53% of Democrats are Christian. Are you really going to say that about them?

Joe Biden's and Rachel Maddow's work show no such thing. They show REALITY.
Leonardo Di Caprio's speech for climate change before the U.N. did not show that. He showed REALITY.
The Catholic Church is the biggest non-governmental charity for the poor on Earth. They face REALITY.

The Civil Rights Movement saw many Catholics, like Dorothy Day, actively involved in the struggle for equality, along with many Jews and protestants.

Today's reverends have organized and participated in protests, leading or supporting movements for social justice and equality, such as the Civil Rights Movement; Rev. James Lawson Jr., who's
in the Civil Rights Movement was known for his work on nonviolent protest and advising Martin Luther King Jr.;

Rev. Al Sharpton for Black Lives Matter,
Rev. William J. Barber II for Moral Mondays all over the South, protests against specific policies or injustices.

Study Art & Music History: all the church music, architecture, art of the Western Renaissance began the culture of the West.

Stop being the purveyor of lies.
We have trumpcult, oligarchs, forces of evil and the Axis of Evil for that. What is wrong with you.

Give up your addiction to screens of the Internet. Join with everyday humans who have happy hearts and love their neighbor in systematic ways.

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 07:04 PM - Edit history (1)

And that includes many DU members. Many others, I'm sure, are members of other religions.

Before DU members post to blame either Christianity or "religion" in general for everything bad, they should pause and think about the fact in so doing, they are insulting many of their fellow Democrats.

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 07:11 PM - Edit history (2)

the very biblical basis of Western law. And that the Jews are the West's ancestral people of faith, hope and good works.

Democratic Party members who are Christian remember this:
We are not what we are called. We are only what we answer to.

As for christianity's detractors...

Bet they will still trust the very Catholic Rachel Maddow as they watch her every night.
Bet they will trust what our previous Christian Democratic presidents say -- like Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman (even LBJ from TX), Barack Obama, Joe Biden.
Bet they will still trust their Christian leaders (and love Bernie, the good Jew) who all know that their God loves good and just governance.

Imagine a world with no religion.
That takes out a huge chunk of people control which always seems to happen. Now we have nukes.
So many gods. What if you pick the wrong one?
My problem with religion as a basis for today's laws should be obvious. It is used to deny the rights of others based on interpretation of a few thousand year old book.
Now I must slay my neighbor for working on the Sabbath.

I've been where you are.
Religion is misused by humans to do what atheists also do. Between atheists and believers there's no difference in doing evil. The difference is after that:
a) that Christians are called to repent first to their earthly neighbor, then to their God, of doing evil;
b) atheists are indifferent about making amends.

Your misunderstanding of any misuses of biblical law are not in any way the fault of the Bible or its God inspired authors.

Oppenheimer claimed to be a secular humanist.

Christians were believers in the Holy Trinity. Now we have Western science, art, architecture, music, universities, libraries.

"God" is not the reason I have remorse or empathy for my fellow man... There is nothing sacred about those natural human emotions...just like having 'god' be angry and smiting in the OT is removed from the more modern conceptions of a deity...

To each his own, but I need no use of the angry sky daddy to instruct my humanity...quite the opposite

"God" indeed is the exact reason you have a conscience, a soul, and empathy for your fellow man. You follow Jesus' 2nd Great Commandment -- Love your neighbor as yourself -- that offsets the Old Testament.

You're right about emotions. They're natural. Conditionable and controllable, too.

Turn away from the sky daddy if you want. I've made what you humanists call "Pascal's wager."
At death, if I'm right, all's well between me and God for eternity; but not good for you for eternity, where you will suffer with yourself who you loved more than anything.
If you're right, I've only lost a belief based on history, so, no more than you.

Pascal's wager allows one to find out about the following...

When biblical knowledge works for 2.4 BILLION people on the planet today, it's obvious that that knowledge wasn't limited by its original location. It's like saying that anything a scientist says is limited by the scientist who wrote it -- you know, like Einstein in that little town of Prague.
Both science and Christian knowledge are fact based. Why? Because Jesus was a real human, and was witnessed by at least 5 of whom saw him die, and 500+ people more, who touched, talked with, saw his wounds, and saw him after he had risen, and by 7 of his 12 apostles who wrote of these events after they witnessed his ascension. Why would 11 of his 12 apostles want to die for spreading lies? Yes, they were killed by various means. But not before they wrote their gospels and epistles and histories.

TEN non-Christian writers -- who range from neutral to decidedly anti-Christian -- mention Jesus within 150 years of his life and death. While archaeology has been catastrophic in verifying claims of other religions, over 20,000 archaeological digs continue to corroborate the evidence presented by the writers of the New Testament (the 6th final and eternal Covenant that fulfills & supersedes the 5 OT Covenants of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, & David).

What establishes the historicity of the New Testament books
— Within 10 years of the ascension of Jesus that the apostles witnessed, the apostles had attracted followers of a new peak morality and God consciousness from Jerusalem to Antioch (the first church to call Jewish Jesus believers Christ-ian) Edessa, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Cyprus, Crete, Alexandria and Rome.
— By 100 AD, 40+ churches were established by the apostles, most in Asia Minor and Upper Mesopotamia, such as the seven churches of Asia, and some in Greece and Italy.

— Within three generations after 1 AD, those whose knowledge was based on their witness to the life, teachings, death & resurrection of Jesus, then spread that knowledge this far in human history without the original eyewitnesses, because of the 27 documents that 9 apostles (out of the original 11 apostles) left behind about everything they witnessed wherever they were, since Jesus had told them before he left, that the Holy Ghost would come to them to inspire their memories of all they saw Jesus say and do. Compared to all other ancient historians, that's more than enough to establish historicity.

Historian & doctor, Luke, in The Gospel according to Luke, references 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands that have all been verified by archaeologists. Luke made zero mistakes. Why? Because he wrote of things that historians can only know from eyewitnesses -- local slang, topographical features, specific weather patterns, small town politicians, etc. How would such a careful historian suddenly be careless in tracing the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. He wouldn't.
By the end of 1 AD, Christianity was spread far by Paul (a converted Jewish Pharisee known as the 13th apostle) to the Gentiles and his very few assistants. Paul traversed from Antioch to Spain.

The current 66 books of the Bible were established by the Christian church that changed its name to the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent. The timeline of their canonizing (below) was before the canonizing of the Hebrew Bible, now known as the Old Testament.
350 AD formally established by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem
363 AD confirmed by the Council of Laodicea
367 AD further established by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria
382 AD confirmed by the Council of Rome

After 2,000 years…
It goes from unreasonable to preposterous to claim that the original 13 apostles made some pact to be willing to be killed for their alleged hoax. And 11 of them were killed.
Only those who actually experienced such teachings, and witnessed such events, would commit to such travel, such hardship, jailing & longsuffering, and death, to spread their knowledge of Jesus' teachings.
No "hoax" lasts long in human history, nevermind 2 millennia before the existence of the historical Jesus, then another two thousand years after Jesus' actual life.

"Good" science is disproven all the time. That doesn't mean science is a hoax, or is some "religion" people believe in.
"Good" knowledge, older than science, knowledge of Laws, judges, eyewitness testimony, rules of evidence, drawn from a thousand years prior, are used today as the basis of Common Law and International Law — and they are not disproven as a hoax or religion, either. That knowledge has also been the basis of Western art, architecture, music, universities and libraries.
Christianity is all about one historical, eyewitnessed event -- the Bible that records all that, was never about 'religion' -- nor has it been ever since.

Think of the parents of these children, think of the fact that that most of these men and women believe in God and are praying at this moment for their children to be spared, yet their prayers will not be answered because this is all part of God's plan.

Any God who would allow children by the millions to suffer and die and their parents to grieve this way either can do nothing to help them or doesn't care to. He is therefore either impotent or evil and worse than that, in your view many of these people certainly will be going to hell because they are praying to the wrong God. Just think about that, through no fault of their own they were born into the wrong culture where they got the wrong theology and they missed the Revelation.

There are 1.4 billion people in India at this moment, most of them are Hindus, most of them therefore are polytheists. In your universe no matter how good these people are they are doomed to be tortured in hell for eternity.

So God created the cultural isolation of the Hindus, he engineered the circumstance of their deaths in ignorance of Revelation, and then he created the penalty for this ignorance, which is an eternity of conscious torment in fire.

No thanks.

I'm not getting into this.

You do you (or Sam Harris).

Sam Harris's points about children suffering, or that God created Hindus, is only his human understanding of human beliefs and suffering -- some suffering is legitimate (genetic, caused by nature, etc), but most is non-legitimate (what humans inflict on others and themselves). Harris can't have it both ways: not believe there is a God, while still blaming that God for the suffering on Earth, or not answering prayers.

Any god that didn't allow free will would have created flesh robots or zombies.
A God that creates and loves that creation doesn't work that way; instead s/he/it creates freedom.

Freedom is the power, rooted in human reason and free will, to do this or that, act or not act, and so perform deliberate actions that are respons(able) or irrespons(able). That's free will. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in using free will toward committing to truth and goodness. By free will humans shape their life. The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. And there is no true freedom except in service of what is good and just.

The Declaration of Independence begins with these three declarations:

Humans all have free will; if they love as their creator loves, they don't cause suffering for others, whether it's personally or through government.

Sounds like a rational loving Creator to 2.38 billion people on Earth, and not just me or 53% of American Democrats.

I agree about no further discussion; you might equip your understanding of god consciousness by reading more world history, ancient lit, philosophy or psychology.

you realize a focus of theirs was to emphasize that there is no scientific or empirical evidence supporting the existence of a deity. That said, beliefs should be grounded in evidence, and without such evidence, belief in God is unjustified. Hitchens maintains that extraordinary claims (such as the existence of a divine being) require extraordinary evidence, which religion fails to provide.

So here is what I think about that. Science tells us the universe is 13.8 billion years old, the earth around 4.5 billion. Our evolutionary ancestors go back millions of year, but let’s begin at Homo Erectus, say 200,000 years ago.

This means that ‘God’ created the universe 13.8 billion years ago and after twiddling his thumbs for 9.3 billion got bored and formed planet Earth. He then waited another 4,499,800,000 years to witness the first humanoids, but thought it best to wait an additional 194,000 before creating Adam and Eve. Fast forward 4,000 years and we get to baby Jesus, who spent his first 30 years as a tekton before informing the world he was the son of God.

So one of my many questions would be: He waited 13,799,994,000 years before creating his masterpiece. What would have been the difference had he waited until the year 2025, a mere 2,000 years longer, a difference of .0000145%. Would our current population believe someone who said the world is flat, that Earth was created prior to the sun which revolves around us? Would Charlton Heston have had the opportunity to play Moses in the Ten Commandments?

I prefer science, logic, and reason. Your ‘arguments’ sound remarkably like those put forth by Chrisitan Apologists/Nationalists.

WARNING - sensitive believers who do not want to be offended - STOP HERE. I have no quarrel with you and wish you peace and happiness in your lives. You live as you see fit and I will refrain from comment unless you try to use it on my children or grand-children. Keep it to yourself and your fellow congregation and ne'er the twixt our paths must cross...

PROCEED WITH CURIOSITY AT PERIL OF OFFENSE BEING GIVEN....

OK, I assume anyone proceeding is OK with what comes next...Save the preaching man, I just don't care.

I really don't and I mockingly reference McDowell, and the tools at the DI, because what you wrote above this reply could have easily come from either one or both of those entities at least 20 years ago. The same arguments in one form or another have been bandied about for millenia and if you are determined to believe, be my guest. You're sentiments are unmoving, your faith is unimportant and the reasons for your passion are wasted if your god is all-powerful and all-knowing and unable to intercede for justice but perfectly suited for smiting and eternal punishment of pesky mortals that question its existence in the first place.

God, if you're listening...I call on you to smite Donald Trump..(runs off to see if wishes do come true...disappointedly returns to the keyboard, unheard, unvalidated).....did not work again, oh well, maybe tomorrow for tomorrow is another 1/364.25th of orbit around the Sun.

Christian apologetics is tiresome and quite honestly boring already. How many times do you all believe that you can repeat the same unconvincing arguments and generate a response other than bemusement and mockery or more likely juist being tuned out or ignored as people worry more about dinner and the mortgage and less about strangers' lives?

Here's a different wager for ya, in the spirt of Pascal's well-worn nonsense of milquetoast ....I call it the Double Down Dichotomy (since everything is more plausible with a pithy name! LOL)

1) If "heaven" exists, it must be populated by the very holier-than-thou Christian preachy types...their eternal reward and all that jazz...
2) If "hell" exists, it is the place of maximum, eternal punishment for the temporal offense of "unbelief" (doubting the Holy Spirit is unpardonable according to Jesus...I don't remember chapter and verse, but I also don't care)...their comeuppance for not cheering for the right team during a temporary audition period on a random, moist pebble in the corner of a non-descript back water of the Milky Way galaxy.
3) It must therefore follow from 1 and 2 than for me, who CANNOT FUCKING STAND THE PREACHY TYPES that my heaven would be their hell and vice versa...they could no more abide my presence in their reward for eternity than I could stand being there in the first place. In such a horrible company, I would certainly be thwarted in all escape attempts by you vengeful deity, who could no more allow me to die than he could allow them to live...

Which means that if ANY of the nonsense is real, we all are going to have to spend eternity together in one way or another any way...so lighten up Francis...(yes, that IS an irreverent reference to "Stripes" circa Bill Murray 1980).

For their heaven would be my hell and their hell would be my heaven.
The reality is much more likely to be that we all return from whence we came - dust to dust for sure, but also non-conscious to non-conscious as well.

No man has memory preceding his father's ejaculation fertilizing his mother's ovulating egg - whether natural or artificial means, no sperm-egg union = no person (including Jesus of Myth, or Adonis, Hercules, Osiris, and all the other virgin births throughout human history and myth making.

When you die, your brain likewise reverts to its original state - non-existence. This will trouble you exactly as much as it troubled you before you were born - which is to say, not in the least bit. I'm betting heavy that you and I won't notice it any more than you can exactly pin point the instant you fall asleep or enter R.E.M. cycles and dreams. Your death is not an ending for the matter that composes your body, your mind or the electrons that flow from the biochemical reactions in your synapses and brain right now. That matter is either converted to energy and used or it is dissipated in heat loss and the process of decay, gone from its present form forevermore, but not leaving the universe at all. Reality is we live and we die and in-between we rent. We OWN nothing. we KEEP nothing and when we cease to exist, our consciousness returns to nothing from whence it sprang.

Tell yourself whatever you want to make believe that we exist beyond the veil of death. Luxuriate in the fantasy of "eternal" life being anything but a hellacious torture of unchanging agony in the 13 billionth year following your 80-90 year terrestrial life - unchanging and part of the eternal choir singing songs of praise to your maker, as if the first 12,999,999,999 years weren't ENOUGH to show gratitude.

If you need help sleeping at night, I begrudge no man any means to alleviate their own personal torment...just don't be fooled into thinking, or believing, that the rest of humanity outside of the conversation in your head gives any fucks at all about it and therein lies the peace. You go right on being saved and ignoring my existence and I will do likewise.

If I am right though, I'll see you in your heaven anyway...

Vaya con dios amigo.

Gracias a la vida y tú.

I should have known better than to be involved in a religious discussion on this forum. Thousand year old arguments will not be settled here, and are inappropriate.

I am deleting my comments

Seems six of one, half a dozen of the other, the only real difference being the packaging, as politics have been just as guilty as religion on all manner of control. Written law or written scripture, that which is imaginary is imaginary, codification (whether secular or religious) simply makes it easier to swallow.

DO NOT buy into your bullshit

It is not our concern.
If you chose to be insulted, be insulted

Or you'd get burned at the stake.
Easy-peasy

Your religion forms you. Don't expect everyone else to comply with your religious beliefs. We don't want them. We don't want them in our schools, our businesses or our government. Go into your closet and worship in private, as Jesus bade you.

Poor, persecuted people, who have torn this country apart, and others before that, for two millennia. Jesus wept.

..." rule about the separation of church and state. So you're right. And yes, Jesus wept at the hardness of hearts that turn away from the poor, forced into poverty through the stealth takings of the rich who do not love their neighbor as themselves. The poor are not the will of God but the free will decision of men who do not love.

Unfortunately, so many of them don't.

They have arbitrary rules on blasphemy and punishments.

They are just ways to subjugate others - especially women and lower "classes".

Jesus said: "“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:43-45

Pope Francis (now in the hospital for the last 3 weeks) has convened a Synod composed of 1 archbishop and 8 women. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Church founded by Jesus with Peter, James and John, is called the Mother Church, a Matrine body of Christ, and that its patrine body is secondary to the matrine.

I really wish people would stop blaming "religion" for the fact that humans (religious or not) are flawed creatures who get things wrong and screw up a lot of the time.

Christianity, for example, has literally thousands of denominations, plus countless "nondenominational" and "independent" churches, plus who knows how many individual practitioners who have their own unique interpretations.

Plenty of people in those organizations still do bad things.

Pederasty/pedophilia spring to mind.

Preying (not praying) on the weak and sucking their meager savings to fund mega-churches (the Roman Catholic Church is the mega of the mega.)

I also want to know how many different prayers and religion classes are we supposed to offer because just this one dysfunctional cult is not gonna cut it! Boy will they be hot when their kid has to sit for a Muslim prayer over announcements. All of that….is what private worship is for. But why don’t they get it?

I am very grateful to the founders for including it in the constitution.

Since Christianity is the majority religion in this country, those who want religion taught in schools usually have that in mind. They conveniently overlook the fact that not only are many other religions represented in this country, but all branches of Christinaity do not even agree on every single detail. That's why those who desire religious training for their children need to seek it someplace other than the taxpayer supported public schools.

True story: I attended elementary school in Tennessee, where my family lived until I was 12. At that time (late 1950s through early 1960s), the Bible was still an optional part of the public school curriculum. Kids whose parents opted them out of Bible class, were, sadly, often bullied by other kids, because being "different" in any way at that age puts a target on a kid's back. I wasn't one of those kids (although I got bullied for other reasons), but being witness to it was bad enough.

That experience is not the only reason I am adamantly opposed to religion being taught in public schools, but it ihas added to why I feel so strongly about this issue. Some kids are just plain mean and will leap at any excuse to torment other kids, like sharks smelling blood in the water. They do NOT need an extra excuse like an optional religion class that only a few kids opt out of.

When I was in elementary school, A bible verse was read every morning after repeating the pledge of allegiance and the Lord's prayer.

We had a little Jewish kid in the class who had the courage to demand to be excused before the Lord's prayer, since it's in the New Testament, which he did not believe in.

We, I am ashamed to say, gave him a hard time about this.

When I got older, I realized how brave he was, and what an ass I was.

We just have to have the separation of church and state. We owe it to that little Jewish kid and millions like him

Most. Christian Churches that Republicans attend have never heard of the Beatitudes.

But they do believe in making the United States a “ Christian” nation

single day to turn to it and learn from it. They have fallen away from their faith and will perish.

Though very much not religious, I do respect some of the teachings, just not most of the adherents. I suppose I share Gandhi's view. That said, I grew up SBC / evangelical and heard more than a few times that this group or that group weren't real Christians and were going to hell. Ironically, some of those groups felt the same about SBC. They all say they're following the Word correctly and those other guys aren't. So who ya gonna believe? For me, none of them, though some of the tenants, while universal, are admirable.

and that there is no "correct way" to follow the Word, because every single time they read it, they know that the Spirit makes it mean something new and relevant to apply to their lives. Reading the Word is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done thing.

Who ya gonna believe? If they read the Word they would know "you shall know them by their fruits." They KNOW their group serves Mammon -- wealth and power -- and they vote for that and lie to themselves that taking money from everyday Americans is okay. They might have read the word but they don't live by it, and they never think they will have to answer for their deeds in life. If they did they would fear for their eternal souls when they read what Jesus said in Matthew 25:37-46

Doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I want now?

..👶 🍷🥓

It got what Jesus said: that repentance is necessary all the time -- he says that 19 times in the NT written by his apostles, Matthew, John, James, Peter, and then the 13th, Paul, who originally was a Pharisee. Even the Jews (Jesus was a Jew) understood that repentance is not a one-and-done thing -- having their yearly Day of Atonement for 1,000 years -- better Martin Luther who used his own human understanding in the 15th Cent. to pick and choose what to believe of Jesus' words. He didn't even want either James or Revelation in his protestant bible.

Only the spiritually lazy believe what they want.

that the truth!!!

religious books are filled with contradictions. That's why I checked out. They can all be used to justify acts of pure evil.

I frequently find myself reminding Christians what is and isn't in the Bible. And why would you need a book to tell you what is right and what is wrong?

Thousands of years of compiling the concepts of right and wrong have come from the Word.

The Bible itself has writings that span 4,000 years, and more archaeological and antiquity documentation than any other book on the planet. Centuries old universities in the West -- Ivy League and major private & public universities with various majors in Antiquity, Western culture, Western law, music, the arts, architecture, and the sciences originated with believers, starting at least 1,000 years ago.

filtered through the contaminated mind of man, translated 15 times from languages that haven't been spoken in millenia.

If God has something to say, why doesn't he/she/it just say it? God can do anything, right?

It contaminates bad politics even in the Democratic Party.

You need to read more. If you're serious -- but I doubt you are -- think you have a soul and spirit, and that there really is a God, there are books list that you might find on the religion forums of this site.

have spent their entire lives studying what the Bible teaches and they still can't figure it out. I understand your confusion.

I've got a younger brother who changed his crutch from booze to religion. He spoke more coherently when he was a drunk.

According to several billion folks on this planet, the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to Mohammed, an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia! Uh oh, but then again, several billion others believe otherwise.

Seems it depends overwhelmingly on when and where one was born, and which god(s) their parents taught them to believe in.

really take the Bible as the literal word of God. He said it was full of allegory and there were so many different versions, and translations that almost nobody agrees which is supposedly the real deal. He said it's like the game of telephone, where the original message gets so garbled as it passes from person to person it's not even close to what the first person said.

He said those who believe in God, and Jesus need to behave in the way that their own hearts, conscience, and mind tells them is the way that God would want them to behave.

...was perfect, no errors.... I eventually asked her if she ever tried to do trigonometry with the biblical value of pi, and explained what dumb answers it provided. It didn't shut her up or change her mind, but she quit telling me that.

The reason I went to talk to a priest about the Bible was because some fundy co-workers kept trying to sell me their interpretation. I was already under stress because there had been layoffs, all my friends at work had left, and I had a boss from hell, so it was upsetting me more than it would have under normal circumstances.

My therapist recommended talking to the priest even though I had already become a lapsed Catholic by then. He kindly agreed and talking with him actually helped. He also said, I didn't have to go back to church, if I was uncomfortable with that. He said I needed to trust my own mind on what my beliefs were and how to act on them.

she just gave up that tack, and resorted to other stuff about spending eternity in hell if I didn't confess to Jayzus. One day, I told her I went to a Baptist college, so I had served my time in hell. THAT didn't sit well with her!

religions is NOT NEEDED to be a decent person

for doing the right thing. I have known atheists who are more generous and kind then some believers I know.

We were even taught that we were supposed to help others without expecting thanks or repayment.

I just like to think that there's another universe where there is no suffering, only beauty, love, and peace for all who chose to value those things regardless of their religion or lack of.

The people who don't think those values are important & deliberately do evil to others of their own free will, regardless of their particular faith, or lack of faith, however, should IMHO, go to the a different place that more represents the type of world that reflects their priorities like one with no empathy.

why was one of my grade school classmates arrested for throwing a molotov cocktail under a police car, when the officers were questioning his neighbors about a crime a few years ago?

Read up on "free will." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will

J/K, sort of.

I'm going to hazard a guess that most of your classmates did not throw molotov cocktails or commit other criminal acts, and that this particular classmate was an outlier. There will always be outliers in any group, for all kinds of complicated reasons.

If most of your classmates were throwing molotov cocktails, stealing old ladies' purses, or holding up convenience stores, that might be an indication that the school you all attended was doing something wrong. Emphasis on "might," because there are lots of reasons why kids go astray; and that piece of info alone would not prove that the behavior was or was not the fault of the school, of the Catholic Church as a whole, or of some amorphous entity called "religion." It might be worth taking a look at, but one kid's poor choices don't prove a danged thing about the value or quality of the moral instruction given to kids at that school.

l am the last person in the world to try to convince someone else whetber to believe in a deity or what to believe about any deity. I have religious inclinations myself, but I honestly don't care what anyone else believes or doesn't believe. I also don't really have an opinion on the teaching of morality in Catholic schools because I have no personal experience with it. I'm just saying that I dont think the logic of the example you gave holds up under scrutiny.

I think atheists have some good points, and I understand why some people arrive at that conclusion. My path has led me in a different direction, but that doesn't mean I think that's the direction everyone should go in. Diversity is a beautiful thing.

want to take away other people's rights to be diverse. They believe that their religion is the one, right, and only way, and therefore, everyone else is damned.
They have been working hard for centuries before this country even existed to pass their religious beliefs into law, so they can force them on the lives and bodies of everyone else, irregardless of whether or not we agree.
Believe and belief has the word LIE right in the middle of it. Those words bypass the need to think and conceal a refusal to simply say, " I don't know".
I personally reject the dominator father god religions. They are based on a punishment model of the universe, the idea that we are bad for getting here at all. That kind of concept doesn't work for me, and I don't think you have to belong to any religion to be moral, do the right thing, or live a kind and constructive life.
If religion works for you and helps you be a better person, great. You are more than welcome to it, as long as you don't try to force me or anyone else to conform to your beliefs.
I would also point out that there have been other civilizations that have had good laws, and none of the father dominator god religions were involved. Women of the Celtic tribes had more rights than Roman women, who were essentially, property.
Neither laws nor religion can guarantee good treatment of others. Humans create laws to give society some recourse in instances where one person harms another. Honoring those laws is a choice. We're seeing what happens when those laws are ignored or unfairly enforced.
I could also go on about how the father dominator god religions are used to justify the destruction of our planet's life support systems and the refusal to see the other beings as worthy of life or having any rights, but I know my post is getting long.
What I object to, and I think that many other people on this board would agree on, is that I object to any religion being forced on others and being used to crush diversity and enforce conformity. That's not freedom or democracy and I don't want my tax dollars paying for it. If you want your kids taught your religion, then either pay for it yourself or take them to regular attendance to your preferred place of worship.

Just don't compel me to go along.

I follow two simple rules that I have made up myself.

1. Don't hurt anybody unless it's to prevent another hurt.
2. Be a better person today than yesterday, and try to be a better person tomorrow than today.

If you think I need someone else to impose morality on me, and also manipulate me in the process, you can think that. It's a free country, sort of.

I always think too that as long as someone's life choices don't harm me or others, then what they do is none of my damn business and I have no right to judge them for it.

Some people use the good part of their religion to guide their lives.

Others use religion to justify the evil that is in their hearts and actions.

Helps if you make the right choice.

Helps if you can work out which way people choose to use religion.

The only religion I feel any affinity for is Zoroastrianism.

how about just doing the right thing without expecting some kind of reward in the end, imagine that