Country Founded on God

[Angry Dragon]

Open Letter to the Talking Heads, Anyone...

I am biased. I do believe no one is without bias so it is important to realize you do have it and try to put it aside as much as possible. With that said I try to kept an open mind and try to understand people that disagree with me. Lately I have been listening to the right wing talking heads and trying to find some logic in their ideas.

One thing I have heard over and over again is their thoughts that this country is based on God and how the Constitution is based on God and how we will not survive unless this country turns to God.

My question is this: I have searched and searched and have been unable to find any reference to God in the Constitution. Please I beg you to show me the part that makes the reference to God so I can better understand you. I know it exists because it is referenced so often. Where is it so I can fully understand??

[louis-t]

1. One explanation I heard from a fundie:

It says "in the year of our Lord". :eyes:

[rd_kent]

2. There isn't any reference. It's all made up shit just like the religion they spew.

[Zoeisright]

3. This country was NOT founded on God or Christianity.

The Founding Fathers were deists.

And Thomas Jefferson said, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

Just because something is repeated over and over again does not make it true. That is one of the tools of right wing hacks. They lie, then repeat that lie over and over again and stupid people then believe it is true.

[Angry Dragon]

5. Just looking for truth....

I am just opening up my mind to them and giving them a chance to open my mind and eyes to the truth. If they say it is in there I just want the chance to read it my self.

[YOY]

7. Try looking for fact. Stop looking for truth.

n/t

[Angry Dragon]

9. Fact=Truth

I thought if one found the fact you would find truth.......

[YOY]

10. You have no higher education, do you?

I mean nothing past high school that is.

Let me put it this way:

Truth is a matter of perspective. 5 Blind men describing what an elephant feels like as they all feel it from different angles. "Truths" can conflict based on perspective. This is Philosophy. Religion. Even the Arts.

Fact is rock solid. No debate. The car was traveling at 90 miles per hour at 7:15 AM on a Saturday May 15th, 2006 between Tempe, Arizona and Flagstaff. This is Biology, Physics, History (the real one...not the victors's version), Archeology, Anthropolgy, and all other Physical and Social sciences.

[Angry Dragon]

12. Perspective

Perhaps it is just semantics ........ perhaps it is not a good idea to let your perspectives cloud your judgment of others. I was not aware that formal education was the only way one learned.

[YOY]

13. Not semantics at all. It's pretty much common knowledge that Fact and Truth are seperate ideas.

Oh there's a lot of ways to learn not say stupid shit like "Fact=Truth".

For example: Education, reading a book or two on the subject matter, or to listen to those who do know what they are talking about before saying stupid shit works too!

My perspecive works fine in smelling those out who should not be here. Now if you're quite done trying to paint the founding fathers as religious nuts just because some RW talking heads repeat BS to the idiots of this world unchallenged and without demonstrative fact...

[Angry Dragon]

14. whoa.....

I am wondering how you got that I was saying that the Founding Fathers were religious nuts. Where did I say that?? What I said was all I hear from the right is that country equals God...... I have never ran across that and I was giving them a chance to show me where that is...........

[YOY]

15. RW Fundementalists claim that the founding fathers were fundementalist christians.

Something some of them say as though it is historical fact. Upon reading anything by Jefferson or Adams you have to laugh at the very subject. Washington and Franklin are almost as laughable in such roles as well.

Now when you say "RW talking heads" saying this shit I think the Dobson Focus on the Family talking heads and not the Sean Hannity types. Obviously you mean the latter. I stand corrected.

As for the latter talking heads. THey say all sorts of shit to appease the former who think they are journalists. Returning to Christian roots and the Constitution and laws being based off of Christian values included.

[Angry Dragon]

16. Concern

Just to clarify..... I have a deep concern about where this country is headed. No group has all the answers, NO ONE. We are all to blame for where we find this country today. It will take everyone of us to fix this country. It is broken and what I see in the future is another lost civilization. The biggest complaint as I was growing up and even today is that I ask too many questions, ask why too much, and try to see the other side. If that makes me uniformed, uneducated, naive, then so be it. One can bash the other side all they want, but that does not make them hear. When I search for facts, to me that also brings about a truth. However, I never stop pondering nor searching for more facts, more truths. How I look at words may be different than the way you look at them. It does not make mine any less than yours.

I see and hear the debate about health care and just shake my head. We will either have a health care that covers the country or not. If it will be good, only time will tell. This will be done and then another thing will pop up and it will have to be fixed. My feelings are that if we continue in this direction, with all the fighting, then we will never get where we want to go. We need to fix the underlying problems of this country and not just work on the surface things.

Enough for now.......

[YOY]

19. THere's a debate about heath care?

I don't hear any debate from the other side. Just a bunch of idiotic screaming about "Communizm".

[Angry Dragon]

21. What I hear.....

are the words socialism and capitalism. Communism doesn't care about the little people. People today do not feel they have a voice and so if they hear someone saying what they believe then they do not feel so lost and then they will follow that voice, even if that voice is leading them down the road of destruction.

[YOY]

22. I take back my moment of civility.

You really have no fucking idea of what you just said. You just showed that you have no idea of what any of those three -isms mean.

"Communism doesn't care about the little people. " What? Huh? And not only does that make no sense and is a totally relative statement. Communism as defined by what? By what the Soviet Union had? China? By what is was philosophically intended to be??? It presumes so much more about the other three words and that they mean something other to you than what they really do. Like that capitalism somehow does care and communism does not. Um, whose capitalism would that be? Adam Smith? Ronald fucking Reagan? To make another logical jump that there is some kind of black/white neccesity going on here in picking one ultra extreme or the other. And socialism...lemme guess...it's the same thing as communism right?

Please. If you don't know what a word means DON'T FUCKING USE IT! Look it up. Take a class. Ask an expert. But if you don't know what a word means. DON'T FUCKING USE IT!

[Angry Dragon]

23. Bow to the Expert....

Since you know everything then would you so kind to tell me what they do mean. So if and when I do use them again then I will truly have a full understanding.

[YOY]

24. Stop. STOP FUCKING USING WORDS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!

It's not hard. You just open up a dictionary. You just open an encyclopedia. Take a college course at your local community college. and insinuating that someone else is an "expert" because you are using those words and being called on it is a cheap and pathetic copout.

Shit if you want go to the wikipedia link! That's a lazy and imperfect but better than nothing type of fix.

I don't have a doctorate but if I start paraphrasing definitions it will be close but have some inconsistancies. I'd prefer you get the real McCoy.

Ask a Political Science professor if you want to understand what a word means.


Once you can, you can start using those words but until then...JUST STOP FUCKING USING WORDS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!

[YoungAndOutraged]

25. First I've ever heard of truth and fact being different concepts

Really it is. I hate to interrupt the shouting, but I had to comment on it. Maybe if I had higher education I would already know this, but I had never really heard that they were different things before, so I looked it up. Apparently they are different concepts. It makes me dislike the word "truth" now. It seems like such a meaningless word after learning this. At the least, I have another reason to dislike Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth...

[YOY]

26. Well if you don't believe me ask Professor Jones.

Watch the Third Indiana Jones movie (the one with Sean Connery) and listen to his lecture to the class in the beginning. He tells the class that (and calling this movie factual is not what I am trying to do) "Archeology is a search for 'fact'. If they want 'truth' go to professor such-and-such's Philosophy class." That's the kind of line you actually do hear in a college class...because that's the fact: truth is philosophy and fact is scientific.

Fact is not disputable. H2O is water. The Brown Hyena (Hyaena brunnea, formerly Parahyaena brunnea) is a species of hyena which occurs in Namibia, Botswana. George Washington was the 1st President of the United States of America.

Truths can conflict and are debatable. Religions are just LOADED with truths. That's how each faith can justify that they all have "the truth" (because in their own sad little worlds...they do.) Incidently, my "elephant" description above is a paraphrase of Socrates describing "truth". Aristotle used some goofy shadow definition alegory. I like Socrates beter.

And Terry Goodkind? Well I kind of like his books but he is a total Randroid. Ayn Rand died alone and bitter (rich but alone and bitter.) He and others like him can pimp her little book all they want but she died alone and bitter.

[Chantilly Lace]

34. Actually . . .

It was SIX men of Indostan to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant (though all of them were blind), that each by observation might satisfy his mind.

[Zoeisright]

27. It's not in the Constitution.

There is mention of God in the Declaration of Independence, but that has nothing to do with the laws of this country. The Declaration was written before the Constitution.

Please note that the Declaration says nothing about our rights secured by Christianity.

It bears repeating: "Governments are instituted among men."

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Tripoli.htm

And here's something from the treaty at Tripoli signed by the United States and Libya is 1796:

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..."

And John Adams said:

"Gentlemen, we are not, nor have we ever been a Christian Nation ...
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or Mohammedan nation."

[CaptAmerica]

31. A small number of founding fathers were deists.

"The Founding Fathers were deists."

A small minority were.

You don't really mean to insinuate that all or even most, were deists?

[sui generis]

4. Well the more nuanced argument is that they know what

the founding fathers were thinking, and by god this country is about the founding fathers vision.

Actually, we are the founding fathers of the next generation. If our vision is so poor we have to rely on a bunch dudes who wore wigs and tights and kept slaves to tell us about right and wrong today, then we're pretty lame.

The founding fathers wanted us to have equal opportunity, provided we were white and male and landowners.

They believed in god to hedge their bets, but they fastidiously avoided writing any form of faith in our foundational screeds and constitution, mostly so protestants wouldn't have the jump on catholics or vice versa.

The idea of atheism wasn't really a political issue, so much as the idea that government is about administration of resources, national security, and the effects of economy at the borders of our foreign interests.

That makes government about governance, not about faith. This country is founded on ideas, and on vision, and vision and faith are not the same thing. Ideas and God are not the same thing.

This country is most of founded on the idea that individuals have rights as individuals, and that collectively we do not have more rights than the rights f individuals in the same context. Therefore we should not allow a bunch of white dudes to tell a few black dudes they can't get married, or vice versa.

Those kinds of ideas have nothing to do with god so much as what democracy means, and that ain't just majority vote.

[Angry Dragon]

6. Religious freedom....

My understanding is that at the time England had a national religion (not sure if that is the right term) and part of the revolution was based on not having government connected with religion.

[sui generis]

18. Actually, England was beginning to explore a more liberal

interpretation of religion - things like it was no longer mandated that one had to attend church on Sunday on pain of flogging or death, etc. The puritans had a real problem with that.

The puritans in England, were the fundamentalists of the day. They wanted stricter teachings, yearned for the "old ways" of church in rome rather than church of England, and generally wanted to live a purer, harder life. That wasn't enough for them though - they wanted EVERYONE to live a purer, harder, more deeply religious life.

In that respect yes, we got the David Koreshes of England, and they got rid of their crazies. The puritans came to America because England didn't want them. Something to the effect of "if you don't like it here, you're welcome to leave", and they did.

[rd_kent]

41. But the Puritans did not found this country. The Puritans were some of the first settlers

on the continent, but they in no way had a hand in the founding of the United States.


Unless, you want to include that the Puritans wanted was what the Founding Fathers were trying to AVOID when they wrote the Constitution. I guess you COULD say that had a hand in founding the country.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. "...we are the founding fathers of the next generation."

So true.

Lincoln is today lumped with the 'founding fathers', even though 80 years, and three generations separate them. His Second Inaugural address is equivalent to a founding document. The farther from the founding, the more founding fathers there are.

Just as Alfred the Great and Ethelred the Unready were both early English kings, and part of the foundation of modern Britain.

One day, come a thousand years or so, if we should last so long, Roosevelt will also be a 'founding father'. As will Reagan (more of the Ethelred the Unready type). And Obama. And, some future president with a name like Santos or Wu.

It's all a matter of perspective.

(OK, back to topic.)

[YOY]

8. To take a hateful joke by Andrew Dice Clay's template...

"They want their rights? They want their rights?

50% off of all Bibles now get back in the fucking church."

Anyone who thinks that God is in the constitution hasn't read dick about the founding fathers.

[laconicsax]

17. It's in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.

Approved with unanimous vote in the Senate after being read aloud.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion...

(link)

Oh...you wanted the part where the Constitution is based on God...Sorry, that part doesn't exist. It's the big lie--repeat it often enough and people will believe it and believing something doesn't make it true.

[Angry Dragon]

20. Okay

Thank you for the link.......close enough to the time of the Constitution to have merit.

[AtheistCrusader]

29. IIRC if you look at the senators that voted 'yea' on the treaty of tripoli, and the signers of the

Declaration of Independence, you'll find 4 correlations*.

More if you examine the ratification of the Constitution process.

*Technically 5 correlations, but the Paine in the Senate is not the Paine on the Declaration.

[DuaneBidoux]

28. Declaration of Independence does say that all men are created equal, "[men] are endowed by their..

creator with certain unalienable rights.."

Of course it doesn't say which creator. Mine is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[LiberalFighter]

30. The country is the United States of America...

until 1787 the colonies were just a conglomeration of colonies. They were under the control of Great Britain. The Norse are considered did not explore this continent for religious reasons. Columbus did not discover America with the purpose of god or religion. It was for economic reasons.

Consider that the Declaration of Independence was the result of taxes and representation. Not god. Not religion.

Nowhere in the list of grievances below is religion or god given as the reason for revolting against Great Britain.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

[clarence swinney]

36. USA IS NOW OBSOLETE

the wall street of america is new name

[CaptAmerica]

32. Want a kick?

Read the state constitutions enacted at or near the founding of the Nation.

(Hint: Such a review utterly destroys the idea that God and religion was a foreign concept to the founding of the country)

[MsTigerHawk]

33. Re: Country Founded on God

Actually, most of the Founding Fathers were Deists, Theosophists and Rosicrucians. They certainly did not think of God the same way that right wing fundamentalist Christians of today do.

[clarence swinney]

35. which GOD

In history there have been 20,000 things worshipped as a GOD.
Today
2000 Million Christians
1500 Million Muslims
14 million Hebrews

[JoseCanyucee]

37. I Won't Bash You

Sorry to see you get bashed for asking a simple question. I'll try to answer it for you.

The founding fathers would not have put God in the Constitution because, as we all well know, they wanted to keep government and religion separate. That didn't mean they didn't think there was value in Christianity and that it would bode well for it to be the dominant religion in our country. It just meant that they were absolutely dead set on making sure that religion would not be forced on anyone by law, and most definitely not by tyrannical majorities.

It's a pretty cool debate watching humans try to forge their common destiny.

[LiberalFighter]

38. First point is that until the Declaration of Independence they were only colonies.

Second point is that the Declaration of Independence was not about religion. Not one word about religion as the reason for seeking independence. The Declaration of Independence is the point of transformation from Colonies acting separately to United States of America.

Third point is that religious leaders did not write the Constitution. A document intended to be religious in nature would be drawn up by representatives from the churches only. The Constitutional Convention delegates were sent by their state governments. Not by any state church or other religious group. George Washington would not had been selected as presiding officer if religion was the focus of the Convention.

[Sarah88]

40. Yes, Washington Was a Freemason and Deist

Washingto, like most of the Founding Fathers, wanted not only to establish freedom of religion, but freedom from religious bigotry and theocratic imposition.

[Sarah88]

39. The Founding Fathers On Religion

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” - Thomas Jefferson

"Whenever preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put off with a discourse on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract." -- Thomas Jefferson

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.” -- James Madison

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.” -- James Madison

My teacher posted those quotes in an article, adding that Benjamin Franklin, a founding father and a genius, felt the same way. He became a Deist after educating himself and turning away from his puritanical Protestant Christian upbringing. He learned to appreciate Deism, which was popular among many educated men of faith at the time, because it is the belief in the existence of God on the evidence of reason and nature, with rejection of superstition. That is why presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were Deists, and their religious perspective was more close to that of today’s Unitarian Universalists than any other.

To give you an example of how Franklin felt, in an essay on "Toleration" he stated: "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. found it wrong in the Bishops , but fell into the same practice themselves in New England ."

Furthermore, Congress declared in the Treaty of Tripoli that the U.S. in no way was founded on Christianity. It was founded on the idea that all religions should be respected, and that no religion should dominate. And, by the way, my teacher's article, Little Known American History, can be found at: http://reformationcomingsoon.bravehost.com/AmericanHistory.html