It is a nice party trick to make him look like a nice guy to the naive. How can someone be evil and self serving if they are a christian right? In fact it is such a good trick I would say it is probably the primary reason it is promoted so much.

 

This article more than adequately refutes Shake's argument with regard to the Treaty of Tripoli.

 

I wouldn't click on anything you put up for fear of catching some virus.

 

First off, the article makes a huge contradiction. It says that they left off God in the Tripoli treaty so as not to offend the Muslims, but then they leave it in for the treaty of Morrocco. That doesn't make sense. They were still Muslims, after all. If they were worried that the idea of God would offend Muslims and provoke more conflict, why the flip-flop? And it wouldn't matter anyway because Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Islam, Judaism and Christianity have the same God. Jews and Christians are referred to by Muslims often as 'People of the Book'. We (by 'we' I mean Western Christians) share the same god, but our particular teachings are wrong. So simply referring to God in these documents would not have been sufficient to inflame them. Referring to Christ might have.

But that's really secondary. Tell me, Dirty, when was the Constitution ratified and signed in to law? I'll save you the google. It wasn't fully ratified until 1788 and didn't take effect until 1789. So the law of the land, the separation of church and state was not law when the treaty with Morocco was written in 1786.

But the author is correct, many legal documents reference God. Many people of the time were Christians of some form or another. But please explain to me, if God was so important to our values, why isn't it mentioned in the Constitution even once?

The article you posted talks about the Maryland state constitution and it uses the word God 5 times but not as an endorsement of a particular religion. It does say that in order hold office one must acknowledge the existence of a God, but no particular faith. You could be simply a deist, and have no faith in Jesus Christ or the bible and still pass the test. Of course this is illegal and maybe someone someday will get around to challenging such laws in the Supreme Court. According to poll data there are more atheists in the U.S. than there are Jews. By upholding such a law as found in the Maryland Constitution and others (I think there are 7 states total with such clauses) you are discriminating against millions of Americans for their lack of religious beliefs. All men are created equal, are they not? We hold these truths to be self-evident. So should it be all men are created equal unless they don't think like me, then we can marginalize them and treat them as non-citizens?

But I never tried to claim that there were not Christians involved in the founding of the U.S. There most certainly were. As we can see in the state constitutions, sometimes they were able to get their way. Did you know that during the Civil War a group of protestant ministers went to Lincoln and tried to tell him that the reason we were fighting the South is because God was not in the Constitution? In sooth! They tried to get Lincoln to change the preamble of the Constitution to not only mention God, but Jesus Christ specifically. But the founding fathers (and Lincoln) new that once you start talking about God in government you open up a huge can of worms. It is inviting divisiveness.

The article talks about the Declaration of Independence but that is not a legal document in any way, shape or form. And Jefferson (the author of the Declaration) was a deist. He believed in a creator but not in a personal God. Not in a God that you would pray to and swear fealty to and worship on Sundays. It is not unusual that he would use the word Creator, as that's what he believed in. But he, along with the other founders, had the forethought to keep God out of the central government. They knew that creating a religious government would sow the seeds for it's own destruction.

And Jefferson was also a firm believer in states' rights. While he may have disagreed with the wording of their constitutions, he would have left it up to them to decide their own way.

Finally, (and probably most importantly) claiming that because the majority of Americans are Christian that the U.S. is somehow a Christian nation is... well it's stupid. The majority of Americans right now are white. Are we a white nation? I'm guessing that the majority of the gender is male. Are we a male nation, Joe? Or if it's women, are we a female nation?

Americans at this point in history are a predominantly Christian people, but that is a vastly different thing than saying we are a Christian nation. The founders, despite their personal beliefs, designed the Constitution for us to be a secular nation and that's what I and others like me seek to defend.

-S-

 

I deal with it above, no worries.

-S-

 

Good rebuttal and I would point out that most of the states that included God in thier constitutions started out as religious colonies in the first place and remained that way up until the constitutional convention. Maryland was one of those colonies where the Roman Catholics and Protestants organized.

And the Declaration of Independence is actually a very well written piece of propaganda which sole intent was to gain public support for the coming revolution.

 

Right back atcha', AO.

There is a mighty big difference between our country being a secular nation (in the sense that the Founders intended) and the antireligious monstrosity that your kind would have this great country become.

My problem with your absolutist position is that you cherry pick your evidence. You pick out bits and pieces which you feel support your preconceived position while ignoring vast amounts of evidence which lead to a contrary conclusion.

Your argument on the Constitution not referencing God is merely an argument from silence which proves nothing.

 

Actually I think you are obviously wrong. The monstrosity is the leverage reliegion and especially the Evangelical religion you seem to advocate has gained in our government, which has taken us from being a great nation to actually more of a fascist police state that is the laughing stock of the free world.

And when you speak of cherry picking evidence you are apparently looking in the mirror again. You had to dig pretty deep to find your "evidence" of what the Treaty of Tripoli meant when I bet I can bury you with the history and purpose of the separation of Church and State.

Also the fact that God is not mentioned in the constitution is far more than an argument from silence. God or Christianity is not mentioned in the constitution on purpose. It was something discussed during the Constitutional Convention and beaten back by people like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams among others.

 

I'll strive to respond to Shake and others here regarding this matter.
But I'm not going to waste my time trying to respond to you from this point onward. I've seen how you react to others who dare to try to refute you. You ignore their carefully argued responses and then you attack and call names. That's your MO.
I'm not playing your game.

 

Not true at all Joe Dirty and I think that is obvious to everyone not just me. In truth it is your pattern to attack, leave the forum, come back and apologize and then just turn around and attack again. Likewise to make up things, and then pretend you are the victim, when I believe your actual intent is to stir up trouble and try to gain attention.

And the reason you don't want to discuss these things with me is because you know your logic and arguments won't hold up.

Now isn't it time you put on another sock puppet and went and attacked someone else?

 

I'm still here. And I'm not planning on going anywhere soon.
As far as attacking...you have been attacking me a whole hell of a lot more here lately than I've ever attacked you. I apologized to you in another thread and hoped that bygones would be bygones. But rather than burying the hatchet you keep slamming it into my skull. But it's not only me. I see now that this is how you act toward any person who dares to disagree with your views.
The reason why I don't want to discuss anything with you isn't because you are a liberal and an atheist. The reason why I'm refusing to discuss anything with you from now on is that you are an asshole.

 

Being an amatuer student of US Law (Wisconsin's State Laws in particular) has taught me several things about the way they are written and interpreted. Our nation's constitution was founded on religious principals. I'll site an example. In 940 of the Wisconsin Statutes and in Chapter 120 of the New York penal Code and Title XLI Section 1111 of the Federal Statutes and in Exodus 20:3-21 It all says the same thing. It all says that murder is wrong. Now sure these words were interpreted and written down by man, however I pose the following question to you all! Where do you think man got the idea in the first place that it is wrong to take the life of another? Is the prohibition of murder not a religious principal? Of course it is! All major religions denounce it and said denouncement can be found in the writings of all major religious text. Most major religions denounce illicit sex, theft, lying, and a good share of other things that our constitution has criminilized. What has happened in America today is that many of these principles upon which this nation was founded have been drawn away from due to a change in thinking. Let's face it, Freedom of Religion in this country is a right! It is not a privelege or even mandatory. If you choose not to follow a religion you are totally within your right to do so but we can not allow those that choose to practice and follow any religion to tell those that don't that they are not doing right under God. After all, I believe Joyce Meyer said it best when she told the world, "If I believe what I believe and I am wrong, oh well, no skin off my nose; but If you don't believe what I believe and I happen to be right on the money, who's got the problem? I guess we'll all know who's right when the time comes!" I hope I haven't offended anyone and I open the forum here for anyone else who wishes to comment on my post. Thanks for taking the time to hear me out! Please; no bashing or insulting me. It's only my opinion. Take it as you will...

 

I didn't do anything but respond to the threads and posts that interest me and point out where your arguments are wrong. And not two posts ago you accused me of calling you names and then on the thread I just came off of you are calling me an asshole. And as I have pointed out it is your pattern to attack, apologize, leave the forum as if you are a victim, come back and just attack again. And you must be bullshitting yourself because you're sure not fooling anyone else.

You are actually quite wrong in both facts and principles, and it will not take a very long response to point that out to you. The prohibitions against murder predate the major religions you refer to by thousands of years. Your argument also contradicts itself because as you say all religions prohibit murder and other common things, yet when you introduce those religious beliefs into the public realm such as schools and public buildings and ceremonies you can not to that without violating other people's freedom of religion because there will be many different religious beliefs present, such as Jews, Christians and Muslims which all think everyone else is going to hell. The separation of Church and State was designed for that exact purpose.

And as Thomas Jefferson said Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion

 

If there are still doubts about the writers of the constitution and their deliberate to have a separation of Church and State I would point out the following:

I. U.S. Constitution and U.S. Treaties and State Constitutions
The Constitution of the United States (1787-1788; 1st TenAmendments ["Bill of Rights"] ratified 1791; no reference to anygod is to be found in the body or in the amendments to theConstitution)
The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. (Article VI, Section 3, The Constitution of the United States.)
That was the original intent and the first amendment guaranteeing the freedom religion came afterwards. For anyone interested this is a really good site for understanding the concept of the wall of separation between Church and State.


http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html

 

Do you have to pass an LSAT to go to your law school or is it one of those evangelical rip offs?

 

Hmmm you mean cherry pick like how you found an article with your point of view and when Shake did an extensive shread of it you just offered up a few lines of generic deflection?

 

Sometimes it just gets out of hand.


https://www.godhatesfags.com/

 

Aww, is the poor Christian feeling oppressed? Is it because you can run for public office, having no other qualifications but a church attendance record and I can not, even though we are both natural born citizens, pay taxes and believe in our country? Wait a minute...

I would love to see the eradication of religion. To me, it has no redeeming value and accomplishes nothing in the world that can't be done in it's absence. But I'm also a realist. I know that this will never happen in my lifetime. What I will settle for is what the founders put forth in that religion belongs in the private sphere and not in the public. What faith you are or who you pray to (or not) should not matter in the slightest.

Even if I could send my son to Boy Scouts and ignore their blatant discrimination, if I ever wanted to participate, be a den leader or something along those lines, I could not because in order to do so I have to sign an affirmation of faith. I have to sign a document that says I don't believe I can be a good person without God. If they were strictly private, I couldn't really complain, but they receive federal (read: my) money and use public facilities free of charge and often receiving assistance (read: public schools) from the staff of those institutions. In many places when you turn in forms or paperwork for Boy Scouts you give it to the school's secretary and she takes care of it. If they're going to take my money and use my schools then they should not be allowed to say who can and can't enter based on personal beliefs or orientation.

But that's just one example, I can go on and on.

Our country is a great country because of our Constitution. It laid the ground work and provided the frame to make it so. And it was done without invoking God. What you and people like thundermike with his email post seek to do is undermine that because you think only God keep us great. Ignoring the fact that we didn't need God to make us great. It is not our churches that built this nation, it is our secular government. It is the laws laid down by some of the greatest men ever to walk this earth. I don't know who said it, but the quote goes "America is the only nation founded on a good idea." And, like it or not, that idea did not include God. It made room for God in people's lives, but not in the Government.

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, to name a few, these men are icons. They specifically excluded God or the endorsement of religion out of one of the greatest documents ever written by man.

Are you going to sit here and tell me you know better?

-S-

 

I am about half way through the Hitchens biography Thomas Paine's Rights of Man but I am having such problems retaining it. If I can't attatch it to a process I lose it, and there are so many seemingly disjointed facts. I could scarcly quote anything from it. Have you read it?

 

A minor quibble at this point, Shake, but the framers of the Constitution were primarily Deists, not Christians. Many of them did seem to believe that God (however broadly defined) was smiling on and blessing the entire affair. Nevertheless, they consciously left God AND Jesus out of our system of government, and specifically provided for freedom of worship and no state-sanctioned religion. It bewilders me that anyone could seriously dispute the point.

Carry on, gentlemen.