Yeehaw! That’s some mighty fine theology right thar!
I was just thinking a few days ago – I have never heard anyone say they left the church or aren’t speaking to their parents because they were “lied to” about Santa but most of us have heard (or been) people who are now nonreligious because of their overly strict background. Just sayin’.
Learning that Santa is make-believe is not on the same magnitude as finding out you’ve been lied to about God. When you believe in God, he becomes your whole life. Santa doesn’t. When you discover that what the Mog pulpit from the pulpit really are lies or half-truths (as in, not in the Bible or twisting the Bible), it shatters that life.
(Generic “you” here, just in case it’s not clear.)
I hear ya on that one Christy!
I think it’s all good and fun! When your home feels the love of and for God and Christ, these things, Santa & the Easter Bunny are known just to be festive events and no threat against beliefs is a factor.
On the other hand, taking away from a child, the fun of pretending that Santa or an Easter Bunny is coming to bring gifts or trinket, is hard on a innocent imagination! They often feel resentment or cheated during those holidays!
Go ahead people..,. Let the children have a wonderful time!!! Surely the rest of the year, under your guidance will keep them aware of the truth and the fun!
Ho Ho Ho!
Merry Christmas!
~~~Heart 😛
I actually heard someone say that her road to unbelief in a deity started when she realized her parents had lied to her about a man who knew if you were bad or good and watched you while you slept and while you were awake. She noticed the similarities in the two stories.
I shouldn’t say this, but these are semi-legit reasons to hate Santa Claus; they’re just not as fun as the Santa=Satan ones dragged out every year. 😈
Here’s one more: All his labor is done overseas, depriving hard-working Americans of decent jobs. Just examine what’s written on most of the toys and junk you get, gee, I didn’t know the North Pole was in China 😛
Okay, a Krispy Kreme butt cushion for the person with the best Dumb Crook story of some poor burglar who got stuck in a chimney, esp in December.
– Keeps a naughty and nice list.
– Only works one day a year.
– Always wears a suit
-Keeps close tabs on you to see if you are naughty or nice.
Yeah, would you want to be caught in a movie theater when Santa comes? 🙄
Depends on the movie. And he has to bring his own popcorn. 😀
Never did santa with my kids. Didnt want to teach them a lie and take the focus off of Jesus birthday .
No easter bunny for that matter either.
You could have taught them the truth about saint nick, how saint nikolaos was serious about Jesus and he smacked Arius in the mouth for his heresy
My 5 year old asked about Santa this year so I told her the legend, starting with the historical figure and tracing the story to its current state. She was content. I also told her that if her friends believe he’s real, she shouldn’t tell them otherwise because that’s not nice.
Our almost-5-year-old heard that Santa was real from friends. (We keep Santa as a fun part of Christmas, but always said he was fun to pretend about.) She has been very curious about Santa this year, so we have also been talking about the actual St Nicholas. She is fascinated by him. She still isn’t sure what to believe about Santa coming down the chimney with presents. It’s cute to watch her figure this out.
Dirty-covered with ashes and soot
Crippled-only has one leg (from his head to his FOOT)
Won’t use a handkerchief-laying a finger aside to his nose (or maybe cocaine use)
Serious guilt trip all year long for little tykes. Sounds like my years in IFBdom!
Quite frankly, Santa scared me when I was a kid. I was glad when I found out he wasn’t real!
Santa goes around bribing people to be good but he never defines the term.
He claims to know what we are doing all the time. If we are bad, whatever that is, he will find out about it.
Santa stays the heck away from the unclean Muslims too!
Santa works one day per year but when he does he wants worldwide recognition for the fact.
Giggle! 😆 😆 😆
Keeps track of whether we are naughty or nice.
Reasons Santa isn’t a fundy mog:
Known for his generosity.
Only binge eats one day per year.
Kind to animals.
Tries to sneak in and do good without being seen or praised.
Altruistic.
Wears a suit but no tie. The compromiser!
Sings songs that are not in the hymnbook.
Goes into the houses of Presbyterians and other Catholics.
Goes into all of these heatherns houses without leaving Chick tracts.
Lives at the North Pole which is not in America.
Delivers toys even when Christmas is on a Sunday.
Goes into the houses of Presbyterians and other Catholics.
LOL
When I was a kid, I believed in Santa and was blissfully unaware of any controversy about it. When I started going to a Fundy type church as a young adult, I was surprised that some people thought Santa was a bad thing.
On a totally unrelated note, I should be doing housework right now… 😛
Me, too… I grew up in a moral, but non-Christian home. We celebrated Halloween (but no satanic rituals), were taught that the Easter Bunny hid baskets of goodies, and that Santa brought up gifts.
Like you, after God brought me to Himself, I got into a fundamental church, and then kept getting into more and more fundamental churches until I heard more about how wrongly I was brought up (but I secretly enjoyed my childhood).
Me too! The housework, that is. 😳
Scientific Inquiry into Santa Claus
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) – I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison
– – – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
Magic and fundy theology: the two things that always trump science. 😉
Magic and Fundy Theology – same thing ?
Add a good dose of superstition and i believe the formula is complete for fundy theology!
Paul Best, this is all well and good. But I gotta tell ya, those reindeer are going to need to poop at some point. Santa is behind them. Feces at 650 mph would probably ruin his evening before he even got to his first house.
Just sayin’.
Comment of the year
No wonder we never see Santa, he’s just too fast to slow down! 😀
Sheldon? Is that you? 😉
Maybe Santa is a Time Lord and his sleigh is a TARDIS.
^+1 for Doctor Who reference.
I know lots of muslims in australia who celebrate christmas and santa is busy delivering tons of gifts to their children
Dr. Larry Brown went on a long rant against Santa Clause at Pastors School 2008. (The same sermon where he climbed on top of the pulpit and proceeded to rip up Rick Warren for using “drums on the platform.”)
There’s a sermon clip online from the 70’s where Hyles said that “If Santa Clause comes down your chimney, punch his lights out, he’s of the devil.”
The anger that has spewed out of so many IFB pulpits is so contrary to the spirit of Christ. So much hatred, so little love.
I am still a big fan of the Cathedrals even though they are gone. Many years ago while the Cathedrals were still touring I asked a friend of mine if he had hear the album A Cathedral Christmas. He said he refused to listen to it because it had a medley of Jingle Bells and Santa Clause is Coming to Town.
In my fundy prime, I gave that album to another fundy friend, for the same reason. Later I bought the record from a bookstore, then I bought the CD. Glad the fundy nonsense is over for me! Glen Payne does a great ho! ho! ho! I’m pretty sure Lari Goss did the vocal arrangements for that project.
Our MOG-elect, (voted on in haste last week) preached a message where he basically ruined Santa for all the kids who were in the service. Think, people!!!! 😡
I’ll never get the Fundy killjoy-mindset about Santa Claus. Sad, really, to destroy that for the kids. Sheesh.
What’s wrong with being honest with the kids? Do you people let your kids also believe in the Warren Commission until they are 5 years old? The Warren Commission is a bigger joke and fraud than Santa and the Tooth Fairy put together!
But the Warren Commission Report really does exist. You may disagree with its findings, but the Commission is/was real, as is the report. All 889 pages. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
We tell our kids that today Santa is fun to pretend, and that other kids who believe it’s real are having fun, too. My MIL was not happy with us; she thought we should let them believe Santa brings the gifts. We think they should be appreciative to the people who pick them out and buy them. meh. They know Daddy eats the cookies and drinks the chocolate milk they leave. 🙂
We have always had presents from “Santa” to people in our family. One by one our children either caught us at it (or realized on their own) that their parents were Santa, and they wanted in. They preserved the Santa story for the other children.
It was never as if Santa was a replacement for the Christ. Santa was one of those who worshiped Christ as well, only he did it better than most. He gave in the spirit of Christ’s command to give, without expecting anything in return. And he gave to children, because children are close to the heart of God.
We also did the “tooth fairy” with my children as well. I remember the day my daughter got into my underwear drawer (for some reason) and found a tooth of hers that I had kept. She was delighted to realize who the tooth fairy was, and teased me about it for some time (as she was still losing the occasional tooth).
We never considered Santa “a lie” as so many fundie pastors (including ours) had said. It just was a tradition, acting out a part of Christmas that was fun for children and helped explain why we give each other gifts.
Seriously? I’ve never been a fundamentalist but there is so much hate and bitterness on this site it leaves me with a dirty feeling…
Just be thankful you have never been under the controlling influence of the IFB and be thankful we are here warning folks like yourself of the dangers found in the IFB movement.
“I’ve never been a fundamentalist.” — then you have no idea what we’ve been through. And the fact that we respond with what you see as so much “hate and bitterness”? Might that not be a clue that what we’ve experienced was deeply hurtful?
If our response is so repugnant to you, you might want to consider WHY we’re responding so viscerally.
Seriously, James? You admit ignorance of a subject and then proceed to pass judgement, not exactly an elegant way to communicate.
What Don and pastor’s wife have already said is true. There in fact are people whom visit and post on this site who may be “bitter” or hold a hatred for people who treated them wrongly. However, in your haste to misjudgment you missed those who are healing from a broken lifestyle they were forced into or unwittingly fell into. You missed that this site serves as a “light house” for those near or heading toward the destructive IFB religion. There are some who just hate the system of religion, not necessarily the people. There are many many other reasons this site exists for good.
May you grow up soon.
I don’t know any of you people’s experiences and I’m very sorry you have had hurtful religious experiences. I have too, I was raised in a cult, not fundamentalist per se but plenty crazy. I just said how I feel…I see a lot of hate here, and it gives me a dirty feeling. Take it for what it’s worth.
There are ways of warning people of a destructive religion without mockery, IMO. Most of you seem to be religious, religion should bring peace and comfort. In my own life, I like to focus on the good and not hold on to the bad things religion has to offer. *shrug*
Comments are closed.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
bwhahahaha
or should that be bwhohohohoho?
😆 😆
First? Now my comment, why does that sound like some of my old Fundy pastors…oh wait,
http://doctorbulldog.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/jesus-shoots-santa-claus.jpg
Redneck IFB Christmas Display
Yeehaw! That’s some mighty fine theology right thar!
I was just thinking a few days ago – I have never heard anyone say they left the church or aren’t speaking to their parents because they were “lied to” about Santa but most of us have heard (or been) people who are now nonreligious because of their overly strict background. Just sayin’.
Learning that Santa is make-believe is not on the same magnitude as finding out you’ve been lied to about God. When you believe in God, he becomes your whole life. Santa doesn’t. When you discover that what the Mog pulpit from the pulpit really are lies or half-truths (as in, not in the Bible or twisting the Bible), it shatters that life.
(Generic “you” here, just in case it’s not clear.)
I hear ya on that one Christy!
I think it’s all good and fun! When your home feels the love of and for God and Christ, these things, Santa & the Easter Bunny are known just to be festive events and no threat against beliefs is a factor.
On the other hand, taking away from a child, the fun of pretending that Santa or an Easter Bunny is coming to bring gifts or trinket, is hard on a innocent imagination! They often feel resentment or cheated during those holidays!
Go ahead people..,. Let the children have a wonderful time!!! Surely the rest of the year, under your guidance will keep them aware of the truth and the fun!
Ho Ho Ho!
Merry Christmas!
~~~Heart 😛
I actually heard someone say that her road to unbelief in a deity started when she realized her parents had lied to her about a man who knew if you were bad or good and watched you while you slept and while you were awake. She noticed the similarities in the two stories.
I shouldn’t say this, but these are semi-legit reasons to hate Santa Claus; they’re just not as fun as the Santa=Satan ones dragged out every year. 😈
Here’s one more: All his labor is done overseas, depriving hard-working Americans of decent jobs. Just examine what’s written on most of the toys and junk you get, gee, I didn’t know the North Pole was in China 😛
Okay, a Krispy Kreme butt cushion for the person with the best Dumb Crook story of some poor burglar who got stuck in a chimney, esp in December.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2011/11/teen-burglar-stuck-in-chimney-10-hours.html
Teen criminal stuck in chimney for 10 hours
– Keeps a naughty and nice list.
– Only works one day a year.
– Always wears a suit
-Keeps close tabs on you to see if you are naughty or nice.
Yeah, would you want to be caught in a movie theater when Santa comes? 🙄
Depends on the movie. And he has to bring his own popcorn. 😀
Never did santa with my kids. Didnt want to teach them a lie and take the focus off of Jesus birthday .
No easter bunny for that matter either.
You could have taught them the truth about saint nick, how saint nikolaos was serious about Jesus and he smacked Arius in the mouth for his heresy
My 5 year old asked about Santa this year so I told her the legend, starting with the historical figure and tracing the story to its current state. She was content. I also told her that if her friends believe he’s real, she shouldn’t tell them otherwise because that’s not nice.
Our almost-5-year-old heard that Santa was real from friends. (We keep Santa as a fun part of Christmas, but always said he was fun to pretend about.) She has been very curious about Santa this year, so we have also been talking about the actual St Nicholas. She is fascinated by him. She still isn’t sure what to believe about Santa coming down the chimney with presents. It’s cute to watch her figure this out.
Dirty-covered with ashes and soot
Crippled-only has one leg (from his head to his FOOT)
Won’t use a handkerchief-laying a finger aside to his nose (or maybe cocaine use)
Serious guilt trip all year long for little tykes. Sounds like my years in IFBdom!
Quite frankly, Santa scared me when I was a kid. I was glad when I found out he wasn’t real!
Santa goes around bribing people to be good but he never defines the term.
He claims to know what we are doing all the time. If we are bad, whatever that is, he will find out about it.
Santa stays the heck away from the unclean Muslims too!
Santa works one day per year but when he does he wants worldwide recognition for the fact.
Giggle! 😆 😆 😆
Keeps track of whether we are naughty or nice.
Reasons Santa isn’t a fundy mog:
Known for his generosity.
Only binge eats one day per year.
Kind to animals.
Tries to sneak in and do good without being seen or praised.
Altruistic.
Wears a suit but no tie. The compromiser!
Sings songs that are not in the hymnbook.
Goes into the houses of Presbyterians and other Catholics.
Goes into all of these heatherns houses without leaving Chick tracts.
Lives at the North Pole which is not in America.
Delivers toys even when Christmas is on a Sunday.
Goes into the houses of Presbyterians and other Catholics.
LOL
When I was a kid, I believed in Santa and was blissfully unaware of any controversy about it. When I started going to a Fundy type church as a young adult, I was surprised that some people thought Santa was a bad thing.
On a totally unrelated note, I should be doing housework right now… 😛
Me, too… I grew up in a moral, but non-Christian home. We celebrated Halloween (but no satanic rituals), were taught that the Easter Bunny hid baskets of goodies, and that Santa brought up gifts.
Like you, after God brought me to Himself, I got into a fundamental church, and then kept getting into more and more fundamental churches until I heard more about how wrongly I was brought up (but I secretly enjoyed my childhood).
Me too! The housework, that is. 😳
Scientific Inquiry into Santa Claus
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) – I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison
– – – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
Magic and fundy theology: the two things that always trump science. 😉
Magic and Fundy Theology – same thing ?
Add a good dose of superstition and i believe the formula is complete for fundy theology!
Paul Best, this is all well and good. But I gotta tell ya, those reindeer are going to need to poop at some point. Santa is behind them. Feces at 650 mph would probably ruin his evening before he even got to his first house.
Just sayin’.
Comment of the year
No wonder we never see Santa, he’s just too fast to slow down! 😀
Sheldon? Is that you? 😉
Maybe Santa is a Time Lord and his sleigh is a TARDIS.
^+1 for Doctor Who reference.
I know lots of muslims in australia who celebrate christmas and santa is busy delivering tons of gifts to their children
Dr. Larry Brown went on a long rant against Santa Clause at Pastors School 2008. (The same sermon where he climbed on top of the pulpit and proceeded to rip up Rick Warren for using “drums on the platform.”)
There’s a sermon clip online from the 70’s where Hyles said that “If Santa Clause comes down your chimney, punch his lights out, he’s of the devil.”
The anger that has spewed out of so many IFB pulpits is so contrary to the spirit of Christ. So much hatred, so little love.
I am still a big fan of the Cathedrals even though they are gone. Many years ago while the Cathedrals were still touring I asked a friend of mine if he had hear the album A Cathedral Christmas. He said he refused to listen to it because it had a medley of Jingle Bells and Santa Clause is Coming to Town.
In my fundy prime, I gave that album to another fundy friend, for the same reason. Later I bought the record from a bookstore, then I bought the CD. Glad the fundy nonsense is over for me! Glen Payne does a great ho! ho! ho! I’m pretty sure Lari Goss did the vocal arrangements for that project.
Our MOG-elect, (voted on in haste last week) preached a message where he basically ruined Santa for all the kids who were in the service. Think, people!!!! 😡
I’ll never get the Fundy killjoy-mindset about Santa Claus. Sad, really, to destroy that for the kids. Sheesh.
What’s wrong with being honest with the kids? Do you people let your kids also believe in the Warren Commission until they are 5 years old? The Warren Commission is a bigger joke and fraud than Santa and the Tooth Fairy put together!
But the Warren Commission Report really does exist. You may disagree with its findings, but the Commission is/was real, as is the report. All 889 pages. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Does the magic bullet really exist?
Yes, it does.
😀
That’s not the magic bullet I’m looking for.
Is that some kind of code? 🙂
We tell our kids that today Santa is fun to pretend, and that other kids who believe it’s real are having fun, too. My MIL was not happy with us; she thought we should let them believe Santa brings the gifts. We think they should be appreciative to the people who pick them out and buy them. meh. They know Daddy eats the cookies and drinks the chocolate milk they leave. 🙂
We have always had presents from “Santa” to people in our family. One by one our children either caught us at it (or realized on their own) that their parents were Santa, and they wanted in. They preserved the Santa story for the other children.
It was never as if Santa was a replacement for the Christ. Santa was one of those who worshiped Christ as well, only he did it better than most. He gave in the spirit of Christ’s command to give, without expecting anything in return. And he gave to children, because children are close to the heart of God.
We also did the “tooth fairy” with my children as well. I remember the day my daughter got into my underwear drawer (for some reason) and found a tooth of hers that I had kept. She was delighted to realize who the tooth fairy was, and teased me about it for some time (as she was still losing the occasional tooth).
We never considered Santa “a lie” as so many fundie pastors (including ours) had said. It just was a tradition, acting out a part of Christmas that was fun for children and helped explain why we give each other gifts.
Seriously? I’ve never been a fundamentalist but there is so much hate and bitterness on this site it leaves me with a dirty feeling…
Just be thankful you have never been under the controlling influence of the IFB and be thankful we are here warning folks like yourself of the dangers found in the IFB movement.
“I’ve never been a fundamentalist.” — then you have no idea what we’ve been through. And the fact that we respond with what you see as so much “hate and bitterness”? Might that not be a clue that what we’ve experienced was deeply hurtful?
If our response is so repugnant to you, you might want to consider WHY we’re responding so viscerally.
Seriously, James? You admit ignorance of a subject and then proceed to pass judgement, not exactly an elegant way to communicate.
What Don and pastor’s wife have already said is true. There in fact are people whom visit and post on this site who may be “bitter” or hold a hatred for people who treated them wrongly. However, in your haste to misjudgment you missed those who are healing from a broken lifestyle they were forced into or unwittingly fell into. You missed that this site serves as a “light house” for those near or heading toward the destructive IFB religion. There are some who just hate the system of religion, not necessarily the people. There are many many other reasons this site exists for good.
May you grow up soon.
I don’t know any of you people’s experiences and I’m very sorry you have had hurtful religious experiences. I have too, I was raised in a cult, not fundamentalist per se but plenty crazy. I just said how I feel…I see a lot of hate here, and it gives me a dirty feeling. Take it for what it’s worth.
There are ways of warning people of a destructive religion without mockery, IMO. Most of you seem to be religious, religion should bring peace and comfort. In my own life, I like to focus on the good and not hold on to the bad things religion has to offer. *shrug*