God Hates Freedom!?!?

The following was posted by someone using the name biniohas to a newsgroup at alt.politics.usa.constitution. While I’m quite aware of the board’s policy against full quotes from copyrighted material, I’m unaware of any way to link to a newsgroup post, or I would do so. Instead, I’m quoting the full “essay” here. If a mod. is able to produce that link, please feel free to cut the essay to a couple of paragraphs and insert the link instead.

Okay, this nut makes even the Christian Reconstructionists look tame by comparison – at least their intent is to establish a theocracy by legal means! And I guarantee you that even the overwhelming majority of those who hold to one absolute morality would shrink from this guy’s solution of enforcing it by banning the right of anyone to believe other than he does.

But this discourse is so thoroughgoing a tractate on the enforcement of morality that it speaks volumes to me on the need to protect freedoms. What’s your take on it?

  1. This person has listened to one too many “They’re trying to take God out of our country!” rabid hyenas carefully disguised as televangelists.

  2. This fellow really needs an in-depth look at the history behind Church-driven/operated states, with a particular look at the middle ages and Christianity in Europe and the zealous Islam states in the MENA area.

  3. This person further needs to be actually shown what the text in question means and, more importantly, how.

  4. It would be interesting in seeing a rebuttal of this character’s assertions (“argument” or “point” assumes that those terms are valid).

It seems that there is no point of debate with this chap. We disagree (read: I think he’s stark raving effing mad) and that’s gonna be that.

My take is that he’s absolutely, 100% correct. Which is why I’m not religious.

Actually, while he is certainly from the same side of the border of rationality, he lives in a wholly different country. Their cry is usually “freedom of religion does not demand freedom from religion.” He is clearly crying “God demands there be no freedom of religion.”

Maybe if we put them all in one room they would annihilate?

.

.
Millum? Is that you? :wink:

Sure its not a

*Whoosh!!! *

I hope so, for our sake1:eek:

Ugghh, add a “?” and a “!”

Well, to be fair to him, his view isn’t historically a unique one. A lot of people have criticized the idea of religious freedom. In 1864, for example, in his Encyclical Quanta Curia, Pope Pius IX condemned the ideas that:

and

And, there is a certain logic in a religious person being opposed to religious liberty. If you believe that your religion is correct, and other religions are false, then religious liberty can be dangerous, because it increases the possibilty that people will believe false things.

I have always liked what Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and pioneer of religious freedom, once said: “Forced religion stinks in God’s nostrils.”

And, although I’m not Christian, it’s obvious to me that this cretin misses a basic point of Christianity: that man has the free will to decide to embrace or reject Christ. How would forcing people to act outwardly Christian make them truly Christian in spirit? Choice is the crux of the biscuit (although, admittedly, there is the whole predestination/predetermination branch of Christianity, which I’m conveniently ignoring for fear of the philosophical and semantic debate which may follow… ;)).

If you really think about it only three of the Ten Commandments (Don’t steal. don’t kill, don’t bear false witness) are actually enforcable as crimes under the Constitution. In addition to practicing idolotry and taking God’s name in vain, we are also allowed to commit adultery, to covet, to dishonor Mom and Dad and to ignore the sabbath.

This guy guy has at least five or six more essays in him.

I’m still trying to digest the idea that the Founding Fathers worked for Satan. Also, I’m strongly resisting the urge to make the sign of the devil and shout “Satan Roools!!!”

Oops.

Good guess. He actually has 13 more. Or, really, whomever the true author was–I don’t know who actually posted this.

Eh, the whole thing was stolen (I’m assuming) from this page. According to the site’s copyright, Robert T. Lee owns the silly thing–and I think he can keep it. After all, with a group name like the “Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the Ten Commandments” one knows its followers are nuts.

Of particular interest to me is another essay on the site with the name of “America is a thoroughly corrupt tree”. Not because I’ve actually read the essay, mind you, but because I like the name. It reminds me of what Memo said in Malamud’s The Natural: “I’m a twisted tree.”

Silly trees.

I would love to see the Minnesota Multi-phasic (?) profile on the author. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any position quite like it.

Of course, the next question is Will the members of this society go to heaven? :wink:

Sounds like another usenet wacko, Poly.

Tell him to move to the Vatican if he has a problem. Hehehe!!!

Geez, this guy could be Osama´s drinking buddy… :stuck_out_tongue: Better to keep an eye on him in case he decides to go postal.

As a colleague of this fellow put it: God hates America.

(I’ve never understood why He doesn’t hate Canada and Northern/Western Europe a whole lot more, under the criteria in question, but I suppose that’s a topic for another day.)

In line (sort of, I think)with that, matt, I was wondering if this was the latest effort of the guy who evidently didn’t think (warning: vile) this or (again, vile) this were enough in his Hate Crusade.

Yeah, but at least with Phelps, we KNOW he’s crazy.

I mean, even Jerry fucking Falwell thinks that Fred is over the top.

1: Quiet, heartfelt gratitude to all the people before and current with me who have worked so hard to make sure I had the good fortune to be born into an increasingly secular society.

2: Sympathy for the level of cognitive dissonance I magine you have to occasionally feel by (nominally) sharing a religion with so many fucking kooks, pharisees, and assholes.

So he seems to be saying that they were trying to make a nation that does not enforce an ideology. Since that is an ideology as well, they were trying the impossible and thus would be better off snuffing it and creating some kind of Taliban meets Landover Baptist meets the Twilight Zone… [i[thing*.

If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em, I guess, is his message here. But would it be a stretch to say, then, that according to that reasoning, doing something “by yourself,” say, like building a house is impossible too?

I mean, you have to use tools, right? You have to get those tools, though. That means someone else made the tools, which you used to build the house. So you DIDN’T do it all by yourself. What if you made your own tools? There are still processed materials from which they were made. Then there was still the matter of making raw materials which, I guess, was God’s doing.

So, if I interpret his logic correctly, to do something “all by oneself” or from scratch, is impossible too. I guess the solution to THAT problem would be then to pray to god to plop down a trailer.

Is my interpretation consistent with what that dogmatic diverticular dweller said?