With thanks to Polycarp:
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I’ll bet you don’t. That would require marshalling facts and arguments that actually address the points I raised.
How am I supposed to know you even read my post to find out if this is true if you aren’t going to respond to it properly? I understood you just fine: you tried to use the memories of men who gave their lives defending others as cheap advertising for your ideology.
Do end your posts with “love” to countbalance the hateful slander that is par for the course in the actual content of the posts?
No one is trying to arrest anyone for speaking about God in public.
That was part of their reasoning, but not all of it. Their reasoning was based in part on the development of men like Locke, who held that religious belief was simply outside the effective and prudent realm of political power. They reasoned that the government should not be given the AUTHORITY to have particular religious viewpoints, because any such grant of authority would have to detract from the authority of citizens to determine their own consicences. That’s why they fought against, and won, those who wanted to put religious affirmations into the Constitution and practice of government. Though of course, men of simpler minds, who couldn’t see the subtlties of the doctrine, got right to work on undermining it. But the fact is, free from government meddling, religious and spiritual belief has thrived in the U.S., while those European countries without doctrines of separation have seen it dwindle.
What fanatic? You tiilt at this strawman of people that want to outlaw religious belief: but where are they?
Nonsense. Doctrines of rights were never a particularly religiously inspired one: they came out of the notably areligious englightenment, your revisionist history non-withstanding. What is so criminally silly about your view of history is that you assume that religious belief in the past was anything like yours is now.
Hey Apos, none of my business, but why do you hate religion? Heck, its not like they are kidnaping you.
You have made a lot of general statements, partially true and partially not. I seldom answer replies that take my post and break it up into pieces with comments on the pieces instead of the original post. It reminds me too much of the quotes of sentences from ten different parts of the Bible to try to prove points made by religious people. You skimed over the main purpose of my post so I will skim yours also.
Yes, why is it that you attack anything spiritual in nature.
Love
Leroy
Because he has a brain that works?
Excuse me?
Where have I said that I hate religion? Either find somewhere in the thread where I’ve expressed such a view, or take back this particular slander.
I respect religious believers and religion very much. What I hate are zealots who can’t tell the difference between pro-separation and anti-religion. The founders, at least, recognized that pro-separation WAS pro-religion in that religion would better be able to thrive without entanglement with a political government.
I gave a coherent response to the key points and assertions that you made. You’ve seen fit to respond with discombobulated and false questions. You make claims about various things being true and others being not… but then you don’t explain exactly what, so that no one can check up on your claims. In other words, you want to make charges and accusations without actually exposing yourself to the danger of having to defend them.
This question is no more an honest line of inquiry than if I asked you when you had stopped regularly beating your wife.
You are rationalizing and justifying attacks on religion with “pro-separation”, whatever that means. I have never heard any religious person use that term. I really don’t think you will ever convince the moral majority that pro-separation is good for them, while teaching evolution as fact. The veil of deceit is too thin for this. If our founding fathers wanted prayer and every reference to God removed from the public schools, songs, pledges, etc., I think they would have said so, and done so, in their time. The “separation of church and state” seems pretty clear to me realizing the sharing of power between church and state that existed in their time. The zealots you seem to hate are only trying to hang onto to some of their rights of religious freedom. Funny you should call the religious, zealots, when it is the atheists that are doing all the screaming and suing.
Love
Leroy
It is religious zealots who are ostracizing people (even Christians) who ask for separation, beating and tormenting their children, and vandalizing their property. I have not heard of any proponents of separation resorting to violence in the way that the people you support do:
Persecution of Christians for challenging school prayer
Lisa Herdahl, the mother of the practicing Christian family, brought her concerns over the unconstitutional nature of classroom prayer to local school officials. As a result of Lisa Herdahl’s opposition, her family was not only harassed, but was accused of devil worshipping and atheism.
From http://www.mindspring.com/~wjager/tele.html
(And if you call evolution dishonest one more time, despite the fact that you have ignored multiple citations of people providing evidence that speciation has been seen and recorded, I am going to have to conclude that you are simply an habitually dishonest crank.)
And they had really mean’t “All men are created equal, they would have abolished slavery.” [/sarcasm] The great thing they did do, apart from the bill of rights, was to leave an open ended amendable system so that our govt could be retailored for new times. And these are new times. Inspite of our horrendous educational system, there are a lot of people that have compiled and analyzed data and concluded that the whole creationist thing and a big guy floating around in the sky is a bit hokey. All due respect to people who continue to believe this stuff, but they have freedom to practice it in their own churches, mosques and synogogues. If just one child is forced to acknowledge a diety he doesn’t beleive in, in the pledge, or object to it and making himself subject to ridicule, then he is disenfranchised. Our laws are designed to protect the minority view. The majority doesn’t need that protection. I love my country, I love my flag. Its more than a little ironic that the flag commands such dignity and repect because we have the right to wipe our asses with it or burn it. But when we lose those rights, silly as they are, when we lose liberty, it will cease to hold that grand meaning.
Again: please back up your charge that I am attacking religion. It’s easy to make cheap, hateful accusations. But on this board, you have to back them up with something other than repetition.
You must not have met many religious people. Because we wouldn’t HAVE a doctrine of separation without religious people. You think a handful of roundly despised atheists had the power to enforce the doctrine? Come on. There are numerous religious non-profits, for goodness sake, that exist to advocate separation.
Lekatt, this sentance contains a painfully glaring error. That error is this: there WERE no public schools during the time of the founders. There WAS no official government song (wasn’t adopted until much later, and there certainly wasn’t any mandatory or even widespread recitation of it). There WAS no pledge. So how could they “remove” references to God in these things if hey didn’t even exist? It was religious zealots that tossed out the mottos nad traditions that the founders had created, replacing them with their own.
And the fact is, the founders DID say so. If you don’t know this, then you have not read their written works. Instead of making it up as you go along, I challenge you to read up on Madison, one of the chief architects of the Constitution and the leader of the group that hashed out the first amendment. Read what he wrote: see that he opposed even the idea of ceremonial chaplains or freedom from taxation.
Read about Washington. Read about how he rebuffed those people that DID want the Constitution to include ceremonial religious affirmations.
No. Not a sharing of power. NO government power over religion. And no religion giving up some of its authority and power to the government. That’s the brilliance of the idea of liberty: that the government is limited, only encompassing part, but not all, of civil society. The whole idea of separation, the whole point of the argument the founder put forth is that government corrupts religion, and religion becomes a force for tyrrany in government.
Please explain to me what rights you are talking about: what do you consider a violation of someone’s rights to freedom of religion. I highly agree with you that there are people here and there that go too far. But more often than not, I also find that people who complain of threats to relgious freedom are lying: what they are concerned about is losing the power to abuse OTHER people’s religious freedom. I want to make sure that is not the case here: so out with some examples.
Well, I feel compelled to make some comments.
All righty. Let’s proceed.
Hmm. You know, the way I remember it, the war lekatt describes was a little different. Number 1: the “several dictators” were not, as lekatt claims, “[trying] to conquer the world.”
Number 2: we were not “outgunned in everything,” as the USSR mobilized about 22-30 million troops, the United States 16, and Germany 17. According to the fundamental laws of arithmetic, 22 million + 16 million is not less than 17 million.
Number 3: while the United States may have enjoyed a resurgence of nationalism, patrotism, etc., Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia undobtedly utilized nationalism and patrotism to a much greater extreme than we did.
Number 4: whether the Axis had a greater military advantage is debatable, and perhaps they did (compared to Russia). But most historians would avoid making such an unsubstantiated statement as, “The enemy had a more advanced technology, better tanks, airplanes, better trained troops…”
And so on…
It’s really trivial to explain reality to those who try to avoid it.
Try to avoid it? Heck, I’m thinking it’s not even on the dude’s map!
“It’s really trivial to explain reality to those who try to avoid it.” said Blue22.
“Try to avoid it? Heck, I’m thinking it’s not even on the dude’s map.” smirked Monty.
You know Dudes, I bet you wouldn’t nit -pick World War Two if you had been in it…mmm, of course you wouldn’t. If american nit-pickers had run World War Two rather than men of great vision, nit-picking would now be outlawed by Der Fuhrer and you would be speaking, not Dude, but German.
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If you think numbers mean anything, you should look at the current war on Iraq.
The German war technology was far greater than ours at that time. From planes, tanks, to machine guns, et all. They had 112 jet aircraft in the fight at the end. The Japanese war machine had already rolled over many countries and had they not been stopped at Guadacanal could have taken Australia. Read some history.
The Germans did have superior tanks, they called American tanks “mobile coffins.” One shell from a Panzer would easily destroy an American Sherman. American tank shells bounced off the thick German armor. Actually the Russian tanks were much better than ours, the Germans were impressed with Russian’s tanks strength. When German troops entered Russia, they killed Russians at a rate of 15 to one. Their troops were the best trained.
I don’t think it is necessary to go on, you have not studied the war and know little about it.
I can say, I was there and it was a tremendous effort by Americans to build war materials. Please don’t discount something you know nothing about.
Oh, yes, Hitler was determine to establish the superiority of the German race on the world. Read something about the War history before talking about it.
Love
Leroy
Milum: The fact of World War II having occurred has exactly zero to do with the constitutionality of the religious phrase inserted into a nationalistic pledge. In other words, your last posting, quite like lekatt’s postings in this thread, are completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The phrase “under God” was not in the Pledge during WWII.
Not that WWII has any relevance at all to this discussion.
Unfortunately for you, I have studied the war: professionally.
Quite an exagerration here. Indeed, it seems that you’ve read too much German propaganda, rather than history. While the Germans were ahead in some technologies, they were far far behind others, and in all areas they simply could not produce good technologies in useful numbers or acceptable quality.
Really? As of 1941, the British alone, with only 70% of national income of Germany, outproduced the Germans in EVERY major aramament category except small arms and torpedoes.
Indeed: far more tremendous than Germany’s effort. Americans managed to do something that Germany never managed to do: militarize their economy. Even up to the end of the war, Germany’s economy was still on a civilian footing. Thanks to Nazi propaganda, many people still believe that Germany worked “day and night” to arm itself. The reality is that the Nazis were not only fairly incompetant as industrial managers, but they could not convince the German people to stop frittering away resources on nicities, or co-opt industries the way we managed to do in the U.S.
And the fact is, Germany not only did not spend time prior to war preparing for a wider conflict, it was also constantly short of resources during the war. The Blitzkreig attacks it was so famed for was not a strategy freely chosen as the best: it was the only sort of war Germany could afford. They had to win decisive victories or pull out precisely because they could NOT sustain long conflicts. After each major attack, they actually had to have a great deal of downtime in order to replenish what they had used and lost in battle.
Again, your knowledge seems to come from watching the news back then (with not a small amount of propaganda), not from a study of history. There is simply no evidence at all that Hitler had any sort of grand plan for world domination at the start of the war: I dare you to back up your claims (and especially your insults to other’s lack of knowledge) with cites. I can cite historian AP Taylor, who can you cite? Hitler seems to have drifted from one small victory to another, surprising himself that it was so easy. His main ambition after that was to crush those who might take away what he had gained. The idea that Hitler wanted to “take over the world” is laughable to anyone who understands the resource needs that would be required to do such a thing and then administrate power. Even the U.S. today could not take over the world. He certainly wished to demonstrate the superiority of the Teuton race: but world domination is just silly. The only reason people cling to this idea is because they want to think of Hitler as the ultimate evil in every respect that they can imagine. But no such false fantasies of evil are necessary: the real Hitler was more than evil enough even if we only look at his treatment of the Jews.
The United States government itself conducted a post-war investigation into these matters. It’s conclusion was that the Nazis were dismal failures in the industrial production department, and did almost nothing in the war preparations department.
So, are you going to disagree with your own government, or admit that maybe, Germany wasn’t quite the iron giant its own propaganda seems to have convinced you it was? Germany was profoundly stupid for giving the Allies a reason to unite and combat it.
Unnecessarly Diogenes said…
“The phrase “under God” was not in the Pledge during WWII.”
We know that Dio, it has been mentioned twice before in this thread.
“Not that WWII has any relevance at all to this discussion.”
he continued.
Wrongo Dio, Lekatt generalized about the second world war to make a point and then Blue22 nit-picked his representation of the facts. Therefore World War Two is a subpoint to the discussion and can be properly addressed.
(Hey! Thanks Diogenes, I just figured out that two capital “I’s” can make the roman numeral “two”, as in World War II.)
Thanks, Diogenes.
Okay Millum, have it your way.
No one is nitpicking WWII: we’re nitpicking lekatt’s fantastical revisionist account of WWII, which he thinks that, if true, would somehow support his ideology, despite it STILL being irrelevant to the issue.
If you were to post something intelligent and worthwhile on this debate, rather than just taking backhanded sideswipes at people, I would be pleasantly surprised.
You still haven’t backed up your slanderous assertion that I “hate religion.” Put up, or…