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| | Author | Messages | |
Lurker
Posts:35
 | | 10/26/2007 4:49 PM |
 Alert | We may have rules to separate church from state (they are never followed and should be), however we still learn about the Holocaust and Jews in history.
The whole point is our currency recognizes our history, what started it all. I would hate, absolutely hate it if I went to India and Gandhi and all other forums of a countries heritage was wiped from itself because it had relationship to religion. Religion help forum and create cultures as well as geography, it is a binding part of us a humans...even if you do not believe in god, you still have a belief: p . I respect those people’s beliefs and would never want a nation of people to hide or forget that history. It is a sign of respect and remembrance.
If a 100 years from now or 25 for that matter there is a huge war and Judaism takes over and conquers the United States to forum some other country based on a different set of social rules, I would hope there would be Jewish symbols and references to Yahweh on their currency…just my perspective.
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| | HiggsBoson
Posts:641
| | 10/26/2007 5:27 PM |
Alert | Jason,
Certainly you must know about the Jefferson Bible and his views on Christianity, despite the quote above. I'm not denying that the founders were Christian and that had some influence on them, but it is not revisionist history to acknowledge that they were more deists than literal interpretation of the Bible Christians and they were vastly different than todays fundamentalist Christians. Again, they were far more influenced by the philosophies of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism than Christianity. This is abundantly clear from the sum of their writing, not just select quotes. Even as Christians they were men of logic, reason, and science. They also understood the great importance of keeping the federal government and religion separated, something that todays fundamentalists don't seem to understand.
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
-- George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, also James A Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief
I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.
-- George Washington, responding to a group of clergymen who complained that the Constitution lacked mention of Jesus Christ, in 1789, Papers, Presidential Series, 4:274, the "Magna-Charta" here refers to the proposed United States Constitution
Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.
-- George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789, in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol 1. p. 495, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88), from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 258, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"
We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.
-- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785, quoted from Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (1991)
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
-- John Adams, letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
-- Benjamin Franklin, the incompatibility of faith and reason, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)
Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.
-- Benjamin Franklin, An Essay on Toleration
Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the US
-- James Madison, being outvoted in the bill to establish the office of Congressional Chaplain, from the "Detached Memoranda," Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detached Memoranda." William and Mary Quarterly (1946): 554-62. Quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom.
And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.
-- James Madison, 1816, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1: 579, quoted from Gene Garman, "Essays In Addition to America's Real Religion"
Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.
-- James Madison, explaining to Congress during the House Debate what the First Amendment means to him, 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August 15, 1789), That his conception of "establishment" was quite broad is revealed in his veto as President in 1811 of a bill which in granting land reserved a parcel for a Baptist Church in Salem, Mississippi (directly above this entry)
FYI
A few of your quote are bogus, according to this:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/badquotes.htm
Thanks,
Higgs
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Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
-- Ludwig Von Mises | |
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| | Jason
Posts:3378
| | 10/26/2007 9:23 PM |
Alert | | I'll accept that some of the quotes, after further research, appear to be false and I recognize that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian, but that was not my point. My point is that many of the founding fathers were Christian and that it is clear by examination that the principles of our country are based on those taught by Jesus Christ. This does not prevent anyone from worshiping in the way that they want. | |
Joined: Jul 2005 | |
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| | ken
Posts:521
| | 10/26/2007 10:33 PM |
Alert | "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
There it is... the one little line that everyone argues about. The one sentence that sets up the entire idea of the separation of church and state. Read into it what you will, but I think it reads in fairly clear English. Congress can't pass any laws that forces America upon a particular religion.
"In God We Trust" does no such thing... "In Jesus We Trust" would certainly cross the line, but "God"? Maybe God is Jesus, maybe he is Allah, maybe, in your mind, he is You! The truth of the matter is that no one can be 100% certain if there is a creator or not, and if you are certain there is not than you must be all seeing and all knowing, which would in fact make YOU a god in your own right. So why wouldn't you want everyone to trust in you? Is it that your opinion can't be trusted?
Just some food for thought. | |
"Knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow." -- Unknown | |
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| | Jason
Posts:3378
| | 10/27/2007 1:09 AM |
Alert | | Yep. The early Supreme Court ruled exactly like that. Then somewhere along the line the Supreme Court thought it could start making law (which is what the founding fathers feared it would do) and reinterpreted that. | |
Joined: Jul 2005 | |
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