LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ns_kumiho)

"If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin."

~Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

From The NY Times
March 4, 2007
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. “God exists,” he wrote in black and orange paint, “or if he doesn’t, we’re in trouble.” Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since — why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.

Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, “belief in hope beyond reason” — whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. “Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?” asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. “If you have negative sentiments toward religion,” he tells them, “the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.” Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?

The full article here...break your heart and subcribe.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

"They think they're already walking their 40 days in the desert.

I'm gonna tar with a broad brush here, but if you're a Rapture-ite, chances are good that you're a mostly working-class person with limited education. Everyone you know thinks like you do, you live in a very insular community because non-believers are "dangerous".

The world as you'd like to keep it is rapidly passing you by. Most of the fundamentalists I knew/am-related-to are living at least 40 years behind everyone else.

You send your kids to a "bible based" private college and it cost you a fortune, but now you find that nobody in the "secular" world will hire them because strangely enough, classes in "Righteousness" don't really translate to real world work situations. Where they can't preach the Word at that filthy homosexual across the cubicle from them. More marginalization occurs there and you can't get or buy the things other "unGodly" people have.

More and more you feel yourself and your way of life becoming marginalized and embattled. If all you watch is Fox News and the 700 Club, you'd know that EVERYBODY is gunning for you, your country, your children (born and unborn), your way of life and Goodness and Decency. Liberals, feminists, environmentalists, homosexuals, Hilary Clinton, Mexicans...they're all coming to take what you have and rub your nose in it afterwards.

Nobody is Behaving Correctly, in your opinion, and it's just getting worse.

The world is a sinful, awful place and what's more...it's dangerous. You're taught that with every thought you think and every book you read...even the music you may overhear...is enough to let the devil in to steal your soul. Evil walks among us, stalking YOU personally at every turn. If he succeeds, you'll be Left Behind...you'll lose your entire family, everyone you know and love, and be left on a planet that's gonna be riddled with Godly bullets. Famine, Pestilence... Jeezus on a pale horse splitting open the guts of the non-believers and laughing like a deranged Clint Eastwood/ Mad Max as he does so.

The simple answer is this - if you believe in the Rapture, you believe that God will come down and whisk you up into the great Cosmic Marriott in the sky where you can sit with everyone else who believes as you do in the vast lobby with the all you can eat buffet (like a sin-free Vegas!) and watch everyone who you feel has been part of making you feel inadequite, scared and miserable Get Their Due on big screen TV's while you and yours are finally safe.

That's why so many of these folks talk about being "finally Free". They're a tense, repressed, uptight, anxious group of people who are not having a whole lot of fun down here."

~archanglrobriel from this post in Dark_Christian

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY webmiss_k)

I always felt that Long Island/NYC Metro area was a pretty liberal, open minded place to live. But, reading this makes me wonder:

Hired in 1999, Berrios was a reading specialist at the school. During her second year there, she said, she began to hear from parents that rumors were spreading that she was a witch.

Then, she said, Albano began removing books from her classroom, such as Shakespeare's plays and the Goosebumps series, which Berrios claims he disliked because they involve goblins, soothsayers and ghosts. Berrios said the paranormal went against Albano's born-again Christian beliefs.

I would like to hear more on the flip side about this. I will certainly be watching for updates to this.