To Whom It May Concern,
I am convinced that the ideal nation is a secular
democratic republic
that allows its adult citizens to do whatever they want
as long as
they do not obviously hurt someone else.
The United States was not
necessarily designed to be such a nation at its
conception, yet,
compared with other nations at the time, it certainly
was a major
step in the right direction.
Anyone who takes an oath to "support the
Constitution"
as our judges and politicians do, should be expected
to support the Constitution as it was written and
intended to be carried out, not what the politicians
think it should be or want it to be.
Not
True. The constitution is a living document as
specified by the
guys that
wrote it. If we followed the constitution exactly as
it was
written we'd
have slavery, blacks would have only 3/5 of a head
count
when taking a
census, and there would be no concept of judicial review
by the Supreme
Court. (sarcasm begins here) Of course if the
Supreme Court
rules that
your thinking is unconstitutional, then of course, if your
this
guy, then
don't change your thinking - just discredit the court,
rewrite
history, and
impose your tyranny on a free nation by
defining for
everyone else how to think by telling the world
how the
constitution "was intended to be carried out."
The United States was founded on some excellent ideas,
but sometimes
these ideas had to be expanded to be as good as
possible. For
example, the Declaration of Independence declares
"that all men are
created equal."
What does that mean?
It originally meant that all
white American men who own property and pay taxes are
created equal,
and, thus, should be allowed to vote.
All men are created equal, but not all are allowed to
hold public office (must be 35 years old to be President,
for example). The ability to vote to increase taxes
should be limited to those who must pay them.
Who knows what
he means by this. Is he proposing a new kind
of poll tax to
limit who gets to vote in elections or his he proposing
getting
rid of a
representational government? I think he's proposing
only to let
people who
think like him vote. Gee wouldn't that be a nice
world
for any of us
if we had the power to only let those who would vote
like me to
vote?
The same can be said of America's secular seed.
The Declaration of
Independence does mention "Nature's God."
(Which, by the way, refers
to the Deist conception of God, not Yahweh or the
Trinity. Remember
that the writer of the Declaration of Independence,
Thomas Jefferson,
was an outspoken Deist.)
Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence
was altered by a revision committee, and signed by those
who cannot be called "deists."
More
revisionist history. He implies Jefferson wasn't a
staunch
supporter of
the serparation of Church and State and got snookered
when a
committee changed his wording, and that the men that
signed
the
constitution were not deists. Not all signers of the
constitution
were deists,
that is true, but several were as described in their own
words.
Yet the Declaration of Independence
mentions Nature's God in passing, so it is by far more
of a secular
document than a religious one.
I disagree. The Declaration says:
• that the existence of God is a "self-evident
truth" - Not in the declaration
• that our rights are the product of intelligent design
(not the
government) - Not in the
declaration, but if he means
our inalienable Rights are
endowed by a creator, it is in the declaration.
• that all Americans are obligated to conform their
lives to
"the
Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," that is, the
Bible - only the
quoted part is in the
declaration, the bit about obligation and conforming their
lives is totally
fabricated and has nothing to do with the point of this
document.
• that our actions must one day pass judgment with
"the
Supreme Judge of the world" -
again other than the quoted part, totally fabricated.
The appeal to the Supreme
Judge of the world is to grant that the intentions
of writers, that is
dissolving their association with Great Britain,
be rooted in moral
principles. This is more in line with a "May
God be my witness"
kind of thing than one
day I'll have to stand before God and be judged.
• that all Americans should have "a firm reliance
on
the
Protection of Divine Providence." -
again other than the quoted part, totally
fabricated. the phrase
comes from the signers pledging their lives, fortunes
and honour to support the
constitution with a reliance on Divine Providence,
not as a rule book for how
people should live their lives.
This is *pervasively* religious. An
unsupported conclusion. He misrepresented
every quote in the declaration
that made any reference to the devine and concludes
that the document is inherently
relegious. I claim the references to the devine were
made specifically to show the line
between the devine (which they believed in) and
government which they believed
belonged to the people not the devine. To misread
this document in this way is either
ignorant or just wish fulfillment.
Most Americans today are victims of educational
malpractice,
and so they don't know how religious America was in
those days.
Man did this
guy read the same declaration of independence that
I did?
First the declaration of independence is not the document
that defines
who we are as a people and a nation. That document
is the
Constitution. The Declaration is an argument that
justifies
the separation
of America from the British Government.
No where in
the Declaration is there any argument to specify how
Americans are
obligated to behave. So in some sense reading the
Declaration to
decide if America were founded as a Christian
or any other
kind of Nation is just silly. Read the Constitution
to see what
kind of Nation the US was founded as. But the
Declaration is
a key document in the birth of our nation. It's
valuable to
read and understand it all on its own merits.
The key
phrases in the declaration include this one,
"That to secure
these rights
Governments
are instituted
among Men, deriving their just Powers from the
consent of the
Governed." This was written at a time when
most
governements were claiming their rights to govern came
from devine
powers. This is a clear rejection of theocracy
in favor of
government whose powers come from the people
not God.
Another good
phrase near the end of the declaration (so I doubt
this guy has
ever seen it because that would be a lot of reading
to do) is
"In the Name, and by Authority of the good People of
these
colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United
Colonies are,
and of Right, ought to be free and independent states;
that they are
absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown,..."
Again, when it
comes to governments, these guys believed the
authority to
govern comes from the people not the devine."
Finally, I
concede to this guy that the founders were not atheists.
The
declaration does appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the
World,"
and states
"a firm reliance on the protection of devine
Providence,"
and cites
"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as the
source
which entitles
man to self evident rights. But stop and consider
for
a
moment. These references are generalized, they do
not talk
of the Bible,
don't mention Jesus, Mohamad, Budda, or even God
and are
carefully never used to justify the actions of
governments.
Why the
elliptical references? If all the authors and signers of
the declaration
were in
agreement in the US
being created
as a Christian Nation why not say so? The answer is
simple,
the key idea
of the declaration and later built into the constitution
is that the
power of governments comes from the people not
the devine,
and that any personal beliefs in religion have no role
in defining
the governments by which men agree to rule their lives.
The only way
to misread the declaration is to read it with an agenda
in mind.
This guy wants America to be a Christian nation so that
he can impose
a tyranical set of laws on his fellow citizens to follow
his religion
so when he reads the Declaration he skips all the words
that don't
reference a devine being. Utter hog wash.
Deism is also a far more secular
philosophy than Christianity.
But not the deism of Jefferson's day.
More ignorance
and wishful thinking - just read Jefferson's writings
to figure out
how much he did not want America
to be a
Christian nation.
Furthermore, the United States
Constitution does not refer to any deity.
This is because Christians did not want the federal
government to have any authority over religion.
If the United States was
supposed to be a very religious nation, its constitution
should have
at least mentioned a deity!
Not according to the Christians who wrote it.
If the Framers had intended the Constitution
to be secular, they could have done so. The
French did this, but the Americans did not:
From
these largely-secular beginnings, the United States will
hopefully develop into a purely secular nation in the
same way it
developed from a pro-white-rich-male-citizen nation into
a pro-adult-
citizen nation.
Even Jefferson wanted America to be a Christian nation,
albeit Unitarian. But religious, not secular, not atheist:
Sharing
a hope nurtured by many Americans in the
early
nineteenth century, Jefferson anticipated a
re-establishment
of the Christian religion in its
"original
purity" in the United States.
Andrew
M. Allison, in
Thomas
Jefferson: Champion of History, pp.299ff.
Once
primitive Christianity was fully restored . . .
Christianity would
escape
all danger of being eclipsed or superseded. "I
confidently
expect,"
Jefferson wrote in 1822, "that the present generation
will
see
Unitarianism become the general religion of the United
States."
And
to the Harvard professor and Unitarian Benjamin
Waterhouse,
Jefferson
that same year observed: "I trust that there is not a
young
man now living in the U.S. who will not die an Unitarian.
Gaustad,
Faith of our Fathers, p. 105
May the United States government favor no religion,
not Deism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism,
Satanism, Atheism,
Agnosticism, et cetera.
That way, Americans can practice their
religions without interference from their government and
no religion
will have a governmental advantage over another.
It was never intended for practitioners of human
sacrifice,
cannibalism, polygamy, or suttee to be permitted to
practice
their religion, because this was a Christian nation.
Although we
allow the Indians of the Southwest to take peyote
in the name of
their religious freedom.
I oppose government support of religion (i.e., taxing
people).
But government makes laws, and laws impose somebody's
morality, and morality comes from somebody's religion.
Government will always favor one religion over others,
or be in the process of changing favored religions.
It's naive to
believe that all moral systems come from religious
beliefs.
There are moral systems that have no religious roots
and
surprisingly many of these moral systems share common
ground, like
the belief in the golden rule because the golden rule
is a
reasonable rule that does a lot of good for all the
people. It
does not have
to come from a divine source to be reasonable.
Americans will be
much more likely to embrace or reject a religion based
on its merit
(or lack thereof), rather than because their government
backs it.
I agree.
This allows more freedom, and freedom is the core value
of the United
States of America!
May reason prevail!
Jayson
Deputy Director
World Union of Deists
Human beings have reason because they are created
in the Image of God.
That is a
belief and just because it happens to be
your belief
doesn't make it true or false. We will never
know
if a
particular belief is true or false - that's why its so
important that our
government be
based in a separation of church and state -
to allow
everyone the privledge you take for yourself, the
luxury of
treating your beliefs as true.
Beings which are created by impersonal, random,
meaningless, blind forces do not have reason.
They are simply the random interaction of various
chemicals.
Which of
course is another belief and you can't know if its true
or
false. All you'll ever know about this is that you
want it to be
true. Again, citing the golden rule, you need to
allow others
the courtesy of having their own opinions about
beliefs if you
feel its important to you to have beliefs you
take as being
true.
Kevin Craig
Powersite, MO 65731-0179
www.VFTonline.com
www.KevinCraig.us
On Sun, November 30, 2008 10:41 pm, Cindy Mulvey wrote:
Did I send you this Kevin, I sought for truth and began
to understand.
Whether America began with christian values or not, this
does makes sense.
To Whom It May Concern,
I am convinced that the ideal nation is a secular
democratic republic that
allows its adult citizens to do whatever they want as
long as they do not
obviously hurt someone else.
The United States was not necessarily
designed to be such a nation at its conception, yet,
compared with other
nations at the time, it certainly was a major step in
the right direction.
The United States was founded on some excellent ideas,
but sometimes these
ideas had to be expanded to be as good as possible.
For example, the
Declaration of Independence declares "that all men
are created equal."
What does that mean?
It originally meant that all white American men
who
own property and pay taxes are created equal, and, thus,
should be allowed
to vote. Later
on, this idea was rightfully expanded to include black
male citizens.
Later on, this idea was rightfully expanded again
to
include female citizens.
Later on, this idea was rightfully expanded yet
again to include 18-year-old citizens.
And somewhere along the way, the
requirement to own property and pay taxes to vote was
dropped. Thus,
the
seed of a great idea was planted in the Declaration of
Independence but
had to grow into a mighty oak of inclusiveness to become
completely just
and good.
The same can be said of America's secular seed.
The Declaration of
Independence does mention "Nature's God."
(Which, by the way, refers to
the Deist conception of God, not Yahweh or the Trinity.
Remember that the
writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas
Jefferson, was an
outspoken Deist.)
Yet the Declaration of Independence mentions
Nature's
God in passing, so it is by far more of a secular
document than a
religious one.
Deism is also a far more secular philosophy than
Christianity. Furthermore,
the United States Constitution does not refer
to any deity. If
the United States was supposed to be a very religious
nation, its constitution should have at least mentioned
a deity!
From these largely-secular beginnings, the United
States will hopefully
develop into a purely secular nation in the same way
it developed from a
pro-white-rich-male-citizen nation into a
pro-adult-citizen nation.
May
the United States government favor no religion, not
Deism, Christianity,
Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Satanism, Atheism,
Agnosticism, et cetera.
That way, Americans can practice their religions
without interference
from their government and no religion will have a
governmental advantage
over another.
Americans will be much more likely to embrace
or reject a
religion based on its merit (or lack thereof), rather
than because their
government backs it.
This allows more freedom, and freedom is the
core
value of the United States of America!
May reason prevail!
Jayson
Cindy Mulvey
352-529-1058
www.artshealingsecrets.com
On Saturday, November 29, 2008, at 10:36PM, "Kevin
Craig"
On Sat, November 29, 2008 12:30 pm, Cindy Mulvey
wrote:
Hi Kevin,
what is 4 FT
Kevin4VFT = Kevin4Vine&FigTree = Kevin for
Vine&FigTree
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Kevin Craig
Powersite, MO 65731-0179
www.VFTonline.com
www.KevinCraig.us
I was in the understanding with Biblical (only)
understanding, but
this reveals the fact, this walk of mine has been a
walk of
The Christmas Conspiracy
Virtue
Vine & Fig Tree
Paradigm Shift
Theocracy