love is an emotion that may or may not exist in any given individual's mind. in that regard i'll agree that god exists only in a given individual's mind. you'll have to explain to me how you come to the conclusion that because you exist god also must exist because i don't follow that reasoning at all, jeannie.

hmmmm. is it a fact that infants can die from injuries or a fact that have died from injuries? can a fact be an even that may happen in the future? not debating, just that i see little agreement among folks regarding what is fact and what is not even in past occurances much less what may happen. any democrat will tell you it's a fact that increased taxes will save the economy and claim it has worked in the past. most republicans would say it's a fact that the oposite is true on either count. so just what is fact? what is reality?

to gain support for the 2009 stimulus the administration estimated that the unemployment rate would be at 6.5% within eighteen months. it's now been two years and we're still above 9%. how can anybody say the stimulus package worked if the topic is jobs? it's purpose was to meke things better, not to keep them from getting any worse. is the economy any better today than it was two years ago? that's the question. this so called jobs bill was tossed because it was based on the same flawed logic that the stimulus package was. a government simply cannot spend the county's way out of bad economic times.

no, you are correct as far as i know. and yes, when we're talking legality and marriage the church has no say in the matter. as of course it should be.

mh, in your first sentence of this post you said "as to polygamy, thats another one I dont feel the laws is infringing upon,,, because in such religion the authority is not the STATE but the CHURCH,," when speaking of laws and infringing upon them, the church has no authority whasoever. oh sure there is ceremony, tradition, pretend but you were speaking about laws and authority which once again happens to be the topic.

a perfect example of each of us seeing things differently. you see what collins saw in the waterfall as inspired by god, as does he. i see him as delusional. suppose he'd said what he saw in the waterfall was inspired by a coke machine that has jammed because somebody crammed too many quarters down the slot. would you agree that he was inpired by a screwed up coke machine?

we don't all have a better understanding of god. some of us still see no reason to think god or devine inspiration even exist much less understand it. you folks are doing a fine job of convincing yourselves though.

you couldn't be more wrong. many people, mormons included, are serving time in jail after being convicted of polygamy. name one state that tolerates marrying more than one spouse regardless of what the church recognizes. another example where the establishment clause is readily applicable.

not so. state laws can be more or less lenient than federal laws. certain murders for instance are federal capital crimes that are punnishable by the death penalty. several states have no death penalty. state laws are subject to the same constitutional tests as federal laws but that is where restrictions on state law ends as regards the federal government.

nevermind then. tried to help by showing that the establishment clause and the free excercise clause are separated by by commas just as the other clauses are and that as such each has it's own meaning and application. that's precicely what the courts do but you insisting that the establishment clause and the free excercise clause should be combined to understand their collective meaning just says to me that you'll never really understand the meaning of either. but i'll try one last time. in your mind. what does the following statement mean to you? assume that you see it written on a single peice of paper by itself.


congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.


in a nutshell, is that statement not what this thread topic is all about? it was paraphrased of course into separation of church and state but the two are conceptually the same if one follows constitutional case history. nowhere in the opening post did i see a reference to the free practice of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, expression, assmbly, redress of grievances, the right to bear arms, habeus corpus, due process, illegal search and seizure, commerce, nothing other than a question about the separation of church and state. so what does the statement i wrote mean to you? forget that there is a period that ends the statement and not a comma. we can argue punctuation correctness later. i'll of course argue that both a period and a comma complete a thought but for now so that we can move along, what does the statement i wrote, and only the statement i wrote, mean to you?

doesn't help my understanding, mh. where does impoverished end and middle class begin? where does upperclass begin? what is comfortable. read an article just this morning about a guy who lives quite comfortably on less then 20k a year. he's an author with no supervisors and is in complete control over his income yet i'll bet i can find someone who'll say the poverty level begins well above twenty large a year. on the other side of the coin i know people who control the incomes of hundreds, sometimes thousands of employees who in these economic times must rely on personal bankruptcy protection if they are to emerge from this financial crisis with any semblence of the wealth they enjoyed even five years ago. then there is the fact that i just don't put people in classes nor do i pay attention to people who do so what do i know, huh?

oh, i understand quite well that you don't think i need to be convinced that god exists. it's me who says i must first be convinced that god exists before i can be convinced that devine inpiration exists.



if i'm free to think you may be wrong about god then it must follow that I AM free to think you may be wrong about what inspired you to paint? in niether case have i said you were wrong. i simply told you that if I AM TO BE CONVINCED that you were inpired by god then by MY REASONING you need fist convince me that god exists. short of that convincing, MY LOGIC tells me that you were inpired by something other than god which i can agree does exist such as your belief in god which i've no reason to doubt. what you believe in has nothing to do with anyone else just as the logic i use in my reasoning process has nothing to do with anyone else. you very well might convince one of your fellow church members that you were inpired by god. you may be able to convince every person of faith on the planet that you were inpired by god but that would not mean that I AM CONVINCED that you were inpired by god.

i've not said anywhere that devine inspiration, god or santa does not exist or that you are wrong for believing it so. all i've said is that i've seen nothing that suggests TO ME that they do exist. though i must say that in my younger years my parents did have me convinced of santa but my reasoning methods have changed dramatically in the last half century or so.

let's break it down like this. the word 'devine' refers to god as has already been established here. so first convince me that god exists, then we can get to what i think inspired you to paint the picture. because obviously if there is no god then you telling me that you were inspired by god is either a lie or a mistake. perhaps had you said that you were inspired by your BELIEF in god i'd see your point. but that's not your claim. your claim was that you were inpired by god.

yep. along the agonic line a mag compass will point to true north. unless of course you're standing between mag north and true north along the agonic line. lol. you guys figure it out but i've been there. flew the polar routes between asia and europe several times and i can tell you the magnetic compass was about as useful as a boat anchor at those latitudes.

are their teeth really that perfect, jeannie? i see a little gap between the two front teeth just like arnold's. dramatic licesnse? lol.

hell, mh, i don't even understand what the middle class actually is. i can ask different people of various cultures in several areas of the country and get numerous completely different answers.

never said it does. so what 'meaning' do you dissagree with???

oh i hardly take attacks on my opinions or myself personal, especially here, jeannie, where personal attacks are more common than punctuation errors and misspellings. i just find that typos of whatever kind rarely have much real hinderance on effective communication as demeaning another's opinions or person does. as i say, i'm no stranger to anything here found on the forums but i let some things slide that i find inconsequential and point out others that i find absurd and a block to a fair exchange of views. as we all do of course.

seems you're confusing the words 'opinion' and 'knowledge'. what do my opinions, or anybody's opinions, have to do with knowledge? like ben franklin i like to say that i have no opinions and like einstein i say that i can never really know anything absolutely but still the concepts of opinion and knowledge are highly different in my mind, one having nothing to do with the other. and of course in forming no opinions, a 'strenght of authority' is irrelavent to me. what weight you put on it is your concern.

i don't have an opinion regarding separation of church and state and i certainly don't recall stating one here. what i do, jeannie, as a very serious hobby that i've enjoyed for more than a quarter century, is read the constitution and study the opinions, both concuring and desenting, in constitutional case history so that i can better understand how this great country runs. during discussions such as this i simply try to relate in my own words some of the things that i've read over the years but nothing i've said here should you take as MY opinion.

indeed it has been pointed out by others that they see me as an excellent observer with much higher than average recall abilities. nothing i've quoted here from the constitution is copy/paste for instance. but is there such a thing as 'professional eye witness'??? sounds like easy money to me. lol.

this is exactly the reason you're having trouble with the establishment clause i think, mh. nowhere in the establishment clause does it say 'or prohibiting the free excercise thereof.' those words are found in a completely separate clause commonly known as the 'free excercise' clause. but the origional question asked about separation of church and state which the ESTABLISHMENT clause NOT the FREE EXCERCISE clause that you keep referring to mandates. if we were to discusse the free practice of religion then we would look at the free practice clause because that is the applicable clause. if we were to discuss free speach we'd look at the free speech clause.

perhaps it'd be easier for you to understand if the first amendment were broken down to several amendments because that is precisely the kind of things the courts do when interpreting the constitution. we can do it ourselves for the sake of discussion;

amendment 1a; congress shall make no law respecting an establsishment of religion.

amendment 1b; congress shall make no law restricting the free practice of religion.

amendment 1c; congress shall make no law abridging free speech.

amendment 1d; congress shall make no law abridging the press.

etc., etc.


can you now see that each of the clauses of the first amendment have very different applications in law as my example of separate amendments for each clause would show? you cannot rightly read my amendment 1b to correctly find the meaning of amendment 1a any more than you could refer to the second amendment right to bear arms in deciding if gays have the constitutional right to wed. they are two entirely different legal concepts each with their own applications.

not being an atheist i couldn't say but i've still seen nothing that suggests that devine inspiration exists. but i suppose now we get into the difinition of the term 'devine inspiration' which has been stated to include god and since my doubt there is not unlike my doubt in santa i'll leave that discussion to others.