Grace Before Dinner -- Appropriate?

[Anonymous]

To 07;28 - Yes I Got it, thank you.
It's difficult to get people to behave. If you get several people together like at a dinner, it's likely that some will misbehave. If one can view it as comical it helps.
What happens is most people are selfish and instead of doing what I want them to do they do what they want to do. If that starts getting to me, that's when I think about the fact that "the things I cannot change" are "other people" and the "only thing I can change" is "me (or my attitude)."
I'm an atheist but I sit quietly if I'm somewhere grace is being said and I hold hands but look around the room instead of bowing my head. I have been tempted when a prayer went on too long, to shout "Amen" and then start dishing out food. I've never done that and probably never will but I'd like to.
I apologize for my post about praying for the sun to go down. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful, I just wasn't being considerate nor did I really give it much thought. I'll try to behave better in the future.

[Anonymous]

don't Jews say grace? They believe in God too! You hosted a dinner on Easter!! What's wrong with saying Grace

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the evidence indicates that prayer does not effect the physical world and if it affects a persons mental state, it cannot be shown to have anything to do with a big ear, listening in the sky.

If on a certain day, the Sun will go down at 7:00 PM, and at 1:00 PM we start praying for it to go down, if we pray long enough the Sun will go down. Someone starts praying at 1:00 PM and grows tired of praying without getting any results by 4:00 PM. So at 4:00 PM they stop praying for the Sun to go down. Well obviously they will conclude that prayer doesn't work and the prayer warriors will say, "Well, if you think prayer doesn't work it's because you haven't prayed enough." And of course, they're right, because if the person had prayed for three more hours their prayer would have been answered.

See if you can pray the Sun down any earlier than when it is set to go down according to the forecast for your location. Get you whole church congregation to pray or get all the people in the world to pray, and guess what will happen?

I'll tell you what will happen:

1:00 PM - start praying for the Sun to go down.
1:01 PM - God says, "Not yet!"
1:02 PM - God says, "Not yet!"
• • •
6:59 PM - God says, "Not yet!"
7:00 PM - God says, "Now!", and answers the prayer. And the gullible believe more than ever as they shout, "Thank you Jesus" - "Praise the Lord!" - "God is great!"
What I'm saying is that all those table prayers are only being heard by people anyway. So while you are wrapped up in your tradition and dogma and whatever, talking to the sky fairy, I'm going to be eating before the meal gets cold.

Being totally disrespectful on DCUM is a sign of your superior intelligence and the other atheists here are giving you high fives all around. The only bad behavior is when OP's FIL disrespects OP's guests. Got it.

Now....this is the part where you articulate how PP was being "disrespectful". Some people think Duke is the best college basketball program ever. If I say they stink and that Louisville is far better, am I being "disrespectful". Perhaps. But usually in those situations we ask adult people to grow a pair when discussing such things in an open forum. Same thing with politics. It's only religion where believers want to carve out some sort of "religious exemption" and be free from any criticism whatsoever.

If this were the political forum, these types of critiques would be considered incredibly mild. This demand to be free from any sort of even mild questioning is a great example of "Christian privilege" which mirrors "white privilege" and "white privilege".

So there's this guy who is a political leader who is trying to subvert family planning policy in the third world. Also trying to get people in AIDS ravaged countries to stop using condoms that are the only practical protection against infection. If he were the Chancellor of Germany, it would be fair to criticize him in the strongest terms possible. But instead he wears a funny hat, and people think he's God's anointed on Earth. So how dare you be so disrespectful as to criticize!

Nice racket.

[Anonymous]

^^^ At first I thought your attempt to drag the pope into a duscussion of saying grace at dinner was an April Fool's joke. You know, a parody of the anti-catholic bigotry and specious reasoning that normally characterizes certain posters here.

But then I realized that you really are the same second rate, piss-poor thinker who really just wants a good, endless fight. Too bad!

- signed, not a catholic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ At first I thought your attempt to drag the pope into a duscussion of saying grace at dinner was an April Fool's joke. You know, a parody of the anti-catholic bigotry and specious reasoning that normally characterizes certain posters here.

But then I realized that you really are the same second rate, piss-poor thinker who really just wants a good, endless fight. Too bad!

- signed, not a catholic

How DARE you say that Mike Krzyzewski is mortal! I truly believe he is infallible. For you to imply he's not is incredibly DISRESPECTFUL!

--signed, not a duke fan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: No reasonable person participating in a holiday/family celebration for another person's religion would be offended by a prayer before dinner.

If it's just a family celebration maybe, but if there are people from outside the family it might be. What if they're atheist or Muslim?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Very rare do people say grace at every meal, those who do - do it quiet and don't need to make a big show. It's not about me, it's about them. It's about their day to day belief which isn't a December 25th thing. It's a yearly 3 meals a day thing.

Yeah, in my DH's family they only say grace at big holidays,not every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: No reasonable person participating in a holiday/family celebration for another person's religion would be offended by a prayer before dinner.

If it's just a family celebration maybe, but if there are people from outside the family it might be. What if they're atheist or Muslim?

My husband is an athiest. He will sit quietly through grace. The fact that he doesn't believe (neither do I) doesn't mean we don't respect others' choices. Especially if we're at a dinner in someone else's home. If you're invited to someone else's home you need to respect them.