christians in this case are hunting down people. No Christians in this case are forcing their views on people. They are simply trying to pray, out loud, in a public place where speech is supposedly free.
and that is, it is probably better for the world for religion to be outlawed completely
Thanks for clarifying your position, then. Thankfully our nation’s founding fathers thought differently and in fact guaranteed freedom of religion so that idiots such as yourself should never be able to enforce your bigoted opinions on the rest of us.
The Supreme Court has ruled that religious speech is protected, under the first amendment, just as much as any other speech.
In fact, the University of Missouri - Kansas City attempted, in the late 1970s, to prevent the use of rooms (which were available to all student groups to reserve) by groups which intended to use the rooms for a religious purpose. The Supreme Court ruled:
Here UMKC has discriminated against student groups and speakers based on their desire to use a generally open forum to engage in religious worship and discussion. These are forms of speech and association protected by the First Amendment. In order to justify discriminatory exclusion from a public forum based on the religious content of a group's intended speech, the University must therefore satisfy the standard of review appropriate to content-based exclusions. It must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and that it is narrowly drawn to achieve that end....
If you let groups reserve the room, you cannot discriminate against religious groups who want to reserve the room. They play by the same rules as any other student group.
If you let some people talk during their meal, you cannot prohibit people from talking to God. Same exact situation. If this went to the courts there is more than enough prior precedent that the continuation of this discriminatory practice would never be allowed. In fact I doubt that the Supreme Court would even hear the case seeing as it duplicates prior cases. It would be ruled on by lower courts.
Tim Rutherford, Senior Citizens Inc. vice president, said some of his staff recently visited the center and noticed people praying shortly before lunch was served. Rutherford said his company provides meals like baked chicken, steak tips and rice and salads at a cost of about $6 a plate. Seniors taking the meals pay 55 cents and federal money foots the rest of the bill, Rutherford said.
"We can't scoff at their rules," he said of federal authorities. "It's a part of the operational guidelines."
Rutherford said the moment of silence was introduced to protect that funding. He said although the change may have been misinterpreted, perhaps his company could have done a better job selling it.
"It's interpreted that we're telling people that they can't pray, but we aren't saying that," he said. "We're asking them to pray to themselves. Have that moment of silence."
People were praying. ZOMG might offend someone. Be quiet! Have a moment of silence. You can pray. But not out loud! Pray silently.
I could just as easily write some code that would prove it does not work. Evolutionists put far too much faith in the nigh-magical power of natural selection. Sure, the Mona Lisa can be made with random polygons. You just have to have an algorithm to kill the bad mutations and keep the good ones alive. There is absolutely no hard connection between that algorithm that you write and the effects that natural selection is actually able to cause in real life.
Hell, we’ve just barely sequenced the genome, we have no idea what most of it means, we faintly understand a few types of mutations, and you’re telling me that we can accurately simulate the sort of changes that random mutations of the genome will cause over billions and billions of years? That is ludicrous.
No, illustrating that the law decides what “being left alone” means, and it happens to mean that I get the same rights in public that you do, which includes being able to speak to whomever I want. Just as you have that right.
Freedom of speech, etc. People have the protected right, in the US, to be (to a certain extent) intolerant bigots if they are so inclined. See: Westboro Baptist Church, a la the Phelps. The Supreme Court has, in fact, ruled in favour of their right to stand in public places and be intolerant bigots.
You can’t just walk up to someone and tell them “your speech offends me, shut up”. Quite frankly everyone will know they’re intolerant bigots, but it is their right to continue to do so. If someone is an intolerant bigot, publicity is their own punishment, but you cannot just take away their rights in order to make them go away. All you can do, in most cases, is to simply permit them to make utter fools of themselves and show everyone how bigoted and intolerant they are.
I'll put it another way, if Southern Baptist Christians in the audience decided to say a prayer to save the Jews (one of their doctrines is to convert Jews, amongst others), or to save homosexuals, or to save America from the evil of "Liberals" and "communism" then some people (even if they aren't Jews, homosexuals, or communists) might be offended.
Well, that’s just tough. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion mean that whatever freedom someone else has to speak, a Christian has to pray.
You assume a lot of things that may or may not be true.
Smoking, perhaps, I would mind, though not probably. It’s harmful to my health in a very legitimate way, not that I haven’t been with people who smoked before or mind it terribly (some people do, so I’m just saying it’s reasonable for them).
As far as giving a prayer to your deity, whether you be a satanist or whatever else? If you’re no more disruptive than the Christians are being, then I really don’t have a problem with it.
In the past 5 minutes, I’ve heard people compare the tragedy of having to hear another person praying with first rape, and now slander. Can somebody hurry up and godwin us already?
People do not have the right to silence someone else for different beliefs, either. That is exactly what happened at the senior center in TFA.
That is what religious intolerance means. I am not expressing opinion here; I am showing you the definition. There is nothing for you to “argue” about. it is fact.
If the two guys over there are allowed to politely converse between themselves before, or during, their meal, then I am allowed to have a polite conversation with my friend, even if you think he is imaginary.
The alternative is making everyone eat their meal in perfect silence. Either they may talk, or they may not. So which is it?
I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding for all your life, but when someone “gives thanks” for their food to some divine entity, most people call that prayer.
The first definition for prayer given by Google is:
“the act of communicating with a deity (especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving)”
Every one of the verses I quoted from the New Testament portrays Jesus praying in a more-or-less public setting. Sometimes he was “giving thanks”, but I’d like to know what you call the first one I quoted (Mt. 11:25-27) if not “prayer”.
Sometimes he was just praying in front of his disciples, but other times he prayed in front of large crowds. He even said on one recorded instance that he was praying for the sake of the listeners – because obviously God would have heard him if he’d prayed silently, but he wanted it to be clear who was doing the miracle: God.
Isa. 60 is a passage which is a messianic prophecy. Like many messianic prophecies from the Old Testament, it does not clearly differentiate between the first coming of Jesus as a baby and his return in glory and his reign as predicted in Revelation, but it’s not too difficult to see where it switches over. Verses 1-3 refer to his birth:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
The magi, or kings, who came from the East, are considered by some to be a fulfillment of the prophecy in that last verse.
Like I said elsewhere... I’m not offended by his theory, but I do think it is incorrect, and I figured I might as well post an alternate theory from a Christian perspective. Take it for whatever you feel it’s worth.
I'm not sure what you think that phrase means, but it seems pretty clear that the Constitution doesn't want the government messing with religion, nor religion messing with the government.
I think it means that the government shouldn’t be telling people whether or not they can pray, nor where they are or aren’t allowed to do it.
Or, perhaps God planned it on purpose exactly like that, so that the “magi from the East” would recognise Jesus’ birth and come to worship him, fulfilling prophecies such as Isaiah 60:3.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer the term “Software Pillagers, Murderers, Rapists, and Generally Really Bad People”.
What do swashbuckling pillagers of the high seas have to do with a software crack?
Thanks. I came here to ask whether this didn’t just increase the space debris and your comment pretty well answered my question.
No Christians in this case are hunting down people. No Christians in this case are forcing their views on people. They are simply trying to pray, out loud, in a public place where speech is supposedly free.
and that is, it is probably better for the world for religion to be outlawed completely
Thanks for clarifying your position, then. Thankfully our nation’s founding fathers thought differently and in fact guaranteed freedom of religion so that idiots such as yourself should never be able to enforce your bigoted opinions on the rest of us.
The Supreme Court has, in fact, ruled that religious speech in public is protected. It is nothing even remotely similar to slander.
Slander is ILLEGAL. I-l-l, e-g-a-l.
Religious speech is PROTECTED. P-r-o-t-e-c-t-ed.
You have freedom from being slandered. You do NOT have freedom from hearing me pray.
Can you tell the difference between ILLEGAL and PROTECTED? No, obviously not.
Who is it who can’t distinguish fact from fancy?
The Supreme Court has ruled that religious speech is protected, under the first amendment, just as much as any other speech.
In fact, the University of Missouri - Kansas City attempted, in the late 1970s, to prevent the use of rooms (which were available to all student groups to reserve) by groups which intended to use the rooms for a religious purpose. The Supreme Court ruled:
If you let groups reserve the room, you cannot discriminate against religious groups who want to reserve the room. They play by the same rules as any other student group.
If you let some people talk during their meal, you cannot prohibit people from talking to God. Same exact situation. If this went to the courts there is more than enough prior precedent that the continuation of this discriminatory practice would never be allowed. In fact I doubt that the Supreme Court would even hear the case seeing as it duplicates prior cases. It would be ruled on by lower courts.
Not strawmen.
People were praying. ZOMG might offend someone. Be quiet! Have a moment of silence. You can pray. But not out loud! Pray silently.
Not a strawman. Try harder.
I could just as easily write some code that would prove it does not work. Evolutionists put far too much faith in the nigh-magical power of natural selection. Sure, the Mona Lisa can be made with random polygons. You just have to have an algorithm to kill the bad mutations and keep the good ones alive. There is absolutely no hard connection between that algorithm that you write and the effects that natural selection is actually able to cause in real life.
Hell, we’ve just barely sequenced the genome, we have no idea what most of it means, we faintly understand a few types of mutations, and you’re telling me that we can accurately simulate the sort of changes that random mutations of the genome will cause over billions and billions of years? That is ludicrous.
How would you define “prayer”, then?
No, illustrating that the law decides what “being left alone” means, and it happens to mean that I get the same rights in public that you do, which includes being able to speak to whomever I want. Just as you have that right.
Freedom of speech, etc. People have the protected right, in the US, to be (to a certain extent) intolerant bigots if they are so inclined. See: Westboro Baptist Church, a la the Phelps. The Supreme Court has, in fact, ruled in favour of their right to stand in public places and be intolerant bigots.
You can’t just walk up to someone and tell them “your speech offends me, shut up”. Quite frankly everyone will know they’re intolerant bigots, but it is their right to continue to do so. If someone is an intolerant bigot, publicity is their own punishment, but you cannot just take away their rights in order to make them go away. All you can do, in most cases, is to simply permit them to make utter fools of themselves and show everyone how bigoted and intolerant they are.
I'll put it another way, if Southern Baptist Christians in the audience decided to say a prayer to save the Jews (one of their doctrines is to convert Jews, amongst others), or to save homosexuals, or to save America from the evil of "Liberals" and "communism" then some people (even if they aren't Jews, homosexuals, or communists) might be offended.
Well, that’s just tough. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion mean that whatever freedom someone else has to speak, a Christian has to pray.
You assume a lot of things that may or may not be true.
Smoking, perhaps, I would mind, though not probably. It’s harmful to my health in a very legitimate way, not that I haven’t been with people who smoked before or mind it terribly (some people do, so I’m just saying it’s reasonable for them).
As far as giving a prayer to your deity, whether you be a satanist or whatever else? If you’re no more disruptive than the Christians are being, then I really don’t have a problem with it.
In the past 5 minutes, I’ve heard people compare the tragedy of having to hear another person praying with first rape, and now slander. Can somebody hurry up and godwin us already?
People do not have the right to silence someone else for different beliefs, either. That is exactly what happened at the senior center in TFA.
That is what religious intolerance means. I am not expressing opinion here; I am showing you the definition. There is nothing for you to “argue” about. it is fact.
Your argument has been fucked all along.
If the two guys over there are allowed to politely converse between themselves before, or during, their meal, then I am allowed to have a polite conversation with my friend, even if you think he is imaginary.
The alternative is making everyone eat their meal in perfect silence. Either they may talk, or they may not. So which is it?
So you are saying that fictions should be tolerated and given the same acceptance as facts?
Indeed they should not. Evolution should absolutely not be taught as fact.
I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding for all your life, but when someone “gives thanks” for their food to some divine entity, most people call that prayer.
The first definition for prayer given by Google is:
“the act of communicating with a deity (especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving)”
Every one of the verses I quoted from the New Testament portrays Jesus praying in a more-or-less public setting. Sometimes he was “giving thanks”, but I’d like to know what you call the first one I quoted (Mt. 11:25-27) if not “prayer”.
Sometimes he was just praying in front of his disciples, but other times he prayed in front of large crowds. He even said on one recorded instance that he was praying for the sake of the listeners – because obviously God would have heard him if he’d prayed silently, but he wanted it to be clear who was doing the miracle: God.
No, actually I was serious.
Isa. 60 is a passage which is a messianic prophecy. Like many messianic prophecies from the Old Testament, it does not clearly differentiate between the first coming of Jesus as a baby and his return in glory and his reign as predicted in Revelation, but it’s not too difficult to see where it switches over. Verses 1-3 refer to his birth:
The magi, or kings, who came from the East, are considered by some to be a fulfillment of the prophecy in that last verse.
Like I said elsewhere... I’m not offended by his theory, but I do think it is incorrect, and I figured I might as well post an alternate theory from a Christian perspective. Take it for whatever you feel it’s worth.
I'm not sure what you think that phrase means, but it seems pretty clear that the Constitution doesn't want the government messing with religion, nor religion messing with the government.
I think it means that the government shouldn’t be telling people whether or not they can pray, nor where they are or aren’t allowed to do it.
Why did you feel it necessary to bring up a completely unrelated topic just to mock my belief in God?
Actually...
(Obviously, he would have used a sign that pagan astrologers would recognise as the birth of a king. Hence, the star.)
Or, perhaps God planned it on purpose exactly like that, so that the “magi from the East” would recognise Jesus’ birth and come to worship him, fulfilling prophecies such as Isaiah 60:3.
I’m a Christian, and I wasn’t offended.
I think he’s incorrect, but I’m not offended by his theory.