Catholic Mom Flips on Atheist Son
 

Hahaha. You Americans are all crazy. :p

The bit about Christmas amuses me, though - surely if she's so Catholic, she wouldn't be bothering with presents for Christmas because that takes the whole meaning out of it, no?

That's the part that has always confused me about giving gifts on Christmas, it seems to me that anyone you present a gift to is equated with Jesus, which I would think would be labelled as blasphemy.

Being non-Christian myself, I haven't actually heard why this practice was adopted.

It all boils down to the Pagans, I think.

And there's probably some kind of Pagan roots in the whole story of Christmas, including the gifts from the Wise Men - which is where our own gift-giving might come from.

Either way, who are we to argue with it? It's not as if we dislike getting gifts at Christmas, is it? :p

First thing that happens whenever something funny is posted on youtube.

"It's fake"

haha.

Thats pretty funny... pretty ridiculous, too.

Yea, well first its the gift to jesus from the wise men. Then there's the story of St.Nicholas (santa clause)...

True, but many things can still trace their way back to before Christianity - for example, the legend of St Nicholas in the Netherlands and in Flanders has him riding a horse over rooftops, which is thought have been derived from Odin's riding through the sky on a horse. He also has assistants, the Zwarte Pietin (Black Peters), which are thought of as remnants of the legend of the ravens that accompanied Wodan.

Nicholas may have been a real person who gave out gives through the goodness of his heart, but modern Christmas has pre-Christian ideas to thank for it's current state.

Maybe, never looked into it that much, but the whole date thing is obviously jesus birthday, and the wise men brought gifts. And now everyone celebrates christmas (the name too....christ mas....) even if they are not christian. Well, most people in some way or form.

Me neither, I had a quick search on Wikipedia. :rolleyes:

lol, I'm not an internet/computer mastermind. I usually have kaneda do that shit for me. look up/design w/e. lol.

Honestly, it does. Most of our modern Holidays coincide very closely with many Pagan (and largely Celtic) holidays.

I think that Christmas was based to 'replace' the Winter Solstice. Lemme see if I can grab Wikipedia's entry on Yule, I think it supports this as I've read about it in various books...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule#Co...dern_Christmas

If you check other holidays, the dates line up pretty accurately. ;)

Makes you wonder what the first true religion was, or idea of gods or whatnot. It seems that every culture with it's own religion has based it on something else, and then built upon it. Which means that they've probably all grown from the original Religion.

I'm not certain what the first 'religion' was, I believe most spiritual beliefs had to do with peoples' ancestors watching over them, or Polytheistic beliefs regarding the behavior of primal forces.

I haven't looked into it that much, honestly.

It's something that an academic or a scholar would probably spend their whole life working on, I think.

And until then, well, SFF writers have completely free reign over it. :p

True enough, but it is an interesting question. Considering I have about nothing to do while I'm at work, I may look it up. Might not be as interesting as Astrophysics on 2 hours of sleep though. :D

I wouldn't think so, actually. My guess would be that all modern religions have their basis in a group of few original religions. I'll explain why I think so later.

Oooh, now there's something I wouldn't mind reading about - Astrophysics. I'd be doing A-Level Physics if it were all that and nuclear physics, but it isn't, so I don't. :(

Have fun! Be sure to report back to us on what you find. :p

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Oooh! And now we have MJ involved, too! You know, this could make an interesting debate in the Opinions and Debate forum - not a debate competition debate, though, simply because if a debate about an original Religion really takes off, you'd probably be looking at a few hundred posts easily, and quite a few people involved.

Now that's the shit. I love GR/QM.

I'm actually going to a lecture and meet Stephen Hawking this weekend.

Nice, most of my interest is personal, as my Math skills are lacking so I am unable to take much College level Science until I catch up. I have yet to take Trig+, so it'll be a while.

It's all highly fascinating, as I've always been a fan of Physics, I wish I could fully understand it all, but that's gonna have to wait, sadly.