"the explicit grounding of the principals of Human equality and universal rights in THE Creator God was some kind of throwaway line.”
Nobody said it was a throwaway line except you. The question (once again) was:
Would you be comfortable with a MAYOR who said, “If they don’t like an Islamic theme, if they don’t like an Islamist parade – stay at home.”??
“You are an ignorant juvenile punk who has (anonymously of course) slandered real Men who were by any measure, your moral and intellectual superiors.
Now, now, Baby Boy! You were very drunk when you made that terrible insult! You should sleep when you are drunk--NOT POST!
Infantile insults and absurd lies do not hurt me. Did you think they could? Geegoree? (cute name btw!)! Where did you ever get the idea that a potty mouth was a serious argument?
Now once again: the United States is Not a Christian Nation. It is not a religious Institution. It is a SECULAR country with secular laws which PERMITS freedom of religion as a natural right.
So once again: Would you be comfortable with a MAYOR who said, “If they don’t like an Islamic theme, if they don’t like an Islamist parade – stay at home.”??
It is religious totalitarianism that the atheist organizations are fighting against. WE are saving your sorry clay ass…and all we get from you are dickhead insults and puerile potty spews. Why don’t you take off that skirt and slip into a pair of pants for Christ’s sake?? You’re looking more like a wounded troll every day!
"We continue to hear the argument that the United States of America is a Christian nation. The United States is actually one of the only great western nations that were founded on completely secular and humanist ideals with no state religion. All of the articles of law governing the United States of America have been pretty much devoid of the mention of god in any form.
The first law governing the United States was Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union or later referred to as Articles of the Confederation. It was an agreement among the 13 founding states that legally established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. No mention of god was in them. Before that point in time we were a colony of England and not a nation.
The Constitution of the United States was adopted on September 17, 1787 and went into effect on March 4, 1789. There is no mention of god in the Constitution. In fact, the first amendment states that “Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.
Many Christians point to the Declaration of Independence as proof of America being founded on Christian principles but the Declaration did not represent ANY law for the United States. It is what is says, declaring our independence from England to be a sovereign nation. . Interestingly enough the Declaration of Independence does state that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”, not god.
Frequently, the religious right wants to point to the founding father’s religion as proof that it was to be a Christian nation. Most of the founding fathers are believed to be deists and not Christians. Let’s examine the opinions of some of those founding fathers.
George Washington —
“In 1775, he ordered that his troops not show anti-Catholic sentiments by burning the pope in effigy on Guy Fawkes Night.When hiring workmen for Mount Vernon, he wrote to his agent, “If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans [Muslims], Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists.“
John Adams—Christian, Deist
Adams at one point said that Christianity had originally been revelatory, but was being misinterpreted and misused in the service of superstition, fraud, and unscrupulous power.
Thomas Jefferson—Unitarian, Deist
Considered much of the New Testament to be false.
Jefferson sought what he called a “wall of separation between Church and State,” which he believed was a principle expressed by the First Amendment. This phrase has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause.In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and 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 and State”
Regarding the choice of some governments to regulate religion and thought, Jefferson stated:
“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”
Deriving from this statement, Jefferson believed that the Government’s relationship with the Church should be indifferent, religion being neither persecuted nor given any special status.
“If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise as it had happened in a fair or market”
James Madison–
- The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State (Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819).
- Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov’t in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820).
- Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822).
Benjamin Franklin— He clarified himself as a deist in his 1771 autobiography.
In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, who had asked him his views on religion:
“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble…”
It is clear that the United States was meant to have a secular government ruled by secular laws from the founding fathers themselves. This is NOT a Christian nation it is a nation of the people, by the people and for the people where all are equal under the law regardless of religion, race, sex or sexual orientation. The Constitution of the United States guarantees that equality to all citizens and gives them freedom of religion and freedom to choose no religion. |
