thank you, fuzzy. & i don’t blame you for not wanting to go up against ‘big d’.
maybe you could rephrase the question in a different way to get at the kinds of opinions you were looking for. i just re-read your first post & it rambled in so many directions, it was hard to tell exactly what your point was. & you can see that each of the responders seemed to pick some other part as being the basic one. why don’t you try again.
hi, david! 'scuse me. i’ll get out of your way now . . .
The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to have it make a difference you lived at all.
fuzzy:
A great many nations of the world have an official religion and/or an official language. As has been pointed out, one of the reasons that many Europeans came to the America’s in teh first place was to escape persecution from majority religions who exhibited exactly the same attitude that you are displaying here. The inescapable follow up to “America is a Christian nation” is “the Christian religion should be favored over others by our government”. Otherwise, the statement is empty of content. Our founding fathers, thank you Mr Jefferson, were wise enough to understand this and establish in the very first ammendment in the Bill of Rights that there is not and never will be an established national religion in this country. Sadly, two centuries after the fact some people still lack the perception to understand their words.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Damn that David! He keeps bringing up facts! I hate that!
Well, that was a short debate. I guess we can move on now. Thanks for playing.
Don’t know how many, but a fair number do have more-or-less official religions. Off the top of my head: England obviously has the Church of England. Israel has Judaism. China is atheistic (in theory, anyway). Iran is Muslim, as are several other countries in that area. I know there are more, but I can’t think of them this second.
Bill Gates deserves all of the money he has, he enabled billions of computer users world wide to actually use their computers. He actually turned GUIs into something marketable and essentially led the computer revolution. Sure, Zerox made the first GUI, but they never made it all that it could be. Zerox never made it both user friendly and powerful (why Apple never made it really big). I hate people like you who have this constant zero sum mentality. Wealth is created whenever something moves from less valued uses to more highly valued uses. What you fail to understand is that Bill Gates never took money from that homeless man who froze to death, he simply provided the McDonalds with the computers to run their logistics system to sell the hamburgers and keep McDonalds afloat from Burger King and Wendies. The homeless man was simply too lazy to get a job at McDonalds.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
I don’t normally come here, but Dex moved this from GQ and I went looking for it. David’s arrogance doesn’t bother me. I still can’t imagine another moral philosophy of greater significance to the founders of this country and more entwined in our government and way of life than christianity. Or at least the bible in general.
I did have something to share, though, on the topic. I got this from my Canadian lady friend. I won’t testify it it’s acuracy and it seems to be in the context of the Clinton impeachment procedings.
But, yeah, I’m glad to be an American, I’m glad Canada doesn’t need to spend their money on a military for security because US is not going to let happen to them, and I’m glad that our prosperity flows into their economy and Mexico and much of Europe. I don’t want the US to take over the world, but I’m glad we can share what we have with part of the world at least.
We have something to be proud of and our arrogance (like David’s) and individualism and “don’t tell me I can’t”
attitude has accomplished more in 2 or 3 hundred years than the rest of the world has in thousands.
I am proud to be an American! We have done so much more I think than any other civilization is such a short amount of time.
We are a rich nation, and one nation under God. We have freedom of speech and religion.
So many opportunities at our finger tips. All we have to do is tap into them. But we must never become so comfortable as to forget that we have lost good men who fought for our freedom. We must always remember that there is always a price! And, we must always keep our Constitutional Rights and never let them be taken away from us!Especially the Second Amendment! “The right to bear arms so that we can defend ourselves”. We must never let that be taken away from us or we will become lame.
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Um. We have freedom of religion, but we’re one nation under God? We are one nation, with many different people who worship many different gods (or no gods). That’s what freedom of religion means.
Fuzzy: No prob. Next time, though, watch out.
One thing I’d like to toss out for possible discussion: “Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world than the pride that divides when a colourful rag is unfurled.” – Neil Peart, RUSH.
Thrifty that may be why no one knows the pledge of allegance any more…I remember that we had a young lady in school that would not do the pledge of allegance…didn’t celebrate christmas…etc. because of her religion…no one ever said a word to her. She just sat quietly in her seat while we did the morning devotion and the pledge. Of course that is unheard of now.
It was when some idiots inserted that line (“under God”) into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. But I hope you’re not trying to tie that to the framers of this country…
David you are Bad! LOL I didn’t realize that “under God” was inserted after the fact.
Too bad for the little girl who sat out on the pledge of the flag and devotions.
But, I’m not for a one world order. At least not yet anyways. I have my own beliefs on that subject.
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Actually David I can remember the entire time that I went through the 12 grades of elementary school and high school doing the pledge of allegiance and a 10 minute devotion every day…this was before our atheist friends did away with prayer in school…be that as it may…I won’t argue the separation of state and religion…but here in the South…it is still done in many public schools…you just don’t hear about it and it’s not publicized…mainly because the parents approve of it and know that it would be done away with if anything was said. Not saying that it is right or wrong…just that it is still being done in much of the South.
Just for the record- a previous post cited some once well-known commentary from Gordon Sinclair
Actually that came out at the time of the Vietnam War or Watergate, back in the early 70s. For awhile a lot of radio stations even played tapes of his commentary with background instrumentals of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Really? Is that why the words “Christian”, “Jesus”, “Christ”, “Bible”, and “God” (apart from the phrase “Nature’s God”) don’t occur anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or the Constitution?
And please tell me where in the Bible it describes a representative democracy, a bicameral legislature, or a 3-branch system of checks and balances.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I am absolutely proud to be an American. The more I come to understand about other cultures and other governments, the more proud I am. We really do have it all here: Wealth, freedom and most importantly, opportunity. Many other nations lack all three.
I am not especially proud that some of my fellow countrymen lack a basic understanding of our constitution and why things such as not having a state established religion are prohibited. It speaks volumes on how complacency leads to apathy.
Nepal has Hinduism as their national religion and it is against the law there to change one’s religion. If Christianity were established as the national religion here, it would be taught in schools, laws reflecting Christian morality would be passed, state monies would be given to support churches and much of our admirable diversity (which has greatly helped lead us to our success) would be lost. No thanks.
Someone made a comment along the lines of, “Ya, but we still have people starving in the street.” I counter that with “Very few”. There are many social programs available, shelters, etc. These may not be perfect, but they are options. In many countries, there is no safty net whatsoever. You work, your family takes care of you or you die. Period. No food stamps, no welfare checks, no free job training. The poor in America live much better than the middle classes of many impoverished nations. IMO, we have no real poverty here. Yes, there are people who need help and I’m all for helping them. Just realise that they are already way better off than many we share our planet with.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
