The bible promises you stuff: God doesn't return phone calls.

Prayer is an essential component to practicing ones faith and it is said that it is fundamental in establishing a "relationship" with God. 

Evangelical leader, Billy Graham is asked the question: "When God doesn’t answer our prayers, is it because he’s testing our faith to see whether it’s genuine?" Graham answers: "When God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want him to, our reaction often shows just how strong (or weak) our faith is."

But the questioner wasn't asking Graham why God doesn't answer prayers the way he wants him too, but why his prayers go answered. Graham is doing his best to explain away why God isn't answering the prayers. How does Graham's answer fare against the New Testament:

 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. - Matthew 21:22

That seems pretty definitive. Nowhere do the writers of Matt state that prayer is sometimes answered, or not answered just to test your faith.  The bible is unequivocal. Whatever you ask, you shall receive.

However, Graham doesn't fully answer the question in his response. He supplies Hebrew 4:16, stating that prayer will help "find grace to help us in our time of need." And what if the prayer is done in a time of need? For instance, your mother is dying of a horrible cancer and you pray to God to ease the pain before she dies. You realize that asking for perfect health is too much of a request from God, so instead you ask for no pain during the dying process. Your mother dies painfully anyway after countless prayers.

In no way was your request made selfishly. Grahams assertion that "often what we think is best for us isn’t really best, and God says no to our prayer"  doesn't answer why the prayer went unheeded. If the bible's word about prayer holds any validity, the core concept of this Christian practice is just bunkum.

As aside, Graham also informs the questioner that "Christ sits at the Father’s right hand in heaven."

This is a comical suggestion. Jesus is supposed to be God. We are to believe that he is simultaneously sitting at his own right hand? Absurd.

As absurd as the notion of Jesus sitting at his own right hand, so is prayer. Unanswered prayers, any unanswered prayer disproves the notion of God taking requests if the bible is too be trusted.

(Source)

The Vactican is a criminal organization

What does it take for the Vatican to reprimand its priestly sex offenders into custody?

The Vatican on Thursday strongly defended its decision not to defrock an American priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and denounced what it called a campaign to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides.

200 accusations not enough? What about 300? Perhaps 1,000?

Is there any doubt that the Catholic church has become a criminal organization?

Is there?

(Source)

Women. Just shut up already.

The religious practices of one Baraboo,Wisconsin church do not allow women members to vote and in the case of a meeting to determine the fate of its school principal, to not speak as well.

Women were not allowed to speak or vote Sunday as men from a Baraboo church voted to fire the principal of the church's elementary and middle school.

Apparently, the principal had been spreading a document that challenged men's alleged authority over women, and from what I can only guess that lead to his firing. And it seems, that when the beliefs were questioned by the principal, he was fired because it went against doctrine.

 Details of the principal's alleged wrongdoings are murky, and church leaders have been unwilling to be interviewed. In a letter to school parents announcing his suspension, church pastors said Hartwig had promoted materials that questioned the church's teachings and had engaged in conduct "unbecoming a called worker."

What else does it take to show that fundamentalists don't value democracy and the women that fill their corridors? Just shut up already and be a second-class citizens.

How can any woman subject themselves to this sort of debasement is beyond me.

Rank sexism.

(Source)

Teh Stoopid. Things that Christains believe.

These comments are from a Christian that pretty much stand on their own.

"I believe that all dinosaurs were born of Satanic angel who has sex with woman and the animal kingdom that created ungodly reptilian creatures none of these were on the Ark," Johnson said.

 Johnson also said that he didn't believe in homosexuality and "that they should be put to death," according to his statement. But he said his beliefs don't lead him to treat gays differently. 

This is from an ex-prison guard who was fired over these comments for being overly aggressive.

So homosexuals are to be put to death and dinosaurs were the spawn of Satan? Comments that dumb stand on their own without any ridicule from me.

Teh Stoopid. It burns.

(Source)

God Heals?

Conservatives and their republican allies are a sorry lot.

The back-and-forth came as a couple hundred tea party activists descended on Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers and voice opposition to the legislation. Protesters carried signs that read, "God heals, Obamacare steals," at a rally with Republican lawmakers.

God heals? Let me guess this is from the same buffons who probably think that Earth's climate (that's climate not weather) can't be ruined by humans because the end of the earth is in God's loving hands.

Asshats.

(Source)

God must mean nothing at all. God in the Pledge.

I have previously written my views against the pledge stating that compulsory patriotism is not patriotism. Furthermore, I also object to the phrase "Under God" in the pledge. I am not a theist. Reciting that phrase is tantamount to endorsing a religious concept with which I disagree.

We are a nation under law, not a nation under god.

"The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2-1 ruling Thursday.

 Judge Bea is stating that the nation was founded under God. This is a curious history, as the phrase "Under God" wasn't graphed into the pledge until 1954 and was done so to distinguish ourselves from the atheistic state of Russian communism.

All this bluster from the courts that the phrases "under God" and "In God we trust" is "ceremonial and patriotic" is just bunkum.

The 9th District court is lying to you. God is a religious concept. Arguing that the recital of it is something that which is not, robs the meaning of such word, which the 9th District has done. And in by doing so they are forcing anyone who recites the pledge to endorse a religious concept.

This is one reason why I will not recite the pledge.

(Source)

Absolutely annoying: Obama's spiritual cabinet.

In the United States, politicians must pander to the religious proclivities of Americans in order to reassure them of their leadership abilities.

"He certainly does not ask us how we would run the country and what issue to pursue or not pursue," said Bishop Charles Blake of the Los Angeles-based Church of God in Christ, who was on the call.

For 10 minutes, the president and the pastors prayed for peace, an economic recovery, protection for U.S. soldiers, and for Obama to be guided by a wisdom and power beyond himself. 

It is gratingly annoying that politicians can not be freed from the overt influence of religion into matters of state, even if those instances are not directly gerrymandering into the functioning of the state.

President Obama has a number of ministers and other religious leaders which he relies on as quasi-members of his "cabinet" according to Washington Post. This is to give him the veneer of religiosity that Americans so require.

Before stepping into politics, DuBois, 27, was a pastor at small Pentecostal church in Massachusetts, and his approach to the president bears traces of his former calling. DuBois sends daily devotionals to Obama's Blackberry--often a Bible verse or an excerpt from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, or a snippet from the works of theologians Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, particular favorites of the president. 

The very notion that Obama has a cabinet member, in this case Joshua DuBois -- director of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives send him daily Bible verses is nauseating enough. When you take into consideration that this activity is during taxpayer time, DuBois is very clearly violating the Establishment Clause by sending these daily devotionals of a decidedly sectarian nature.

And if Dubois and the President are not offending the Establishment Clause, then they are sure wasting time on religious nonsense. The President holds the office of president not as a pope or theologian, but as the executive of the state.

He can play theologian on his own time.  

(Source)