At 12/22/12 06:54 PM, MonthlyVolatile wrote: No, accept their shit and love your family, you ungrateful scrub.

^this guy.

At 12/22/12 09:05 PM, Ononymous wrote: Christians don't have to follow the OT though.

That's why i was confused.

At 12/22/12 08:59 PM, EmmaVolt wrote: I'm sorry to interrupt the beginnings of a debate between ignorant atheists and ignorant christians, but what on earth are you talking about?

Oh, I don't have a problem with Christians. My mom's mother is Baptist, and almost everybody on my father's side of my family is Irish Catholic. There's just some messed up stuff in the Bible. I know they don't believe that stuff. just funnin'.

At 12/22/12 09:07 PM, 4761 wrote:

At 12/22/12 09:06 PM, EmmaVolt wrote:

At 12/22/12 09:05 PM, Ononymous wrote: Christians don't have to follow the OT though.

That's why i was confused.

I recall that you were being confused because you don't know what that guy was talking about when he said that "slavery and rape is okay".

Oh, I was under the impression that slavery then was the same as slavery now, and rape was actually okay.

But since it was on a subject completely irrelevant to current followers of the Bible, I wasn't sure why it needed to be mentioned.

The only thing that annoys me about Christmas is the fucking Jesusfests that come on wall-to-wall after 10 PM. YAWN.

At 12/22/12 09:10 PM, EmmaVolt wrote:

But since it was on a subject completely irrelevant to current followers of the Bible, I wasn't sure why it needed to be mentioned.

Jews follow the Old Testament of the Bible though.

This is my slogan that I thought up this year (as far as I'm aware, I think I thought it up. But there is always the possibility that I overheard subconciously, that happens sometimes like when you come up with a riff and then somebody tells you it is exactly the same as a famous song, and you go 'oh yeah'. But anyway, I thought this was pretty clever:)

God is dead, but Christmas isn't yet,

There is such a thing as a secular Christmas, so no, nothing is wrong with an atheist celebrating Christmas. In fact, I say it's better for Christmas to be about enjoying spending time with loved ones rather than it being a holiday meant for worship of a deity.

At 12/22/12 09:05 PM, Ononymous wrote: Christians don't have to follow the OT though.

What bugs me is Christians will say that, but still cite Leviticus when gay marriage comes up.

Just because you don't believe in religion doesn't mean you can't celebrate the holidays. It should be a time for friends and family to be together.

Golly.

At 12/23/12 12:04 AM, dragoswrath wrote: Christmas is not a part of Christianity/Catholicism dumbfuck. It was invented by the Greeks for men to give gifts to each other and feast.

No it wasn't retard.

I have to agree with MonthlyVolatile, be clever.

At 12/22/12 06:54 PM, MonthlyVolatile wrote: No, accept their shit and love your family, you ungrateful scrub.

This pretty sums up every X-Mas for me for the past ~20 years

No, but you should go around the internet flailing your dick around about how WRONG religion is.

Just like every other 14 year old internet atheist does this time of year.

At 12/22/12 06:54 PM, MonthlyVolatile wrote: No, accept their shit and love your family, you ungrateful scrub.

Exactly, Christmas isn't a religious thing anyway so stop whining about your own views attempting to think you are "cool" for being an atheist and accept the point of the holiday to share love and well being with your family.

At 12/23/12 12:40 AM, dragoswrath wrote:

At 12/23/12 12:09 AM, Gobblemeister wrote:

At 12/23/12 12:04 AM, dragoswrath wrote: Christmas is not a part of Christianity/Catholicism dumbfuck. It was invented by the Greeks for men to give gifts to each other and feast.

No it wasn't retard.

care to explain?

Christmas as we know it comes from germanic pagan rituals.

OP, there is nothing wrong with an atheist accepting or giving Christmas gifts. Yes, the holidays are primarily about God, Jesus, and celebrating one's faith, but it's also about being with people you care about and enjoying their companionship while it lasts. As an atheist, I just forgo the religious aspect and take the time to be with my family, and I'm fortunate to have Christian parents who are perfectly fine with that. Just enjoy the holiday and don't fret over the hows and whys; people aren't giving you gifts because you're a Christian, but because you're a part of their lives.

At 12/22/12 11:54 PM, Boomstick wrote: Golly.

That episode was so fucking grim. There wasn't even any humor. I was like "when...does this get funny". I mean, what was the point of that episode? It's supposed to be a comedy spoof of Davey and Goliath.

At 12/23/12 12:04 AM, dragoswrath wrote: Christmas is not a part of Christianity/Catholicism dumbfuck. It was invented by the Greeks for men to give gifts to each other and feast.

"...and Jesus probably hates you for celebrating it."

I too am an atheist. I came across this. Perhaps it will be of help to you.

Stop being such a boring humbug like me

Christmas is shit, no matter what you believe in.

Don't be a douche and just open up the damn presents. Remember, just because they're christian, doesn't mean that they're not your loving, caring parents. Parents that brought you into this world and raised you up to be the healthy human-being you are today.

Christmas was never a religious occasion in my house...

So when I realized I was an atheist, nothing changed

Who cares what you and your family believes, Christmas is just a bastardized version of a pagan holiday in order to fuel capitalist consumerism, brought by a lot of violence and anger upon shop workers, while ironically being praised as a christian tradition of peace and love.

Non-religious people mainly just go with the flow. Christmas is really all that it is right now, being more about a fat man in a red suit than the birthday of the messiah. Winter sucks, so you might as well.

At 12/22/12 09:05 PM, Ononymous wrote: Christians don't have to follow the old testament.

I hear so many Christians now a days claim that the Old Testament is defunct for Jesus was the âEUoelambâEU to clear away its rules and regulations. This is just another bullshit scapegoat that Christians use to ignore the atrocities and bizarre laws commanded by their god. Their preachers spoon feed them that the Old Testament is no longer binding so that they can excuse the majority of evil that the bible promotes. I am so tired of Christians manipulating the scriptures so that they can assign a kinder nature to their God, that I have assembled a BRIEF list of verses which clearly show that the Old Testament is not to be ignored. Its laws should indeed be adhered to, for the New Testament demands it!

1) âEUoeFor truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.âEU (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV) Clearly the Old Testament is to be abided by until the end of human existence itself. None other then Jesus said so.

2) All of the vicious Old Testament laws will be binding forever. "It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid." (Luke 16:17 NAB)

3) Jesus strongly approves of the law and the prophets. He hasnâEUTMt the slightest objection to the cruelties of the Old Testament. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)

3b) "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness..." (2 Timothy 3:16 NAB)

3c) "Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God." (2 Peter 20-21 NAB)

4) Jesus criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children according to Old Testament law. Mark.7:9-13 "Whoever curses father or mother shall die" (Mark 7:10 NAB)

5) Jesus is criticized by the Pharisees for not washing his hands before eating. He defends himself by attacking them for not killing disobedient children according to the commandment: âEUoeHe that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.âEU (Matthew 15:4-7)

6) Jesus has a punishment even worse than his father concerning adultery: God said the act of adultery was punishable by death. Jesus says looking with lust is the same thing and you should gouge your eye out, better a part, than the whole. The punishment under Jesus is an eternity in Hell. (Matthew 5:27)

7) Peter says that all slaves should âEUoebe subject to [their] masters with all fear,âEU to the bad and cruel as well as the âEUoegood and gentle.âEU This is merely an echo of the same slavery commands in the Old Testament. 1 Peter 2:18

8) âEUoeDid not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law" (John7:19) and âEUoeFor the law was given by Moses,..." (John 1:17).

9) âEUoe...the scripture cannot be broken.âEU --Jesus Christ, John 10:35

As somebody that sees all religions as highly paranoid attempts of answering the questions "where do we come from?" and "what happens after we die?" I celebrate no aspects of religion at Christmas. To me it's exchange gifts day, a day to just be nice for once and to get monsterously drunk. I'm pretty sure that's what most people do now.

I'm similar to you. I'm an agnostic in an otherwise entirely Christian family; my father was a church deacon for a while. Personally, I don't care about the origins of Christmas. I just view it as a time to celebrate family, and if that bastardizes a tradition, that's not my problem. I'm free to celebrate what I want how I want simply because I can.

At 12/23/12 12:07 PM, PrincessLuna wrote: I hear so many Christians now a days claim that the Old Testament is defunct for Jesus was the âEUoelambâEU to clear away its rules and regulations. This is just another bullshit scapegoat that Christians use to ignore the atrocities and bizarre laws commanded by their god.

The bible is ultimately just a book written down by men in Israel a few thousand years ago. Just for the sake of the following argument, let's say for a second that God exists in the form professed by Christianity. We have absolutely no way of differentiating between what was God's real word and what was added by the writers due to cultural pressure. We have no way of telling whether the events described occurred exactly as they're described or whether they were warped by the cultural biases of the writers. There's no such thing as an objective observer. We all see things through the lens of our culture. We can be told a message clearly but interpret it as something different than what the speaker intended.

This is true for every person including the prophets who passed along Jesus' teachings. Note that we don't have a gospel written first hand by Jesus due to that he was likely illiterate, and many of his disciples were also likely illiterate with the exception of maybe Paul. As a result, it's unlikely that these disciples wrote down their own accounts, which means that a third party must have transcribed it. This is significant because many things get warped through word of mouth. The gospels may profess themselves to be the literal word of God but we don't have a way of knowing whether that is a true statement or just a reflection of how the writers believed they were writing down the literal word of God.

All of this shows how it is actually a legitimate argument to take a figurative and selective view on the bible. Taking into consideration all of these factors, it's natural to come to the conclusion that it's possible to disregard the parts of the bible that were most likely to have been warped by culture.

Meh; I'm at work on Christmas day and Boxing day anyway, so I really couldn't care less about it. The fact that the Christmas holiday itself is actually around twice as old as the religion it's supposedly all about speaks for itself, as far as how genuine it is from that perspective.

At 12/23/12 02:36 PM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote: All of this shows how it is actually a legitimate argument to take a figurative and selective view on the bible. Taking into consideration all of these factors, it's natural to come to the conclusion that it's possible to disregard the parts of the bible that were most likely to have been warped by culture.

This is demonstrated quite nicely by the Codex Vaticanus - the world's oldest surviving Bible. There are entire verses in modern Bibles that said version does not have, making it look quite likely that, even after the period of hearsay and conjecture had ended and a standardised text had been established on the matter, people were still prone to manipulating it to suit whatever end they felt they were achieving by adding things to it. And that book (along with it's only known counterpart, the Codex Sinaiticus) is from around the 4th century; 400 years after the fact, too. It's likely that the purveyors of the story hadn't sorted out the details of what they thought happened until then (hence the lack of any older books to date). I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of the details, if not the entire thing, was born of artistic license on the part of the scribes.

And that's making no mention of Mithraism, which is based on a chain of events involving exactly the same story as the core events of Christianity, and is about a century older. Go figure.

(You need to post more. ^_- )

This may sound stupid but for me, pre xmas is when i through religion into it and on christmas is all about the family and presents.

At 12/23/12 01:51 AM, Sense-Offender wrote:

At 12/22/12 11:54 PM, Boomstick wrote: Golly.

That episode was so fucking grim. There wasn't even any humor. I was like "when...does this get funny". I mean, what was the point of that episode? It's supposed to be a comedy spoof of Davey and Goliath.

They were developing the characters, showing how Clay is really selfish asshole. I wish they would have gotten their 4th season, it would have tied even more loose ends.