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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (63705)	12/10/2014 10:55:51 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

“Naked reason is not sufficient to establish moral obligations or universal rights,” All rights and moral “obligations” are reasoned out by man and agreed to by man. It has been this way since the first tribe and it remains this way with the American and Canadian tribes—and every other tribe. It helped every tribe we know of in history to pretend that the intratribal and intertribal agreements made were authorized or dictated by their own personal special god. All these thousands of gods were extremely prejudiced, bigoted, irrational, immoral, and unpredictable. Just read any mythology from Zeus to Ezekiel. The great thing about the American Independence is that the principals were philosophers, statesmen, educators, scholars, lawyers, and leaders. It doesn’t really matter what their personal beliefs were. Enough books have been written to prove that many were deists or pretended to be deists. The point is that they did what every other group has ever done who desired to have the sheep voluntarily permit themselves to be led: They declared that their authority came from “Nature’s God”. And (this is the beautiful part), they (these MEN!) defined that “Nature’s god” as one who was the aegis for a set of rights which these men defined as being beneficial and necessary to a civilized union! The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! This was the first god invented in history who would be the aegis of these fundamental rights which rational people reasoned out centuries after the primitive tribal tales of the bible were cobbled together. Before that we had tribal gods such as Yahweh who said and demonstrated that life was not a right but a privilege based on caprice and whim. The tribal god, Jesus, made it clear that the pursuit of happiness was not a right—but usually a sin. Madam Teresa understood that suffering was the biblical goal--not happiness. And the right to liberty? Not if your god was Jesus or Jehovah or Zeus! Slaves were to obey their masters! What about the most important right reasoned out by our Founding Fathers—the “all men are created equal” thing? This is expressly what the Jewish tribes and the Christian tribes and the Muslim tribes and the Iroquois tribes--and all the other tribes argued against for centuries! No way were people equal! Every tribe had its own superiority by virtue of their self-serving assertion that they were special and that their claim to special rights and privileges (usually including rape, genocide, rapine, and pillage) was authorised (and sometimes documented), by an invisible (always invisible!) Commander in Chief! In particular, the biblical tribes were ruled over by Priests and Patriarchs--by Judges, Elders, and other leaders--and finally the mostly fictional "Kings". The people obeyed the will of their leaders or they were killed. No arguing about fundamental rights and freedoms under this tribal god! No siree! Women suspected of being unfaithful (or even thinking unfaithful) were compelled to drink a wretched mixture scooped from the offal of the slaughterhouse floor. Are these the rights our Founding Fathers were trying to preserve? Is this the God they were trying to preserve? NFW! That is the very reason they left Mother England. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution completely turned the Church of England and the entire damn primitive self-serving, anti-rights, bigoted, immoral, and criminal bible...ass over teakettle. The Founding Fathers replaced the immoral, genocidal, ignorant anti-rights of the racist bible and replaced it with rights defined by REASON and appropriately (and gratuitously) credited to the Provenance of "Nature's God". Brilliant men! My heroes! “Sure. Nobody is being compelled to worship any god. They are free to have a parade if they want to, and I am free not to attend” So is it fair to say that you are opposed to the separation of church and state and the religious neutrality of all governments from municipal on up?? “I do find it interesting that the perpetually outraged, atheist whack-jobs at FFRF are not opposing Gay Pride parades attended and endorsed by politicians” I am puzzled why you would find that strange? There is nothing in the objectives of the FFRF that seeks to marginalise or disenfranchise gays or political tolerance of gays. Nor do they oppose freedom of assembly for religious groups. They simply want Government to be free of religious fanatics whom admit no obligations to the people but only to an invisible god. This is why we do not want our Presidents, our MP’s, our Mayors, or our Senators to show any partiality to Muslims. This would effectively deny the right to religious freedom, because government is authorised to conduct force to control directives and policies. It is the Christians who ought to be the MOST vocal and active in ensuring that state and church remain separate. I am amazed you cannot see past your noses on this. If the Church--any church--ever becomes the State again, the rule of law will be subverted to whichever superstitious, self-serving nonsense the "Chosen People" of that Church choose to impose on decent human beings. NOT ON OUR WATCH, KID.