Don't worry with Greece's current insolvency I'm sure we'll swoop in and buy the ruins at a bargain and you'll be able to visit at a great cost savings.

Where are all the christians screaming about the indecency of this obviously pagan ritual....oh yeah they are too busy judging gays.

As a Christian, it looks to me like you are the one doing all the judging. Obviously, you haven't evolved much by your own standards.

It's not the same as being there but you can watch the ceremony on You Tube. Here's the link:

Religion talk? Seriously people? Grow up.

@We the corporations?: Scroll down and read the post by MrWatcOwtNow. There, feel vindicated?

@ken-1058449: The evangelical community has had such a long history of condemming and judging just about everything you can think of, including each other and whether or not their "Christianity" was good enough, that it is not even funny. On these news forums alone there are countless examples of the judgmental attitude of protestant evangelical Christians, and don't even try to pretend like there isn't unless you are brand spanking new to these forums and just haven't read anybody's posts before. The sentiments of We the corporations? are an anticipated reaction to people like MrWatcOwtNow, who are all too common in our country and on these forums.

@Ken-1058449, it doesn't look like We the corporations? is judging anybody by his/her statement. But you sure are quick to jump right to the insults when somebody doesn't quite see eye to eye with you, huh? Could we please keep the religion and politics off of this discussion? I was just trying to make an innocent remark about how beautiful I bet it was to see such an amazing ceremony take place at an amazing location. Simple, really.

Cool story

Would have been cool to see

This has nothing to do with politics or relgion or anything like that, its just a cool story..

I actually am new to this forum so there are many post I have not read yet, but my personal experience is that I have never met any Christian who had a problem with anything of this nature or even close. The church is/or at least should be focusing on the saving of souls.

There that is my (incredibly) ill placed reply to someones comment.

Sorry, but I just had to say it so that maybe someone could not make it sound likek they are condeming a group of people for the actions of some..sounds a little too familar

Politics? The above and below posts are about religion! Can't people think of anything else besides politics and religion?!

How about culture? I was going to comment on how neat it is that Greek culture has permeated nearly every facet of Western society, including the Olympics, but hey everyone wants to talk about how socialism, paganism, and Christianity are all evil and need to be done away with.

The Olympic flame has burned since the first Olympic games in 776BC. No relay of a torch was run in those days since the flame originated at the site of the games for over 1000 years, Olympia Greece.

Pi106 you are correct. Casual US Taxpayer, it's obvious Wikipedia is what it is.

Lucifer never showed up in anything I've ever read about the Greeks. Actually, it was in honor of Zeus (god of sky and thunder), not Helios (the sun god).

There, you learned something.

I wanna be there at the afterparty @rgy for the ritual. All those womenz in white getting all evil with oil. Yay

Learn your history and not what your pastor feeds you.

A...There is NO Lucifer. If you actually believe in Angels then you need help in discerning truth from reality. It lies up there with Elves, Goblins and Zombies.

B...Being we are all based of Carbon atoms and space junk anyway, The Sun being a star is what actually gives ALL life on Earth to include Water and Air. You can't live without any of it.

C...The statement in B is absolute to humans and if you believe that some invisible man gives you life, loves you but is wiling to burn you for all eternity if you don't love him back who decided to kill every first born of Egypt and made a blood sacrifice from his only son then you really are off in the unreal world.

D...The Olympic Games was and always have been finding the best of the best of the human spirit yet defined in many ways.

P.S. If you can find and talk to a REAL Sun worshiper I am sure that you can find more truth and consistency from that person than you will ever find in the Holy Bible. Read it some time and not the censored parts your pastor teaches every Sunday morning. Read about the incest, Jewish domination, the slaughtering and enslaving of entire nations. The interesting part of Moses writing the first 5 books even the book about his death.

I've talked to a sunworshiper. He had no more answers than anybody else and there was no more truth or consistancy. He no longer "sunworships" :) Also, his retinas were permenatly burned from sungazing-at 28.

I'll take God and Jesus and angels thank you!

To each his own and I hope you lead a good life. I really do mean that.

However, I on the other hand have NO guilt. I have NO sin, given to me because of ADAM and Eve. Another BS story that a High School level genetics or National Geographic Special will tell you. Heck, you can even read it yourself because after Adam and Eve an entire human race just pops into existence on the next page. Of course God had to kill all of them as well in the great flood. The Flood that was taken from earlier stories and plagiarized.

A flood that is impossible due to the amount of water to land ratio on the planet.

Funny how not a single artifact has been discovered such as the Grail, Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear, ect... Every tourist trap says they have it but your unworthy to actually see it. We do have the shroud of turin, then again that was carbon dated to the 1300's I believe.

Somewhere along the line, Jonah lived inside a Whale for a few days and lived to tell about it.

Job had everything a man could ever want then God allowed him to be tortured and destroyed on a bet with "Lucifer"

How about the girls who got their father drunk and raped him in order to get pregnant because there were no men in the area. Teach that one to your kids do ya?

Anyway, I lost my place. Oh yea.

I may not be the smartest man around but I do try and think for myself. I believe a certain way until a better theory or true proof tells me otherwise. My morals come from my mothers upbringing and not from some invisible man that needs 10% of my earnings.

I treat my brother as I want to be treated and I go after any crap artist that tries to corrupt my kids by coming to my door and waking me on a Saturday morning.

Then again, you can always claim you have faith, which is the same thing as you have no proof but I believe it anyway.

Those things that you're focusing on are about real life first of all and second, you're not telling the stories in their entirety.

There is NO spin, out of context or anything of the sort.

People claim this to be the HOLY WORD OF GOD, the creator of all things including the universe, galaxies, stars and this is HIS word not mine. It is or it isn't.

Then MOSES talked to the burning bush. If Moses wrote it then why does he not say then I talked to the burning bush? Talking in a 3rd person is someone writing about the character.

Jesus was a character that comes in many theme's throughout history.

The one true king always born of a Virgin. Captain Kirk was better written and I respect him!

The Tower of Babble is the best they can come up with about languages? Really!

Galapagos islands shows a clear example of how species evolve into their own little groups.

It's called isolation yet this was the best a primitive culture can come up with at the time.

Shamans and burning witches still occur in India in the 21st century because they are still isolated area's, uneducated and 3rd world.

The Middle East is in turmoil because of human rights, religion and Uneducated people.

I can't stand Regan but Russia was won over through economics the same as China.

Give someone freedoms and a car then they get mad when someone takes away their toys. That's when change comes along and you want to part of society instead of blowing it up.

EDUCATION and understanding of he modern world.

If we die today it will be because of religion or overpopulation just like Rapanui.

Birth Rates are lower in educated Western countries while religious idiots keep saying be fruitful and multiply at the same time the head Alpha jerk wants to bang as many chicks in the tribe he can to prove his manhood. You get that only in the wild and uneducated. Aids in Africa buddy.

Hey, as I said. I hope it works out for you and get's you through the day.

"Funny how not a single artifact has been discovered such as the Grail, Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear"

The grail and the spear you speak of are purely fiction. Nowhere in the Bible are they mentioned as artifacts or anything. the shroud of turin is totally a fake, if you believe the Bible it spells that out pretty clearly as well, and if you just survived a flood that wiped out everything around you, you would be using every piece of that ark in order to survive. Ark of the covenant was most likely siezed in war and melted down by the enemy for it's gold, though we will probably never know.

Your other arguments are a little rambling and disjointed, so I won't bother comment. Nothing personal.

I don't really believe you when you said "I hope you lead a good life" though, because it's pretty obvious by your two following posts that you doubt it possible if I believe in God :) That's okay though.

Boxing? Skiing? Ice Hockey? Football (Soccer)?

Ping pong.

Track and field, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, weightlifting...

Greece is falling, buddy

Greece is falling, buddy

Interesting then that we are still celebrating their traditions 3000 years later on a worldwide scale...

We still celebrate traditions and cultures of dead regimes-->Greece is adding itself to the list.

The US is falling not Greece. Greece will come out just fine. Always has, and always will. It's pathetic that our government is trying to blame all our economic downsides on them right now.

Fiscally the U.S. is in better standing based on net assets. Comparing the U.S. and Greece when it comes to which one will be insolvent first is laughable.

Failing according to our "johnny-come-lately" western free market standards-which are less than 150 years old. Like I said, long after these standards pass into the history books, Greece will still be there. That is why the Greeks do what they please and that is why they are essentially telling the free-market guys, and the Germans in particular, to F---off. One of the dumbest things they did was to let Western banks convince them to abandon the drachma. You know, the drachma was the oldest currency in continuous use since antiquity until it was abandoned in favor of the Euro over a decade ago. Ironically, the euro and dollar will be a blip in history compared to the drachma.

You only need to look at Greece today to see where it's going. Greece is not a country that has separated itself from western fiscal ideals and it's going to pay for its dependence on it. Look at the country with 20% unemployment and people committing suicide because of the future burden they've bestowed upon themselves and tell me that it didn't play into free market standards<Naive?

Don't expect the Greeks to pay. They will shed that burden. They are going to suffer either way. Knowing them, they will not suffer to keep the Germans happy or the free-market happy. If they must suffer, they will suffer according to their own rules. You will see, they will suck the German's dry. That is my point. Lenders make loans and presumably understand that there is a chance that they might not get paid back. The lenders need to suck it up and be just a little smarter next time.

Yeah, you'll never find that story on MSNBC...Oh wait: usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/02/11507850-questions-raised-over-virginia-newspapers-delay-in-report-of-attack-on-reporters?lite

Clearly MSNBC is trying to bury this story by reporting on it at length. So devious!

So?

Ah, the famous judgemental Christian attitude. Want to talk about "true Christians"? How many times have you conveniently or deliberately ignored Christ's commandment: "Love thy neighbor as thyself", oh ye who cast the first stone?

That would be a no on the 'Vestal virgins'. The Vestals were (not 'where') the priestesses of Vesta, Roman Goddess of the Hearth, and Vesta had nothing to do with Greece or the Olympic Games. So technically no, as Vestals (with their vow of celibacy) served only Vesta. The Greek goddess of the hearth was the virgin goddess Hestia, and for both, fire lighting was a significant ritual (however there doesn't seem to be the centralized servitude to Hestia that Vesta had (via the Vestals), the rituals to Hestia were generally performed by the women of each household). However there was no indication in the article that the pseudo ceremony depicted was intended to be directed to Hestia, nor are the women performing rituals to Hestia traditionally required to be virgins.

No, it is tradition. The fire rituals of Hestia, the Greek Goddess of the Hearth, are performed by women.

Yes, me too. I have been completely infatuated with the Greek mythology as far back as I can remember. I hope you are able to get over there one day!