If We Erase The Christian Basis Of Governance, Then What Do We Unleash?

[NYcarbineer]

Perhaps I've missed a chunk of the conversation.

Of course culture is interwoven with religion (beliefs and ritual and imagery). But those things can change and the culture can still withstand.

Can the tapestry withstand the excising of the yellow thread woven throughout?

Is a culture really a tapestry?

Sure it is. I have a better example to use. A spandrel:

A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.
​

A sprandel is not designed to serve a purpose, it appears as a consequence of other features. Now go an knock out the useless sprandrels in the photo below. They don't serve a purpose, right, they weren't put there on purpose, so knock them out and lets see what happens to the rest of the structure.

All of your examples are of something that was designed by one person, even if it was built by many.

All of your examples are of something that was designed and built with a specific purpose in mind.

So, let me ask you this: Who designed Western culture? And what specific purpose was it intended to serve? To decorate? To shelter?

God's will and providence necessitate the formation of Western culture and everything else.

So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own so they need an unseen supernatural superhero to scare people into accepting them?

very funny.

 

[NYcarbineer]

How many of you obey the speed limit because you fear a punishment in the afterlife?

 

[JakeStarkey]

I'm hoping that this is a fun topic. A century ago G.K. Chesterton observed:

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” ​

Christians have this quaint belief that God created Adam and Eve and that all of mankind is equal in the eyes of God. A King and a Pauper shall be judged equally by God once in Heaven. This God inspired notion has informed our governing philosophy ever since we began as a nation.

The evidence of reality however is abundantly clear that we are not all made equal, so what higher principle can we turn to to guide us and prevent us from a utilitarian reform of our laws and customs which recognizes and enshrines what the real world is SCREAMING at us - we are not all equal?

We have past experiments where legislatures have tried to impose the will of man over reality, such as when the Indiana Legislature came close to passing a bill legislating a method to derive pi to a value of 3.2. Any engineer will tell you that if forced to use an imagined value for pi while building a bridge or an airplane, the product will be unstable. Man's will can't override reality. Disaster follows.

So we have a society where the great majority of people believe in God and the belief that God created us all equally. Once that belief is crushed into dust, why on Earth would we close our eyes to what nature is telling us about human inequality? Some will try to argue that appealing to the nature as a model for how society should be constructed is fallacious thinking but what then in its stead? We see the negative ramifications today of a world where we treat all people as equal when they in fact are not, but when God's command is being honored, who are mere men to know better and so we suffer through.

Once the foundational beliefs which created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are shown to be false, how shall we proceed to reform society? The problem with merely appealing to the Religion of Liberalism is that it's unmoored from independently derived higher principles - it is actually formed by appealing to Christian foundational beliefs. How do we justify the notion of one man, one vote when some men are better and wiser than other men? The rational course is to acknowledge this reality and construct a society reflective of what nature has created. We no longer have to fear God's displeasure because we no longer cling to silly superstitions like "we are all created equal."

They didn't say God they said Creator because they weren't convinced God existed. If they had said God then the lack of belief in God would have meant that the constitution was invalid.

So they did a good thing there. No ones religious beliefs can either validate or invalidate the constitution.

But you go right ahead and keep on trying.

Divine Providence and Supreme Judge are names for God.

And yet they didn't put God in the constitution.

That's because it is in the Declaration of Independence.
__
The Birth of a Nation
by David Barton

For 235 years, America has been blessed as the longest on-going Constitutional Republic in the history of the world. These blessings are not accidental – they are blessings of God. This is evident as we look at the turmoil in other nations and contrast that to the stability we see in America. Preserving American liberty depends first upon our understanding of the foundations on which this great country was built, and then it depends on preserving the principles on which it was founded.

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted to approve a complete separation from England. Two days later, the early draft of the Declaration of Independence was signed. Four days later, members of Congress took the document and read it out loud from the steps of Independence Hall, proclaiming it to the city of Philadelphia, and afterwards they rang the Liberty Bell. The inscription on the top of the bell is Leviticus 25:10, which reads, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof."

John Adams said, "The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity." Probably the clearest identification of the spirit of the American Revolution was given by John in a letter to Abigail the day after Congress approved the Declaration. He wrote her two letters that day: One was short and jubilant that the Declaration had been approved; the other letter was much longer and gave serious consideration to what had been done that day. Adams could already foresee that their actions would be celebrated by future generations.

A Different Holiday

Adams also noted: "This day will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival." He felt the celebration should be in a manner that would commemorate the day as a "day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." John Adams believed that the Fourth of July should be a religious holiday. The two top holidays celebrated in this country are Christmas and the Fourth of July. According to John Quincy Adams, the two dates are connected. On the Fourth of July, the Founding Fathers simply took the precepts of Christ and His birth (Christmas) and incorporated those principles into civil government.

The Declaration of Independence was the birth certificate for this nation, but the men who signed it knew it could be their death warrant. The closing paragraph states, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance of the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." The 56 Founding Fathers, 27 of whom were trained as ministers, took their pledge seriously. On the morning of the signing, there was silence and gloom as each man was called up to the table of the President of Congress to sign the document, knowing that it could mean their death by hanging.

Most wars have a motto. The motto of World War II was "Remember Pearl Harbor." The motto during the Texas war for independence was "Remember the Alamo." The spiritual emphasis, directed towards King George III who violated God’s laws, gave rise to a motto during the American Revolution: "No King but King Jesus." The Founding Fathers passed the torch to us. It is our responsibility to not let it go out.

Independence Day Our Christian Heritage -- Spiritual Life in God

Be very careful using Barton indiscriminately if you wish to be accepted seriously by informed people.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Happy horse shit, folks. The USC is deliberately a secular document with no mention of God. The attestation is a legal affidavit according to legal practice and not part of the charter of governance itself.

 

[MaxGrit]

I'm hoping that this is a fun topic. A century ago G.K. Chesterton observed:

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” ​

Christians have this quaint belief that God created Adam and Eve and that all of mankind is equal in the eyes of God. A King and a Pauper shall be judged equally by God once in Heaven. This God inspired notion has informed our governing philosophy ever since we began as a nation.

The evidence of reality however is abundantly clear that we are not all made equal, so what higher principle can we turn to to guide us and prevent us from a utilitarian reform of our laws and customs which recognizes and enshrines what the real world is SCREAMING at us - we are not all equal?

We have past experiments where legislatures have tried to impose the will of man over reality, such as when the Indiana Legislature came close to passing a bill legislating a method to derive pi to a value of 3.2. Any engineer will tell you that if forced to use an imagined value for pi while building a bridge or an airplane, the product will be unstable. Man's will can't override reality. Disaster follows.

So we have a society where the great majority of people believe in God and the belief that God created us all equally. Once that belief is crushed into dust, why on Earth would we close our eyes to what nature is telling us about human inequality? Some will try to argue that appealing to the nature as a model for how society should be constructed is fallacious thinking but what then in its stead? We see the negative ramifications today of a world where we treat all people as equal when they in fact are not, but when God's command is being honored, who are mere men to know better and so we suffer through.

Once the foundational beliefs which created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are shown to be false, how shall we proceed to reform society? The problem with merely appealing to the Religion of Liberalism is that it's unmoored from independently derived higher principles - it is actually formed by appealing to Christian foundational beliefs. How do we justify the notion of one man, one vote when some men are better and wiser than other men? The rational course is to acknowledge this reality and construct a society reflective of what nature has created. We no longer have to fear God's displeasure because we no longer cling to silly superstitions like "we are all created equal."

They didn't say God they said Creator because they weren't convinced God existed. If they had said God then the lack of belief in God would have meant that the constitution was invalid.

So they did a good thing there. No ones religious beliefs can either validate or invalidate the constitution.

But you go right ahead and keep on trying.

Divine Providence and Supreme Judge are names for God.

And yet they didn't put God in the constitution.

That's because it is in the Declaration of Independence.
__
The Birth of a Nation
by David Barton

For 235 years, America has been blessed as the longest on-going Constitutional Republic in the history of the world. These blessings are not accidental – they are blessings of God. This is evident as we look at the turmoil in other nations and contrast that to the stability we see in America. Preserving American liberty depends first upon our understanding of the foundations on which this great country was built, and then it depends on preserving the principles on which it was founded.

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted to approve a complete separation from England. Two days later, the early draft of the Declaration of Independence was signed. Four days later, members of Congress took the document and read it out loud from the steps of Independence Hall, proclaiming it to the city of Philadelphia, and afterwards they rang the Liberty Bell. The inscription on the top of the bell is Leviticus 25:10, which reads, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof."

John Adams said, "The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity." Probably the clearest identification of the spirit of the American Revolution was given by John in a letter to Abigail the day after Congress approved the Declaration. He wrote her two letters that day: One was short and jubilant that the Declaration had been approved; the other letter was much longer and gave serious consideration to what had been done that day. Adams could already foresee that their actions would be celebrated by future generations.

A Different Holiday

Adams also noted: "This day will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival." He felt the celebration should be in a manner that would commemorate the day as a "day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." John Adams believed that the Fourth of July should be a religious holiday. The two top holidays celebrated in this country are Christmas and the Fourth of July. According to John Quincy Adams, the two dates are connected. On the Fourth of July, the Founding Fathers simply took the precepts of Christ and His birth (Christmas) and incorporated those principles into civil government.

The Declaration of Independence was the birth certificate for this nation, but the men who signed it knew it could be their death warrant. The closing paragraph states, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance of the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." The 56 Founding Fathers, 27 of whom were trained as ministers, took their pledge seriously. On the morning of the signing, there was silence and gloom as each man was called up to the table of the President of Congress to sign the document, knowing that it could mean their death by hanging.

Most wars have a motto. The motto of World War II was "Remember Pearl Harbor." The motto during the Texas war for independence was "Remember the Alamo." The spiritual emphasis, directed towards King George III who violated God’s laws, gave rise to a motto during the American Revolution: "No King but King Jesus." The Founding Fathers passed the torch to us. It is our responsibility to not let it go out.

Independence Day Our Christian Heritage -- Spiritual Life in God

Be very careful using Barton indiscriminately if you wish to be accepted seriously by informed people.

LoL. Why should I care about being accepted seriously by apparent idiots online?

My argument is not me.

Those (un)informed people are ignorant in research bias reduction methods. Also seems like they are people too stupid to understand the logical fallacy of ad hominem.

You are an idiot. Not an ad hominem btw.

I just think that you are really stupid.

 

[MaxGrit]

Can the tapestry withstand the excising of the yellow thread woven throughout?

Is a culture really a tapestry?

Sure it is. I have a better example to use. A spandrel:

A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.
​

A sprandel is not designed to serve a purpose, it appears as a consequence of other features. Now go an knock out the useless sprandrels in the photo below. They don't serve a purpose, right, they weren't put there on purpose, so knock them out and lets see what happens to the rest of the structure.

All of your examples are of something that was designed by one person, even if it was built by many.

All of your examples are of something that was designed and built with a specific purpose in mind.

So, let me ask you this: Who designed Western culture? And what specific purpose was it intended to serve? To decorate? To shelter?

God's will and providence necessitate the formation of Western culture and everything else.

So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own so they need an unseen supernatural superhero to scare people into accepting them?

very funny.

You are absolutely stupid. History of the world concur with the fact that you are extremely stupid.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Maxgrit is consumed by confirmation bias, so we can ignore the nonsense and move on.

 

[MaxGrit]

"So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own?"

Claim: Democratic government, equality, rights etc. are of sufficient merit without the existence of God.

The claim is self-contradictory. The very idea of merit vs. unmerit (good vs. evil) requires absolute moral standard based on God perfect morality.

See: Transcendental proof of God's existence.

 

[MaxGrit]

Maxgrit is consumed by confirmation bias, so we can ignore the nonsense and move on.

I know right! I become more biased everytime I read your posts and I confirms my thinking that you're really stupid.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

"So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own?"

Claim: Democratic government, equality, rights etc. are of sufficient merit without the existence of God.

The claim is self-contradictory. The very idea of merit vs. unmerit (good vs. evil) requires absolute moral standard based on God perfect morality.

See: Transcendental proof of God's existence.

There is no 'proof' of 'god' as perceived by theists.


And it's this sort of religious arrogance and hubris that the Framers sought to guard against with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment – correctly understanding the threat religion poses to freedom and liberty.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Can the tapestry withstand the excising of the yellow thread woven throughout?

Is a culture really a tapestry?

Sure it is. I have a better example to use. A spandrel:

A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.
​

A sprandel is not designed to serve a purpose, it appears as a consequence of other features. Now go an knock out the useless sprandrels in the photo below. They don't serve a purpose, right, they weren't put there on purpose, so knock them out and lets see what happens to the rest of the structure.

All of your examples are of something that was designed by one person, even if it was built by many.

All of your examples are of something that was designed and built with a specific purpose in mind.

So, let me ask you this: Who designed Western culture? And what specific purpose was it intended to serve? To decorate? To shelter?

God's will and providence necessitate the formation of Western culture and everything else.

So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own so they need an unseen supernatural superhero to scare people into accepting them?

very funny.

Also very sad.


Religion of course was the primary force of the state, used to compel conformity and dictate to a subject population.


This is why the Framers wisely and appropriately mandated that church and state remain separate, as the prohibition of conjoining church and state was codified in the Constitution, where many of the Founding Generation had first hand experience with the evil of religion when wielded by the state as a political weapon.

 

[Rikurzhen]

"So democratic government, equality, rights etc. are not of sufficient merit on their own?"

Claim: Democratic government, equality, rights etc. are of sufficient merit without the existence of God.

The claim is self-contradictory. The very idea of merit vs. unmerit (good vs. evil) requires absolute moral standard based on God perfect morality.

See: Transcendental proof of God's existence.

There is no 'proof' of 'god' as perceived by theists.

That's immaterial. There's also no proof that racial groups are equal. The point is if people believe in God and follow those traditions, civil life takes one course and if they abandon their belief then their behavior changes too.

Racial inequality is real and it's biological and expressed in many forms, many of which intersect our social matrix. If you want to be governed by empiricism, then kiss equal rights good bye.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

"If We Erase The Christian Basis Of Governance, Then What Do We Unleash?"

Again, the idiocy of this, of course, is that there is no 'Christian basis of governance,' since the Declaration of Independence is a document neither of policy nor law, and devoid of any authority; consequently there's nothing to 'erase' and nothing will be 'unleashed,' whatever that's supposed to mean.

 

[Bfgrn]

You picked the wrong forum Rikurzhen...

Look for one of these, then get on you tricycle and follow it...

Here you can join your ilk...

 

[Rikurzhen]

You picked the wrong forum Rikurzhen...

Hey, how did the photographer catch you in the middle of a debate?

 

[Bfgrn]

You picked the wrong forum Rikurzhen...

Hey, how did the photographer catch you in the middle of a debate?

Let's trace back to your founding fathers comrade...

Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al: The Role of Darwinian Evolution in Their Lives

What a person believes to be true about the Origins of all that is (mankind included), absolutely and without a doubt colors that individual’s philosophy of life in all its aspects. Very little thought on the part of anyone able to think at all will confirm that statement.

In fact, so patently obvious is the truth of that statement, that one must marvel that any understanding of any individual in any walk of life would be attempted without letting it be plainly known what their beliefs were (and are) about the origins of man and all else.

So, what have certain powerful historical figures in the not too distant past believed about the Origins of all that is? Since Adolph Hitler is the most demonized figure of the 20th century, let’s begin by seeing what he believed about Origins....

Dr. Jerry Bergman, a college professor in Ohio, put together information from various authorities showing important connections between Hitler’s Nazism and Darwin’s Evolutionism. A few quotations will make the accepted but rarely discussed point that Hitler’s Nazism was a calculated and deliberate plan to apply evolutionary “science” to government policy. Indeed, Darwinism was the heartbeat of Nazism as Hitler conceived it. Note Bergman’s findings:

“Adolph Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching--probably since he was a boy.”

“One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was...evolutionary theory...”, we read in another place.

The whole Hitlerian idea of the “master race” of “supermen” was based on the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest” which Hitler proposed to speed up by various policies. Jews and Blacks were singled out as retards on the evolutionary scale who must not be allowed to contaminate the more evolved, i.e., the more advanced “aryan master race”.

Dr. Bergman’s conclusion: “The evidence is very clear that Darwinian ideas had a tremendous impact on German thought and practice.... In fact, Darwinian ideas had a tremendous influence on causing WWII, the loss of 40 million lives, and the waste of about 6 trillion 1945 dollars. Firmly convinced that evolution was true, Hitler saw himself as the modern savior of mankind.... By breeding a superior race, the world would look upon him as the man who pulled humanity up to a higher level of evolution.”

more

 

[Rikurzhen]

Thanks for dropping by, sharing your creationism with us and showcasing your talents at poo-flinging. You must be prize that ladies fight over.

 

[Ravi]

Blah, blah, blah, blah. God is not in the constitution because the founders didn't put him there. That some of them attended church is meaningless. Like many politicians, they keep up appearances to garner the support of the masses.

 

[JoeB131]

Now, yeah, they'd have killed that Pope the next day. But at least he did the right thing.

dear, getting yourself and your followers killed is not necessarily the right thing in
the long term.

You know what, a lot of people got killed hitting the beaches at Normandy and Anzio because the Pope was such a fucking coward.

And frankly, if the entire Catholic Clergy got wiped out, I'm just not seeing this as a bad thing.

 

[JoeB131]

...Right. So it's okay the Pope let millions of Jews, Poles (who were Catholic) and other get killed because, hey, we need to look out for ourselves...

Of course it's not. But I also can't blame the Pope for not choosing martyrdom or suicide for both himself and much of his fellow clergy, given that large-scale killings of Jews did not get underway until the 1942-1943 timeframe and that such mass killings were only rumors for the longest time and given that all of Europe was under the Nazi boot heel.
..

Horseshit. the first country to fall to the Nazis was Catholic Poland. Where they eventually wiped out 6 million Poles, half of them Catholic. are you really trying to claim the Pope didn't know EXACTLY what was going on? While the Nazis had laws saying that they would kill anyone who hid a Jew, Poland was the only country where they actually did it on a large scale.

...Horseshit, Pius was all for the Nazis because he was more afraid the COmmunists would win and take his shit.

Disagree.

Wartime Pope Pius XII more concerned about Communism than Holocaust - Telegraph

The files appear to lend weight to Jewish allegations that Pius failed to stand up to Nazi Germany and failed in his duty to issue any kind of condemnation of the persecution of Jews during the Second World War.

Two Italian researchers found previously secret correspondence about a meeting held in Nov 1944 between Pius and the British ambassador to the Holy See, Sir D'Arcy Osborne.

Rome had been liberated in June that year, but the Germans were deporting Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz and other camps.

Osborne, who later became the Duke of Leeds, told the Pope that the British government wanted him to issue a public appeal on behalf of the Hungarian Jews.

But Pius said that instead he was under pressure to condemn alleged abuses perpetrated by the Soviet army against Catholic civilians in Poland and the Baltic States.

Case pretty much closed, I'd say.