Yes, you're right again ILF. I've noticed in passing such programs on TV. But it isn't rocket science or proof of supernatural ability to be able to nominate likely common names, and to say "I can't quite hear". You can usually tell by the age groups, ethnicity, and attire of the people present which people are likely to have a mother, aunt, sister or friend called "Joan".

That particular name, common about WW2, has well and truly given way to other forms of "Joan" such as Jean, then Jeannette, Janet, Jane (as a common middle name) and lastly, "Joanne", worse luck. . Especially when "John" remained popular a bit longer, I agree. Though Jonathan or just Jon seems more popular these days. It seems that names are often allotted to children according to fashion, though they can usually reflect belief systems as well. Very often they also reflect nationality as well. Every year, here in Australia, the newspapers post the five or ten most popular boys' and girls' names for that year, and it isn't hard to go to a library or to research this sort of info on Internet. Or to check out locally for statistical information on its cultural groups.

Do you think babies should be automatically named after saints, or important religious figures? How do you feel about current fashions in naming children? What do you think of really weird names sometimes given to babies, and how this might have annoying, even adverse consequences for the child?

What is in a name, in short? And what sort of naming ceremony would you have for your child? What do you think of ministers who refuse to christen the babies of non-believers?

We had planned a traditional (and Biblical) name for our child no matter what he/she turned out to be. She was a girl and we had Sarah Grace already picked out for her, not the least of which because I love the name Sarah and think it's beautiful. Had she been a boy we had Mark or Paul picked. Kids can be terribly cruel at younger ages and having an unusual or even wacky name will ensure some teasing in varying degrees, from light ribbing down to hard bullying. My name was fairly uncommon at the time so I endured quite a bit of hard ribbing about it to the point where I really do hate my name even though many others love it. I was originally supposed to be Andrew, but that didn't pan out. If a parent wants to name their kid Dingbat McGoober that's their right to do so, but they should definitely consider the kid's future, especially because it's going to be pretty scarring.

My christian friends were not named after saints or anything there names are rensha and anisha. I don't like the idea of people giving children weird names for the reason shadow stated. My family tend to go with a name and choose the less common spelling. Such as with me My name is Danyelle.

My last whine about the "psychic" stuff, then I'm good for whatever else.

I agree very much, ILF and wagga, that many supposed fortune-tellers are imposters. All it takes is some college psychology courses and the ability to pay attention to make some predictions. If one customer wears flirty dress and another wears dowdy dress and a third wears office professional dress, there's probably a reason, and a smart "psychic" can "predict" some details. Or if the customer lets slip a personal detail such as being a middle child, the "fortune-teller" can run a long way with the Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! commonalities.

The reason for our concern is that it might not be that every poser is a college drop-out. Some dangerous things do exist.

So, MLD, if this sort of thing really does have a pull on you and you say again that you feel "guided" to follow them, may I suggest two alternatives.

One is: "in the mouth of two or three witnesses let each thing be established."

Matthew 18:16 : But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

2 Corinthians 13:1: This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.

That is, if it were okay for a Christian to indulge in some activity, there should be two or three verses you can cite to support it. Within reason, of course. I doubt there are 2-3 verses regarding whether Christians should ride roller-coasters. But if it were okay for Christians to consult fortune-tellers, you should verify that Scripture supports it.

The other option is: Talk to this pastor, Dr. Frederick K.C. Price. E-mail him, snail mail him, call him. (I would suggest more than one method, because megachurches get so busy). Fred Price is pastor of the Faith Dome / Crenshaw Christian Center. He's non-denominational, with a dash of rapturism and a touch of Prosperity Gospel, but a lot of drive. I don't agree with him on all things, but I appreciate his passion for Christ and the man does his homework. When I disagree with him on an interpretation, he always shows his homework to support his interpretation.

The reason I suggest talking to him directly -- not to his helpers or family or staff, because they're just bystanders, like us -- is that he said plainly in a tele-sermon that he went through an interval in his life when he practiced many of the topics and hobbies you cited. He concluded, "I had my poor wife scared to death." Eventually he decided that that stuff was not for him. Maybe the reason you don't see why it worries us is a case of "don't knock it until you've tried it." And of course we don't intend to try it, so how could we know what we're talking about? Fred has tried it. You'd have something in common with him and might find him helpful.

Take care.

...

On the subject of baby names, I can only think of a real-world joke. A couple decided to give their baby a bully-proof name. No one should make fun of their darling, they said. After much effort, they settled on a name.

When the time came, they brought home a new baby and introduced the brother to Baby Amber. Without missing a beat the boy said, "'ello, 'Amberger."

Long story short: Next time, consult The top 100 things to do if you're an evil overlord. Rule #12 is, "One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation." Or, in this case, ask a kid about how kids think.

Oh, and W4J, "followers" sometimes refers to subscribers to a Twitter account, sort of like their fans. I don't think MLD is leading a congregation in hir ("his/her") basement. (You're not, right?)

Actually I live in a beach house, so we don't have a basement. We usually have meetings in my guest room or else out on the beach beneath the stars, with lit candles.

Yes, dancing by moonlight on the beach does really go with your user name here. I can visualize the joie de vivre of dancing in such a locality. I hope the sand is nice, and not pebbly or littered with rubbish as it can be elsewhere in the world. In contrast, my own user name, which refers to an Australian city, also refers to a character in the Harry Potter series, which has caused some controversy when it was at its most popular.

But having read and enjoyed this series as much as I always enjoyed the Narnia books, I found it lampooned and decried fortune-telling and dabbling with dark occult practices. These books also pointed out the pitfalls of mishearing, misinterpreting and misunderstanding prophecies, or applying them in retrospect. As Aslan says in the Narnia series, "nobody is ever told what would have happened". Another, somewhat less controversial, movie series, which my family also enjoyed immensely, was the Indiana Jones series, all of which films mention ancient religious artifacts, superstitious beliefs, dark and dangerous occult rites and the involvement of sinister thuggish enemy powers, such as the Nazis.

I share a name with a fairly well known saint whose gilded equestrian statue near the Louvre is a most useful starting point and landmark to navigate one's way around Paris. The story of this heroic 15th century French peasant girl was also a dire warning about the pitfalls and perils of dabbling in supernatural visions and admitting so publicly. And so, getting back to unusual and ridiculous names and what they can mean for the user, I can also see why people may not like even fairly common names they have been saddled with.

There is nothing unusual or particularly dreadful about being called "Ronda", for example. It isn't a saint's name as far as I can remember, and Ronda Fleming, whose career started a fad for that name, was a famous actress in the 1920's, I believe. But in the 1890's it was a really unusual name. Until a mare by that name came second in the 1892 Melbourne cup. My great grandfather, who had backed the horse, called his newly-born daughter Ronda after the prizewinning horse. And so it became a family name. I really would not have wanted to be called after a horse, even a lucky or famous one like Phar Lap or Black Caviar. Better to be continually misnamed Jo-anne.

Meanwhile, thank you all for your well-reasoned responses. And here is something else I might ask about names and why people have them. A prominent Muslim spokesperson here has complained that people with Islamic names get discriminated against in job interviews because of those names, and so, to avoid such discrimination, they have been Westernizing their names in a bid to fit in with those around them. I have noticed that non-Muslim Asian students have also used similar practices, though I usually tried to learn to call such students by their own proper names.

Do you think it should be necessary to change your name to be accepted in another faith, country or culture? Why and why not?

My name is considered to be french actually and my surname is originally irish. Though i think the name Danyelle/danielle is used around the western world. I don't think you have to change your name in these times to fit into a culture or religion because the world is very diverse now.

Thought I would revive this thread.

I am interested to know how you came into religion. What is your story? were you born into a religious family? did you discover religion later in life yourself?

My family are mainly skeptics. I was the first however to take a real interest in evolutionary science. My family are not what I would call "pushy" by which I mean I was hardly forced into anything. Including sport and other activities. I think they like people to make there own choices. There has never been a fight/ debate about religion in my family.

I am interested to know how you came into religion. What is your story? were you born into a religious family? did you discover religion later in life yourself?

I actually became a Christian before anyone really told me about Christianity.

I remember being very little, and having an awareness of "Something Good", though I was too young to be able to explain what I thought it was.

No one really talked to me about religion, and I'm not sure my family even went to church at the time. My parents were both religious, but they didn't plan on teaching me about religion until I was a lot older. To their surprise, I came up to them randomly one night when I was three years old and said to them, "I want to be Christian."

Throughout the years, they started teaching me what they believed about Christianity and God - which was much different than how I had pictured God at the time. I didn't really go along with much of the things they said. I spent a lot of time thinking and forming ideas based on things I personally saw and knew; and some of the things they taught me just didn't seem to add up. But I had to sort of... pretend to agree with them back then, of course, because I didn't want to get in trouble with them.

When I was old enough to do Bible study on my own (instead of hearing my parents' interpretation of every scripture) I found their ideas didn't really match what the Bible seemed to say either. So, as soon as I was of age, I chose my own beliefs based on what I believe the Bible means, rather than what my parents think it means. Today, both my parents and I are Christians, but we belong to different denominations of the Church.

Of course, I have a lot more basis for my faith than just feelings I had as a kid. I have witnessed miracles (I don't mean the silly sort of things people often call miracles, like supposed "faith healings" or prayers coming true, or adages like "every day is a miracle". I mean miracles. Things I saw in person that don't have any other explanation.) Plus, based on what I've read about science (Yes, I do believe in science. I'm not one of those Christians who thinks science is evil. ), I think that it is much more likely the world was either formed - or its formation was aided by - some sort of intelligent design.

~Riella

I am glade you don't think science is evil. I am far from that group of people who call themselves militant atheists. An agnostic atheist is the better definition for myself( I don't believe in gods but I don't rule out the possibility).

I also like how your parents didn't say anything endless you asked.I understand science more than my parents( though dad does know a bit about physics).

My father especially i not the most open person. He hardly ever discussed religion, afterlives and still doesn't.

I want to put a question to religious folk. Why do some of you think one person being found trapped somewhere alive after a natural disaster is a miracle of god but yet so many others died? why save the one person?.

My experience was similar in some respects to Ithilwen's. From as far back as I can remember, I believed that the Universe had been created by some kind of God. My parents weren't especially religious, though my mother had a loose connection with Methodism and I was Christened a Methodist. But I was rather a precocious kid whose reading age was a fair bit ahead, and to me it seemed illogical that a Universe as complex as ours could just spring into being by itself for no reason.

I first read the Narnia Chronicles when I was 6 (around 1970) but I didn't make any religious connections from them until I was at university (around 1984) and began to read C. S. Lewis' books for adults.

Christianity didn't really enter the picture till I was 17 and doing my A-levels at school (they're the exams people do in their final year of high school in the UK to determine, among other things, where you go to university). The school's Christian Union put on a (Christian) rock concert in the common room, and I went along as I'm well into rock music. A friend of mine in my Maths class then invited me to go to the local Baptist church the following Sunday. I thought, "Why not?" I found I really enjoyed it, made a lot of friends and kept going. After about three months I prayed the expected "Ask Jesus into my life" prayer, and from then on considered myself a Christian.

However, I've never "known" Jesus the way some Christians claim (and I can't help but wonder if they're being wholly honest, or whether they're attributing some of their own thoughts to be words from God). I don't have any "inner peace" or anything like that, despite praying for it many times over the years. Still, there's that underlying childhood conviction that God is there - somewhere.

To answer ILoveFauns' question, I must admit I wouldn't describe that kind of situation as a "miracle of God". I tend to believe that God has mapped out when we are all born and when we all die, though we can make choices during the time in between. If one person survives a disaster, then maybe God just decided it wasn't that person's time yet, for a reason which may become clear later.

I want to put a question to religious folk. Why do some of you think one person being found trapped somewhere alive after a natural disaster is a miracle of god but yet so many others died? why save the one person?.

I don't consider this sort of thing a miracle, though I have met many people who do. From what I've seen, they usually believe this for one of the following reasons:

1. Whenever they see something amazing happen, they want it to be a miracle of God; so they call it one, conveniently ignoring all the bad things that happened.

2. They listen to a lot of televangelists or prosperity gospel teachers, and their beliefs are influenced by them. This is especially the case if the survivor of the disaster is a Christian, and those who perished in the disaster are either non-religious or people whose beliefs are unknown/unspecified.

The big thrust of the prosperity gospel teaching is that if you're a Christian, God will bless you, save you from disasters and not let anything bad happen to you; and that, if something bad happens to you, you aren't really saved. So when the people who go along with this belief see someone survive a disaster, they think God must have spared them because that person was such a good Christian. The funny thing about the prosperity gospel, though, is the Bible contradicts it completely. As Matthew 5:45 says: "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Being a Christian won't get you special perks.

~Riella

Riella, the saved person may not be a Christian though, and later become one. I think sometimes it's a miracle, sometimes it's not. I don't follow the prosperity gospel, it counteracts the Bible, but God's sovereign, so who's to say what is and isn't a miracle of God?

Either way God controls the events surrounding the incident and its aftermath. It may not always be pretty but it always has purpose.

I don't follow the prosperity gospel, it counteracts the Bible, but God's sovereign, so who's to say what is and isn't a miracle of God?

Because, if a sign or result of His sovereignty is considered a miracle, wouldn't everything be a miracle of God? God is sovereign, but his sovereignty touches everything. And to paraphrase the Incredibles, if everything is a miracle, then nothing is.

There are people who view everything as a miracle. But it's a term I like to save for the truly incredible - those rare, extreme events that can only be explained by the supernatural.

~Riella