Judging from past experience, I believe that cosmosdan would agree that such a situation would be unfair. However, should you point out that the situation is just what happened to non-Christians, then his eyes will roll. “Sure, so maybe you CLAIM that it feels bad to sit by the sidelines, and I know who bad my daughter felt when the exact same thing happened, but it is just not that way when it comes to religion.”
:rolleyes:
Scott, you’re getting way too emotionally involved, here. Now you are making up replies for other posters who are active and quite capable of responding, themselves. I suggest you cool it.
Say what? What is wrong with pararphrasing people? I- Ah, nevermind. While I review of his past posts does show this to be accurate,
I guess I will indeed “cool down”
It is either one or both depending on the situation. God is, and always has been personal. If you seek to prove God’s existence through science you will fail. If you seek to prove God individually you can be successful. The relationship between God and man is personal. I know He exists because I have experience Him. But I can’t prove that to others. There are millions like me who have experienced God. You don’t need to die to experience God. Some experience Him when relaxed and contemplative, others during severe stress. There is no certain rule to this. But to say God doesn’t exist is not true. This has nothing to do with religion or any other kind of organization. I know you will want to say we didn’t really experience God. But you are wrong, and I can’t prove you wrong. The closest we come to proof is what researchers like Dr. Wharton have to say about the experiences.
Thank you for posting here. Yes, I agree with everything you say.
Well I think it would be fairly easy to disprove the claims being made, save for the fact that every bit of experience I have shows me that lekatt will ignore every point, and go on to make the thread all about him. Thus, you can expect me not to reply to him in the future.
Anyway, going back to the subject, I when I was a child, I felt like I was not part of society ever year around Christmas. (Yes, cosmosdan, I really do expect you to believe that it was that bad.) The fact that my school had Christmas activities only made it worse. Now, had the school based reinforcement of Christianity been eliminated, I would still have felt bad, since the rest of society would still enforce the idea that “Oh, of course everyone is Christian. What else is there?”
However, it would have been a different easier to bear kind of feeling. Since popular society was expressing it, there would be nothing I can do about it. Freedom of speech, and all that.
I think it is you who are terribly, woefully mistaken. The Enlightment no doubt played a large role in the philosophy which birthed the nation. But to say that they intended the new nation to be a purely rationalistic, non-theistic state is pure fantasy.
If you’d like to rebut this, it might be helpful if we started with what you mean by Deism, or what you think it meant to the Founders.
Diogenes, Sorry for the trady reply…
I was using that question because it seems to be at the foundation for all theistic views.
It might help my understanding if you could answer this? Is Atheism primarily a belief system that thinks the world can be fully understood (eventually) and because it can, there is no use for God. Or do they start with the opinion that there is no God, so we will (eventually) be able to understand the world?
In other words, what came/comes first: the belief that there is no Creator? Or the rationalistic look at the world?
Your description sounds more like agnosticism. Where would you draw the line between the two?
Why not? Monotheism is at the foundation of our country. Again, I refer to the D of I.) If you and others sharing a certain belief set started a country tomorrow, you cbuild it upon whatever philosphical pillars you’d like. Now, you may think the Founder’s idea a poor one and want to change how we address things today, but that doesn’t change history.
And since monotheism is at this country’s foundation, I think it is is completely proper to have us reminded of that fact. I think it is also helpful. I’m not religious in the least, but I do think it healthy for us to realize that there is something more powerful than us.
No, but it might shed light on what scope they intended the First Amendment to have.
Primarily, it is atheism. Two words. A, without. Theism, meaning any kind of god belief. It is not a opinion, but a lack of an interest.
Sure, some atheists may have an explination of how the universe began, while other s don’t see the need for such an explination. However, there is no primary belief set or starting place. Personally, I started out not because of a need to explain how to understand the word, but instead with disgust at God’s senseless slughter of innocent babes, during the flood.
I was raised as an Episcopalian. The best way I can describe it is to think of Santa Claus. As a child you believe without thinking too much about it. As you get older you start to rationalize how he gets down the chimney, can be in more than one store at once, visits all those children, etc. At some point you realize that there is an easier explanation: your parents do it all.
Religion was like that for me. At some point I realized that believing in God did not make things any simpler. The world just made more sense without God.
To me atheism isn’t a “belief system” any more than there is a “belief system” for someone who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.
We’re getting into some unessecary tangents here. I thought your offered analogy was extreme becuase of
Something closer might be “Yankees are great” This doesn’t say Met’s Suck. It doesn’t say only the Yankees can be great. It doesn’t say Yankees are the greatest. It says that most of the people in town think that Yankees are great. Which happens to be true. For those Met’s fans who truly don’t believe that Yankees are great, they can just not say it. Is *that * fair?
It is hard to keep track in this thread. Some posts are very long and it’s getting harder to go back and look up previous posts.
I am concerned but not for the reasons you assumed. As we have agreed, it is tricky sometimes to find the balance beween seperation of church and state and defending peoples freedom of religion. My concern is not that mean ole atheists will push federal laws against religion. I’m concerned is that these rights will suffer from a lack of defense. I’m concerned that it will become politically incorrect to allow a religious expression. My hope is that now if an atheist is punished or assaulted for expressing their lack of belief that some Christian who gets it would rush to that persons defense rather than shrug and say “It’s not my problem” or worse yet, “Serves him right” I know that doesn’t always happen. I also hope that atheist would be as determined in defending the religious freedoms of all believers.
I’m not sure these analogies are at all helpful but I’ll give it a shot.
In this case , fair.
Gee that seems unfair. Perhaps they could modify the PE program so that even though minigolf was the main focus of the program, those who chose not to participate were allowed to play any sport they chose. Would that be fair?
There is a difference, which is why, as I understand it, neither the words, “under God” or the pledge are mandatory. None of your analogies have been representative of the real discussion. Perhaps we can abandon them.
Now you’re talking. Seriously. The fact is that many sub groups do not defend the rights of groups they consider to be “not one of us” It’s a responsibility we too often shirk. I’m glad to hear you’re someone who understands and takes it seriously.
Well my point was that you contradicted yourself within the same post.
I agree. It wasn’t presented as such.
The point is exactly that where the lines are drawn are not clear. IMO, The first amendment prohibits the federal government from naming any specific religion as the official religion of this nation, period. Beyond that where the lines are drawn will probably shift based on the mood of the country.
Ahhhh, now thats a simple and easy to understand analogy.
Scott I didn’t intend to minimize anyone’s experience. When I used the word minute I was refering only to the pledge and the very general and brief reference to a belief someone doesn’t agree with.
It may be but my point was that atheists do not lack for nontheistic explanations of how the universe began.
Atheism isn’t a belief system, it’s just a lack of one belief. Every atheist is different, For me, the default is that to assume that things have natural explanations until proven otherwise. I make no assumption that the universe will necessarily ever be fully understood, but I have never seen any reason to believe that anything in it requires a supernatural explanation.
Technically, agnosticism is the belief that humans cannot know whether God exists. It is distinguished from weak atheism in that agnosticism is really only an epistemic position, rather than an actual statement of personal belief. It is a position on what it is possible to know rather than a belief about what is true. Technically, one can be an agnostic and still believe in God…or not. Popularly speaking, though, agnosticism gets used synonomously with weak atheism. So much so that I tend to define myself as agnostic rather than atheist because people perceive the latter as conveying an active belief that God does not exist and the former as a more neutral or undecided position. I would call myself agnostic in both the technical sense and “weak atheist” sense.
The Declaration of Independence was written before the Unired States existed and is not the basis for US law. It is not a legal or authoritative document. The basis for US law is the Constitution and the Constitution (quite deliberately) makes no mention of God.
Furthermore, Jefferson’s conception of a “Creator” was not the personal God that most people would associate with monotheism. Jefferson (like most of the other founders) was a Deist, not a “theist” in a religious sense. He did not believe that the creator intervened in the universe or in human affairs.
They explicitly said in other writings that they intended to create a “wall” between government and religion.
Thank you. You are a most gracious debater.
You are missing the point. You stated as if a fact that there are no rights other than those explicitly declared in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. You said:
What I said in reply is that we know there are additional rights not enumerated: that’s what the Ninth says. We KNOW this, even though one cannot state with certainty what those rights are.
Didn’t you just say that there are no rights not enumerated in the Constitution/Bill of Rights? Didn’t you just contradict yourself?
In any case, You know and I know that that is no right. It is simple power. Furthermore, the majority does and did not have the right to add the patently religious phrase “under God” to such a Pledge, since it is a violation of the Establishment Clause.
That’s an absurd assertion, and doesn’t accurately portray my views as stated. You erected a strawman.
The fact is the Enlightenment played such a vast and vital role in the origin of the Founders and the Founding that one can cite an Enlightenment source for EVERY fundmanental ideal of our Nation. Hell, the Founders even took the very structure of our government almost word-for-word from Enlightenment philosophers!
I once took a course in The Enlightenment, and we students discovered that every single fundamental statement of our Founding documents and principles can be directly traced back there. Every one.
So I take it you have an explanation for the first cause of all things that is not God. I don’t want to hijack the thread, but in the end that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it. You may have an explanation that makes sense to you, I haven’t found one yet. I’ve thought about it a lot, and have concluded (for myself) that there is, and must be, a Creator.
That said, I enjoyed your post.
The D of I preceded the nation only in that it created the nation. The Founders believed that the document itself imbued the US with sovereignty, including the ability to declare war and craft peace.
The D of I is not a document that states our laws, but it is an authoritative document. It formally states the philosphical underpinnings that the country was formed upon. The Constitution does not mention God because it was a practical document. Even it’s preamble is practical and to the point: “We the People of the United States, in Order to…” gets right to it.
Additionally, if one is unsure as to what a passage in the Constitution means, it is one of the documents he or she can look to to possibly find clarification. I’d say it should be the first place we look, for two reasons. First, it is a philosophical document (the first half), which is most likely to reveal intent. Second, it is not the words of one man. While Jefferson may have been it’s author, all the rest agreed with the words, which we can see by their signatures.
Agreed.
Please define how you are using the terms Deists and Theist. And is that the same meaning you think the founders would have ascribed to the terms at the time?
I honestly can’t understand how anyone can look at body of the Founders writings and conclude, that on balance, that they were not mainly Christians. Or, at the very least, that to a man they believed in a God, Creator, Supreme Being, etc. As I’ve noted earlier in one of my posts in this thread, many of the quotes given to prove hostility to religion are often taken out of context.
I said “…no such protection”. I was merely drawing a distinction between those rights enumerated and others.
[QUOTE=ambushed]
Didn’t you just say that there are no rights not enumerated in the Constitution/Bill of Rights? Didn’t you just contradict yourself?
I was employing a little sarcasm. You said:
Then, I replied:
Get it? 
That is what the debate is. And the answer depends on 1) How you interpret the Establishment Clause and 2) whether you think “under God” refers exclusively to a particular religion. I’ve explained my position in depth earlier in this thread.