quote:
Originally posted by B Bankins:
Actually, once I stopped laughing, I kinda like the name. It has an aristocratic sense of high society associated with one who has wealth. I may use it on another forum-with your permission of course. 
Feel free. I have a few extra in my Fake Name Vault.
quote:
Originally posted by B Bankins:
...when reaching adulthood,I saw the results of those who ignor the teachings of the Lord. Most of these people were miserable and hated life.
By contrast, those who worshipped God always seem to have a calm, inner peace, along with a joy and zest for living. I found that the more people accepted God, the better life seems for them. Of course, an Atheist can attain such inner peace and zest for life. They just don't associate God with their state of being. They must believe in something, however.
God is the best teacher of all when it comes to moral, ethical values. Just look at the decline of our culture today and it's hard to believe that late pop culture icons like Frank Senatra and Elvis Presley were considered in their time to be lewd and lascivious performers.
Again, I'm not a religious fanatic, but with the steady decline in basic human dignity, manners, and respect our kids are exposed to on a daily basis, to call the Pledge unconstitutional because of "under God" added, and say this is being forced on kids......
Sorry, but I'll never understand the thinking behind this kind of logic. Maybe their school day should begin with an episode of Ozzy Osbournes' family.
Somewhere in my last post, I got off the point I was trying to make. What I think is that it is possible to embrace morality and not believe in God. People who live in tribes who never heard of God still have a sense of right and wrong that's not outside of that of most people. It makes sense for me to believe in God, but the "agenda" I spoke of before is my desire to see people understand that morality and religious belief are not one and the same.
Like you, I've noticed that people who abandon the religious teachings they grew up with seem to end up in miserable situations. Family and friends of mine who grew up in church do well if they stay in church, but those who give up on that stuff tend to get in trouble with the law, have kids out of wedlock, and have all kinds of drama and beef in their lives. The linkage is clear.
If religion didn't try to claim itself as the only source of moral principles, this wouldn't be as much of a problem. Those who abandon their religious upbringing usually abandon the whole thing, including the moral principles their church taught them. But if they were taught that morality exists regardless of religion, then when they start questioning the religious teachings ("Why would God let such-&-such happen?" etc.), the natural, self-evident moral principles would remain with them. The way it is now, most people in that position throw the baby out with the bathwater, because they link religion and its dogma with the otherwise universal moral principles, and don't understand that the flaws they see in their man-made religious concepts have nothing to do with right-and-wrong.
This is one of the top causes, in my opinion, of the problems so many blacks deal with. Religion is everywhere black people turn, and so many of us come to see religion's flaws as morality's flaws. If we don't feel up to "doing" what religion requires us to do, we implicitly don't feel up to "being" the kind of people that moral principles require us to be. And that's unnecessary, and wrong to me.
Anyway, I ramble. But this belief underlies my problem with the "under God" phrase. The way most people see it, when enough Americans, black and otherwise, stop being "God-fearing," they will necessarily become immoral (or amoral, or believe in "moral relativism," and all that crap). That has already happened with a lot of people. But it didn't need to happen, because regardless of how we look at God, if morality were seen as the common sense, inherently correct, self-evident body of belief that it should be, we would all be better people.
By the way, MBM, the NY Times article gave great insight. It'll help next semester if I take "Constitutional Law II."
