Does watching or attending sporting events make you more patriotic?

I was watching a sporting event and a commercial came on for an upcoming event. I only saw it one time and wasn't really paying to close attention to it when I heard how this sport is the most patriotic in the nation. I doubt that they are using the proper definition of patriotic. The first thing I thought was, how can a sport be patriotic? I have only come up with the fact that anyone attending or buying products linked to that sport would be patriotic. That doesn't make the sport itself patriotic.

The sport is seen by most as one with many christians within it and they seem to think that being religious means you are patriotic. I think most don't understand what being patriotic means. Being patriotic means you love your country and what it stands for. The way I see it you have to put your love of your country first in all things or you aren't really being patriotic. I know that this view of patriotic is a view that makes it almost impossible to be patriotic. I would have less respect for someone that would put country first in all things. The point I am driving at is that christians can't put country first if they truly are christians. According to all I know, god has to come first in all they do. This means that they will ignore needs of the country if it is in conflict with the bible. The way many of the christians I know have fixed this is making the claim that this country is based on christian principles. If you ask them to point out those principles in the Constitution they fail at being able to do that. Instead they turn created by the government that was formed by the Constitution to support their belief. They fail to look into history that most of these laws have predated christians in one way or another. They try to make the common laws into christian laws but again the common laws predate christianity in England. What does all this mean? It means christians need to better educate themselves before they speak about anything to do with being patriotic.

Science and religion.

I was talking with a guy that claimed he is a christian. He started out with the normal claims that he could prove god exist and that he had no doubts about that. It got me to thinking about some of his proof and why he was using it the way he did. Don't worry I haven't changed my mind about the truth of the bible but it did raise a few questions about how science has caused christians to change their interpretation of the bible. I am really interested in finding how some of the verses he used were interpreted before the advances in science caused the change in their interpretation. These are some of his proofs as he claims or more then likely The Discovery Institue or Answers in Genesis claim.

"The Holy Bible holds that God created the universe and the only reason we continue to exist is because God upholds our existence. (Genesis 1:1) (Hebrews 1:3) Scientifically, this Biblical worldview belief is confirmed by the laws of physics and by our existence living within our universe on the planet earth. You can think of the laws of physics as part of God’s invisible qualities."

"The Holy Bible’s Old Testament (Isaiah 40:22) which teaches us that God stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in; which suggests that the universe has actually increased in size since its creation. Scientifically, this Biblical worldview belief is confirmed by redshifts in nearly all galaxies and the Hubble Law which states that distant galaxies show greater redshifts than nearby galaxies."

" The Holy Bible tells us that the age of the earth is about six to ten thousand years old based upon God creating everything in six literal 24 hour days (Exodus 20:11) and genealogies recorded in (Genesis 5, 11) first starting with the first man God created, Adam. The Holy Bible said that a massive flood covered the whole earth. Noah’s Flood was a global, year-long, global catastrophe.

Scientifically, the geological features of the earth today are exactly what we should expect to result from such a complex, year-long, destructive event as Noah’s Flood which was global in its nature. Also, an incredible find of fossils we find are of shallow marine organisms, like corals and shellfish—and sometimes we find those even in very high sedimentary layers, even on top of Mount Everest!"

I am not wanting to refute these claims but am looking to find how christians interpreted some of the verses he used and others that are claimed to be supported by science. I am not having much luck in finding anything about the way some of the more obscure verses were interpreted. I doubt very much that christians from 100 years ago saw the bible as many see it today. I will keep looking but any help would be appreciated.

I doubt that most christians have a problem with changing how a bible verse is interpreted if it can help them to hide from the fact that their bible isn't very good in the science department.

Report

Church sign.

I drive a truck locally here where I live and since I am in the bible belt I get to see many church signs. I try to remember to take pictures of them but seldom remember to. I drove by this sign 3 or 4 times before I took this picture. I have been trying to figure out what it is suppose to mean. I get the first half of it but the second half makes no real sense to me.

The way I take it is that if you attend their church you will never grow up. I couldn't really see some church calling its member children though. The other way I took it was that unless you attend our church you will never become an adult. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what this is suppose to mean?

I have another challenge for any that read this. There is enough information in this photograph to determine the town and state it was taken. Who can be the first to name the town and state correctly?

Brake problems

Today I got pretty lucky with my brakes. I was hauling a load with the truck weighing around 85,000 pounds when I started to slow down to get ready for a right turn I had to make. I'm not sure if it was right before or right after I applied the brakes. I felt as if I run over something with my steer tires and a heart beat later I felt my drive tires run over something and one of the drive tires blew out. I hadn't seen anything and was thinking a part had broke loose from the truck, so I started slowing down. It took just a second or two to figure out I didn't have my full braking ability. I used both my brakes that remained and the gears of the truck to slow myself down enough to make my right turn safely and get to where I could check things out. At first glance it just seemed that the drive tire was blown and an airline was leaking somewhere in the engine area. Since I was at where I was going to unload I went ahead and got the truck unloaded. It doesn't take long to get unloaded, maybe it takes 10 minutes total to unload. I have to unstrap the load and I saw my steer tire seemed to be low on air but was able to unload and as I was getting back into the truck I knew I wasn't going to far since it was almost completely flat by this time. I got myself out of the way of truck traffic and this is what I found. The brake drum had busted in half on me and it had cut the value stem completely off allowing the air to leak out at a good pace. If I had been driving on a busy road or the steer tire had lost air faster it could have been bad.

We got snow.

Well we got snow here yesterday afternoon until some time last night. It is only about 5 or 6 inches but since this is only the second time in the last two years we have gotten enough to be called a worthwhile snowfall I figured I would post a pic of my truck. Since I am in Arkansas you can be sure there are plenty of fools trying to drive in this stuff not knowing what they are doing.

I went into the grocery store Thursday evening to get a few things and it was a mad house. What I was getting was a money order and a few minor things. There were people buying enough groceries to last a few weeks it looked like. They had known the storm was on its way here at the beginning of the week but I guess they were hoping that it would be like the last time they predicted something like this. We didn't get anything but a few slick bridges.

Now to other things I have been thinking about lately. Why does it seem that most of the main media is ignoring the stupidity of the Supreme Court ruling. I haven't seen much written about it at any of the websites for CNN, MSNBC, AP, and Rueter. I have them on my google reader and only saw them talking about it for the day after it was made. The only place I have seen much said about it is at Huffington and they seem to be doing a good job of talking about what it really means. I saw another site, Alternet, had an article about 10 things to do about it but the suggestions I saw there either had little chance to get passed or would take to long to get done for it to prevent what could ruin this country. I think it will take a major push by the American people on all sides of the spectrum of views to force the courts to over rule this ignorance.

Just a picture

I took this picture and until I downloaded it I figured it was a waste of an attempt. I like how the birds flying against the sunrise actually came out.

Do people really believe you can't celeibrate Christmas without Jesus?

I live in an area of the country that has more churches then it does gas stations. Most if not all of these churches have signs saying how Jesus is the reason for the season. I have for the last few years read a few sites with the history of Christmas and have to say that the only reason Jesus is even involved is the church was attempting to rid the world of pagan rituals. I found how many of the traditions aren't based on any christian rites but come from pagan rites. http://www.holidays.net/christmas/story.htm In the USA it wasn't until the mid 1800's that what we see as Christmas took form here in this country. http://www.thehistoryofchristmas.com/ch/in_america.htm

I think if Jesus was actually important to christians for Christmas they wouldn't be out there spending small fortunes on gifts that tend to end up on the shelves unused after a few weeks or so. I have no idea how much is spent on Christmas gifts each year here in the USA but figure it is in the high millions if not over a billion. If all the people who celebrated Christmas would take just half the money they spend on unneeded gifts and give it to actual charities, churches aren't charities to me, how many people would be helped around the world? I have always understood that Jesus was all about love and helping those less fortunate. People, at this time of year, give a little to help get gifts and food for those less fortunate but never seem to have enough end the problems. I don't remember anything in the bible about giving those not in need of help expensive gifts and ignoring the ones needing help paying electric and other utilities. I do agree that there are people out here that will abuse any help they get but most people aren't that way. There are also people that need to have hard times to get it though their heads that they need to reset their priorities. I was talking with my brother-in-law during Thanksgiving and he give me a good example of someone that needed to rethink how he was spending money. We just got the lottery here in this state and one of the guys my bro-in-law supervises came to him wanting to borrow some money for animal food because he was broke. He was asked what had happened to his money and he said that he had been playing the lottery and had a streak of bad luck. This type of person doesn't need help but needs to have it rough for a short time.

Churches aren't charities, they are just distribution centers for people that give them stuff to give away. I know that there are some that do put some small amounts of money into their communities but most wouldn't rate very high on groups that rate charities. Most of the churches I have noticed never use the money they get from their members to help others. The items they give out usually come from individuals and companies but the churches take credit for it as charity they are doing.