Video being:
Tiffany Ondracek : Creationism (Penn and Teller) (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_lhfUhrHY
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- +Honestman400 Getting into prison can be avoided by a strong moral code. It can also be avoided by being part of a very élitist clique and being used to get what you want through that clique instead of through your own deeds.
Now, also, stealing in legal terms and stealing where it is a mortal sin according to Christianity are not coextensive.
You shoplift in order to survive (in situations where begging has already been tried and failed or where begging would expose you to police searching to put you back in a place like an orphanage), Christianity does not say all shoplifting is totally wrong in such a case.
But belonging to the kind of élite I describe does protect you from shoplifting.
Now, belonging to such an élite does not necessarily protect you from aborting or using contraceptives or being gay as in committing or trying to commit sodomy. But those offenses, which are mortal sins, will not land you in prison any more.
+Honestman400 Atheists might simply be so minoratarian in US that they are mostly or over much part of the kind of élite I just described.
In Sweden it is not so. I have been to prison there, and as for Swedish inmates atheists and satanists do outnumber the very Orthodox Christians or even Christians at all. You do get more Christians, as well as obviously Muslims, if you count immigrants as well.
[maybe my stats are flawed by fact I was among violent prisoners rather than thieves] - Cynthia Albrecht
- +Honestman400 You must have been dropped on your head a lot when you were a baby, to think that, because there are more Christians in American jails than atheists, (which you say, but not that I believe it, yet) that means that Christians tend to go to jail more frequently than atheists. You know absolutely nothing about inmates, and how many BECOME Christians while in jail. They were not Christians BEFORE being convicted, but many people become Christian while serving time.
I have been involved a little with inmate ministry, and it is an active ministry. Inmates become surprisingly interested in eternal matters when they are serving time, and learn about the Bible, Yeshua and what they mean, then become Christian relatively frequently, compared to other ministry fields. - 007TruthSeeker
- +Cynthia Albrecht You raise several good points, Cynthia, including how ludicrous it was for someone to write that more Christians GO to jail, when that is hardly the case.
As you mentioned, they often respond positively to the message of God's love for us, whey they no longer have their gang around them, their drugs to cloud their mind and lots of time to think.
For some critic to say that Christian missions "take advantage" of the poor inmates demonstrates how they do not understand the situation at all, but are simply anti-Christian. - Paul Stern
- +Cynthia Albrecht I have to agree with you, too, Cynthia, as to how criminals do not GO to prison as Christians, but a LOT of them become Christians in prison. It is one of the most satisfying missions, I've read, since inmates usually are from broken homes of single parents and have had little introduction to Christianity. When they learn of what God wants for us, they gladly accept the message. To say that Christians GO to prison is simply being devious.
- Honestman400
- +007TruthSeeker to you and Paul Stern. I understand why you cannot accept that Christians go to jail in much higher numbers (by percentage) than atheists. It's the same mentality I've found among Christians who Claim that Hitler was an atheist, because they cannot reconcile horrendous actions with Christianity. I, on the other hand, have no problem with accepting the figures. As Voltaire said:
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
There is nothing more absurd that a belief in Gods. - Cynthia Albrecht
- As others have tried to explain, God exists whether you like it or not, and it is a smart thing to investigate this with an open mind and not be fooled by anti-God propaganda such as you see on this site.
The issue is too important to leave it uninvestigated, so don't, like these critics have done, dismiss it without careful study. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Brandon Osborn the "only god can judge me" tattoo is heretical.
It is against Romans chapter 13 and also against the Catholic Catechisms like Trentine Catechism or the Catechism of Christian Doctrine by Pope Pius X.
Similarily the Catechism of Philaret of Moscow would reject it as heretical, and so would - though themselves heretical - the Catechisms of Geneva, Westminister and a few more.
Including one I never read while belonging to that heresy, that of Luther. [Those actually: like the Westminister Congregation he wrote a smaller and a larger one.]
So while not atheist they are not orthodox Christians either. Some may be Muslims arguing from the locality in Dar el Harb and the time without a Khaleef. Though that would not be accepted as excuse by other Muslims. Others are plainly floating around or making a private religion.
Others might indeed have said it on Christian or near Christian grounds on practises recently outlawed but not necessarily wrong - bootlegging or tax fraud after Roe and Wade (in which case it is not the outlawing but the licitness that is new). - Raymond Doetjes
- +Cynthia Albrecht When you adhere to proper scientific protocol you can't start with a default position stating that God exists. Because proving a negative is pretty much impossible. You need to start with the default position there's no God prove to me that there is,Proving something that exists should be infinitely more easy than disproving something that doesn't exist.
Concerning the stat that most people in jail are religious is not because of conversion during their jail time. But it's the stat taken upon registering an inmate, which is done so that they can have their "extra liberties" -- which I am firmly against btw. Kosher food, Halal food, access to the praying booth 2,3 or 5 times a day. It is true that loads more religious people come from jail because of conversion during their sentence.
In my country (and since you have a Dutch name it could well be your country) I know for a fact that 56% of the people in jail are non-Dutch citizens. The largest majority are people from the old-colonial Islands, Suriname and Morocco. The first two have a massive population of Catholics people, the third obviously muslim. Then we have a large amount of eastern european convicts which have ranging religions from protestant, catholic and orthodox russian. We need to remind ourselves that most of Western Europe is statistically atheists but the rest of the world over half is religious.
So if this statistic proves anything than it is that people outside of western europe are more likely religious. I can't speak for other countries because I don't have those statistics. - Honestman400
- +Cynthia Albrecht I have been investigating it for nearly 60 yrs now. I spent the first 20 yrs of my life as a devout Christian. I took me nearly five years to finally abandon my faith, most of these years were spent desperately trying to hold onto my beliefs, so don't assume that I am a sucker to propaganda. It is Christians who are gullible to propaganda.Science consists of questions that may never be answered, but Christianity consist of answers that may never be questioned.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "Will you tell me that the numbers showing the VAST majority of prisoners claim to be christian are all heretics?"
I did not say they are all heretics, I said that is heretical. That only God and no man on part of the state can judge a criminal is a heretical proposition and can be tested as such because it is, first of all, rejected by the real Catechism, i e the Catholic one, and second, rejected even by a lot of schismatic or heretical catechisms. In other words, the position expressed in those words (excepting special cases like bootlegging under prohibition or tax fraud under a state using tax money to fund antichristianism lie abortion or like teaching onesidedly evolution), as it applies to criminals, can be tested as very much a marginal opinion among Christians. In a way which would not be applicable to call for example Creationists "marginal". - Brandon Osborn
- may have deleted another comment here or I might still be answering the same one:
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "Saying that something you don't like or agree with is heretical is a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy"
No more than classing a certain behaviour as illegal according to the laws os Scotland.
"you don't know that's heretical"
It is obviously as testable as whether a thing is illegal in Scottish law. Marrying before the blacksmith in Gretna Green is not illegal, but acceeding to a feudal heritage without a Classical education is illegal according to a law from 15th C.
Catholic Church is not just the true Christian Church (as conceded time after time by pop culture as well) but also the majority Church. Something even you would acknowledge due to available statistics. The position is heretical according to available Catholic Catechisms, not just the latest one. Orthodox are next in number, they also would classify the position as heretical as long as it is concerned with crime rather than with sin. Anglicans are the largest body among Protestants. The Anglican tests of trua faith would also acknowledge the position as heretical. Now, after Anglicans among the Protestants I suppose the Calvinists are world wide next. They too would consider the position as heretical, as witnessed by some passage in Calvin's Institutiones or in the Westminister Catechism. And so on.
No, we are not talking about the bagpipes of a no true Scotsman, we are talking about something as testable as saying "a Scottish parent may forbid his son or daughter to marry a person, and then he or she cannot marry", which is very obviously NOT a legal Scottish statement as witnessed by Gretna Green marriages.
"you don't know every prisoner in prison and what their motivations are!"
Of course I do not. I even very clearly claimed to distinguish my position about the statement as such - "it is heretical" - from any statement about an individual wearing it on tattoo or t-shirt, since I do not know their motivations.
"Did you look at the data I cited?"
They are not relevant for distinguishing Orthodoxy from Heresy.
"Will you tell me that the numbers showing the VAST majority of prisoners claim to be christian are all heretics?"
Many prisoners who are Christians do not wear that tattoo.
Many prisoners who are Christians and are criminals acknowledge that even if they took a risk, one of the risks they took was being - and rightly so - judged as criminals.
And some Christians who are prisoners are really so for having done something good, like the Apostles, or like Kent Hovind.
I am very far from claiming every prisoner who is a Christian and in prison is a heretic, but I am very clearly claiming that the tattoo "only God can judge me" is not an expression of Christianity but of heresy. - Cynthia Albrecht
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl I appreciate the effort you put into trying to provide helpful dialog for readers, though I believe we both agree that the minds of your critics on this thread are closed and sealed shut. Honestly, I believe you could show them video evidence for, say, the Flood of Noah, taken, perhaps by visitors from Alpha Centauri and brought back for a celebration, and they would not believe their own eyes.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- I would not believe the visitors were from Alpha Centauri, so I would not believe my eyes either.
I would perhaps recognise the story though. Which I already believe.
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