I Believe in Hope and Obama

I never ask my surgeon what religion he practices. I do not need the flight crew to post their religion on the cockpit door.

It is illegal in this Country to make hiring decisions or housing decisions based upon religion.

We "hire" & house the President & VP!

I don't care what criteria anyone uses when they are in the voting booth, (more power to them if it is religion or any thing else) but I object to putting it on all our government forms, government websites & making such a big deal about it in the press.

Yonkers, New York
30 October 2008

I canot blame Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite for having allowed herself to be guided by her reason and good judgment by voting for Barack Obama.

But she obviously has not used her reason when she says that her conviction is that "the world is a divine gift."

Divine gift? Meaning God's gift? To whom?

I suggest that Ms Thistlethwaite needs to disabuse herself of this particular conviction of hers.

The world, let me just point out to her, is "Big Bang's" gift--that is, if that primordial explosion some 15 billion years ago could ever be considered a "gift."

Just one more point: Ms Thistlethwaite asserts that "God loves this world..."

Huh? Give me a break!

The world, as she must know by now, is going through a very severe crisis. Tens upon tens of millions of people are gripped by fear, anxiety, anger, angst, hopelessness and powerlessness--and millions in fact are dying of hunger and disease in Africa and elsewhere!--and Ms Thistlethwaite has the gall to say that "God loves this world...?"

Assuming, arguendo, that God exists, it would be logical and reasonable to assert, objectively, the contrary proposition that Ms Thistlethwaite's God does not love the world.

If Ms Thistlethwaite still insists--as I fear she will--that her God loves the world, the necessary conclusion, given the state of the world (limited to planet Earth of course), is that God does not exist. God is a figment of some people's febrile imagination.

Mariano Patalinjug
MarPatalinjug@aol.com

How "scholar" came to mean "spewer of facile tripe", I'll never understand.

Madam,
You are a lady and a scholar in addition to having common sense and impeccable ethics.

Haha!
"Fear-mongering"
You're not actually supposed to listen to everything the media says! Sheesh.
As to 'wearing religion on the sleeve', that kind of talk leads directly to relativist nonsense where there is no good or evil, only opinion. In that scenario all religion falls apart and faith itself is meaningless.

So we should ignore the infanticide that is going on in our country?
So we should ignore the fact that 6& of the women in the USA are responsible for 36% of all abortions, and that support of this practice is tantamount to support of genocide (of his own people, no less; the 6& are Black)?
We should ignore the past: that socialism and communism are completely contrary to the intentions of our Founding Fathers, and that they fail miserably whenever and wherever applied (Russia, China, Cuba)?

So instead of breaking our faith into categories and critically and analytically searching for how they relate to our lives (the definition of theology, Ms. Thistlewaite), we should 'take a step back,' and the 'sum of all values'? Since when do the sum of the parts not equal the whole? It is impossible to examine and act on the whole without first analyzing the parts.

Faith and fear are not the same. However, they are intricately related. If there was no fear, there would be no need for faith since there would be no unknown , no conflict, etc. In a sense I guess you could say we need fear.
You said "Perfect love casts out fear." Yet it does not destroy fear. And all love is certainly not perfect.
While we're proof-texting, I'll add some of my own: "To err is human." Not Scripture, but it'll do. Humanity is fallible. We will perhaps never love 'perfectly.' So how does this prove your point?

Socialism and its more vicious derivatives are godless. They are faithless and without religion, creed, code, or ethic. They serve no moral law.
Senator Obama has proven himself to follow these systems as his guide, and derives from them his mantras. He is a master of the eloquent meaningless speech, one of "hope."
Are we obeying any of God's rules in a Socialist state or society? Take from the rich and give to the poor: in other words, don't elevate the poor, bring down the rich. That's not showing love for anyone.

Voting on a religious basis goes beyond same-sex marriage and abortion (though within those two issues easily lie enough reasons to pick one candidate over the other). It is in part the basic value system you spoke of, Ms. Thistlewaite. However, that basic value system stems from and flows towards the same line of thought that condemns abortion and same-sex marriage. It is a grand circle of hard true logic, and by undermining one point of a circle's infinite, the entire figure falls apart.

Ghandi believed that with true love and faith in God, there is no violence. He also believed that a true love and faith in God would keep a believer from creating fear. There are too many relgions in today's world who have twisted the love of their God into something that gives permission to their followers to create fear, to use fear to excuse hate and to excuse the use violence as an answer.

byt he way, i dont line mckane either.

so,
you believe in hope so much that you are willing turn a blind eye to reason?

is it hope that he endorses PLO terrorists?
is it hope that he has an economic plan the history proves will cause a deep depression?
is it hope that todays terrorists are contributing to his campaign?
should we be ignoring this or should someone bring it to light. if the press will not, that leaves onlyh his opponant.

if obama gets elected, we are all in deep do do.

Here are 2 more that don't go together: God and lie; God and slander. The crowd who can barely speak without lying and slandering believe themselves more holy 'cause IN THEORY they won't murder an unborn child and want to make sure no one else does (and besides, as we're discussing, mmmmm, consider the political payoff for their stand). Seems that Solomon left the door open for Mom's choice, and the test worked. Maybe if these practicers of lies would look to themselves and change their ways before God they'd legitimately have something to give in terms of ministry to those facing difficult times.

The tax policies of the republican party are pro-abortion, pro-euthansia, and will lead us to nuclear holocaust.

I like John McCain - politicans do slimey things -that's what they do because that's what they are for the most part.

Truman and Carter were not politicans and they got roasted.

Reagan was unaware of the consequences of his tax policies and killing the renewable energy efforts by the Carter administration. He had been brain washed by his wife's family. He really wasn't a politican either.

Bush Sr and Clinton both did things most of us would consider slimey. So did Nixon and Kennedy and LBJ. Bush Jr has been vilified by so many people I have lost count.

McCain is trying to win with a losing hand - that's something we can blame him for - not shuffling the deck - not picking someone who actually did understand economics or the economics of energy.

Instead he picked a saleswoman when he needed a scholar.

Dear Ms. Thistlethwaite,

Please stop.

-CBH

Nice thoughts. I like you do not wear my religious beliefs on my sleeve. You can't talk about abstract ideas, such as using the word "conception" as a point without thinking that killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, men, women and CHILDREN, and think that is justifiable.

I have great hope for the future of this country as soon as our present administration is gone. Thanks for your thoughts which were stated well.