well I didnt mean in the pledge, I was going to use it for a nickname for my girlfriend, still have your blessing? How about One nation, under the heavens?" It doesn’t have religious meaning, it refers to the shy. But some still think of it as religous, oh another one that wouldn’t work. “One nation, under the protection of homeland security.” I dont think that would enspire or enstill pride in our country much.
Go for it. If you want to call your girlfriend The Mother Goddess, more power to you. And Anything under Homeland Security is merely a morass or a quagmire of red tape and more government spending. What a waste of a cabinet position.
Oh yeah, I was going to address the other part of your message. While “Allah,” “God” and "Yahweh"could be considered synonymous, they still “represent” different “Figures?” Am I correct?
Yea well, I don’t see why starting a completely different department the does the job of many others, while giving more money to all those others would be more cost effective. Well anywho, this is getting way off topic, so wandering, do you believe in the seperation of the church and state(I will go out on a limb and say yes) and do you think they abuse this or no? What things would people like to see accountable under this and which ones are falsely accountable?
Christians who promulgate state religious involvement just mystify me. I don’t get it. Forget for a moment all the political arguments, which are quite valid, and sufficient by themselves, consider the religious implications. Do you want the Supreme Court and the President to make the judgment that your child should repeat their choice of a prayer in school? Christ said not to pray in public at all! Do you want the interpretation of doctrine in your faith to be subject to a vote by the general assembly, or the Congress? Are you worshipping God, or George Bush?
Why would you want the words “In God we trust” to be put on the money? That is the one and only thing in the entire world that the Lord said was not His! On the money? Are you totally nuts? Give unto George, what is George’s and unto the Lord what is the Lord’s.
Did your public school teach mathematics? Can you still factor a fifth order polynomial? Can you factor 13455? Did your school teach History? Who were the Olmecs? Where did the Celts come from originally? Did your school teach Chemistry? Can you balance an oxidation/reduction reaction? Did your school teach English? Can you diagram a sentence? What is the rhyming pattern of an Elizabethan Sonnet? Did your school . . . well, you get the idea.
Are these the people you want to be responsible the spiritual education of your children? Have you no sense of duty to your children, and your Lord? How can you foist this sacred duty off to yet another welfare program run by Government Workers? Do you think they will care?
And the most hideous thing of all, for me, as a Christian, is to notice that the heathens of the world are not subject to this particular spiritual sloth. They don’t want Wiccan prayer in school, or even Jewish religious lessons in school. Why? Because, schoolteachers lack the authority to give such lessons. Only American Protestant Christians want to let George do it when it comes to the spiritual well being of their children. The Catholics won’t surrender that, and would rather have the church do all the educating of children.
Let us weep, brothers, for the uncaring, and those they wish to abandon to Caesar. And let us keep our faith holy, and out of the hands of secular power mongers.
Tris
No, just different languages. “Allah” just means "God in Arabic. Arab Christians call God Allah. Yahweh is the Jewish name for God.
Islam worships the same God of Abraham as Jews and Christians.
I think “Mother Goddess” would be a better example of something that would really irritate people, or how about simply "One nation under the gods?
Well gods is good but your still prefering religion over none. How about “One nation under god, the heavens or just the clouds if you have no religion” ok that was a bad one. “One nation under the helpless sons-o-bitches in the government?”
Chuch should spread the word, schools should teach how to spell them? Correct?
church, sorry.
In the branch of Hinduism I follow, God is above material trivialities such as money. I don’t like to see God being conflated with money in this manner. YMMV and IMO, of course. But, as you can see, having “In God We Trust” on the money is not religiously neutral. It is an endorsement of a viewpoint that it is acceptable to combine God with money. Separation of church and state serves to protect the religious as well as the non-religious.
I will accept the proposition that something unexpected could fall out of GUT, but since GUT is concerned with the unification of the electro-weak, strong, and gravitational theories, your use of it in this context is bizzarre, and makes me think you actually do not understand what GUT is.
Well, you’re free to believe anything you want to, but unless you can cough up evidence that physical laws exist outside the universe, then your theory is about as useful as creation science. There is plenty of evidence that there is no “before” the Big Bang. What is your evidence that there is a “before”?
As for what caused the Big Bang, I’ll happily say that God did. But I won’t disingenously pretend that I’m not talking about religion when I do.
It seems to me that you are taking anything that exists outside the bounds of science (or which science doesn’t have a mechanism for) and labelling it “God,” and then claiming that this is scientific. If something is outside the bounds of science, then it isn’t scientific.
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The pledge is not “banned”, kids don’t get sent to the office for saying it with the “under God”. The court just decided that that reading could not be led; similar to the ruling on prayer in school. And IIRC, that ruling was stayed by the 9th Circuit shortly after they made it.
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If not that many people pay attention to God on the money, then why can’t we get rid of it? No one will notice, right?
Putting aside for the moment other quibbles with the PoA:
That do it for you?
It’s funny that you point this out, because I was just going to ask ronbo if s/he understood what position s/he was advancing. Sometimes in a debate someone will tossed out Capitalized Words in the hope that they make their opponent think “Ooh, this guy has heard of Capitalized Words I have not; he must be right.”
I know EXACTLY how you both feel. It is SOOOOOO hard to have a decent conversation with people that don’t know what they are talking about.
Oh, for the Record, by Dr. Chaim H. Tejman of grandunified theory.org states:
“The universe was created by a single entity of energetic matter, which by its spinning and swirling motion formed two swirls (loops) that together comprised a wave.”
I am certain that he is not intending to imply a Supernatural Being, Intelligent design or even monotheism created the universe.
Wait a minute…
God…Gott (German)
Gott…GUT
God…GUT
That cannot be a coincidence!!!
We must change the coins to:
In GUT we Trust
An “entity” can be defined as anything having a discrete existence, it doesn’t necessarily connote sentience, although that is often implied in common useage.
One problem with your overall argument, though, ronbo, The “entity” referred to in Tejman’s description no longer exists. It therefore has no present tense meaning and it is sensless to aver that we “trust” in it or that we are “under” it.
Surely you don’t think the word “God” can rationally be applied to as a swirl of energetic matter which no longer exists?
From ronbo’s site, here’s Dr. Chaim’s biography:
Well, of course, if one wants to learn about physics, one should look to the crackpot theories of a medical doctor who has audited some physics classes.
Did it cease to exist or did it become the Universe? Maybe a part of that force or energy that did not become the universe still exists outside (in an alternate) universe?
Even as you read this post, elementary particle pairs are being created out of nothingness and annihilating themselves from of our universe by a force or energy we do not yet understand. No, I am not even implying that these particles are being created by a supreme being.
:smack:I guess I need to screen my cites in more detail.:smack:
Maybe I should limit my cites to crackpot Patent Clerks.
I will concede that his theory of the creation of the universe is lacking, but the point is that it is within the realm of possiblilty that there is a non-supernatural explanation for the Force(s) that caused the Big Bang.
By the way, please show me your cites that whatever Force caused the Big Bang could not possibly be a Natural Force, and that it or Forces like it no longer exist.
Well, to be fair, we’ve both (also Diogenes, which makes 3) tried to show you where your errors are in your reasoning and your facts. If cites don’t do it for you (while you insist on things you can’t prove and base your arguments off them), I don’t see where you get off saying it’s hard to have a decent conversation with us.
Unless, of course, we aren’t the “people that don’t know what they are talking about”…
It’s already been explained, Ronbo, time is part of the universe. There is no “before” the beginning of the universe in the same way that there is no “outside” to the universe. Time starts with the Big Bang. The universe is a phenomenon which is completely exclusive of any hypothetical causal event (short of a supernatural “Creator.”
if you want to say that the causal force has become the universe, (i.e. the universe itself is "God) then that is really substantively equivilent to saying there is no God. What is the difference between a universes that, in its entirety, is a non-sentient “God,” and a universe which is just a universe?
To bring it back to the OP, what meaning would it hold to say that wea are “one nation under the universe” or “In the universe we trust?”
Any attempt at rendering a non-supernatural meaning for “God” in those phrases also renders those phrases meaningless or even absurd.