I saw this on the news earlier and looked it up online for more information. Fred Phelps is a man who takes his family around the country protesting at the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq. Their target: the families of the soldiers. They hold up signs such as: "God hates America", "God hates your Tears", "God gave Fags Up" > Link to Article< Add these sorry excuses for human beings to the list of those that don't deserve to take another breath. Reading other articles, the family has gone to a hundred or so military funerals. At some of them, they completely ruined the entire day. A day intended to be a celebration of the lives of some of our most treasured citizens. In contrast, what that group of bikers is doing is truly touching. Old Glory waving in the wind as the funeral procession passed by was a sight to see. Always good to see that no matter how bad some people? are, there are countless truly good people that step up.
they are just following their faith. i think we should respect them. maybe this is what god wants. who am i to tell anyone what is the will of god? if you believe in god, i don't see how you are in any position to be critical of somenoe else's faith.
Well I guess I am more or less in a position to criticize. I believe in the existence of "something".
you rule. i do think the majority of people have no leg to stand on when it comes to calling out people for doing what their faith tells them to do. there obviously is nothing to argue about with these bastards. god tells them to hate fags or whatever, and thats the end of it. i realize i am a broken record on this. but i think this is one more example of how faith makes people bad, while we all pretend that faith is personal and sacred. and also i have always noticed that bikers are the best people you can imagine.
edit: i agree that the phelps family and westboro baptist church are a bunch of collective morons. you could say much of the same of many individual church bodies who claim to worship Jesus, then take individual bible passages out of context to persecute others. in fact, there is a very large baptist church on the outskirts of baton rouge that tells its women not to wear anything but long flowing skirts, etc. for all of the anecdotes you could possibly find i could give you thousands more examples of how faith makes people good. it goes on every day at the soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc. unfortunately you are blinded by lumping islam and christianity (hell, all faiths) altogether while disregarding the individual teachings thereof. even bringing up the crusades of 1400 is misleading because it is well known that was a political endeavor. nobody who truly followed the turn-the-other-cheek teachings of Christ would have involved themselves in such an enterprise. except for those dudes in the bar in terminator 2 where arnold got his clothes, boots, and motorcycle. those dudes were pretty rough.
I liken it to someone taking the Islamic faith to do violent things. These deals get corrupted. I know my church and faith does not preach to hate gays. I may not think it's a good thing for people to be gay, but my church doesn't preach to hate gays or to shoot abortion DR.'s. That's a corruption of the faith.
i've explained this to him before yet he cant differentiate. it makes no difference what anyone believes nor does it matter if they use faith as an excuse or martian himself. If someone imposes ill-will upon another, that person is responsible. If I kill someone today and say I did so in the name of atheism then that makes martian stupid for being atheist by the same logic and makes atheism stupid itself. it makes no sense to care one way or the other what another believes or disbelieves outside of having a conversation.
While I do not agree with what they are doing and how I wish they would all die in a horrible firey crash. The reason myself and my fellow brothers in arms pick up our weapons and go to fight is to PROTECT their rights to do that. I would only hope that each solider that has died takes an extra day outta their afterlife to haunt and scare the crap out of each and every one of them.
I dont think the problem is a question of faith but more a question of taste. If they wanna preach the things that their god tells them that is fine. BUT have respect for the very people that give them the rights and freedoms to practice their faith. How would they like it if everytime they held a church service a group of devil worshippers or agnostics gathered and shouted gestures and called them stupid and wasting their lives believeing in false idols.
