Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

It is common for wetbacks to rather work where their presence isn't obvious..

In Bend about forty minutes from me..they sleep under houses being built..

Nickolai

I beg to differ. The founders were educated men and they were quite aware of the civil strife that emerges in a society when government and religion are mixed. The 30 years religious war's of the 17th century that ravaged Europe was still fresh in their minds and their intent was for government to remain neutral in all religious matter. There fore there is no mention of Jesus or God in the Constitution. The constitution is a secular document

son of witless

You are judging the Constitution as we all do, from your own preconceived notions and prejudices. You are secular, you find no reference to God in that great document, so it is logical that the men who wrote it believed as you do. I challenge your idea. Now before I go further and give you my arguments for why you are wrong, I want to know if you are up for this discussion ? I have wasted too much of my time with liberals on OPP where I in good faith cited examples to prove what I have said, only to have the liberal bail out on me.

I accept your point that the Founders would have known all about the 30 years war. I do not accept that it made them non religious and that they therefore wanted no part of God in Government. I am prepared to show cause that the colonial men who fought the American Revolution were in large part religious, and they put in the religion part of the First Amendment only because they wanted no DOMINANT religion.

I then ask you for any evidence of what you said. That when the First Amendment was written the authors were thinking of the Thirty Years War.

debeda

CORRECT!! The founders wanted FREEDOM of religion, not SUPRESSION of religion. Freedom means to worship within your beliefs, not have your faith dictated and be discriminated against because you don't adhere to the state religion as the Muslims do to the people of the middle East.

Nickolai

First of all I don't bail . I don't have any proof of the founders having the 30 years war on their mind but since they were educated men and that surly were they aware of the history of the civil strife that arises when combining religion and government. I'm not making a claim that the founder were not religious. I'm sure the vast majority were religious --most people in those days had some sort of religious belief but they made sure the Constitution was a secular document keeping government separate from religion since there was so many different denominations of Protestantism plus Catholicism. All of which aligned with local governments and wared with each other of and on for around 50 years of the 17th century. From this carnage the enlightenment rose in response between the years of 1680 and 1720 and most of the important founders considered them selves to be men of the enlightenment from what I have read

Nickolai

The freedom of religion and establishment clauses was meant for the government to be neutral in all matters of religion. Freedom of religion is like the freedom of speech it has to be restricted, One cannot yell fire In a crowded theater. A wealthy donor decided to flaunt the SCOTUS ruling on religious on public property and brought in a big chunk of granite with the 10 commandments carved on it. So right away the Church of Satan requested to drag in their monuments and display them. The Oklahoma Supreme Court made the guy move his monument to private property. That's not suppression, that is maintaining neutrality. No one wants to visit the Grand Canyon and see religious advertizement's for the dozens of different religious beliefs carved in the walls of the canyon.

Loki Loc: Georgia

For once, tovarisch Nicolai Nikolayovitch is mostly correct. In the 18th Century, the Roman Catholic Church in Spain and France had created a de facto Theocracy. The Church was far more secular than spiritual, and had their fingers in everything from real estate to slave trading to mining. The Church of England was doing the same thing, just not on as large a scale. These were much like Islam in Iran or Saudi today, a religious organization practically shaped government policy, using perversions of Biblical principles for personal and organizational enrichment and power. The Founders sought to limit government's ability to use religion as a political tool. There is no law that forbids Nativity Scenes on public property, but other religions have the same right to displays of their faith. Public displays of religious faith are not prohibited, but they must be open to all religions. Speaking of which, I am still wondering how the Church of Satan, which disavows belief in God and is, in fact atheistic managed to get status as a church. Maybe they have some member over at the IRS; it would not surprise me.

Nickolai

Hey for once Loki Is right on. The French revolution was about overthrowing the oppressors of the people, both the Monarchy and the Church. I seem to remember a couple of Native Americans that were arrested for using Peyote. They claimed it was part of their religious rituals. I can't remember the out come

Mikeyavelli

...peyote will do that to you.

son of witless

You do not bail ? We will see. Anyway I do not run my humongous mouth without being prepared to defend what I say. I am not sure, but I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who well after the Constitution was adapted coined the phrase " a wall of separation between Church & State " in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. Even that letter is not anti religious. But I digress.

My original contention that the Founding Fathers would not have been anti God is backed up by a lot of colonial documents predating the US Constitution, where God is mentioned. The settling of the North American Continent was a total crap shoot for most people. You put your wife and kids on a leaky boat and you prayed. You had a good chance that your whole family would die in the crossing from a storm or disease.

Then when you got here you could be wiped out by starvation, disease, or native tribes. You had to be religious to believe you had a chance. Many of the communities in the colonies started out as religious ones. I can list founding documents mostly from the 17th century which mention God. The Mayflower Compact 1620, the First Virginia Charter1606, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut 1639, and the New England Articles of Confederation 1643 were organizing documents of colonists which have God in their body of words. Point being that prior to the American Revolution, religion was alive , well, and generously mixed in with the 13 colonies local governments. These were by and large successful. So for you to say that the founders were aware that belief in God had no place in government because of the 30 Years War does not stand scrutiny.

Ah, but already I am anticipating your next objection. You are going to say that just because a bunch of scaredy cat White Boy Europeans in the 1600s settling an untamed continent were religious, that does not mean that by the time of the founding of the US, their great grand kids would not be more scientific and less superstitious. Well lets us look at the evidence.

While it is true the US Constitution leaves out the words Jesus, God, and the Creator, other documents of the same general time period do not leave God out. The most obvious piece of paper is the Declaration of Independence. The sacred document was written by scared people who had just committed Treason against the most powerful Empire in the World. For years they struggled against hopeless odds. Yet somehow they won. You don't think they believed that God had something to do with their victory ? ? ? ? " 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, " Creator is God.

Even in the precursor to the US Constitution, the Articles of Confederation 1778, " the Great Governor of the World " is mentioned. Then even once the Constitution is adapted and we have a real government, our leaders are making references to God. Now if God was to be totally absent from government, why didn't somebody arrest George Washington when in his First Inaugural Address 1789 he said " it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to the Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Council of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, "

I most humbly apologize for the length of this response. I actually left a lot of documentation out.

son of witless

In all of the examples you are citing, there is a state religion. That Central Religion is entwined with government, corrupting both of them. In all of those countries if there were competing religions you would not have much of a problem. I want to cite two revolutions which toppled a government and with it a state religion, and how the differences in how the post revolutionary governments dealt with religion mattered in their long term prospects.

The two Revolutions are the American and the Russian. I am purposely leaving out the French Revolution. The American Revolution toppled the British Crown and the Church of England from power over Americans. The Freedom OF Religion that the American Constitution insured has lasted well over 2 centuries. The Russian Revolution toppled the Czar and the Russian Orthodox Church from power over the Russians. That Freedom FROM Religion did not last nearly as long.

Loki Loc: Georgia

What I was saying was the Founders wished to prevent another incarnation of the Roman Catholic or Church of England theocracy here in this country. In other words, no state sponsored religion. People free to worship or not. Congress cannot make a law respecting an establishment of religion. Why do you think they left it to the IRS to determine "religious"status? Because the IRS is a semi-private corporation incorporated in Delaware. Don't believe me? Next time you get mail from them, look in the upper right hand corner and it will say "postage paid by IRS." If they were a government bureaucracy we would have to pay the postage because of government franking privilege.
I digress. The purpose was not to seem unreligious, but to prevent the establishment of a church as another branch of government. Many of the Founders who were mistakenly called "Deists" were actually what was known at the time as non-clerical Christians. What that mouthful means is that they were Christians who rejected organized religion with it's trappings, clergy and fakery. They placed more faith in their own understanding of their Bibles than in the self-serving, ulterior motived "interpretations" of established churches.

son of witless

You and I basically agree. My point is that the Constitution is not an Atheist piece of paper. Our good friends are insisting on their interpretation of Thomas Jefferson's letter mentioning the separation of Church and State, which is not written anywhere in the Constitution. In their Universe no mention of anybody's God is allowed on Government property or in any Government literature. Yet I gave an example of George Washington mentioning God in his First Inaugural Address. There are plenty more such examples. Either God is allowed or he is not.

Even President Obama spoke about Faith. In a perfect Atheist America, he should not have been allowed to say that except when he was on his own time.

Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

At the risk of unpleasant tidings..In the New Testament..the apostle Paul admonishes "the bretheren" 1st Corinthians 1:10.."that there be no divisions among you, but that you all speak the same thing"..Now this might not seem a big deal..but it's like having a huge army with different beliefs..If instruction is from the same book, why all the differences..Could greed be a factor?

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

<sigh> I suppose that having Mormon missionaries knocking on your door every week or Jehovah's Witnesses repeatedly trying to get you to subscribe to the Watchtower or your neighbors repeatedly trying to get you to attend their church or ... or ... etc. is OK with you. I suspect that this is not the case. Why do they have the freedom to bang on your door at all? Or for you to be accosted by a sidewalk preacher in your face? Atheists don't have a corner on the market when it comes to "in your face' evangelizing, but where does my ability to not listen end? I've had my interior apartment door knocked on by local Baptists trying to convert me (this was technically trespassing since the complex was gated), and had to literally knock down a Jehovah's Witness who insisted on putting his foot in my door so that I couldn't close it. Where do you draw the line? With the Attorney General justifying immigration deportations by a Biblical reference? With Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) making law for everyone in regards to abortion and LGBTQ rights? Where is that dividing line? It goes all the way from the all-encompassing to the personal. All of these instances are minority views that have been made into majority edicts based on religious moralistic grounds. Much of it (if you truly believe in the separation of church and state and individual rights) is therefore invalid and should not be part of the legal framework.