the pledge of allegiance

Thank God there's no more Communism in Russia. Some people are under some delusion that it was a wonderful time in that system. They would do well to read what you have typed

 

I couldn't agree more!

 

I appreciate your response. You have enlightened me. I just knew a lot of people who said they were athiest because something bad happened in their life and they blamed God. Like my bestfriend's older brother was murdered and she blames God and says she's athiest. She told me that was why. Or because they prayed really long and hard for something and never got it so they say, "God doesn't exist." That kind of stuff. That was (and I'm happy to say was) my only experience with athiests. And that's why I said what I said.

Yea, deep down, I actually agree with most of that. But I do like to explore different things/explanations that others have come up with. It can be pretty interesting sometimes. But I do believe that I'm no one to say who has it right. I do like to assume that it was the work of some deity, because to me that's, so far, the only thing that might make some kind of sense, however, to the extent that I believe that wholeheartedly varies as often as my mood.

That's an intriguing way to look at it (to me)

Very well said (in my opinion)

Duly noted.

LIVE AND LET LIVE!!!! :smt023

Thank you for satiating my curiousity...

 

VERY WELL SAID!! I would tap your rep if I knew how!

 

Just click the second icon from the left on the bottom left corner silly

 

Thanks! I'm waiting for my rep...

 

I did that, but it didn't ask me if I wanted to give positive or negative rep and I don't know if it worked. Maybe I did it wrong.

 

I would demonstrate, but I can't:

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Tinkerbell again"

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Moskvichka again"

 

I didn't get it, but I love you anyway!:smt058

 

I'm Agnostic. Before that, I was Pagan. Before that, I was Atheist. Before that, I was Baptist. The latter was simply what I grew up being taught, and it only lasted until I was a preteen.

I always felt wrong saying "Under God" in the pledge, so I didn't say that part. I had to move my mouth and pretend, because otherwise the other kids would've been even meaner to me than they already were.

To me, personally, it doesn't bother me that the words are there. However, thinking of other people, and all of the religions practiced in this country, I could see how it could be a problem. I understand that this country was founded with religion as it's backbone...after all, isn't the reason we're even here owed to the search for religious freedom? But, considering Christianity is not the only religion practiced here, and how we have no official religion, it just doesn't feel like adding "God" to so many things (implying the Christian god, specifically) holds true to that original idea of freedom from religious persecution. Sure, it doesn't say "Under God, and all other god's be damned", but...well, doesn't the bible specifically say to not worship any other god? So all this talk of God kinda implies the Christian god is the only one in the eyes of the government, whether it's the truth or not.

I'm not trying to step on anyone's beliefs. I respect those who have faith in any religion, because faith is something that I find it hard to come by. I try not to let my personal views cloud my judgment on things like this. As I said, I personally have no issue with the words, because I can choose to ignore it, but others may not find it so easy. I think it's more the implication than anything, honestly. Not to mention someone who doesn't believe in the Christian god may feel more than a little uncomfortable with being bombarded with things like this from our very government which is supposed to be separate from the church.

Yeah, I know that while it's a beautiful thought it's been proven countless times in this country that there is no actual separation of church and state (as in the case with churches becoming involved in political campaigns, which bothers me quite a bit)...but just because that's "how it is" does it really make it right? Not so long ago it was just "how it is" to segregate people according to race.

The world is changing. Our country is changing. That's "how it is". It's how it always has been, and how it always will be. Change happens. Sometimes it's for the good, sometimes for the bad, but it's the way of the world.

 

Britty24>
Hmm. Shion? My names not shion.. but I wrote all the stuff you commented on. Strange.. Or is it just me who sees the name shion.. ?

thanks for apprieciating the answer. These discussions are hard for most people.

I'm gonna make a small comment on the logic of existance, just for the fun of it. I always thought that the reason we are here should make sense to me. You know, be a coherent sentence, stuff like that. Then I had one of those Ahaaa-moments, and figured that why does it have to make sence to me? I'm just human. On a mathematical level it's all probably perfectly clear, especially if you count in 16 dimensions instead of 4. Or something like that.
I'm trying to get at the fact that the human rase overrates its own intelligence. I dont think we could possibly understand the reason why we are here, because we are looking at a reason for our souls. Not for our existence. And we are looking at it as if we are here with a mission, and not why we ended up being here to begin with.
The answer could be "because coal athoms in combination with this and that, makes life, and lifes strive" or it could be way more complex, but I still think that we might not be as complex and filled with purpose as we think. We might be an accident. But we did happened.
Well, thats just random thoughts. Its interesting to think about though, gets a bit mindboggling.

 

No, it's not just you. I got the names mixed up (I hope that's all I got mixed up ). In my defense, they both start with S and are short names! :lol: I'm a dork, you'll have to excuse me.

No problemo. I like to think I'm wiser (What's that saying? A fool thinks he knows everything and a wise man knows he doesn't/that there's always going to be more to learn? Something like that.) and accepting and open and that's the way to be. Of course I'm not perfect though, at all whatsoever. I like me though

Ahaaa. Good point. Hm, why does it? I wonder if/guess/think/not sure but maybe, some people just want to know and others think why should it matter? And that's the way the cookie crumbles. Maybe if someone feels like they know, they have that sense of knowing something they didn't know before or something that no one else really knows. A lot of people don't know, ya know? Heh.

Whew! That's a lot of dimensions. I like to keep it simple and think they're three.... Or is there? :smt037 I don't knoooww.. This is fun :smt003 . (Yea, I think it's fun not knowing things as well as knowing things. Perplexing.)

Aaaaha... Yea, I can see our race overrating its own intelligence. Yea, I don't think our minds really have the capacity to understand the reasons for our souls and why we are here (though it can be "fun" to entertain certain possibilities - for me anyway). I do like to think that we do have some kind of mission here. I have noticed during reading different views on the topic of "Why are we here?" ending up being about "What our mission here is." and never really getting the "Why we ended up here in the first place."

That could very well be... Yeppers.

Yes we did. I hope we weren't an accident, heh. What an accident that would be!

Yes, very interesting. I love a good mindboggling now and then

 

Okay, I went back and I am perfectly confused over the Shion and skylla... But whoever I was talking to, I meant what I said... that's about all I can tell ya as far as that goes. I was talking to skylla. I see shion's name in the first one. I don't know why... so I don't think it was me. Though, in other threads (which is what I was thinking about before in my reply before what I'm posting now) I do get those names mixed up, (but I haven't typed it out anywhere that way... yet :knocks on wood

 

I'm Agnostic-ish (I just returned from google, heh). I've been told I'm "Neo-Pagan", never been Athiest, now I claim "New Age" mostly. I wasn't raised any religion really. But when I was little and the "church bus" came to my neighborhood, I hopped on, and came home Baptist. Told my mom and everyone they were going to hell (for cussing, smoking, not going to church, and not asking "God into their hearts.") and I would cry myself to sleep about it every night. That stopped when I turned 10. Then I found a book in my mom's closet about "Magick" and witchcraft. Then in middle school, I became a "witch" and a "devil worshipper" to my classmates. Plus, I was kind of "gothic" then too, which made me look anti-christ to them, I guess.

I hated that. I'm glad my school days are overrr.

I think most religions say there is one God, (their God), Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jews (I think, don't know much about that one), Jehovahs, Mormons, etc. The only ones I know of is Atheist who believe no God, Agnostic who believe "Who's to say?" (if I read the definition correctly.) and Wiccans who believe God has a female duality Goddess (I like that maybe because I'm female, heh.) then there's Buddhism and Hinduism and I think they worship just Idols? I know they include idols.

You are freakin' amazing!! I just love reading your posts and what you have to say!! :smt003

:smt023

 

aww, thanks babe. I like reading your posts, too. You remind me a lot of me...well, the me I used to be, at least. It's strange.

 

Correct me if I'm out biking on thin ice (a lovely direct translation of a contamination of two different swedish sayings..), but I think there's about 10 or 11 dimensions that you count with in string theory, the three spatial we can see and a bunch of others that are "curled up" inside the others. (I'm cheating and looking at wiki now, I don't remember all this stuff)

Picture is from wikipedia on dimensions. Two-dimensional square, three dimensional and four dimensional as how it would be percieved in a three dimensional space

The forth dimension we percieve (not the one in the pic!) is time. Theory is you cannot have space without time and vice versa, since space cannot exist without time to exist in and time cannot exist as a factor without space to exist in. This also exclude the concept of before the universe in a four dimensional Space, since time didn't exist before that. And before time existed, well, there wasn't anything.. Yah, this is a brain killer to think about. And it's science mixed up with my own thinking (facts meets mad swedish girl, a wrestling match from hell).

You can think of time as a spatial dimension if you like it, or as a cloud of events. Linear thinking of time gets in the way when sorting this stuff out... Think of time as a room, each given point is an event (and I'm talking ALL possible events*) in time, they now occur in the same space aka the same time, but you cannot be in any given position more then one time or in more then one position at the same time. Meaning you move through time freely, but percieve it as a linear occurence of events, where you have no freedom of moving in any other way than forward..

Now, if you add quantum theory to that, just for the fun of it, the trick is to be at all possible positions in this time room at once, but only percieving the point/event that is the equivalent of the sum of all these points (this very neetly happens to be the same one as the one that breaks the least natural laws. Its more likely you find yourself as a human, strolling through life, then as a gnome, upside down on the moon), and add that it isn't infact you that does this, it's every speck of dust in the universe. And we are all made of heaps and heaps of specks.

And after thinking about that for a while, it's time to sort out the "why are we here"...

Reading way too much of this stuff makes me go "duh, I have no clue, but i'm REALLY glad, that I'm actually here, since the chanse is quite petite"..

*events as in movement of particles. as in the tiniest possible thing that can happen. To quote terry pratchett "the smallest amount of time it takes for the smallest thing that can happen, to happen." I loves the Pratchett. ^____^

I'm WAY OT right now. I hope it's ok.

An atheist pledge of allience:
I swear faith to this thing I have no idea about
promising to stand strong and try to falsifie everything
and never ever really understand what I'm talking about.

or at least, that'd be my pledge..

 

Do you even see a way that they could put the Pledge of Allegiance back in schools…

I don't think the pledge has to do so much with religion, it's more of an ethical imperative. "One nation under God" signifies the unity of the country and adds to the legitimacy of the nation state, sort of like a spiritual guideline. It's similar to the ideas of absolutism when they claimed that the sovereign derived their legitimacy to rule from God. In the American case the sovereign is the nation, the people, not a king, so basically it's a pretty democratic ideal.

However, separation of church and state is vital and secular humanism is a pretty good idea and it should be protected.

I was raised in an atheist/agnostic family, but I became a Baltic pagan very early on. It's basically pantheism, a belief that everything in the world is permeated with the divine. To me Nature is god, Nature not only in the sense of the material substance in the world, but the Universe as a whole. Nature created everything in its diversity and it's all sacred as it is, and this view is totally compatible with science.

 

I've thought the same thing too. You kind of reminded me of "who I used to be" (before I got boring) and of the kind of person who would have been in my "clique" (group of friends), we were just all pretty unique, different, and didn't give fuck etc. But, it's really just a vibe. I can't really say that with utmost certainty, naturally, because I don't know you personally.

 

Ah!! Overload! :smt103 LoL. It is interesting though. And that pledge is how I feel sometimes too! :smt017

 

You are definitely out on very thin ice.

Is this what you call being Open Minded?