Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: Waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy off topic...

The title of Your post should have been: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy
out of line.
This is undoubtedly, the worst thread I've seen here.
I never thought I would live to see the day when Christ, and Christians, would be "openly mocked", by people from this country.
I"m sad to say many of You have "cast yourselves in an unfavorable light".

LT61,

Please don't take anything said here as a personal insult. There's more than one flavor of Christian represented here on this board. I hope you're not implying that there are "true" Christians and "non-true" Christians. THAT would be waaaaaaaaaay out of line.

Christ had nothing to say about evolution, by the way.

I think that it is time to slowly walk away from this thread.

I think LT is right - this thread has been an ugly, bigoted, insulting orgy against southerners and Baptists. Pretty tasteless and ignorant.

My southern relatives (Missionary Baptists, btw) are all kind and gracious, especially so when compared to the members throwing bombs here. Ditto for the extended family of my late father-in-law. Very kind and polite people.

I'm not religous, but I do know a bit about the Missionary Baptists (I think the southern Baptists are more of a "singin' and hollerin'" group of people, right?). Missionary Baptists can be pretty severe, especially when it comes to sin and vice, but I do respect the spartan nature of their churches, the focus on faith rather than dogma, their focus on scripture rather than symbols, and the autonomy that each church enjoys. There is no hierarchical organizational structure as in many other churches.

In any case, if you feel threatened by a perceived incursion of religion into gov't and politics, you should be most wary of large, powerful organizations like the Catholic Church. Bizarre stories of extremist individuals make headlines, but will have zero impact on policy. Organized special interest groups frequently do, however.

I have to agree...this thread has indeed gone awry, as expected.

In looking back on my post, I may have come off as blasting the South. I apologize for that. I truly love living down here. In fact, my intent was to make the point that the South is not what it is perceived to be by those in other regions. I came to the South for grad school to explore this for myself. What I found was that there are indeed stereotypical people and events that do take place. However, this can be said of all regions. The frustration I displayed is based upon the fact that the only face that the media shows of the South is the "bigotted, bible-beating , redneck" stereotypical one. What you don't see is beautiful metropolitan areas like Atlanta and rural areas like Savannah (Yes, I know that there's plenty more to the South). What you don't see is the the fact that people don't have perpetual scowls and the lack of manners that you may find in some areas up North (Yes, I can say that having come from there). You don't see any of this....you just see what they think Northerners want to see and that's a shame.

My frustration with the South (as displayed earlier) is that it continues to fuel those stereotypes with this continual onslaught of church and state incursions. I understand where they are coming from, but I'm not sure they understand what it looks likes from the outside.....or they just don't care.

Again, I apologize for my tone in my earlier post. It's amazing what you see when your revisit your own words in a different time/context.

Route 666 has already been changed.

Don't you feel better knowing we don't have to worry about that?