Hello all. I have many grand religious followers who come to this blog. I do respect what they comment but when it comes to the supernatural, the bible specifically, and all fables and myths I prefer reality. I am sadly not able to accept things that can not be shown to exist with all the science available to us at this time. I once had a really nice but “dumb” woman I do like, say to me she knew her god existed. When I demanded proof she said she felt him. I then demanded to know where her god was when as a child I was being raped, she had no answer, yet still kept existing her god not only was real but was constantly in her life. She could feel him. I gave up. She couldn’t even set aside her Catholic faith long enough to feel sympathy for a raped child. That told me why so many people stay with the religion that has the highest child abuse statistics. Just before I left her home she touched my arm, told me she would talk to her priest, and asked me to come to her church with her that she went to four times a week. If I did I would see her god was real, alive, and wanting to be part of my life. She had just set aside what I had told her, that her god had ignored I was being raped as a child. She couldn’t reconcile it with her faith so she just lost it, shut it out, ignored it and instead still pushed for her deity.
On every blog I read dealing with a case of a religious figure of any faith abusing a child, the question comes up “How can anyone still support that religion, how can they give them more money”? As I found out it is simple. They simply deny or refuse to deal with facts. This was a woman I have known for 15 years, helped out repeatedly, even gave her a printer when she did not have one. I later found out she was using it to print the church bulletins for the services, but I did not care. I gave it to her because she claimed to need one and couldn’t afford it. Yet where was her wealthy church in giving her a printer to do their work for them? Yet it was up to me, an atheist child abuse survivor that gave her the means to do a service for her wealthy church.
Anyway enjoy the video. Again this is not an attack on those that have a spiritual code or belief that leads them through their daily life, this is to refute those that claim the bible is the literal word of an all knowing god and never wrong. Hugs
DeathSantis is a Christian nationalist who believes the myth spread by Christian liars that the US is founded as a Christian nation by and for Christians. His version of religious freedom is total control by the Christians so that they can force their views on everyone else. His idea is to have the public pay for Christian schools and force Christian doctrines / moral standards on public school students. He doesn’t seem to understand that there are non-Christians religious people along with people of no religious views. He also buys deeply in to the myth that Christians are discriminated against and unfairly treated in the US. This man and his kind must never be allowed to have authority and control over the government. Hugs
Republican candidate vows to restore ‘full religious freedom’ in the US if elected president
Republican presidential candidate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on September 15, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The summit featured remarks from multiple 2024 Republican Presidential candidates making their case to the conservative audience members. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Republican presidential candidate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on September 15, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The summit featured remarks from multiple 2024 Republican Presidential candidates making their case to the conservative audience members. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted the vital role faith in God plays in leadership as he explained how he will advance the cause of religious liberty if he becomes the 47th president of the United States.
DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, addressed the crowd at the Family Research Council’s Pray, Vote, Stand Summit Friday, where he discussed his faith in God and outlined how he would protect religious liberty if elected president.
“I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God,” he said. “When you stand up for what’s right in this day and age, that is not going to be cost-free. You are going to face blowback, you’re going to face attacks, you’re going to face smears. And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition.”
DeSantis credited his faith in God with giving him “the foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you ultimately doesn’t matter because you are aiming higher.”
After expressing concerns about the current state of affairs in the U.S., DeSantis lamented that “we do have a spiritual decline in this country.”
The candidate cited the practice of “forcibly closing churches and denying people their right to worship as they see fit” during the coronavirus lockdowns as one example of the spiritual decline engulfing the U.S. “The liquor stores were open, the strip clubs were open, but yet they shut the door on the people of faith,” he recalled.
“I believe that reviving the spirit of America is essential to helping reverse America’s decline. And this revival is going to begin in our religious institutions, our places of work, each of our households, all the institutions that make up the bedrock of society,” he declared.
DeSantis warned of “threats to religious liberty the likes we have not seen throughout most of American history” and highlighted the need for “people to be able to live their faith in all aspects of their life” as “faith has been treated as secondary to secular concerns in culture.”
“Attempts have been made to wipe our Judeo-Christian religious symbols from our national heritage and national culture. The Left, you know, they talk about saying you can’t be involved in religious practice if you’re in government because it would represent [an] ‘establishment of religion,’” he added.
The presidential candidate refuted this argument, saying, “First of all, that’s not true. But second of all, they’re the ones that want to establish a religion. They just don’t want to establish traditional religions. They want political leftism to be the established religion of this country.”
DeSantis insisted that the effort to establish political leftism as the established religion of the country has led those who want to practice their faith in public to find themselves “only being able to do that up until the point it conflicts with [the leftist] agenda.” He pointed to the treatment of coach Joe Kennedy, a Washington state high school football coach who lost his job because of opposition to his effort to pray on the field after the game, as an example of how violations of religious liberty have become commonplace.
The governor noted that Kennedy’s victory at the U.S. Supreme Court was “hailed as a victory for religious liberty” while suggesting that “the fact that it even had to go to the U.S. Supreme Court shows us that religious liberty is not flourishing the way it should in our country.”
He then outlined how he would work to advance the cause of religious liberty if elected president.
“As your president, I’m going to get to work on restoring full religious freedom in this country,” he vowed. He pointed to nominating and placing “constitutionalist judges on the courts of appeal and on the U.S. Supreme Court” as an important step in achieving that goal, assuring the audience that “my nominees will reflect the jurisprudence of justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.,” whom he referred to as “the two greatest justices on the court.”
DeSantis also announced his intention to “end once and for all religious discrimination” by abolishing “all government regulations that force groups to choose between government funding and their faith.” He maintained that “instead, we’re going to actively incorporate the faith community in our administration.”
“We will make sure that the faith community has a seat at the table as we work to do the business of the country,” he added. “We will also do what we’ve done in Florida. We have universal school choice in the state of Florida, and we need it nationwide. On day one, we’ll issue an executive order that ensures funding available to private non-religious schools must also be available to private, faith-based schools.”
He continued: “We will stop the federal government from targeting men and women on the basis of their faith. Religious schools should not be pressured to violate the tenets of their faith. There will never be a question about whether a faith-based charity that serves the poor deserves First Amendment protections. We will seek the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which suppresses the speech of our religious leaders.”
DeSantis detailed how his administration would “ensure that the Judeo-Christian tradition and values that our nation was founded on are respected and are preserved.” Specifically, he expressed a desire to “create divisions of conscience and religious freedom in the Departments of Education, Labor, and [Health and Human Services] to protect religious liberty against all agencies of government.”
“Even when God-fearing citizens have won in court, they have been forced to go through the time-consuming and invasive processes,” he lamented. “My Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute attacks on faith-based [crisis pregnancy] centers and pro-life activists, which the Biden administration is ignoring and they’re letting this go on.”
DeSantis repeatedly discussed his record as Florida governor in his remarks and concluded his speech by describing his state as “the place where woke goes to die.” He told the audience, “As president, we are going to leave the woke mind virus in the dustbin of history, where it belongs, once and for all.”
If you can’t separate church and state you can’t govern and ultimately you wont survive as a country, Christianity is not the only existing religion in America Bootsie.
Actually, I’d much prefer a leader who understands that no invisible man in the sky is coming to save us, and we need to fix the laundry list of problems we have ourselves.
I’d love to see presidents and prime ministers who are openly atheist, and quite a few being openly LGBTQ+, and quite a few being ethically nonmonogamous. And, of course, all of them being progressive and genuinely committed to making their nations and the world better for ALL the people.
I don’t really care if they believe in god. I don’t but I do care about how they govern others that don’t believe as they do. That keep their beliefs private and separate from their policies.
I am sick to death of the Bible thumpers who keep acting as though non-believers have no right to leadership in America and who treat secularism and humanism as dirty words. They are full of bullshit. We are Americans. We are decent people. We do not need to be led by superstitious fools.
We have a memorial in Salem here to show that this religious terrorism has always been part of the fabric of America. In that case, it cost a number of women their lives.
The first smallpox insufflation clinic in Boston in the 18th century was firebombed by a mob shouting that it was the devil’s work.
And American culture in general is violently prudish compared to Europe, with the Puritan roots never escaped from as the reason why.
So I cannot agree that America is better. It never escaped its horrific roots to this day.
“At the time Ron DeSantis became Governor of Florida, the Florida Retirement System (FRS1) was already in serious financial trouble, with “unfunded pension liabilities” exceeding $30 billion. Under his administration, that shortfall has risen to $36 billion, and losses continue to mount. DeSantis’ politically motivated decision to promote an Anti-ESG2 investment strategy for FRS investments is increasing that funding shortfall. This is placing the retirement savings and pensions of career state employees at risk, unless Florida taxpayers are forced to pay for the shortfall, to keep the FRS from failing.
“The massive FRS shortfall is only the tip of the HB3 iceberg. Governor DeSantis’ anti-ESG political campaign has negatively affected a number of Florida financial systems. Counties and municipalities are paying higher interest on bonds; Florida is walking away from billions in potential investments and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs in renewable energy; Florida is finding itself at a competitive disadvantage in attracting new investments and businesses. And, just like the captain of the Titanic, Governor DeSantis didn’t see it coming.
He’s pretty stupid, our taxes are paid to the county here for schools and fire, police and emergency and sanitation services. There is no mechanism in place since there is no state income tax to take it from Florida residents
Notice the title specifies “Indoctrinate Other People’s Children”. These people don’t care about other parents rights to raise their children as they wish, they don’t care about other families religious views. They are saying their long time actions in public schools out loud, to force their god, their religion, on everyone else. Yet they are always claiming they are the victims, that they are being discriminated against. The video is at the links, Hugs
Evangelical pollster George Barna spoke at FRC’s “Pray Vote Stand” conference on Oct. 7, 2021 (Image from event livestream)
While right-wing groups are mobilizing angry mobs to yell at school board members that parents have the right to control what their children are taught, evangelical pollster George Barna told religious-right activists at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand” summit Thursday that it is their duty to try to indoctrinate other people’s children into a “biblical worldview.”
Barna, one of the first senior fellows at FRC’s recently established Center for Biblical Worldview, specializes in studying what he calls “SAGE Cons”—Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. What is most striking about FRC and Barna’s “worldview” project is how few people—and how few conservative evangelicals—measure up to their right-wing “biblical worldview” standard.
When the Center for Biblical Worldview launched in May, FRC President Tony Perkins said that a biblical worldview “is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs.”
Barna told “Pray Vote Stand” attendees that only 6 percent of American adults measure up to that standard of a biblical worldview—and only one out of five people who attend an evangelical church.
“Biblically, it’s parents’ responsibility to shape their children’s worldview—both directly and indirectly,” Barna declared. But, he said, only 7 percent of parents with children under the age of 18 have a biblical worldview. That’s a problem that people with a biblical worldview must fix, he said:
That doesn’t portend well for the future because you can’t give what you don’t have. And so, the rest of us who do get it have to come alongside these children in some way. We’ve got to look for opportunities—sports teams, other kinds of activities that are taking place to help them shape things. You can’t wait for your church to get the job done.
…
This is a battle for the mind, the heart, and the soul of America, and so it’s up to you. It’s up to me—those of us who know God, love God, love Christ, read his word, study his word, embrace, embody his word—and to take that into the world in every way, shape, and form that we can.
Ultimately, we will win or lose this battle long term by what we do with children today. And so when you leave this conference, I’m asking you to think about making a list identifying the children whose lives you can impact. It is our biblical responsibility to raise up children to know, love, and serve God the all their heart, mind, strength, and soul, and I pray that you will do that with all the energy and wisdom that you can muster.
Barna’s PowerPoint slide hammered home his message that parents without a biblical worldview have “neither the vision nor the equipping” to “raise spiritual champions.” That means, it said, “True Christians must seize the moment … Go, make disciples!”
In 2017, Barna spoke at the Values Voter Summit—FRC’s annual gathering that has been rebranded as Pray Vote Stand—and told participants that the 2016 election was a “Christians vs. non-Christians” election and that Trump became president because “God did a miracle for us.”
“Pray Vote Stand” is the new name for the FRC’s annual “Values Voter Summit.” Many prominent extremists and GOP elected officials are scheduled speakers over the next three days.
Because none of the other kids parents are showing up to demand anything different. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The fascist are making all these demands and moves basically unopposed. The parents of the kids in the schools affected have to take a stand
First, let’s call this what it is…grooming Second, if they don’t groom children into biblical world views, they won’t have them…and that scares the shit out of biblical peons.
Very informative how conservative and fundamentalist religious leaders have been attacking the public school system with disastrous results. She does talk rapidly but the CC is pretty good for YouTube. Hugs
Public education is under attack from all sides in this country, typically at the hands of a few wealthy and powerful conservatives who stand to benefit from the failure of public education at the expense of children and teachers.
In this episode, @TraeCrowderLiberalRedneck examines how “Southern culture” can be looked down upon and emulated at the same time.
The American South is a complicated place, and we know a lot less about it than we think we do. And many things about the South that seem to make no sense are less confounding in context. The reality is the history of many Southern things has been manipulated, hidden, or just plain ignored. Trae Crowder guides us through the pride points, failures, and contradictions in “Southin’ Off.”
Republican Senator John Kennedy spoke at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on book bans and he also read some similar passages aloud from the books “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Genderqueer”. Kennedy then asks Illinois Secretary Of State Alexi Giannoulias whether he thinks librarians should be the only ones who have oversight of whether kids have access to these types of books.
By Peter Montgomery | October 7, 2021 5:09 pm
Evangelical pollster George Barna spoke at FRC’s “Pray Vote Stand” conference on Oct. 7, 2021 (Image from event livestream)
Scottie's Playtime 