Out God We Thrust

I think you are refering to the practices of the population, and not the intentions of the founding fathers. They also said that "all men are created equal" in a time when slavery was practiced. Society did not allow true equality at the time, and it took a Civil War to get rid of it, but there are a lot of concepts in the Constitution that were philosophical lobs into the future and could not be practiced at the time they were written.

Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence

James Madison, primary author of the Constitution

 

As far as equality, it actually took suffrage, and the abolishment of Jim Crow Laws, but I digress.

The Constitution is a living document. A lot of idiots look at that thing with a fine tooth comb and go "Look! It's only implied! It's not explicit! We can change something due to that!"

It's how wacko's are able to carry around AK47's these days.
It's also how whacko's sit and try to remove anything the slightest bit offensive.

Anyone who feels the founding father's wanted a Pagan society are as myopic and narrow-minded as the people who thought the founding father's wanting fully automatic machine guns for recreation.

They're both very silly stances.

 

straw-man - no one is saying the founding father's wanted a Pagan society - but a secular one, where the Feds are neutral on religion - do you even know the difference?

do you seriously want the government making the decisions about the religion you and your children practice? by institutionalizing Christianity, that is exactly what you are saying, you want the government to make the decison for you

here are some words on the subject by super conservative Republican Berry Goldwater..

"I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.”

“By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars…. Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?”

 

but the Constitution is not ambigious on this subject

 

Right... we continue to get closer and closer to the society that the founding fathers imagined.

I am arguing for keeping it the way it is, not changing it. You are using it when it suits your needs, and discarding it when it doesn't.

They wanted the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. I was just countering your point that we are a Christian society because the almighty dollar bill says so.

Many of the fouding fathers were deists, including the two most important ones, not Christians.

 

Those are great grounds for a "discussion." You posted something with which you already agree (and thus know the answer to the implied question) and is not based on anything that you think can be proven so external sources/research are not needed (you think they could be wrong, after all). What, exactly, did you want to discuss?

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Everything should be "grandfathered". No new stuff-that keeps separation people happy. And keep the stuff already there.

Seriously: What are y'all fighting over?!? The "Pledge of Allegiance? Our money having "In God We Trust"? Some religious bible's or quotes in front of City Halls?

I don't get it. These things seem to be argued about just to be argued about.

If these things really get you riled up, grow a thicker skin, damnit.

What I do recall as a kid was not noticing these things at all. It really is ridiculous.

 

http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=resources_brochure_christiannation

The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document. It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ. In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice in the First Amendment, which bars laws "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and in Article VI, which prohibits "religious tests" for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian.

The Founding Fathers did not create a secular government because they disliked religion. Many were believers themselves. Yet they were well aware of the dangers of church-state union. They had studied and even seen first-hand the difficulties that church-state partnerships spawned in Europe. During the American colonial period, alliances between religion and government produced oppression and tyranny on our own shores.

Many colonies, for example, had provisions limiting public office to "Trinitarian Protestants" and other types of laws designed to prop up the religious sentiments of the politically powerful. Some colonies had officially established churches and taxed all citizens to support them, whether they were members or not. Dissenters faced imprisonment, torture and even death.

These arrangements led to bitterness and sectarian division. Many people began agitating for an end to "religious tests" for public office, tax subsidies for churches and other forms of state endorsement of religion. Those who led this charge were not anti-religion. Indeed, many were members of the clergy and people of deep piety. They argued that true faith did not need or want the support of government.

Respect for religious pluralism gradually became the norm. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example, he spoke of "unalienable rights endowed by our Creator." He used generic religious language that all religious groups of the day would respond to, not narrowly Christian language traditionally employed by nations with state churches.

While some of the country's founders believed that the government should espouse Christianity, that viewpoint soon became a losing proposition. In Virginia, Patrick Henry argued in favor of tax support for Christian churches. But Henry and his cohorts were in the minority and lost that battle. Jefferson, James Madison and their allies among the state's religious groups ended Virginia's established church and helped pass the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, a 1786 law guaranteeing religious freedom to all.

Jefferson and Madison's viewpoint also carried the day when the Constitution, and later, the Bill of Rights, were written. Had an officially Christian nation been the goal of the founders, that concept would appear in the Constitution. It does not. Instead, our nation's governing document ensures religious freedom for everyone.

Maryland representative Luther Martin said that a handful of delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued for formal recognition of Christianity in the Constitution, insisting that such language was necessary in order to "hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But that view was not adopted, and the Constitution gave government no authority over religion. Article VI, which allows persons of all religious viewpoints to hold public office, was adopted by a unanimous vote. Through ratification of the First Amendment, observed Jefferson, the American people built a "wall of separation between church and state."

Some pastors who favored church-state union were outraged and delivered sermons asserting that the United States would not be a successful nation because its Constitution did not give special treatment to Christianity. But many others welcomed the new dawn of freedom and praised the Constitution and the First Amendment as true protectors of liberty.

Early national leaders understood that separation of church and state would be good for all faiths including Christianity. Jefferson rejoiced that Virginia had passed his religious freedom law, noting that it would ensure religious freedom for "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, the infidel of every denomination."

Other early U.S. leaders echoed that view. President George Washington, in a famous 1790 letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., celebrated the fact that Jews had full freedom of worship in America. Noted Washington, "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship."

Washington's administration even negotiated a treaty with the Muslim rulers of north Africa that stated explicitly that the United States was not founded on Christianity. The pact, known as the Treaty with Tripoli, was approved unanimously by the Senate in 1797, under the administration of John Adams. Article 11 of the treaty states, "[T]he government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…."

 

Bravo, Chump. You just proved my first point.

America was founded by Christians who wanted Freedom of Religion.

 

I was never arguing those points

do you understand the difference between "founded by" and "founded as" ?

 

Go re-read my first post. I never said it was founded as a Christian Country.

What I have said, repeatedly, is that the writer's never imagined that people would use such silly semantics to peel every layer of a person's beliefs.

Again, just like freedom of speech, you have every right not to participate, or look at any religious thing. You can even denounce it. What you cannot do is remove something because you find it offensive.

Aren't libs the one's who started the idea of freedom of speech? You can't have it both ways.

 

And y'all have every right to debate my post, but I will be answering very sporadically the next few days. I'm outta here!

Merry Christmas, you bastards!!!

 

This is also supposed to be a country where no religion is forced on people simply because it is the predominant religion in the country. That is what the Founding Fathers were running away from, a church that had its hooks in every government institution, as it has been here for quite some time.

The Founders may very well have been Xian, but they codified into the supreme law of our land a clear separation of church and state. The fact that said separation has not been fully enforced until recently is really immaterial. The Bill of Rights set out a freedom that judges are just now starting to recognize. That is a good thing, IMO, not a bad one.

BTW, saying that "this is a Christian Country that doesn't persecute other beliefs or feelings" is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Americans have persecuted others for their religious beliefs since before the Declaration even. From the Native Americans to the slaves to the immigrants of this country, Xians here have persecuted other beliefs for centuries right here in America.

 

no the idea started after william and mary approved the bill of rights including freedom of speech in the brit parliament...

oh and the constitution.

 

Metaphor fills our lives, but it is subtle and often unobserved even when we are confronted by it every day. Joseph Campbell points to the symbolism on our currency: "...the elegant eighteenth-century engraving still to be seen on the back of our twentieth-century dollar bill represents a realization of the philosophical way pursued by that extraordinary company of deists to whom we owe the establishment, in reason, of this nation. Composed of elements adapted from a hermetic tradition of great antiquity and universality (undoubtedly assembled from the library and great learning of Thomas Jefferson), its pictorial vocabulary is so little understood today that many suppose the word 'God' of its maxim, 'In God we trust,' to be a reference to the 'God' of the Christian religion, which it is not. For the deist founding fathers rejected the idea of the 'Fall' and, with that, the necessity for 'Redemption,' as well as the idea of a special Judeo-Christian revelation. Man's nature, in their view, is not corrupt. The idea of God is innate in man's mind from the beginning; so that by reason alone man has arrived, everywhere, at a recognition of God which is sufficient. Religious intolerance is blasphemy, since in their primal ground and ultimate sense, all religions are one, as is mankind" (Inner Reaches, p. 126).

 

giddy - perhaps you should move to South Carolina

http://christianexodus.org/

 

Many other religions do not have a belief in your god. So with the statement above you are implying that their understanding leads to people being killed etc. That is completely disrespectful.

Many other religions do not pray to your god or pray at all. And again, it very disrespectful.

I can say that those who do not meditate and instead pray produce the killers. It would be the same thing.