I am amazed today in the way culture has turned inward to the self. I think some of it has to do with the way children have been raised in an affluent society. All things become about them. When I talk to conservative (I hardly see any leftist kids today) college kids who were born with a silver spoon, there is no sense in which things could be different. There is also the sense in which if the other has nothing it is 'their' fault. I am wondering when America turned away from its religious values to self centeredness? This piece is just one more example.

by Karl Taro Greenfeld, Portfolio

"Joel Osteen preaches the virtues of prosperity -- for himself as well as his congregation. A look at the man who may well be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the slumping economy."

God Wants Me to Be Rich - WalletPop


Does God really want you to be rich?

>

Are you familiar with the Puritan concept of "the Elect"?

That smug religious rationalization for "Them what has gets more, and them what hain't, won't" has never left this nation's collective consciousness.

Hell, you can still hear that "elect" philosophy resonating in the jaundiced musings of this board's libertarians and (mostly) angry White Boys who like to imagine that "I made it all on my own without no help from nobody"

What I am suggesting is that American never turned away from its religious core values, because our most cheished religious core value is basically THE apology for exploitive capitalism, and power and control oppression by economic means.

The question really is,

Will America ever turn toward its oft stated in noble words, but seldom manifested in noble actions, core primative Christian values of faith hope and charity?

My answer the above is this...

Visualize me rich.

Okay.

I'm visualizing you as lobster thermador.

Yum! You look delicious.

An interesting point and one I was aware of. I was raised Catholic when everyone else was pretty much a heathen. (When I see Scalia, Alito, or Roberts I fear for justice.) Jewish people suffer that same grandiose presumption. But in spite of that the key cardinal sins are Gluttony, Greed, and Pride and we were reminded often that these were serious sins. While I don't have that faith today, it seems religion has moved from these beliefs as even the other sects preached similarly. Consider if we exist for 60 or 80 years, and that is if we are lucky, then life here is a mere moment compared to infinity. So my question would still be why is so much required for this short trip? And what happened to religious values?

I'm thankful that my parents never took me to church, although I guess since my dad's side was Catholic and my mom's was Baptist, it was a lost cause from the start .

On the other side of the coin from the Puritans though, consider how many influential people in the colonies considered themselves to be Deistic Christians. I think that is the saddest thing, is that modern Americans tend to see a fundamental divide between religion and the exercise of reason. Modern Christianity seems to draw a lot more from folks like Jonathan Edwards, who saw God as an angry being holding us above the Fire, and furthermore, "God has laid himself under no obligation by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell one moment."

Note that my views are probably a little skewed, because the majority of my experience with religion comes from an ethnographic study I once did on a Pentecostal Church.

Osteen is a con man.

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“The living of one protective principle of the gospel is better than a thousand compensatory government programs—which programs are, so often, like ‘straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.’ ” Neal A Maxwell

“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature." -ETB

I lost all religious value when science disproved it.

No wait, god waved his hand then I appeared!

I lied.

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Reasons why I support Barack Hussein Obama
http://www.usmessageboard.com/electi...ein-obama.html

Are you referring to Calvinism.......when mentioning "elect"?

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Regards, Eightballsidepocket

"Nothing should be said anonymously behind a P.C., that can't be respectfully said in person"

You do realize that you are contradicting your own position = If he is a con then all those people are being conned?

I didn't mean to bring the issue of religion into this, I was merely alluding to the history of this nation, and how the elite of that proto-American immigrants justified their good fortune as they lived off the sweat of their indentured classes (who were of the same religion)

The true religion/pilosophy of our time is MAMMON, folks.

Not merely the philosophy that one must earn one's bread in society, not the philosophy that we're all in this together, but the philosophy that the richer you are the better a person you must be.

Hence my harkening us back to a people who once put that philosophy into their religion.

Did I mean Calvinism?

Yes, Puritanism is a sect of Calvinism.

I pointed to the Puritans because I was pointing to Americans, and FWIW, a group of Americans whose most successful families (of course the progeny of most former Puritans are not wealthy or influenctial) still have enormous sway over this society even today.

I quit catechism when I was 8 because I asked a lot of questions and my all knowing Catholic priest told me I was not there to ask questions but I was there to listen and believe. I never went back.

And yes I do believe that people can make it on their own, my wife and I did. The problem is that you have the pols, the news and the general whining public telling you how hard and horrible everything is and most people believe it.

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"If you want the government to give you puppies and rainbows, don't pout when you're picking up dog shit in the rain"
--Skull Pilot


...being permitted to vote for politicians who enact unjust, oppressive new laws magically converts the stripes on prison shirts into emblems of freedom.
--James Bovard

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
- Wendell Johnson

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- Thomas Carlyle