RE: Comment by nick the greek
"But Mr. Big! I volunteer at one of the major hospitals (every Monday for 13 years), and I haven't seen you around there - unless I just haven't recognized you. Another thing, as I see and visit with these people who're out assisting with Meals on Wheels and doing other charitable deeds (and I don't want to sound like a religious fanatic), I fail to ever encounter any athiests among them."


That's because we don't carry atheist crosses around our neck or carry a holy book of atheism with us.

Personally, I've delivered food to the poor. delivered gifts to the less fortunate, rescued a man from drowning, saved a bulding from burning down and housed and fed a woman and her two daughters for 3 months even though my wife and I had only met them less than 90 days prior to that time.

There are literally thousands of gods that man has believed in throughout the centuries. Consequently, we all all atheists; I just disbelieve in one more god than you do. If you can understand how you can dismiss all of the other thousands of gods as being a silly belief then you can understand how I can so easily dismiss yours.



RE: Comment posted by Cortknee:
"One Nation Under GOD" is what our U.S. currency reads; Not "one nation under allah", or buddha, or any other false god. The United States IS a Christian Nation, founded upon Christianity. If you don't like it, don't believe it, and don't accept it - LEAVE! It's that simple.

You might want to educate yourself on your own long held beliefs. Instead of 'just believing', why don't you simply 'just check out the facts'?

Most of our influential Founding Fathers, although they respected the rights of other religionists, held to deism and Freemasonry tenets rather than to Christianity.

The United States made an official statement regarding your exact comment in Article 11 of The Treaty of Tripoli, written in 1796. It reads as follows:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

The "God" and the "Jesus" that Christians worship today are actually amalgams formed out of ancient pagan gods. The idea of a "virgin birth", "burial in a rock tomb", "resurrection after 3 days" and "eating of body and drinking of blood" had nothing to do with Jesus. All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made. Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions. As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts.

The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.

Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras - called the Son of God and the Light of the World - was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans.

It is extremely hard for a Christian believer to process this data, but nonetheless it is true. All of the "sacred rituals" of Christianity, and all of Christianity's core beliefs (virgin birth, resurrection, etc.) come straight from pagan religions that were popular around the time of Jesus. Once you understand the fundamental truth of Christianity's origins, the silliness of this whole thing becomes apparent.

Commontater: unfortunatley churches today have become more for money than serving the lord. It is truly ridictuless why churches need multi-million dollar facilities and million dollar incomes for the staff....We all would be better off without organized religion and be to each his own.

"One Nation Under GOD" is what our U.S. currency reads; Not "one nation under allah", or buddha, or any other false god. The United States IS a Christian Nation, founded upon Christianity. If you don't like it, don't believe it, and don't accept it - LEAVE! It's that simple.

Ever notice how angry those people are who don't follow Christ? Every single one of the comments below from someone who is ridiculing this article is angry and hate-filled. You would not experience such disdain if you followed Christ. It's actually just the opposite.

I'm not going to PUSH my religion upon anyone, but I will take the opportunity to share Christ's love with those whom I feel are missing it - and this is exactly what this billboard campaign is doing. SHARING, not pushing.

As others have said, if you don't like it - don't read it. How hard is that? It obviously angers/bothers you enough to post here about it - take your energy/anger and use it else where if you're so concerned about NOT being a Christian.

Those that despise or hate Christians are jealous because they know they will never have what we have (no other God can provide it only the one and true God through Jesus Christ) which is forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God.
Christians are not perfect, just saved by the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Also, faith is a gift from God. To all of those who do not believe, I am sorry that you have not received that faith, and my hope and prayer is that someday you will receive it.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

ENOUGH SAID!

If you believe in God, you have chosen to reject Allah, Vishnu, Budda, Waheguru and all of the thousands of other gods that other people worship today. It is quite likely that you rejected these other gods without ever looking into their religions or reading their books. You simply absorbed the dominant faith in your home or in the society you grew up in.

A rational person rejects all human gods equally, because all of them are equally imaginary. How do we know that they are imaginary? Simply imagine that one of them is real. If one of these thousands of gods were actually real, then his followers would be experiencing real, undeniable benefits. These benefits would be obvious to everyone. The followers of a true god would pray, and their prayers would be answered. The followers of a true god would therefore live longer, have fewer diseases, have lots more money, etc. There would be thousands of statistical markers surrounding the followers of a true god.

Everyone would notice all of these benefits, and they would gravitate toward this true god. And thus, over the course of several centuries, everyone would be aligned on the one true god. All the other false gods would have fallen by the wayside long ago, and there would be only one religion under the one true god.

When we look at our world today, we see nothing like that. There are two billion Christians AND there are more than one billion Muslims, and their religions are mutually exclusive. There are thousands of other religions. When you analyze any of them, they all show a remarkable similarity -- there is zero evidence that any of these gods exist. That is how we know that they are all imaginary.

I'm a pagan, from birth for all of my 38 years. I've read the bible (I'm doing a bible study course with my sometimes-Christian husband right now), and I've read other inspirational texts, most recently The Shack. I went to a Christian school.

I have to say, there is little point argueing with a Christian that their God does not exist, because He exists for them just as much as my Gods exist for me, and as much as no Gods exist for Atheists. It's really not important.

The important thing is integrity and understanding. I dont go around telling Christians that they are wrong because my ancestors faith came before theirs. I dont tell them they are wrong because they just havent been exposed to the word of my Gods yet, or in the right way, or by the right person. I personally dont care if not another single person on the planet believes the same things that I do ~ what I do care about is respect. If a group of people want to get together, under whatever banner, and do good things for their community, then THAT is important.

If anyone is interested, there is a great take on Gods of all kinds in Terry Pratchett's novel 'Small Gods'.

iforgotmyname: I DON'T have the patience to extend to you that i hope you find here. I find your closemindedness akin to a member of the KKK commenting about an article about a community of blacks. To me its the same disrespect you show the readers of this article.
Perhaps in due time with introspection you just MAY, I am not saying you will, but you just MAY realize you are the one that is close minded when it comes to the value systems of others.

freebyrd, of course you have the answer, it's the christian way. no matter what the question, christians always have a way to answer it with something to do with god being in control and being merciful and being this and that. does that seem reasonable to you? (don't expect me to be surprised when you say yes) Must be an awfully nice perch to sit on, where there is no right except what you say is right because you read it in a book written by MEN, not by GOD. It's interesting, I'll bet you a dollar that for every christian I can find right now I could have found an ancient greek or roman that would have an equal amount of conviction in their beliefs in their gods. Or a muslim willing to die for their belief in their god. Oh, but too bad for them because their gods were the wrong gods, right?? because you're god is the only one true god right? it must be nice to always be right by default because you're so convinced about your god and your "special connection" to him through your undying devotion that you know all you need to know about heaven and earth...

i await with such great anticipation your response that will continue to insist that your BELIEF is the absolute truth without question simply because you are fool enough to believe it. And I don't want or need anyone's patience or compassion, I have boatloads of patience and compassion of my own, just not when it comes to such nonsense.