Good points all around, though it was my intent to show NiceGuyJack that religion in the American government is not some sort of recent, scary new conspiracy foisted upon us by the babbling right-wing Republican kill-all-trees-and-old-people-and-children-too-if-we-can-make-a-buck-off-of-it Bush supporters, but instead has been there all along, ironically enough, in those history books that NiceGuyJack recommends for Lockfist to read instead of nasty old religious books that might poison his mind or something and turn him to the aforementioned Bush-loving, genocide-perpetrating, environment-raping Republican zombie.
Cap’n Yoaz, I think you have made/have been making an important point, and one that is either misunderstood or misrepresented by many people with an interest in the issue today. As you said, the attitude of some people now is that we should be vigilant against this supposedly recent assault of religion “creeping in” to government, when in fact what they are actually getting at or working toward is much closer to “easing religion out” of government. I disagree vehemently with any who would say that it’s a trivial distinction. Whatever side you’re on (“The government’s trying to make everyone do novenas and carry rosaries!” or “Crime has exploded because we took the Ten Commandments out of courtrooms and schools!” or, what a prospect, something dispassionate in between), I think it is important that we take a fair and logical view of the situation, in particular taking into consideration our entire American history and its context, not just looking at what’s in front of us today with our current sensibilities.
Here you can read about the history of the motto “In God We Trust”. As you can see it was first introduced in 1864 and was originally discretion of the US mint to include it on US coins. In 1908 the Congress made the motto mandatory on coins and in 1956 Congress made it the official motto of the US and included it on our paper money.
Not at all, as I pointed out, I too have read the religious books in order to find out what it is about. Rather than poison Lockfist’s mind, I think it would enlighten him and make him understand what a contradiction it is. From this very thread there are countless recommendations of various versions of the Bible to read. Well guess what, God did not write all these versions. People who introduce their own interpretation of the Bible wrote them all. In history, the difference in interpretation has been around since the birth of this religion. And since the birth of this religion, people have killed and spilled blood in its name. Did you know that the oldest Christian nation is Armenia?
Did you know that what is today known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity derived from Armenia? Do you know that the Roman Catholics first saw the light when Christianity was made an official religion of the Roman Empire? Did you know that when the Roman Empire split into East and West, the first Christian split occurred with the East being Orthodox and the West Catholic? Did you know that on the order of the Pope, there were crusades mounted against the Orthodox Christians? (It was not only the Muslims).
I can go on and on, the point is, there is so much blood spilled and millions of lives taken in the name of Jesus, and strangely, almost every Christian I know ignores it. Perhaps it’s time to face the facts. The facts are in the history books.
I too found the Bible confusing and boring upon first read. Part of understanding the Bible is understanding the context in which it was written. For example, the “historical” books of the OT are anything but: they are actually theological interpretations of history that was already extremely well known. Consider how Hezekiah’s water tunnel gets so little attention despite its clear importance. That’s because everyone knew about it already, and there wasn’t much of a religious nature one could saw about it.
One book that greatly helped me understand the purpose of the stories in the OT is Richard Elliott Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible?, which covers the Torah, the Deuteronomistic history, and parts of the prophets, especially Jeremiah. Jonathan Kirsch also writes great Bible popularizations: David is the best, but Moses is great as well.
For the NT, Randal Helm’s Gospel Fictions is great heresy. A true eye-opener that really just made a light bulb go off in my head, even though I don’t agree with everything he has to say. If you have the time, Robert Eisenman’s James, the Brother of Jesus presents a radically different take on early Christianity and the legitimacy of the gospels, but it is 1000 pages and not entirely on topic.
I think that if you have a better understanding of the stories in the Bible, they are much more enjoyable. For example, while the story of Tamar in 2nd Sam. is interesting in its own right, it becomes downright fascinating when one realizes the incredible parallels it has to stories in Genesis. The story of Jacob and Esau is meaningful only if one knows that their relationship is the same as that of their respective nations.
