[rubicon]

Originally Posted by Challenger

Can you find me a quote in any of our founding documents that declare that we are to be a "Christian" nation?

challenger: everything I have read about the creation of the Declaration of independence, Constitution Bill of Rights were predicated on God and God given rights.

My position is I don't know about creation because the ony references i find ar from other human beings and whether Christian or science they are based on faith.

having said that I would prefer a nation under God rather than a nation under some secular entity. I mean would that be scary

[Sandtrap328]

The US Constitution says that all men are endowed by their Creator to be equal and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Apparently, the Founding Fathers forgot about the 500,000 slaves in the USA. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and George Washington owned slaves.

Slaves were counted as three- fifths of a person for establishing the number of representatives in Congress.

These are the "God-given rights" of a Christian nation?

[Challenger]

Originally Posted by Sandtrap328

The US Constitution says that all men are endowed by their Creator to be equal and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Apparently, the Founding Fathers forgot about the 500,000 slaves in the USA. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and George Washington owned slaves.

Slaves were counted as three- fifths of a person for establishing the number of representatives in Congress.

These are the "God-given rights" of a Christian nation?

These "rights" are only given to christian nations ??? Hmmmmmm

[quirky3]

References to "God" or "creator" do not indicate "Christian" or exclude non-Christian.

[onslowe]

Originally Posted by Sandtrap328

The US Constitution says that all men are endowed by their Creator to be equal and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Apparently, the Founding Fathers forgot about the 500,000 slaves in the USA. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and George Washington owned slaves.

Slaves were counted as three- fifths of a person for establishing the number of representatives in Congress.

These are the "God-given rights" of a Christian nation?

Apart from an apparent lack of historical sense, what point is intended to be made by the painful self righteous and chronologically contemptuous comments for our nation's founding fathers?

[Sandtrap328]

Originally Posted by onslowe

Apart from an apparent lack of historical sense, what point is intended to be made by the painful self righteous and chronologically contemptuous comments for our nation's founding fathers?

.???

[blueash]

Those who have posted about the Constitution and endowed by their creator are wrong. That phrase is in the Declaration of Independence. It is not a legal document, it is a political statement directed specifically at King George who if you remember your history was not just the King of England but ruled by divine right (although some diminution of the divine right had already come to England by 1776). Thus when beseeching the King it is important to go over his head if you wish to act in opposition to his edicts. It was therefore in a political sense that the authors invoked rights from the Creator (never was the word God Lord Jesus Christian or any other specific creator mentioned). Prior to that phrase the terms Laws of Nature and Nature's God are used. Never the term mankind's God or anything similar. It is a very specific use of language invoking the arguments of Locke and others. I have always been amused that among the grievances against the King was that he encouraged the Merciless Indian Savages to attack the American frontiersmen.

The DOI is an important document. It is not however the Constitution. The Constitution was meant to guide the new nation when the Articles of Confederation were failing. Religion appears twice.
The first Amendment mentions religion and of course firmly states that there shall be no establishment of religion (which of course meant Christianity as it was the only possible religion that could have been chosen)
article 6 states :
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.

No religious test means what it says. The wording about Oath or affirmation is also important. The difference is that an oath is typically taken on a religious object eg Bible, whereas an affirmation is simply a statement agreeing to a set of conditions.
Whereas the phrase so help me God has been used in swearing in ceremonies, in fact that phrase is not part of the Constitutional Oath.

[graciegirl]

It makes me sad when people use any means to be critical of others with different ways of looking at life and with different values and different creeds and different belief systems..

I was raised in a Christian/Jewish Community and we did just fine. I see nothing to gain for the devious ways people show their contempt for the religion of others.

Unless your faith directs you to kill someone in the name of your religion than keep it, cherish it, use it. Some of the very folks who say that we must value all people the same are some of the ones who disdain people of faith.

I don't always have deep faith, but it has been my good fortune to know many people who have been very good examples of the religion that they believe in.

In my opinion I think it makes for a kinder, better world to have people around who belong to an organized religion based on the Golden Rule.

Yes, there are people of religion who are cruel and mean, but not as often as people without religion make that point.

What happened to all the scientific atheists and agnostics that I knew so many of... that didn't pick on others about religion?.

We are all different and all valuable.

It really doesn't matter to me whether you believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible or believe the universe was created in seven 24 hour days or in billions of years, or whether you are a religious scholar or an atheist... or whether you are very smart or very not smart. It matters to me, at this stage in my life, if you are accepting and kind and warm.And you give real genuine hugs.

[kittygilchrist]

GG, love to you.

[allus70]

"There is strong evidence that there was indeed a Big Bang which would then seem to preclude an "always universe"."

Perhaps.
Perhaps the expansion and contraction of the universe is a never ending cyclical occurrence.
Perhaps there are an infinite number of "multiverses".
Perhaps there is so much that it will forever be unknown, lying forever beyond our comprehension and even our imagination.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

[tedquick]

Originally Posted by allus70

"There is strong evidence that there was indeed a Big Bang which would then seem to preclude an "always universe"."

Perhaps.
Perhaps the expansion and contraction of the universe is a never ending cyclical occurrence.
Perhaps there are an infinite number of "multiverses".
Perhaps there is so much that it will forever be unknown, lying forever beyond our comprehension and even our imagination.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Perhaps!!

[onslowe]

Originally Posted by blueash

Those who have posted about the Constitution and endowed by their creator are wrong. That phrase is in the Declaration of Independence. It is not a legal document, it is a political statement directed specifically at King George who if you remember your history was not just the King of England but ruled by divine right (although some diminution of the divine right had already come to England by 1776). Thus when beseeching the King it is important to go over his head if you wish to act in opposition to his edicts. It was therefore in a political sense that the authors invoked rights from the Creator (never was the word God Lord Jesus Christian or any other specific creator mentioned). Prior to that phrase the terms Laws of Nature and Nature's God are used. Never the term mankind's God or anything similar. It is a very specific use of language invoking the arguments of Locke and others. I have always been amused that among the grievances against the King was that he encouraged the Merciless Indian Savages to attack the American frontiersmen.




The DOI is an important document. It is not however the Constitution. The Constitution was meant to guide the new nation when the Articles of Confederation were failing. Religion appears twice.
The first Amendment mentions religion and of course firmly states that there shall be no establishment of religion (which of course meant Christianity as it was the only possible religion that could have been chosen)
article 6 states :
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.

No religious test means what it says. The wording about Oath or affirmation is also important. The difference is that an oath is typically taken on a religious object eg Bible, whereas an affirmation is simply a statement agreeing to a set of conditions.
Whereas the phrase so help me God has been used in swearing in ceremonies, in fact that phrase is not part of the Constitutional Oath.

1. Please state the source of amusement for you in the reference to Indian attacks on frontier settlers. I thought people were killed.

2. You are mistaken about the word 'religion' as used and intended within the First Amendment as it came into being in the 1780's. If you will re-read any decent colonial history text, you will remember that certain colonies had established religions, Anglicanism, Congregationalism etc. The idea was to not allow Congress to make any law respecting the establishment of religion,(which means setting up a national religion favored over all others) such as those or any others, be they Methodism, Lutheranism or Dutch Reformed, or Judaism or Quakerism.

That was what was meant by the First Amendment's language - not the hoped for attack on Christianity so much desired by moderns. It meant specific religions, and not just Christianity. It meant the US government could not have a national religion. Nothing else. And anything else is intellectual dishonesty and sociological baseless hype.

Do people ever stop to consider how stupid it is to say that a group of highly educated, largely Christian patriots (of various religious affiliations) set down a law only about their general religious persuasion and only to deter its free practice in the US? Please think.

Why, I wonder, are the enemies of religion, and of Christianity more specifically, so afraid of religious people? Are we dangerous like Pol Pot, and Hitler and Stalin and Kim Jung Il? Are we fanatics who behead people? Have we ever tried to establish any one religion as the 'national' religion? And please remember, Christianity is not a monolith, one size fits all religious persuasion. The facts do not support it, no matter how strident and vicious the attackers get, the facts are just not there - only boring baseless anti-religious fears taught by intellectually dishonest persons in books, carefully choreographed television segments etc. Fears borne of osmosis, and not thought.

[KeepingItReal]

Originally Posted by Sandtrap328

The US Constitution says that all men are endowed by their Creator to be equal and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Apparently, the Founding Fathers forgot about the 500,000 slaves in the USA. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and George Washington owned slaves.

Slaves were counted as three- fifths of a person for establishing the number of representatives in Congress.

These are the "God-given rights" of a Christian nation?

There were many blacks that owned slaves as well. The first black slave owner went to court demanding the right to do so.

http://topconservativenews.com/2012/...s-a-black-man/

America’s first slave owner was a black man.
first_slaveAccording to colonial records, the first slave owner in the United States was a black man.

Prior to 1655 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants. All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Seven years was the limit that an indentured servant could be held. Upon their release they were granted 50 acres of land. This included any Negro purchased from slave traders. Negros were also granted 50 acres upon their release.

Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.

When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker.

Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner.

Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.

By 1699, the number of free blacks prompted fears of a “Negro insurrection.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa. Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free blacks back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves.

However, black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.

By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.

[KeepingItReal]

Originally Posted by onslowe

KeepingItReal, You mean that more than Thomas Jefferson were involved in the lengthy debates, articles and drafting of the Bill of Rights? Wow. Next you'll tell me the Constitution didn't really see the light of day until 1802 when Jefferson wrote his letter to the Danbury Baptists! Wow.

I did not and do not plan to tell you anything, history is what it is....

[onslowe]

PM sent.