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dmaestro 17-May-24, 11:24 |
 LS |
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Whatever the Appeal Atheists enjoyed every bit of freedom theists took for granted, up until the 1950s when the U.S. corrupted both the pledge and the national motto. We never denied suffrage to atheists, though George H. W. Bush famously quipped atheists should be stripped of citizenship. |
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GMF |
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dmaestro 17-May-24, 12:32 |
Today we can even.argue Jesus taught Buddhism www.thezensite.com. Back then then who would not have framed that view. What we know for fact is the framers did not intend to create a Christian nation. If that is agreed upon and I missed that all is fine. |
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DM Nor a religious nation. They were largely believers in Locke and Paine Two Great Thinkers The Founding Fathers were a group of extraordinary thinkers and brilliant men, but throughout the course of American Constitutional History, there were a number of other writers, philosophers, and revolutionaries who helped champion or support the case for American Independence. Two prominent thinkers, one directly and one indirectly, played a pivotal role in the founding of the United States. These men were Thomas Paine and John Locke. Thomas Paine was an English-born political activist, author, and revolutionary who came to America to support the cause against the British. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets, The American Crisis and Common Sense, at the start of the American Revolution, he aimed to inspire the colonists to declare independence from Britain. Although his work influenced the Founding Fathers to some degree, he had a much greater impact on the common people, who, after reading these two works, became much more supportive of the Revolutionary cause. Although the push for American independence was already burning when Paine was writing, he certainly helped to kindle the flame. John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, especially concerning the development of political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, but most importantly, the American revolutionaries. Thomas Jefferson used the thoughts first penned by John Locke while writing the Declaration of Independence. The phrase "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," was an idea first considered by Locke in his Two Treatises on Government. www.constitutionfacts.com |
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By the way What was important is that they believed ADAMANTLY that belief was personal, and that the state should NOT IN ANY WAY encourage nor support any religion, nor prohibit any or no religious belief. As Jefferson stated, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” “If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by His pseudo-priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind.” “But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” “Perhaps the single thing which may be required to others before toleration to them would be an oath that they would allow toleration to others.” |
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dmaestro 17-May-24, 13:57 |
Z |
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dmaestro 17-May-24, 14:01 |
Churches should stay out of politics and only a minority want a “Christian nation” which has no clear definition. That should settle the matter. |
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This What was important is that they believed ADAMANTLY that belief was personal, and that the state should NOT IN ANY WAY encourage nor support any religion, nor prohibit any or no religious belief. It was worth repeating. |
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dm So theologians, pastors, rabbis, etc. do not fit your "definition" of "educated people." Interesting definition. Would you like to expound upon what you considr to be "educated people?" =================== < The point being the colonies were refugees from all sorts of factors.> What "other factors" brought the Puritans here? How about the Pilgrims? The Quakers? The Waldensians? The Mennonites? The Salzburgers? Of course the Jamestown colony was founded for profit, but that didn't survive long. =================== <Applying today’s evangelical definition of believer and atheist is prima facia revisionism.> It is NOT! This discussion was about whether or not atheists constituted a significant portion of the original settlers or founding fathers. Although, as has been pointed out by ls on this forum, the term atheist was frequemtly used in that period as an epithet (much as "fascist" is misused today) there is no evidence that the strict definition of the word was any different during that period from our definition today. It meant disbelief in a divine presence then and it means the same today. Your use of the term "revisionist" does not apply to the term "atheist" in its intellectual use. ====================== <IMO it would be hell to live under the dictates of your type of organized faith based on some myth this should be a Christian nation not secular> You are, of course, entitltled to your opinion, even if it is wrong. You demonstrate your ignorance by ascribing a "[my] type of organized religion" to me. Unfortunately for your argument, I HAVE no "type of organized religion." I belong to no church, nor to any recognized "religion." I have said previously that I do not consider myself a "Christian," but I do believe the Bible to be the word of YHVH. So much for your false analysis. |
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ls re:"This" I agree. |
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ls re: This I agree. |
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However The import of this is that neither government nor "Nature" endows rights and government can only abridge them. |
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GMF 6:35 <I don't disagree with any of what you said other than about Christian Nationalism, which, of course, is supposed to be the topic of this discussion. I'm not certain what the term means as it seems to be a modern term. I do not espouse "Christianity" as it has come to exist, so I have no dog in this fight. Is this a "Christian nation?" It all depends upon how you define "Christian," and to what extent you believe that actions speak louder than words.> I largely agree with your post on this point. If I may put it into my own words for the sake of those who might prefer to misintepret yours... <I'm not certain what the term [Christian nationalism] means as it seems to be a modern term.> Yes, it is a modern term. Largely because historically Christians held to 'One Holy, Catholic (= 'according to the whole') and Apostolic Church'. This is, if anything, anti-Nationalism. Nationalism only became part of our intellectual furniture since the Enlightenment, and the idea of the 'National Church' grew as princes started to seize authority over the 'spiritual' as well as the 'temporal', for their own aggrandisement and power. Henry VIII is the perfect example of a prince who remained 'Catholic' his whole life, but broke with the Pope for reasons of State. As the rationalism and skepticism of the Enlightenment spread, the 'faith' of most people (which was always more a matter of assent and submission to power than a heartfelt conviction), was re-shaped by State churches into being 'a good Englishman' or a 'a good German', etc. This melding of loyalties was part of national identification. In any marriage of Church and State, it is invariably the State that ends up controlling the Church. The Nazis were the first to make 'Christian Nationalism' official policy. Check out the wiki article on 'Deutsche Christen' here:- en.wikipedia.org) Their flag says it all; the Cross is relegated to be no more than a post to support the swastika. But this marriage of 'faith' and Nationalism doesn't have to be official government policy for it to be effective. Ask some NG members about 'Patriot Churches' in America! The clearest example of 'Christian Nationalism' in America today is probably 'Dominionism':- en.wikipedia.org "Dominion theology, also known as dominionism, is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians and based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of acquiring governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy but does not necessarily involve advocacy of adherence to the Mosaic Law as the basis of government. The label is primarily applied to groups of Christians in the United States. "Prominent adherents of those ideologies include Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, and the New Apostolic Reformation. Most of the contemporary movements that are labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism." Anyone with any knowledge of history will know that this 'Holy Nation' ideology has been tried many times before. Every monastery that has ever been founded has been a microcosm of this ideal. But it won't work. Consider Judges 2:18,19:- "Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and behaved worse than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them; they did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways." Revivals only last one generation. So aim to be of service in your own generation. <I do not espouse "Christianity" as it has come to exist, so I have no dog in this fight.> As you would know, there is no one "Christianity" today. There are hundreds of different strands to that theme, some more radical, some more conservative, some more assertive and some more tranquil. Personally, I hold to no one 'official' tribe, but see value in several different approaches if used with wisdom and humility. I spent most of my life in Sydney Anglicans, meet regularly with a group of Open Brethren friends and currently attend a Uniting Church (a merger of Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists) <Is this a "Christian nation?" It all depends upon how you define "Christian,"> Very true! I don't believe ANY nation ever was, is or will be a 'Christian Nation'. As Daniel says, the Kingdom of God is 'not hewn by human hands', and Jesus said 'My kingdom is not of this world'. Christians are called to be the salt in a FALLEN WORLD. Even then, we fail too often! |
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GM Tell your rights to a tsunami or hungry polar bear or bacillus pestis. |
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zorroloco 17-May-24, 13:19 |
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GMF 15:54 Yes, I'm perhaps more cynical than I should be, but I have yet to hear of any 'right' that hasn't been alienated from someone at some time. The three specific rights in the document you allude to are 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. 1. I know of millions of people in history who have been alienated from 'Life'. 2. Millions have also been alienated from 'Liberty', many of them by the very men who composed that document from which you quote. 3. 'The pursuit of happiness'? What does that mean? That you have a right to WANT to be happy? "Sure, pursue happiness all you want to; I won't stop you! Just try doling it while I starve you, beat you, burn your home, enslave your children, etc. None of that prevents you from PURSUING Happiness!" There is no such thing as an 'inalienable right'. But there are 'human rights' which can only too easily be alienated. A good political/economic/social system is one which minimises the frequency, duration and severity of such occasions. Let's start talking politics and economics with that as the primary criterion. |
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GMF 15:47 Please don't think I'm singling you out for contradiction! The truth is that yore posts are often the most lucid and systematic in putting forward ideas that provoke me to think through them. 1. [<Even in those days educated people usually did not take the Genesis creator literally. > So theologians, pastors, rabbis, etc. do not fit your "definition" of "educated people."] Most theologians, pastors, rabbis are indeed 'educated people'. And most of them back then did NOT take the Genesis Creation Story literally, nor the Genesis Creator literally. Do you honestly think that the majority LITERALLY believed that God spoke in Hebrew? Or that HE (note the assigning of masculinity, a biological function) acted over six literal days? Even back around 400 A.D. St. Augustine was talking about the days of Creation as 'dies ineffibiles'! 2. <What "other factors" brought the Puritans here?> 'Fleeing persecution' is one thing. But the response to that is often to set up the 'rules of society' that will not prevent the persecution, but reverse it. Try being a Catholic in Plymouth Colony in 1625! Or even an Episcopal Anglican! The desire to be in power rather than vulnerable to others in power might look to some like 'freedom of religion', but it is only freedom for ONE religion. 3. <This discussion was about whether or not atheists constituted a significant portion of the original settlers or founding fathers.> With respect, it is not what you assert, either. this theme in this thread grew out of your post of 17 May 4:18, in which you said " it is my belief that all the signers {of the Declaration of Independence} believed in the existence of a divine being who alone was responsible for creation." That statement by you made no reference to the original settlers, so your bringing in the various Pilgrim Fathers, Waldensians, Quakers, etc was a distraction; so you are in no position to chide others for irrelevance when they respond to your deviations. Also, your original 17 May post said 'ALL signers, so it is fair game for others to say 'NOT all'. You are the one walking back from your claim by now saying 'significant portion', while calling 'foul' at others who stayed within the original terms. BUT.... 4. What is thoroughly supportable is your slapping Zorro down for his presumptions. He is a regular offender when it comes to imputing to others certain views, when he has no way of knowing what their views actually are. "IMO it would be hell to live under the dictates of your type of organized faith based on some myth this should be a Christian nation not secular" is just one of many in which he sets up an extremist view and implies it is held by someone who disagrees with his own somewhat overblown opinions. He sometimes works himself into a lather with his exaggerations and misrepresentations, all in the aid of discrediting an opinion that is more factual than his but not as binary as he would like it to be. So stick to your position and demand they debate what you say, not what they would prefer you to say. |
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Bob “ "IMO it would be hell to live under the dictates of your type of organized faith based on some myth this should be a Christian nation not secular" is just one of many in which he sets up an extremist view and implies it is held by someone who disagrees with his own somewhat overblown opinions.” I didnt say that |
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Lather He sometimes works himself into a lather with his exaggerations and misrepresentations, all in the aid of discrediting an opinion that is more factual than his but not as binary as he would like it to be.” Sounds like you’re a bit lathered about things I bever said which you impart to me. Get some sleep |
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Declaration of Independence vs. US Constitution youtu.be Now, check the US constitution. The existence of God and his creation can be found nowhere in it. Instead, you will notice the First Amendment which clearly say that the state will not endorse and establishment of any religion (or belief system). We can belief in anything or without the existence of God (atheism) but the bottom line is that one's belief system should do no harm to self or others. Our founding fathers deliberately omitted the existence of God and his creation when they wrote the US constitution. In this way, we have more freedom in our belief system and expression, IMHO. |
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Created Equal You’re reading into it what you want. By “created” they simply meant “came to be.” It is an idiom, like the sun rising in the west or your refrigerator running. You fridge doesn’t have legs, nor runs in place. The sun doesn’t rise, it just appears that way, just as it appears to the misguided men were the products of creation instead of an evolutionary process as we now understand. How did you accomplish a medical degree while rejecting the basic tenets of biology? |
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Ace |
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dmaestro 18-May-24, 13:25 |
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dmaestro 18-May-24, 13:29 |
We face a dangerous and delusional cult of personality and lies that means business and learned nothing from history. |
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All men are created equal. https:///youtu.be/jA2JmC2fQrk?si=lEaeCGcvKoBOpS6T In one sentence Thomas Jefferson not only laid the foundation stone for a new nation he also set that new nation, the United States of America, on a path we still follow today. His affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” may be the most influential words ever written this side of the Bible. The US Constitution ratified a little more than a decade later, was guided by those words. Subsequent amendments, including the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, granting “equal rights under the law,” seem, for all their grandeur, to be restatements of the equality principle in Jefferson’s original Declaration. Yet Jefferson is controversial today because he embodies the contradictions of the founders. Indeed, progressive scholars say, he was the worst of them, the most hypocritical, because the very man who insisted that “all men are created equal” not only permitted slavery, but himself owned slaves. Did Jefferson not see the glaring contradiction between his principles and his practices, between the principles and practices of the infant American nation? According to Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision affirming slavery in the territories, neither Jefferson nor the other founders could have seriously meant that “all men are created equal.” They didn’t act on the principle, so they couldn’t have believed it. Modern progressive jurists such as Thurgood Marshall, as well as historians such as John Hope Franklin, have, again with an irony that should not go unnoticed, adopted the Taney view. In Franklin’s words, the founders “betrayed the ideals to which they gave lip service.” They wrote, “eloquently at one moment for the brotherhood of man and in the next moment denied it to their black brothers.” No defense of Jefferson or the American founding is possible that agrees with this assessment. How, then, can Jefferson and the founding itself be vindicated against this most serious charge? For the answer let’s look again at the Declaration and what comes immediately after the statement “all men are created equal” — that governments derive their legitimacy from the “consent of the governed.” This is the democracy principle and it is no less important, no less foundational, than the equality principle. With this is in mind, let’s turn to the practical choice faced by the founders. Progressives say they should have outlawed slavery in the original Constitution. Yet slavery was legal in all the states that sent representatives to Philadelphia in 1789. How could these representatives outlaw slavery without the consent of the people in their states? Were they expected to do so by overriding popular consent? In that case, they would be overthrowing democracy itself, before it was even introduced as the bedrock of the new Constitution! Furthermore, as everyone in Philadelphia knew at the time, many states would not have joined a union that forbade slavery at the outset. Perhaps a few would have done so, but no more. Had those who opposed slavery held firm on the issue, the union would have consisted of a handful of states, or it would have remained a utopian idea affirmed by a group of high-minded founders—but they would be founders… of nothing. As Jefferson himself said about the slavery issue, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.” It is not reasonable—in fact, it is downright obtuse—to ask of statesmen to do what they manifestly cannot do. It is only reasonable to ask them to make the best choices available to them under the circumstances—to hold the wolf, in Jefferson’s own terms, until he can safely be let go. In Abraham Lincoln’s view, the American founders did just that. They temporarily allowed slavery in practice, while constructing a framework based on antislavery principles. |
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ls re: Sad No, I do not advocate that war, nor am I enamored of either leader. |
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zorro 1607 This is a fallacious comparison, regardless of how many times you repeat it. Consider a house. It is not built for the purpose of burning down, but circumstances cause many houses to burn down. We are not created for the purpose of confronting tsunamis, hungry polar bears, or diseases, but occasionally circumstances bring us into dangerous situations. Just as a house is built for the purpose of providing shelter, we are created for the purpose of glorifying YHVH (God's Name, by the way). As a declared atheist, you are free not to believe this, but as a believer I am also free to believe it. ================= <No one gave us rights.> Correct. We were created by the Creator who endowed us with these rights as the Declaration of Independence states. I believe that document. Obviously, the signers believed it too, else they would not have pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defend that belief. Many of those signers lost their lives and their fortunes in order to reclaim these God-given rights. I am thankful that they did what they did. If you are not thankful that they did, I would suggest that you find a country which supports your beliefs more affirmatively and move there. ========================= <We demand and fight for them or we have none.> Of whom do we demand these rights and fight for them? Do we demand them of King Charles and fight him? No. He is not depriving us of our God-given rights. However, his predecessor, King George did, and it was of him that we demanded them and fought for them. No demand or fighting is necessary unless someone or some government is aridging those rights. ========================== <It’s a fantasy and a conceit to believe we have ANY inherent rights. We fancy ourselves free until someone stronger decides differently. > It is not a fantasy; it is reality. Absent "someone stronger" to "decide differently" why do we not have "inherent rights?" What prevents those rights in the absence of man's power? |
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GM Well, Putin invaded Ukraine. Zelenski is defending his homeland. Perhaps you can detect a slight difference? |
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