Neon Genesis

It's this passage here

In Numbers 5, God uses abortion as a form of truth serum to determine if a woman had an affair.

Why do all those pro-life Christians think the bile condemns abortion? I've read the entire bible myself and I couldn't find a single verse in it that said abortion was a sin. There is a condemnation of abortion in the Didache but it's not considered an official part of the biblical canon and fundamentalist Christians don't consider it divinely inspired. Pro-life Christians justify their view by saying the fetus has a soul beginning from conception but as far as I'm aware, the bible never says at what point the soul enters a fetus. Pro-life Christians point to that verse that says God knew us before he formed us in the womb but that verse only says God is omniscient at best and still says nothing about a fetus. Jesus says in the NT that anyone who harms a child should throw themselves in the ocean but Jesus still never says anything about fetuses. If you read the OT, God seems to have no problem with killing babies outside of the womb and pro-life Christians will go to great lengths to justify God's immoral actions yet will condemn a woman who has aborts a fetus that hasn't even developed the ability to feel pain yet. So even taking a literal reading of the bible, on what basis is there to condemn abortion as murder?

You might want to check out Constanine's Sword by James Carroll.

There's also sites like Meetup.com where you can use it to start groups to meet up with like minded people over a common interest. Another issue is that it seems like churches in general don't really have very good programs for college aged students. Like most churches generally have a very good youth group that does a really good job of keeping kids actively involved in the church through various social activities and community events but then it's like you get to college and the church forgets about your class. Churches will have lots of activities for high school students and adults but they just don't do anything for college kids.

Also, in this age of the Internet, Wi-Fi cell phone connections, and Facebook and Twitter, young people have more alternative options of connecting towards other people and forming communities of their own outside of traditional institutions like the church. Considering though that atheists still remain the most hated minority group in the U.S., even more than gays and Muslims, I suspect many non-religious people who identify as "spiritual but not religious" may be doing so to avoid anti-atheist bigotry and the number of people who don't believe in God may be higher when you take the prevalence of anti-atheist bigotry into account.

It says God breathed life into humans out of his nostrils. First, God has nostrils? Second, how can creationists find the idea of evolving from monkeys absurd yet accept that they came out of God's nostrils?

From Genesis chapter two: Are you going to try and tell me this is exactly like what scientits believe too?

Creationists believe God created light before creating the sun, they believe God created humans from his own boogers, and they believe that snakes can talk, and that the Earth is significantly younger than what all of mainstream science has theorized. How is that different from the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I didn't say it was respectful. You accused the Flying Spaghetti Monster parody of being misleading and I asked what was misleading about it. Being disrespectful is not the same thing as being misleading.

That's not what the goal of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is:

How is it being misleading about what creationists believe?

The Flying Spaghetti Monster was originally intended to be a parody of creationists who wanted to teach "Intelligent Design" in public school science classes but it's since taken a life on its own and turned into an Internet meme with a whole mock religion around it but the original idea was just a parody to mock creationists who tried to claim "Intelligent Design" wasn't the same thing as biblical creationism. As for myself, my most embarrassing memory would be how I used to defend the Church of Christ's teaching that worshiping God with musical instruments was a sin.

I can understand why young earth creationists reject evolution. What I don't understand are those Christians who accept the old age of the Earth and they accept that the six days in Genesis is allegorical but for some unknown reason, they can't accept evolution is true and they can't accept that the rest of the Genesis myth is an allegory.

Ayn Rand also railed against the evils of religions yet her Objectivist philosophy was little more than a cult of personality and many former members of her cult came forward during that time to testify about Ayn Rand's dogmatic methods and how she wouldn't allow any diversity of opinion. When you think about it, Ayn Rand's "philosophy" was little more than just a secularized version of the Puritan work ethics. It was the Puritans centuries before Ayn Rand who believed that success was a sign of salvation and that you were blessed by God and deserved all the riches that you got and that if you were poor and didn't have a lot of material wealth, this was somehow a sign you were a sinner and deserved punishment from God. While Ms. Rand claimed to be against religion, all she really did was take this predestination mentality of the Puritan work ethic and baptized it in secular anti-religious terms.

I've read some of Ayn Rand's Altas Shrugged and I find it ironic that Ayn Rand rails against the evils of government regulations and hand outs and helping other people out yet Ayn Rand herself received social security and Medicare benefits in her retirement years.

I like book discussions but I feel like I always get burned out when I try to participate in it.

One should also consider that there's been a long tradition of religious conservatives accusing liberals of being "intolerant" of their beliefs just because liberals don't believe in permitting religious-based bigotry.

I recommend the books The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels.

There was a lot of concern about whether President Kennedy would have towed the Catholic line and followed the authority of the Pope when he ran for president. The whole reason Kennedy gave his famous speech on the separation of church and state was to reassure American voters that he would respect religious freedom. Kerry was always open that he wouldn't let the Catholic church dictate his politics and vocally stood in opposition to the Catholic church's stance on abortion rights. To the best of my knowledge, Mitt Romney has not made the same sort of statements about his own religious faith and what role the Mormon church will play in his presidency and Mitt Romney seems to think his own beliefs about the separation of church and state are somehow above any sort of criticism.

My concern about the Mormon church is that they were heavily involved in Prop 8 and getting gay marriage banned in California and Mitt Romney has donated thousands of dollars to ex-gay organizations. Since Stephenie Meyer is also a Mormon, I'm curious how much of her cash she made from the Twilight books also went to the Mormon church.

For those who support hate speech laws, do you think Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy should be banned under hate speech laws? In the His Dark Materials series, Philip Pullman portrays God as an evil dictator, the Catholic church is portrayed as a power-hungry organization out for world conquest that would abuse children to further their goals, and all Christians in the series are portrayed as violent fanatics. One could argue that Philip Pullman's children's book series is denigrating Christianity and many Christians tried to censor The Golden Compass film when it came out. So should the His Dark Materials series be banned then for its offensiveness towards Christianity?

Jesus himself was a victim of hate speech laws. The Pharisees were offended by Jesus' teachings that they accused of being heretical blasphemy so they framed him for state sedition and had him executed by the Roman authorities. So how exactly were Muslims harmed by this video if they were harmed by some other reason than hurt feelings? As far as I can tell, the only ones who suffered any actual physical harm were the people in the U.S. Embassy who were killed by terrorists. Here's an article on hate speech laws by the ACLU that more adequately expresses my feelings on the subject: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/hate-speech-campus

And my point is that these are all individual choices we make for ourselves but the government should have no role in making our decisions for us as to what speech we should approve of and not approve of. When Christ was hanging on the cross and all the people were throwing obscenities at him and persecuting him, he didn't order his apostles to forcefully silence his enemies even though he could have told them to fight back if he wanted to. Instead Jesus prayed to God to forgive them because they didn't know what they were doing and Jesus told his apostles to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, not to demand the Romans to intervene and silence anyone that bad mouthed them. If Jesus didn't silence his enemies by force, surely people of faith could do the same. As the classic hymn goes, he could have called ten thousand angels but he died for us instead.