--- In [email protected], "shempmcgurk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "do.rflex" <do.rflex@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], MDixon6569@ wrote: > > > > > > In a message dated 7/13/07 12:59:51 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > > > do.rflex@ writes: > > > > > > > As I've already cited, US laws are not based on Biblical > > > > laws. > > > > > > You were wrong and so were your sources. > > > > LOL! What a smug asshole. > > He's only "smug" and an "asshole" if he's wrong.
IMO, there was more than enough smugness and assholiness to go around, on all sides of this silly exercise in "I'm right and you're wrong." :-) MDixon is right that Christianity was pretty much the only religion that the framers of the Consti- tution had in mind. At the time they wrote that document, if there were any Muslims in the country, they were probably slaves, and the small number of Jews were probably irrelevant to mainstream thinking. The nearest Hindu or Buddhist was probably thousands of miles away. That said, others were right that the framers of the Constitution were driven more by a desire for freedom *from* religion than they were by freedom of religion. They had just come, after all, from Europe, where humans had just demonstrated clearly the idiocy of governments declaring a state religion or religions *becoming* the government or government getting involved in religion in any way. They wanted nothing to do with that, and...uh...God bless 'em for thinking that way. IMO, spiritual beliefs just don't mix with govern- ment. Bad Idea all around, whether it's English kings inventing a church and imposing it on its citizens or Maharishi feeling all warm and fuzzy about mandating TM for citizens of a country "for their own good." Read what the Inquisitors of the past or the Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists of today have to say and you'll find the same message -- "We know better than you do what is best for you, and we're so confident that our 'knowing' equates to 'truth' that we're willing to impose it on you whether you want it or not." Yeah, right. May they all turn out to be wrong about what happens in the afterlife and wind up in the *same* place, thus inventing Hell. :-) Me, I'll stick with those who feel (as the founding fathers of America did) that the only thing that can relate to a religion or a set of spiritual beliefs is an individual human being. They should be free to do that, preferably in private, and *certainly* not in front of a governmental body, grandstanding and imposing their individual "take" on spirituality on people who would be better served by being left to investigate their own "take" on such things. The whole *idea* of opening a session of Congress with a prayer is offensive to me, and to America, and to the founders of America, and to the ideas they stood for. It doesn't matter whether it's a Catholic prayer or a Protestant prayer or a Hindu prayer or an Islamic prayer or a Voodoo prayer or a Jewish prayer or a Native American one. That's irrelevant. The fact that some politicians are so eager to win votes by appearing to either support one religion or be against it is all that's relevant. America is NOT a "Christian nation." It is a nation founded as a *reaction to* and *rejection of* the idea of any state religion, and as an experiment to see whether such idiocy could be prevented in the future. Clearly it cannot. The most that those of us who have read some history and the writings of the framers of the Constitution and thus what they had in mind can do is to remind people what that was. The idea was simple -- "Believe whatever you want. Evangelize all you want, if you're given to that kind of embarrassing behavior. But DO NOT attempt to sway the government of the United States into evangelizing for you, or into mandating your beliefs for others. That is inappropriate in our country, and will not be tolerated." Several good quotes were posted, but not the one that describes what one of the main architects of America thought of Christians who try to use the government to promote their beliefs. It was in a letter to a friend, provoked by an attempt by Christians to take over a school system and promote their ideas in its curriculum. You can still read it today carved into the Jefferson Memorial, although few today remember its context, and *who* Tom was referring to as tyrants: "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
