I still stand by my statement, and am glad to see someone put in real reporting on this issue.

“People should accept people for who they are, and they shouldn’t use bigotry concealed in the name of God’s love to pass hatred on to others, and to create a culture where discrimination against someone is ok, because it’s not!”

-Michael Mason

I am not convinced of the moral superiority or superior intelligence of either choice of God or atheism. One arrives at these things through reflection, experience and self examination. I made the determination that after years of trying to do without God that atheism left a void in my life and that giving praise, glory and thanks to God in the form of our church services and away from my church praise, thanks and glory to God quietly in the form of public service was what I needed to do with my life.

Any set of humans can do good works and God is not needed to cause good works to be done, but for me and others who believe in God the good works are done for the higher purpose of giving glory to God as well as for the practical purpose of meeting needs.

And if you want to believe in something, you certainly have the freedom to do so, even if this government and people were ruling against religious activities. What is in one’s mind is one’s own personal business. The government should stay out of that place, and also churches unless one chooses for it to be there, of course. I do not so choose.

But as you mentioned, Morgan, (”My mother went to church as did my ancestors for generations past …”) you are a victim of ancestral brainwashing. If you had been from a Muslim family, or a Buddhist family, I am sure you would probably just follow their teachings. I think in general, people are a victim of their own evil ancestry, and a product of the religious gene-pool cleansing, resulting in the evolution of many humans that are hard-wired to believe in a deity of some sort.

I just do not feel a need for religion in my life, and I do not think any person, government agency, or religious organization (of any kind) should be dictating what another person should or should not do. While there are some religious people who are good, most seem to want to seize the power to tell others how to live and what to do, and usually (but not 100%, and I know that) they do not follow their own teachings.

One can lead a decent, normal, moral and ethical life without the need for a deity or a religious life. It is this fact that most religious people forget. And many, many crimes throughout history have been done in the name of religion, or in rebellion to religion and government oppression.

Why is it that religious people cannot leave well enough alone and feel that they must change everyone? I cannot fathom it. I never will become a sheepish religious automaton. If God exists, then it should show itself and prove it without a shadow of a doubt. Otherwise, it is simply a fairy tale.

I have believed in a long time in removing non-tax status for churches involved in partisan politics of any kind. Church is about human spirit and human needs and that is all it needs to be concerned with. Politics and candidate endorsing and trying to change a political outcome has nothing to do with a human need or being a place of renewal of human spirit.

As one minister said on TV, separation of church and state is absolutely correct. You can not be both a preacher and a politician. You have to choose to be one or the other he said, You can not be both.

I wholeheartedly support the lifting of the tax-exempt status of any church that voids its spiritual mission by drifting off on blatantly political tangents of any persuasion and thus places itself at blatant cross-purposes as to what its correct and only mission is to be, a place of worship and spiritual renewal and refreshment and nothing more.

God is in one’s heart, is in the strength and energy to get through one’s day and week and to outlast troubles and problems without being consumed by some of them. I find prayer and meditation calming and helpful. Church is a place where I can drop the ragged cares of my own world and its pile of bills, etc. for a few refreshing hours. A place where I can meet with people of all ages, both straight and gay. Our church is involved in feeding the hungry and the needy at s kitchen that feeds 100 plus people one hot meal every day of the year. Every Sunday, our parishioners bring food for a program that assembles bags of food every week for the hungry. Four times a year our church makes over a hundred sandwiches for the men at a homeless shelter. We go on a sponsored walk once a year to raise money for hunger. We give money to charities that feed the hungry and the needy.

some of our church’s knitters we have a knitting group, I am also a knitter, will be knitting scarves for the homeless starting now.

My church is a place where I can take my eyes off of myself and concentrate on being of service to others where in numbers as a group, we can pool our resources to help those less fortunate within.

Activities and ministries to get involved in.

We pitch in with a local community organization to clean the lcoal stream, fix up the local home and garden of a senior person who can’t do that anymore.

For me this is good. My belief in God has gotten me through situations, gives me a “solid rock” to stand on. gives me positive and meaningful opportunities to be of service to others. I have a ready made community of nice, pleasant people of all ages, different ethnicities and backgrounds, straight and gay, whom I can spend time with once a week.

My faith in God and my church with its beautiful music that preserves some of the great music of different cultures of different centuries is a vital part of my personal culture. My mother went to church as did my ancestors for generations past and it sustained them, gave them something to look forward where they go forth for another week, refreshed and renewed.

First, I tried that prayer stuff as a teenager. It did not work then. It will not work now. One simply cannot “pray away the gay”.

Second, numerous scientific studies conducted over the past 30 years or so show that prayer does not work at all, no matter the subject, and no matter the “god”. In many cases, if the prayer subject was human and ill, more of the people died for whom people prayed than for those to whom no prayer was given. One can easily find the evidence using a google search.

An invisible, silent and absent god does not do anything.