toomanyhelicopters wrote:

Linus Van Pelt wrote:The honest Christian response is:

"I submit that my faith is superior to all other faiths because it is based on the truth, and all other faiths, to the extent that they differ from my own, are based on untruths. I believe that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, and that all who do not accept him as their savior cannot be saved. I have no rational basis for these beliefs, but I hold them fervently."

People are reluctant to say things like this, because they are nice guys who don't want to sound like jerks. But I really can't see how someone can be an honest Christian and not believe something very close to this.

>> i don't hold my faith to be more valid than anyone else's faith or non-faith. <<

> i am not positive of *anything*, and though sometimes i might require goading to remember this, it is always the case. <<

>> i believe that whether i go to hell or heaven, if such realms even exist, is at the sole discretion of God, who i believe does exist. i do not concern myself with such matters.<<

>>so you're saying i'm not a real Christian, or that i'm not honest?<<

today we Unitarian Universalists are determined to follow our own reasoned convictions, no matter what others may say, and we embrace tolerance as a central principle, inside and outside our own churches.

today Unitarian Universalists expect new scientific disclosures to cohere, not conflict, with our religious faith. We embrace the challenge and the joy of intercultural religious fellowship.

How do UUs understand salvation?

The English word salvation derives from the Latin salus, meaning health. Unitarian Universalists are as concerned with salvation, in the sense of spiritual health or wholeness, as any other religious people.

However, in many Western churches, salvation has come to be associated with a specific set of beliefs or a spiritual transformation of a very limited type.

Among Unitarian Universalists, instead of salvation you will hear of our yearning for, and our experience of, personal growth, increased wisdom, strength of character, and gifts of insight, understanding, inner and outer peace, courage, patience, and compassion. The ways in which these things come to, change, and heal us, are many indeed. We seek and celebrate them in our worship.

What about Jesus?

Classically, Unitarian Universalist Christians have understood Jesus as a savior because he was a God-filled human being, not a supernatural being. He was, and still is for many UUs, an exemplar, one who has shown the way of redemptive love, in whose spirit anyone may live generously and abundantly. Among us, Jesus' very human life and teaching have been understood as products of, and in line with, the great Jewish tradition of prophets and teachers. He neither broke with that tradition nor superseded it.

Many of us honor Jesus, and many of us honor other master teachers of past or present generations, like Moses or the Buddha. As a result, mixed-tradition families may find common ground in the UU fellowship without compromising other loyalties.

We Are Losing Our Children

Sept 18, 2001

We Are Losing Our Children
Remarks to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee in Nashville, TN

By: T.C. Pinckney
Brig. General USAF (ret)
Second Vice President - Southern Baptist Convention
TCP@TheBaptistBanner.com

The events of a week ago today were a terrible tragedy. The nation is rightly aroused, and we need to take effective action. We mourn for the slain and we pray for their families. Yet having said that, evaluated as a long-term threat and in numbers of lives destroyed, the tragedy I want to discuss with you dwarfs, literally dwarfs, the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

We are losing our children. Research indicates that 70%of teens who are involved in a church youth group will stop attending church within two years of their high school graduation. Think about that statement. It addresses only teenagers who attend church and participate in the youth group. What does that suggest about those teens who may attend church but do not take part in the youth group, or who do not go to church at all?

In a talk at Southwestern Seminary Josh McDowell noted that less than 1/3 of today's youth attend church. If he is right and 67% do not go to church and then we lose 70% of those who do, that means that within two years of finishing high school only 10% of young Americans will attend church.

We are losing our youth.

Why is this happening? Many strands go into weaving a tapestry, and surely there are many reasons this tragic departure of our youth from Christ is taking place. However, I believe the evidence clearly indicates that the primary reasons are, first, our failure as Christian parents and churches and, second, the intentional, persistent, and highly effective effort by anti-theists to use public schools to lead children away from their parents and from the church.

|| A Bit of History ||

About 1830 a group of wealthy Unitarians in Boston became unhappy with the locally controlled, parent-run, church- influenced schools then prevalent. They decided to try to establish a system of state-run, secular schools. They sent two young scholars abroad to study the main European school systems in order to decide which system to use as a model. After a two-year study the team recommended and their sponsors adopted the Prussian system as their model. Why? Because in that system the state had complete control, parents had no influence, and children were entered at the earliest age.

With that decision made, the group designed a three part plan:

(1) compulsory attendance,

(2) a state teacher's college degree prerequisite to certification as a teacher, and

(3) state owned and operated schools. This was the plan they proposed to the Massachusetts' legislature.

Among themselves they agreed that if they could not at first get all three elements approved, the most important part was the required teacher's college. This was their priority because they agreed that "If we teach them what to teach, they will teach what they have been taught."

The first year's cost to establish the teacher'scollege was $50,000. The Massachusetts legislature balked, saying the cost was too high. So the wealthy Unitarians made them an offer they could not refuse; they put up $25,000 if the state would match it. They did, and in 1837 the first state public school system in the United States was established. Soon other states followed suit.

|| The Philosophical Foundation of Governmental Schools ||

Just 14 years after the Massachusetts state school system was established, Auguste Comte wrote the following in his _System of Positive Polity_, vol. I,1851, pp. 35-6.

"The object of our philosophy is to direct the spiritual reorganization of the civilized world. ...[W]e may begin at once to construct that system of morality under which the final regeneration of Humanity will proceed."

His "spiritual reorganization" was a long-term plan, and it has been steadily progressing right up till today.

And you will recall that Darwin's great mythology,_Origin of Species, was published in 1859.

Of course Comte was not alone in this vision of a future without God, of humanity without individuality, of rule by the self-defined most capable over the less capable. In 1918 Benjamin Kidd published in London a book, _The Science of Power_. On p. 309 he wrote:

"Oh you blind leaders who seek to convert the world by labored disputations. Step out of the way or the world must fling you aside. GIVE US THE YOUNG. GIVE US THEYOUNG and we will create a new mind and a new earth ina single generation."

Ten years later in 1928 Ross L. Finney, Ph. D., published in the _United States A Sociological Philosophy of Education_. On p. 118 Finney wrote, "Everything depends on passing out the expert opinions of the social scientists to the masses of the people and the schools, particularly the high schools, are the only adequate agency available for this function."

And on p. 117 he had just said, "It is the business of teachers to run not merely the school, but the world and the world will never be truly civilized until they assume that responsibility."

Another interesting quote comes from _The Reconstruction of Religion_ by Charles A. Ellwood, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, U. Of Missouri, 1923, p.177: "Human institutions, sociology shows, are in every case learned adjustments. As such, they can be modified provided we can obtain control of the learning process."

And the American Humanist Association understands the importance of capturing the children for they have written: "In order to capture this nation, one has to totally remove moral and spiritual values and absolutes from the thinking of the child. The child has to think that there is no standard of right and wrong, that truth is relative, and that diversity is the only absolute to be gained."

Everyone has a worldview, a perspective of the world around him. Bob Reccord referred to this as a"reference point." He may not think of it in these terms. Indeed, he may not think of it consciously at all, but you cannot exist without a framework within which you place events and individuals, which determines your values, which values in turn guide your actions and reactions to events and people.

Although there are many worldviews designated by many exotic or not so exotic terms, they all boil down to just two types: Your worldview will be man-centered or God-centered.

We are all familiar with Deuteronomy 6:7-9: "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."

Yet we seem to have forgotten or ignored God's commands about education:-- Luke 6:40 (NASB) "A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher." Do we want our children to adopt the anti-Christian, socialistic, pro-homosexual, no absolute right and wrong beliefs promulgated in government schools?

-- Colossians 2:8 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." This is exactly what is happening to our children. They are being spoiled by philosophies and deceits "after the tradition of men."

-- II Corinthians 6:14 "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" But this is exactly what we do when we send our children to government schools.

Most Southern Baptists and most Southern Baptist churches are failing to obey God's commands regarding our children. Yes, we take them to Sunday worship and Sunday School. Yes, they may also attend AWANAs or another church-centered youth program. They may even have Bible study at home.

But two or three hours on Sunday and 20 minutes or so of Bible study at home are overpowered by 30 or more hours a week in anti-Christian government schools and the constant pagan media bombardment which may add up to another 10, 20, 30, or more hours per week.

Now of course many schoolteachers are Christians. And may God bless them as they do what they can. But they are strictly limited by school policy, humanist textbooks, programs teaching the validity of homosexuality, "make up your own minds" approaches to morality, "safe sex" instruction, and on and on.

Why have we failed our God in this critically important responsibility?

We have failed because we have been willfully, blissfully ignorant ... and satisfied in our ignorance.

We have failed because the great majority of us have not made the effort to inform ourselves of the facts... even though there are books and articles galore readily available. [ha!]

We have failed because -- even when we have known the facts -- we have not had the courage to point them out to our people.

We have failed because we have been afraid to offend people. So we have chosen to offend God rather than men.

|| What Should We Do? ||

The ideal, most biblical solution is for parents to teach their children, to be home schoolers. All our churches should welcome and openly encourage home-schoolers. But clearly many parents cannot or will not home-school. For their children we need to start large numbers of Christian schools.

And these schools need to be truly Christian:

-- Christian in the sincere faith of the teachers and all other staff,

-- Christian in textbooks carefully chosen,

-- Christian in their entire worldview.

Note that they should also teach about evolution, about humanism, about post-modernism ... but in a balanced way, giving the evolutionists' arguments fully and fairly, but also demonstrating their weaknesses, the mythological presuppositions upon which these lies are based, and the disastrous consequences for those who choose to live without God. Our children must be prepared to live among, confront when necessary, and triumph in debate with secularists. This is one area where ignorance is NOT bliss.

It has been a privilege to be with you today. As Executive Committee members you fill a critically important role in Southern Baptist life, and indeed in Christian life throughout the United States and the entire world. I pray the Lord will lay a burden on your hearts for our children and their Christian education. And I pray that He will lead you to encourage home-schooling and the establishment of more and more truly Christian schools.

Exodus Mandate © 2002

sparky wrote:

LAD quoting Marx wrote:Religion is the groan of the oppressed, the sentiment of a heartless world, and at the same time the spirit of a condition deprived of spirituality. It is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the premise of its real happiness. It is first and foremost the task of philosophy, operating in the service of history, to unmask self-alienation in its profane forms, after the sacred form of human self alienation has been discovered. Thus criticism of heaven is transformed into criticism of the earth, criticism of religion into criticism of law, criticism of theology into criticism of politics

Talk of the suppressing anything makes me nervous. Forcing people not to believe in something that they would otherwise hold true is cruel and dangerous (backlash is almost inevitable).

It's a nicely put argument, but I'm not sure that it applies anymore outside genuine theocracies. You may of course argue that the Bush administration is heading towards theocracy.

LAD wrote:Yes, it has needed some reworking since the 19th century. Enter Louis Althusser. And Althusser's argument needs considerable reworking for an American context (as well as to lessen its totalizing tendency).

ytrehalf wrote:Do the atheists here have an explanation for first cause--who or what is the prime mover, and who or what first created matter from nothing?

The concept of an omnipotent Creator is the only tenable explanation which I am aware of.

ytrehalf wrote:Do the atheists here have an explanation for first cause--who or what is the prime mover, and who or what first created matter from nothing?

The concept of an omnipotent Creator is the only tenable explanation which I am aware of.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:

ytrehalf wrote:Do the atheists here have an explanation for first cause--who or what is the prime mover, and who or what first created matter from nothing?

In a word, no.

There is no God involved, unless you want to ascribe to Gof the power to create immutable laws of physics, in which case I guess I capitulate, but you're still wrong about gay marriage.