Well Kerry I think we have gone over this subject probably several hundred times in here.I really don't think we need to keep going over and over on a subject that has already been proven which everyone agrees on except for a handfull of Atheist.How much longer you want to keep beating a dead horse is up to you.

I do not take those quotes listed above with credibility as they simply do not line up with the general way of thinking,talking,or believing based on hundreds of other documents from our founding fathers.I would also give much more credibility to documents and hearings that was seen and heard by hundreds or thousands of witnesses.We have many quotes from our founding fathers concerning Christianity that was spoken in front of large numbers of people during the events leading to the Constitution and the bill of rights.

I have previously posted many,many quotes related to our founding fathers and Christianity many times in here.You can judge for yourself and see the patterns of what in general they said and believed.I am not going to believe that after reading say 20 quotes about positive things said about Christianity by one founding father and then read one or two negative things about Christianity by the same guy which clearly conflict with each other.It doesn't mesh right.Even in this bizarre day and age you don't find someone saying they believe in Jesus and quote the bible and then turn around and saying he doesn't believe in Jesus and insult him the next.

Firstly, let me state (and this is no personal attack) that I find hard to understand exactly what your point(s) are... I might be misunderstanding what you've written so please forgive me if that's the case. But I wanted to respond so that you don't think that I'm "blowing you off"...
I don’t have any interest in squaring the two items that you mention the amendment/commandment. That would imply things I simply don’t believe in. I never said that I believed the constitution was a "Godly document" for starters. It's simply not my interest to compare the two because I have a "wholly other view" of a Christian's involvement in Gov't., far, far removed from what would be considered traditional. (What in my post lead you to question what I may or may not believe about God?) I simply stated that it is my belief that the god to whom they were referring to was the one of the Christian faith. Furthermore, I thought I made it clear that regardless of whatever they were thinking back then, Americans have moved forward. I also thought that by writing: “I’m all for the change in thinking ” would have made it clear that I found no objection to that moving forward.
What Thomas J. said/believed (IMO) is immaterial... I stated that whether or not the founding fathers were “good” Christians was another story... perhaps another thread. I can't answer what their intent was and don’t think it particularly fair for somebody to assume things about what another thinks especially someone who’s been dead for so many years. I was discussing they wrote, in the context of the time-period, was clearly to a Christian audience and intended to be palatable. If you want documentation that he was routinely active in Christian-based churches go read a history book, any. If you like the ease of an internet-based research, go to Wikipedia… a “fair” source of info to start out. I’m certain that you’ll find that he consistently involved himself in regular, routine and traditional Christian type behavior… churches, bible studies, debates, theology etc. It’s all very well documented. If your point is that he was being disingenuous throughout his life and was secretly something else (Illuminati) all I can say to I won’t go there… I will agree with what has been said in many histories of him; that is that he wasn’t “orthodox or traditional” in his Christian beliefs… to me that’s no slur, as I’m not either. . But to further an already too long post, considering the nature of their "environment", I don't think that the writers of the DoI ever took into account other Gods... they were Christian (or at least pretended to be), Christianity was the soup de jour, and that is also evident in other writings of all founding fathers... TJ or the rest of the bunch never wrote much if anything on Buddha, or Shiva, or Thor etc. They were steeped in Christian dogma/doctrine. Furthermore, as you point out, the British who were the primary, intend recipients of the declaration... were a group of Christians. (BTW, where in my diatribe did I imply, much less “say” that they weren't, to the degree that you would view me as being “intellectually dishonest”?) Anyway, the whole scenario simply implies that it was the Christian god to whom they were referring in that particular document. Had they been referring to any other gods, you know as well as I, that they would have probably been tarred and feathered by the "good Christians" of the day. It’s upon that line of thinking that I wrote that prologue.
Regardless, the thread isn’t about the historical facts behind the true nature of the spiritual lives of the writers of DoI. The OP starts w/the article about a court decision and following posts basically ask the question “so what?” My post was a question, preceded by prologue which I hoped would dismiss the arguments like this one. (What did the writer’s really, really mean? A question that, IMO, has been explained and rehashed for more than 100yrs.) The point that I was trying to make is that it doesn’t matter; we’re a nation that’s changing. I don’t have any allusions that this second post will sway you your beliefs… I’m simply trying to clarify what I must have poorly written before. However, do you care to answer the final question of my previous post?

You asked: So, if we take God outta the constitution what do we have to base these inalienable rights on?

You've made pretty clear in your posts that you believe the Constitution is exclusively talking about the Christian God and the Christian God only. So without wanting to put words in your mouth, are you really asking "If we take the Holy Trinity out of the Constitution, on what are we to base these inalienable rights?"

If that's the case, it's my assertion that you inexonorably alienate the rights of those who don't believe the Christian God is the source of mankind to believe as their conscience dictates- whether they be Jewish, Agnostic, or from Eastern religions-- and your question becomes moot. You are, in effect, joining with some of your fellow Christians and saying anyone else's convictions don't matter because the Christian God is the Alpha and Omega of American law and morality. Indeed, of all things American.

As Jefferson was one of the prime drafters of that document, his comments ARE relevant. It IS relevant to review history and see why the colonists came to this country in the first place-- to escape religious persecution, OFTEN at the hands of OTHER SECTS OF CHRISTIANS!!!!

Take the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers). Friends in England were beaten, imprisoned and killed. In colonial America, they were threatened with death for even showing their faces in the Massachusetts Bay Colony-- Mary Dyer was hanged on the Boston Common for preaching there.

Who stood up for their 'inalienable rights'?

You may ignore what some of the Founding Fathers had to say about Christianity, but you can't ignore the history behind why they probably came to see it that way.

To do otherwise is revisionist history.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." James Madison, author of many of the Federalist Papers, in an 1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches


-Kerry O.

WOW, that dude rocks!

Well Thomas, it's not rocket science-- if you don't like seeing it, skip the posts. 'Cuz I'm not about to stop because you don't like alternative viewpoints.

Dissent is what made this country great-- it is the conscience of the nation. Along with due process and the right to seek resolution of grievances in civil court is part and parcel of those 'inalienable rights' being bandied around here.

-Kerry O.

Why should I skip the posts?Only to have to keep reading the same re-hased posts over and over that have been answered by facts time and time again but you simply refuse to believe it.Are you still dreaming that one day a Christian will say "Wow I had it wrong all along because I read a post in here"?

Your free to believe what you want and I have no problem with that.I do have problems with people trying to re write American history and post misleading and untrue information because after a while people start to believe it.

I give attributions to everything I post here. Like science, I let what I post be reviewed by anyone who cares to. What I post isn't untrue because YOU say it's untrue. And quite frankly, I couldn't care less about your having a problem with it. It's the price you have to pay to live in a _free_ country.

To that end, what I post is like Fox News: "We report. You decide." And many Christians I know don't see things your way. Like the Quakers, many say "Follow your Inner Light."

Or as one liberal Christian said in an email group I'm in about Progressive Thought:

"Do God's work. NOT his job."


-Kerry O.

The founding fathers may have believed your rights came from God but they never said you had to believe in God to get those rights.A Atheist had the same rights as anyone else.So with that said thinking you would some how not have any rights because you didn't believe in God has no merit to it.

I think our founding fathers hated England because of the type of Government they had and all the taxes they had to pay.If they hated religon and the Catholic church so much I find it hard to believe they would re-establish the Catholic church and religon if that is what they were fleeing from.I understand how the Government would use the Catholic church in England as a scapegoat to enforce laws that could be manipluted using the bible and how they would hate that.But it still goes back to Government as the source of the problem.

While doing some reasearch I found out that not only was America a Christian nation after 1776 it was one long before that.


From....http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/heritage/heritage19.html

As we analyze the founding of America, we realize that the discovery of the New World was in the fullness of time. Christopher Columbus' quest was to sail to Asia by going west from Europe. You know the story. He convinced Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to finance the journey, and in 1492 he sailed west ultimately to find the New World. What you probably do not know is that this flawed and complex man professed Christ as Savior. His very name meant "Christ Bearer". He named his first landfall, San Salvador (Holy Savior). In 1504 he wrote a book. In the book he wrote,

I prayed to the most merciful Lord about my heart's great desire ... It was the Lord who put into my mind ... the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit....

Columbus also wrote, "...I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely."

From the beginning, Christians in Europe viewed the New World as a place for religious freedom and a haven and an opportunity to spread the Gospel. Their earliest legal documents reflect their commitment to Christ and their mission. In 1620, the Pilgrims established the Mayflower Compact before they landed at Plymouth Rock. The document said,

In the presence of God, Amen. We...do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves into a civil body politic.

In the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, often called the first American Constitution, written in 1638, the drafters said, "[We] enter into a combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we now profess." This document recognized for the first time that mankind's rights come from God.

By the way, did you know that the Continental Congress called for a day of fasting and prayer within the colonies, beseeching God to give guidance and direction as to whether they should secede from England before the representatives to the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence? In 1777, while the colonies were struggling in the Revolutionary War, the First Continental Congress called the Bible "the great political textbook of the patriots" and appropriated funds to import 20,000 Bibles for the people. Are you aware that the Continental Congress began its sessions with prayer, a practice that is followed by both houses of congress even today?

Long before the United States Constitution, the colonies had written documents that established government and citizen's rights under God's authority. The drafters of the U. S. Constitution were aware of these documents and considered them in drafting the document. The expression of America's early documents is unmistakably Christian. They were philosophically anchored in Biblical principles, and the expression of the colonists in these legal documents of what became the states was undeniably Christian. These documents recognized the existence, importance and nature of God.

For example, He was referred to in the constitutions and legal documents of the colonies and later the thirteen states as: one God in South Carolina and Connecticut; Almighty in North Carolina, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Vermont; in Massachusetts, He was called, the Supreme Being, the Creator, Good, and the Great Legislator of the Universe; He was called the Governor of the Universe in Pennsylvania, and Vermont; and the inspirer of the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. His Divine Providence was recognized in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In Connecticut he was called Savior and Lord. Do you think the classrooms in our country ever study these documents today?

Thomas,

Allow me to say that you sometimes surprise me. I expected you to come back with guns blazing, but instead you cited research that I can check and came back with arguments that were pretty civil in tone.

Good deal.

I can't respond to what you posted this morning because I have to get ready to go to work. I will reseach what you said, and where I can, pick it apart and test it for contradiction, consistency and validity.

And I will promise you this-- if you keep it civil, I'll do my best to do the same. That way, maybe everyone has a chance to learn something and why disparate viewpoints can co-exist in peace if not always in harmony. And THAT is just another thing that America draws upon for its greatness. We seem to agree on that.

-Kerry O.

Actually, you've totally missed my point again. I'm fine with us today not defining the "creator" mentioned in the DoI as the Christian God, but using a much more global and inclusive definition... or leaving it totally UNdefined as the original writer's intended.
The point was... does no creator=no inalienable rights?

But discuss it amoungst yourselves, I've lost interest.

Not so. Even as we post, an Ahteist who was elected fair and square to an office in North Carolina is being denied his right to serve in his democratically elected capacity. His opponent is using the North Carolina Consitution, which has a clause that says to hold office, one must profess a belief in God.

I am prepared to cite many other instances of this happening and, if you like, direct quotes from the Constitutions of several states like Texas, which says:

"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being."

The Revolutionary War started over taxation without representation. Here and now in 2010, we see that representation is still being denied those who don't meet some religious test. How is this different than what happened in the colonies at the hands of the British. Only the names have changed, that's all. But the same 'inalienable' human right is being abridged.

Sure, in almost all of these cases, the plantiff has prevailed in higher courts, but yet the clauses still stand, putting a burden on one person and not the next who just happens to be a Christian.



Anglican Church, actually. Pope Paul III excommunicated King Henry back in the early 1500's.



It wasn't even a nation before 1776, there _was_ no single government before then. The Constitution wasn't ratified until 1788 and even then the United States didn't consist of the 50 states of which it does today. How can it be said that a few religious groups in the 1600s who were not participants in writing, much less ratifying, the Creme de la Creme of American legal bedrock, defined the nation which is today the United States? One could just as surely use those same semantics to say we are a Puritan nation. A Baptist nation. A Quaker nation. Or a Deist nation, for that matter, as that is what most scholars argue to good effect was the 'religion' of a disproportionate number of the Founding Fathers.

And if these Christian groups indeed defined the nation, why were they unable, despite much effort, to successfully insert the name "Jesus Christ" into the Founding documents?

Myself, I think it was because they intended religion to be a private matter between the Citizen and whatever he or she believed to be true about their Creator (or lack of one).


-Kerry O.

(Rest of quoted text from Thomas's post below for reference)

I would like to point out that I politely answered your question, while you answered none of mine and blew me off. Continually saying that the person you're debating misses your point and then saying you've 'lost interest' strikes me as... well... blowing someone off-- that which you assured me you weren't doing.


-Kerry O.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.




Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,,,, another phrase from our constitution which, although sounds noble, is fairly vauge and WIDE open for interpretation (obviously)

"While doing some reasearch I found out that not only was America a Christian nation after 1776 it was one long before that. "

thanks for this comment. i've never laughed so hard in my life....except when bush spoke. i knew this statement was false and i'm not even from america hahahahahaha

where are you from,, if I may ask?

east jerusalem

kewl

I would like to respond to this but it is admittedly off topic. The reason I've lost interest in this thread is because I think/feel that your responses are more about Christian-bashing and less about the original premise of Is “Under God” constitutional. You say it’s been done politely but it hasn’t been interpreted by me as such. To me bashing ppl’s belief=hate. It is true that I do better in a face-to-face venue because I rely so heavily on those non-verbal aspects of communication. So perhaps it says more about me than it does you. I don’t know how to explain that any better. I’m sorry.
In regard to the topic, what I saw is that the OP submitted an article that was focused on a debate surrounding the issue of “is a pledge a prayer?” and their decision that it was constitutionally allowable. It contained arguments supporting (presumably) OP’s beliefs that the PoA and a prayer isn’t the same thing. My post was intended to drift away a bit from that issue and speak to the issue of should we remove God from the Constitution, the thing that I think under lies that issue. The OP’s article included this section:
“The 1954 law that added those words at the height of the Cold War was meant to convey the idea of a limited government, "in stark contrast to the unlimited power exercised by communist forms of government," said Bea, joined by Judge Dorothy Nelson. "Congress' ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism."
I think that besides the patriotism thing, the “Under God” statement is meant to point the “reciter of the pledge” back to the constitution’s statement about us having inalienable rights which are given to us by God/Creator.
My question that I posed could be turned into a statement which might sound something like this… If we keep D*cking around and take God outta’ the constitution, we might just end up losing our argument for inalienable rights… and that, to me, is a scary thought. The “ol’ slippery slope argument” to be sure, something I prefer to avoid… but sometimes they are slippery slopes. But I have no idea how atheists and agnostics feel about that and wanted to hear some of their views, but not at the expense of causing so much vitriolic hub-bub.
I stick to my beliefs regarding the history which I spoke of. I think that my beliefs are supported by the bulk of histories done on TJ, the founding fathers, and American history in general.
I do not think that all of your facts are accurately portrayed. (I think of a law of entropy that goes like this: If you have a barrel of sewage and add a cup of wine, you’ll end up with a barrel of sewage; however, if you have a barrel of wine and add a cup of sewage, you’ll end up with a barrel of sewage.) Many of the facts that you posted are w/o context… a few of them I am familiar with and know that they are totally taken out of context. To me, using facts out of context is that “cup of sewage” that ruins the barrel of wine. And I just don’t like playing that game.
As to blowing you off, I don’t know what to say. I think that you’ve assumed lot of nasty things about me. I think that you’ve deduced that I’m a Christian and you’ve coupled that with some stereotype of Christians that you have in your head. I can’t speak to that either. I’ve tried to parry off some of that by stating that my views are very different from main-stream Christian views but you just stay on the Christian bashing thing to the point that we can’t seem to get to the initial question that I wanted to hear others’ viewpoints on. If you need to call it “me blowing you off” all I’ll say is that I see it as two ppl arguing on the phone until one or the other has had enough and says “Listen, I’m not hanging up on you; I’m just hanging up.”

BTW, if it matters to you, I think that your mention about the founding fathers having Deist viewpoints is both very valid and a much stronger arguement to express yourself. Also, I do honestly wish you the best.

It that's what you believe, then you should report me to the mods. If I am indeed guilty of what you're accusing me of, I've broken the rules -- this is a debate forum and you're not allowed to bash anyone for anything.

Report me. I'm more than satisfied to let the mods remove my posts or kick me off the service if THEY think that's what I've done.

While you're at it, report Thomas Jefferson-- that's who I've been quoting most of the time.

Yanno, politically, Christians have the total and complete upper hand. No Agnostic stands a chance of getting elected to a high Federal office. And some of the fundamentalist Christians advocate for that hand being very heavy when it comes to dealing with agnostics and atheists. "If you don't like it, leave the country" is a common rejoiner. Another is "I hope your *!*%@#@ @$$ burns in hell". Some even threaten violence, although I think most of that is a vicarious release of pent-up agression. Read some of Pat Robertson's quotes sometime.

So if you want to talk hate or religious bigotry, I sure have some quotes I could share in that regard!


-Kerry O.

there is enough ignorance on both sides of the fence. Majority has an upper hand, yes, and voting and being involved is a much more effective way to make change when it comes to politics. White males have had the upper hand politically, but it didnt follow that noone else could benefit from the government which they were 'running'.

Its sad to see faith tied into americanism to the point where people are no longer civil or respectful of each others beliefs. I am a christian who prefers an environment that is, at the best, supportive of my beliefs, and at the worst, not in direct conflict with them, that is natural when it comes to ANYONES values. I advise anyone, believer or non, who has issues with how things are in their country, to get involved with the political process(although they do have to be legal to do so...). It seems the logical and fair way for EVERYONE to affect their representation in their country. I might say, because its true, that one can try to change things or they can just complain, or they can move somewhere else. But there are always options for us all and it is up to all of us to choose which is most suitable to our needs and wants.

We all prefer a home and a community and a country that promotes those values which are important to us. There are alot of stupid rules still on the books simply because people forgot or didnt know they were there and they will in due time be contested, IM sure. I think it is odd , the attitude that believers and non believers must be 'opposites' of each other in those things that are important to them,,,but I suppose that might change with time as well.