Open letter to all Atheists.

An example or two from scripture would be helpful to back this up. Meanwhile Mathew 6:6 is a scripture supporting the opposite proposition.

\That's not what I said at all, and is off-topic.But to address your statement....logical conclusions are only as good as the evidence presented to you.Edited by riVeRraT, : No reason given.

I am not offended by atheists because I think they are from God.There is plenty of evidence around of their agenda being pushed on me, this forum is a prime example. I can take it or leave it, just like you can.Why is it that majority only rules when it supports your position?

Theistic thought is wisdom and love, not science. It has nothing to do with progress other than to warn people of works and doesn't work from it's history. Those who don't learn history )in the correct sense) are doomed to repeat it. It is neither flawed or outdated. It only becomes flawed when atheists take it out of context. I am not. I critical think every day of my life. It has it's purpose.

What does that even mean?

What you and creation scientists need to learn is that the Creator of the universe said to believe in Him by faith. So you aren't going to find any (objective) evidence.Funny thing that faith though, because all of science requires faith. Yep, no shortage of theistic hypocrisy when it comes to science. But the instruction "manual" for a hammer should say "God forbid you hit yourself in the nuts with this tool".

What don't you understand about that statement? Is pretty simple.

Verse wars, here we go. That verse is about hypocrisy, not praying in public.James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.Luke 11:1 [ Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer ] One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.They saw Him praying! So He wasn't in private. Jesus must have been a hypocrite by your logic.Acts 12:12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.Acts 16:25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.I am sure I can find many more examples of public prayer.

I can make no sense of this post, possibly because its referents are the imaginary world in your head rather than the real one.

Nor I. How is back and forth discussions in any way pushing our 'agenda' on you, riVeRraT? Are we mandating that you think a certain way? Are you being forced to think in some fashion?This is an open discussion forum and you are free to participate however much or however little you like. People disagreeing with you are pointing at holes in your logic do not have an agenda. Last time I checked, we are not going to your house, knocking on your door and telling you what we think. Nor are we attempting to pass legislation that would force you to think one way or the other.

Praying at a government function also does not force you to participate. Again, the majority rules only apply when it supports your position.

Now a little side note on the responses pertaining to critical thinking. I've been in here since 2003. I really respect the intelligence of the people in this forum. That intelligence has helped me define my faith. I want my faith to be true and honest. I want to test that faith constantly.In many threads and debates there are many "standards" of reason that atheists seem to use. I call it "the robot response" when ever a Christian tries to apply his faith. I.E. Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Unicorns, and many other illogical comparisons. One that always struck me was the one about people in the church have the same divorce rate as people outside the church.Being the critical thinker that I am (yes I am) it really bothered me that statement. It's evidence and observation that you use to draw a conclusion. Any logical person would ask themselves, if the bible is so right about marriage, and Jesus's way so righteous, why is the divorce rate the same? I would fully expect it to be different. It racked my brain for 11 years that statement, and have seen it used numerous times to put down Christianity.So it's extremely funny that I get an article in my Facebook feed today siting this article:
Author Debunks Myths About Divorce Rates, Including of Churchgoers | Church & Ministries NewsSo there's a lot of conclusions I could draw from that. Everything from she is full of it, or someone else is full of it. But if this is true, then it exemplifies what I mean when I say "critical thinking is only as good as the information used.I would tend to believe this article as in my 48 years of life I have not observed a 50% divorce rate among Christians in the church.Yea science is only as good as it's next discovery, and it's only as good as it's current ones too. If I hear one more time in the news that wine is good/bad for you, I am going to write a letter asking for a ban of further commentary on wine drinking.

I see that it is words arranged in some order and ended with a period. But what is theistic thought?Why would theistic thought be either wisdom or love?

Matt 6It's not about giving God credit or thanks in public. It's about doing it when the attention is on you or in such a way as to bring attention to you. That is ' that they may be seen of men' or ' that they may have glory of men'. Mat 16:18 is not about buildings but gatherings of people (ekklēsia), and this is what I am betting you basing the 'build churches' part of this claim on.Mat 6 tells you there is only one way to pray: The Lord's Prayer in secret. Anything else is pointless because God knows what you want and what you need already and doesn't need you telling him.Mat 14 Jesus prays alone.Mat 26 Jesus leaves the group to prayMar 6 Jesus prays aloneMar 14 Jesus leaves the group to prayLuk 6 Jesus prays aloneLuke 9 Jesus goes off to prayLuke 11 Q: Teach us to pray, A: The Lord's PrayerThat's pretty much all I can find that's relevant and to do with Jesus' instructions.So no, he didn't order us to build churches. Indeed, the word 'church' isn't in the Bible. For fun, take your preferred translation and look how they translated Psalms 22:22 vs Hebrews 2:12I should point out that the Greek is the same as in the Septuagint, it just gets translated differently, basically because King James said so. Either Jesus was being a hypocrite, or actually what he did did not contravene his general instructions earlier. I prefer the latter, but feel free to argue either way. For praying for the glory bestowed upon them by other men (or in the case the Pharisee vs Publican in Luke 18, praying for self-glorification in general) is bad. That is what people who hold up government business while everybody's attention is upon them and they are more or less a captive audience in order to show how Christian and righteous they are by correctly giving thanks to Jesus and praying for whatever or whomever are doing. I'm pretty sure Jesus would see these people cynically using the sacred to bolster their political career in a negative light, wouldn't you? That's very true. I'm not fond of torturing and murdering and saying 'convert or die', but if you want to defend that, be my guest.If you want to suggest that making public declarations about how awesomely devout you are is the ONLY way to spread the gospel - then that's perfectly wrong. For instance you could go to a forum and say 'Jesus died for our sins {etc}', that wouldn't be against Jesus' instructions as far as I know. You could even do it with pathos and ethos and rhetoric and whatever other things the Greeks liked. I would have a problem if two men engaged in an erotic kiss for 2 minutes at the start of every government meeting. Maybe a few times as part of some political protest point I could tolerate, but as a long standing tradition that MUST NOT BE QUESTIONED? No.On the other hand, I'm perfectly fine with guys taking a 2 minute moment to sit on my garden wall and kiss just as I'm perfectly content if someone wants to take a 2 minute moment to quietly pray on my garden wall.What Jesus thinks of either of those groups of people is his business, but it seems to me that what these political opportunists are doing is exploiting the popularity of Jesus/God for votes, and I'm surprised more Christians aren't appalled by this sacrilegious self serving blasphemy. It appears you were wrong to do so.

Since you will likely look to these verses should you reply to my other post, I'll add what I think of their relevance here. You can amalgamate your response to stop our thread from forking awkwardly. Not Jesus speaking, nor is it about public prayer, nor is it about praying so as to be seen by men to be praying. There is no evidence that Jesus had access to a closet in this 'certain place' - why are you being so literal? The point is not hypocrisy or even public prayer, but about trying to prove your righteousness by public and obvious signs of religious adherence (charity, fasting and praying are the examples principally used). The point is that these people's reward is the esteem of the fools that think such things are important.Of course, the setting is important, because Jesus is speaking to Jews whose temple has been destroyed at the time of writing (or will be destroyed if we believe Jesus was magic), but the point is that one doesn't need to pray at the Temple, one doesn't need to prove how righteous you are to other people - God is everywhere so he already knows that stuff and so their reward is earthly not heavenly. I'm sure that being tied in a dungeon with other prisoners makes it difficult for your hymns and prayers to go unnoticed so they could escape the insinuation that they were doing it to be seen by men, they were doing it in the hope of plate tectonic movement that would be a sign for the guard to convert etc.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.