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Author | Topic: Is America a Christian Nation? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Strongly disagreed. Uh ... you read the quotations, right?
Not what I said. It does, however, appear to be what you're thinking, or why would you think that the religious sentiments of Madison and Jefferson had any relevance whatsoever to the question of whether they favored separation of Church and State?
Like the Declaration of Independence, it references a Creator as the basis for inalienable rights consistent with the Bible. Rather than trying to limit religious expression in government, it seeks to protect it. Well, at first glance, and indeed second and third glance, that appears to be a lie so vast that it's in danger of undergoing gravitational collapse and turning into a black hole. Would you care to try to justify it or elaborate on it?
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
We're not talking about their religious sentiments. We're talking about them enshrining in U.S. law the fact that a Creator is the basis for religious freedom. They didn't. Nor is it a fact.
We're talking about how their concept of Separation of Church and State is completely opposite the concept of Separation of Church and State that Progressives today have. It isn't. What I mean by "total separation of the church from the state" is no different from what Madison meant by it. Indeed, if anything, I am more easy-going on the subject than Madison: for example, I have no objection to the provision of chaplains to the military.
The Declaration of Independence states: I have never denied that the Founders possessed religious sentiments. I have indeed asserted it.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom states: It does indeed. And your point was? How on earth does that support your claim that it seeks to protect religious expression in government? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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What you believe on Separation of Church and State I'm not sure. We may be in agreement. All I'm saying is the founders opposed restrictions on religious expression, including in U.S. politics, as evidenced by the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. But they instituted restrictions on religious expression by the government. Yes, obviously they let politicians, in their capacity as private individuals, express whatever religion they wanted, just like any other person could. But they forbade them to do so in their capacity as holders of public offices.
Obviously if he wanted to stop Christians from presenting views on God in government, he wouldn't have used such religious language himself in referencing "Almighty God". His own document on religious freedom provides an example of what his thought process on religious freedom was like, and what should be permissible. Therefore, it should be alright for me to write a bill proclaiming Almighty God institutes X rights, and drawing logical conclusions as such, just as Jefferson did. I think you might find that the First Amendment would be an obstacle in certain cases. After all, have you ever seen any of the whackier breed of Republican congressmen writing a bill saying what Almighty God thinks? And yet they do think that they know what Almighty God thinks and that he's in favor of every bill they write, it's one of the more egregiously nutty things about them. I would suggest, then, that if they don't do that it's because they know that they can't. And really, would it be desirable if they could? Should Congress be allowed to pass laws saying what God thinks? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Jefferson wrote in the Treaty of Tripoli this [...] This treaty was authored by American diplomat Joel Barlow There seems to be an inconsistency in your narrative.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I wasn't aware of Williams, but you didn't really point out how the government he set up was not Christian in nature. When Williams and his associates applied for a Royal Charter, they asked the King to grant full freedom of conscience, which he did:
Have therefore thought fit, and do hereby publish, grant, ordain and declare, that our royal will and pleasure is, that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned (Oddly, the people of Rhode Island retained the charter as the legal foundation of their state until 1843, well after the War of Independence, and didn't establish an actual Constitution until that date.) Rhode Island as a consequence became a haven not just for Christian minorities, but for Jews, and has the oldest synagogue in the United States.
This exchange of letters between the Jews of Newport and George Washington is rather touching.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I guess the reason I see this all being at issue is that it seems like social progressives (I'm personally progressive on economics) want to deny our founding fathers were Christian or guided by Christian ideals when proposing freedom of religion. I don't see anyone denying that most of them were Christian (some, I believe, were more deist in their inclinations). As for "Christian ideals", Christians have no monopoly on the desire to separate church and state.
The way social conservatives at least have been seeing it, they want to remove all mention of God from the Pledge of Allegiance, courtrooms, and state constitutions in the name of religious freedom and Constitutionality - even in cases where the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution put those mentions of God there in the first place. I am absolutely certain that the Founding Fathers didn't put any mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Nor did the guy who actually wrote it.
Separation of church and state seems to have become about infringing on religious freedom of Christians so that, because of their moral, religious views, they can't have a voice on how government should be run, and only atheists should be able to direct our country. Obviously they can have a voice. They can also vote according to what they think God wants them to do. What they can't do is institutionalize Christianity. Yes, that includes employees of the state telling children when to pray and how to pray and who to pray to and what to pray for. Yes, that includes using public money and public land to display icons of one sectarian group of one religion. Yes, that involves using any public funds to push the agenda of creationist sects. When Madison wrote "total separation" he didn't add "unless you really want to".
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I agree about not institutionalizing Christianity. But I guess the question is, what's the difference between what you mentioned, and having taught as undeniable fact to impressionable young minds the theory of Evolution or the Big Bang, both of which are frankly opinions, and using tax dollars to do so? What is the difference between teaching children about homosexual role models as the gay rights movement is having done in states across the U.S.? What is the difference between forcing millions of Pro-Life Americans to fund Planned Parenthood through the new healthcare law? What is the difference between having a Stimulus give millions of dollars in earmarks to Pro-Evolution organizations and scientists, and not to Creationist ones? 404 How are these opinions forced on Americans who don't support them a different case? Religious freedom doesn't entail freedom to play dog-in-the-manger. A flat-Earth sect shouldn't stop state schools from buying globes, or stop the Navy from buying and using navigation systems based on spherical geometry. Nor does the existence of Jehovah's Witnesses prevent them from spending money on blood transfusions, nor the existence of Scientologists prevent them from offering psychiatric treatment to soldiers with PTSD. The existence of white supremacist churches doesn't stop people from teaching about black role models nor render Martin Luther King Day unconstitutional. Pacifist religious groups such as the Quakers do not entail that we should abolish the Army. If there are still any Christians left who pay any attention to the strictures in the Bible against usury, that wouldn't stop the government from borrowing or lending money at interest. And if a cult arose that claimed that two twos were five, schools would not have to abandon teaching the multiplication table. The government is free to act for secular purposes, such as making sure that the Navy can get their ships from point A to point B, without reference to this or that religious belief. If they couldn't, then that would be an entanglement of church with state; moreover, it would be stupid. This does not leave religious people entirely without recourse --- for example, if Quakers could persuade enough people to share their views, we could vote to abolish the Army. But the First Amendment does not oblige us to abolish it right now out of deference to their religion. (And since there were Quakers back when the USA was founded, and we had an army even back then, it is plain that the Founders agreed with my interpretation of the First Amendment in this respect at least.) Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
d.p.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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To me it looks like those who say church and state should be kept separate, as evidenced by the examples I gave, are in reality doing exactly what Jefferson predicted, actually institutionalizing their own beliefs in law, and infringing on the religious freedoms of those they disagree with. If it is wrong to institutionalize one side's beliefs and force them on others, it should be for the other side also. It is --- they're not allowed to use taxpayers' money to teach their religious doctrines either. Of course, they don't want to. I think you're playing about a bit with words like "belief" and "opinion" here. Jefferson clearly thought that one shouldn't be compelled to pay for a religion one does not believe in. This is different from saying that one should not be compelled to pay for a government program that one does not believe in. In a democracy, such things are going to happen. For example, people who opposed the war with Iraq still had to pay for it. I must have missed the clamor of fundamentalists explaining that this contravened the spirit of the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom --- or if they made any mention of it, it must have been drowned out by the din they made rattling their sabres.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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But the line you're taking is not one that can be taken by the government.
Don't you see that if they started making distinctions, the First Amendment would have gone completely up the spout? They'd have to start saying: "OK, we don't have to pander to this church (on inter-racial marriage) but we do have to pander to this other more favored church (on gay marriage). We don't have to accommodate the to the Quakers, who tell us that war is clearly murder, but we must accommodate the Catholics who say the same thing about abortion. The geoplanarians are a small sect, we can draw up a school curriculum without reference to them; but there are many creationists, so we can't teach anything that they find offensive. Moreover, I personally think that the views of geoplanarians are clearly wrong, whereas I being but a simple Supreme Court Justice find it harder to refute creationists. Now, how about the geocentrists? How stupid do I think they are, and how many of them are there?" Now, you as a private individual can dismiss certain religious beliefs because the minority that holds them is a small one, or because you find those beliefs silly and easy to refute. That's your perfect right. But we can't put the government in the business of deciding that, and establishing that for First Amendment purposes some churches are important churches such that taxpayers' money should never be spent in any way that might grieve or upset their adherents, whereas other churches are just silly little cults that no-one needs to bother about. Now of course the elected officials can pander to this or that church to some extent, and may indeed do so by counting heads. Hence, some churches have more political clout than others. But we can't have some churches having a different constitutional position based on how large they are or whether we think they're silly. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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By that definition, if opinions and modes of thinking imposed on others include Evolution, Homosexuality, and Abortion, they might as well be for all intents and purposes religions. They are opinions and modes of thinking imposed on the faith of others. That hardly seems to mean anything. How does someone impose a homosexual opinion on your faith?
I am a fundamentalist, and I've been opposing the Iraq War since 2004. I say so on my CreationWiki page, and I can prove it per my 2004 posting history at RenewAmerica's forums. I was criticizing both Bush and Obama at the time and my posting history proves it, as well as the fact that I voted for Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party. I've never voted anything but 3rd party in a presidential general election. So ... do you deserve a tax rebate? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Well, I kinda liked the constitutional republic we have. But my best wishes on your endeavor to abolish it.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I already gave the example of having homosexual role models taught to grade schoolers. Using one's own public tax dollars to teach that homosexuality is right to one's children would seem to fit that description. Another example would be the homosexual hate crimes laws that are allowing pastors to be sued for not performing gay weddings, photographers for not photographing gay weddings, and doctors for not performing in vitro fertilization on lesbian couples. Those are all cases of infringing on the religious freedoms of others. And where did they actually occur? Could I see some specific instances? Only I know what hate crime legislation actually is, so I am doubtful of your claims.
I think our tax code is way too complicated and needs to be simplified. We should just figure out what the 10-15 most effective Income Tax questions are for determining cumulative national wealth, adopt those, and toss the rest. I'm not sure we even need to ask marriage status for tax purposes. Concerning taxes on business, I'd like to see tax rebates for companies that hire more U.S. workers in relation to company earnings so companies are incentivized to hire U.S. workers maximally rather than replacing them with overseas workers, illegal immigrants, or automation. You missed my point. I mean: if you were opposed to the war, does that mean that you shouldn't have to pay for it?
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