The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity

[Quantum Windbag]

How many of these christians would you say attend church and if they do, do you feel they are just going through the motions? How about christians who are living according the teaching of Jesus?

There are very few real christians in the world.

What is a real Christian and who gets to decide?

There are cultural Christians and practicing Christians I think is the point. You and Care seem like real Christians to me. Allie too.

I appreciate that you'll all keep an eye on the extremist Christians lest I descend into paranoia and conspiracy theory.

It's been known to happen.

The mega-churches scare me. The Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Coral Ridge Ministeries. They have a lot of power and they appear to have taken over the GOP.

Islam scares me a hell of a lot, so I understand being scared. You do not see me running around posting lies because I am afraid, do you?

Let me try this in simple words, you are not God, you do not get to decide if someone is a good Christian, or a good Muslim. Nor do you get to label them as cultural Christians, Deists, or anything else because they do not fit your image of what a practicing Christian. I do not fit your definition of a practicing Christian, but I am still a Christian, unless Jesus comes back and tells me differently I will remain one until I decide otherwise.

Your attitude amazes me. You claim to find Dominionists reprehensible, and claim to be afraid of them, but you insist that anyone who does not fit their definition of Christian is something else. Why do you allow your enemies to define you? That is an indication of a weak person and a small mind. Extend yourself and grow beyond your enemy.

The Christian radicals only appear to have taken over the GOP if you ignore facts. Reagan mobilized the right wing and used it to get into office, and promptly ignored them when he got there. If you had better wources you would know just how betrayed they felt by that, but they also learned that the only chance they have of making an impact is by accepting that they have no real power to influence policy. Ignore them and let them rant and posture to their hearts content. If they actually ran anything Robertson would have won the Republican nomination. The fact that he lost really quick should tell you more than anything else just how little power they really have.

 

[AllieBaba]

Well put. I'll rep you after my 24 hours is up.

 

[Gadawg73]

What is a real Christian and who gets to decide?

There are cultural Christians and practicing Christians I think is the point. You and Care seem like real Christians to me. Allie too.

I appreciate that you'll all keep an eye on the extremist Christians lest I descend into paranoia and conspiracy theory.

It's been known to happen.

The mega-churches scare me. The Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Coral Ridge Ministeries. They have a lot of power and they appear to have taken over the GOP.

Islam scares me a hell of a lot, so I understand being scared. You do not see me running around posting lies because I am afraid, do you?

Let me try this in simple words, you are not God, you do not get to decide if someone is a good Christian, or a good Muslim. Nor do you get to label them as cultural Christians, Deists, or anything else because they do not fit your image of what a practicing Christian. I do not fit your definition of a practicing Christian, but I am still a Christian, unless Jesus comes back and tells me differently I will remain one until I decide otherwise.

Your attitude amazes me. You claim to find Dominionists reprehensible, and claim to be afraid of them, but you insist that anyone who does not fit their definition of Christian is something else. Why do you allow your enemies to define you? That is an indication of a weak person and a small mind. Extend yourself and grow beyond your enemy.

The Christian radicals only appear to have taken over the GOP if you ignore facts. Reagan mobilized the right wing and used it to get into office, and promptly ignored them when he got there. If you had better wources you would know just how betrayed they felt by that, but they also learned that the only chance they have of making an impact is by accepting that they have no real power to influence policy. Ignore them and let them rant and posture to their hearts content. If they actually ran anything Robertson would have won the Republican nomination. The fact that he lost really quick should tell you more than anything else just how little power they really have.

Well said but things are a little different in the south. Christian radicals here will steal, lie and cheat you out of your $ 6 days a week and quote the Bible on Sunday why they will be saved and sent to heaven as a believer.
Robertson HAD taken over the GOP when Bush I ran in Georgia. The religous right put in a convicted felon as party head here and they attempted to steal the show and put in Robertson even though Bush won the statein the primary. And they called themselves Christian all the way while being liars and thieves. If not for us real conservatives that do not tolerate religion in government Robertson and his thugs would have taken over.
I remember when the southern churches backed George Wallace and quoted the Bible in support of segregation.
Your Reagan analogy is correct. However, just like George Bush he bullshitted the Christian right. They actually believed both men believed in and were the face each put on every time they appealed to that bloc.
If you are a real Christian you never have to go around telling everyone how much of one you are or bring up God and Jesus at every political rally. Folks will know you are Christian by your ACTIONS.
Those that quote politicians' speeches that are full of religous rhetoric are naive to believe that is any indication of faith. Politicians lie to get elected.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Well said but things are a little different in the south. Christian radicals here will steal, lie and cheat you out of your $ 6 days a week and quote the Bible on Sunday why they will be saved and sent to heaven as a believer.
Robertson HAD taken over the GOP when Bush I ran in Georgia. The religous right put in a convicted felon as party head here and they attempted to steal the show and put in Robertson even though Bush won the statein the primary. And they called themselves Christian all the way while being liars and thieves. If not for us real conservatives that do not tolerate religion in government Robertson and his thugs would have taken over.
I remember when the southern churches backed George Wallace and quoted the Bible in support of segregation.
Your Reagan analogy is correct. However, just like George Bush he bullshitted the Christian right. They actually believed both men believed in and were the face each put on every time they appealed to that bloc.
If you are a real Christian you never have to go around telling everyone how much of one you are or bring up God and Jesus at every political rally. Folks will know you are Christian by your ACTIONS.
Those that quote politicians' speeches that are full of religous rhetoric are naive to believe that is any indication of faith. Politicians lie to get elected.

I lived in the south most of my life, I know what it is right. I stood up in a church once and denounced the pastor after he refused to pay me the money he promised me for the work he did. The idiot actually tried to tell me I had to respect him because he was an elder. I guess he never bothered to read Timothy. He knows what it says now, believe me.

Politicians always lie. All of them. It is the nature of the beast, and is why I will never believe anything they say.

How can you tell a politician is lying?

 

[JBeukema]

zoroastians would say that THEIR creator was ZORO (musta been hard to sword fight with a big cape always in the way)

Ahura Mazda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for the link

I hope I didn't offend...

I couldn't help the joke....


it just popped out....


have just started reading the link.....
wil admit that other than their existance I really didn't kow anything about zoroastrianism....

so
I guess there is no cape?

NO CAPES!
​

 

[JBeukema]

It's a free country, not a Christian nation. The Treaty of Tripoli spelled that out. American citizens are not constitutionally Christians. Quite the contrary. No mention of God in the constitution. The Constitution is in fact the first significant governing charter in the history of mankind that does not invoke any deities, even impersonal ones, for support.

Some Christians would like to change that and make the US a theocracy I've named a few Christian organizations oriented that way.

Thanks for leaving out the foul language. Maybe next time you can avoid the ad hominems.

Nobody said we are constitutionally Christians. That's your own phrase.

Try to concentrate on understanding what people are saying before you head into lala land.

We have never been a Christian nation. The Constitution is godless. We are a secular society.

We have religious freedom. Lets keep it that way.

We have a Bill of Rights to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

A secular society? Maybe.


A secular government, yes.


Probably best to not confuse the two.

 

[JBeukema]

Can't keep track of your own bullshit?



Mental retardation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

you're good!

Already addressed. If accepted practice, without requirement, is to swear on a bible, then that is evidence we really are a Christian nation.

Not a theocracy.

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Me. Today and all the other times Sky has dragged this idiotic argment out.

So they require it- no wait, they don't- no wait, it's custom...


Make up your fucking mind, dumbass

 

[JBeukema]

None the less, Jefferson and Franklin were Deists, not Christians. An important distinction. They took great care to craft governing documents based on reason, not religion.

One more time.

Jefferson was a Christian by his own words, your opinion of his religion has a lot less weight than his words do.

And Maxine Waters is a liberal by her own words, yet she wants to nationalize the oil industry....

 

[Father Time]

"From the government’s Department of Perverse Acronyms comes the “DISCLOSE Act”, which stands for “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections”. How clever. And how disingenuous.

Not as bad as the uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate, fuck it, the USAPATRIOT act.

 

[Father Time]

You don't have to guess when it comes to Jefferson. He clearly stated freedom and liberty came from God and God alone.

And he also clearly didn't like government favoring one religion over another.

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom - Religious Freedom Page

In fact the term separation of church and state comes from one of his letters.

 

[JBeukema]

None the less, Jefferson and Franklin were Deists, not Christians. An important distinction. They took great care to craft governing documents based on reason, not religion.

One more time.

Jefferson was a Christian by his own words, your opinion of his religion has a lot less weight than his words do.

Jefferson was a Deist. Why do you think he cut and pasted his own bible?

Let's ask him.

He described his own compilation to Charles Thomson as "a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen." He told John Adams that he was rescuing the Philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches and power for themselves." After having selected from the evangelists "the very words only of Jesus," he believed "there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."

The Jefferson Bible

He said elsewhere that it was clear to him the hands of Man had corrupted the texts to serve personal and political ends through he ages.

Basically, he was like Muhammad and wanted to correct what people had done to it.

 

[JBeukema]

You keep saying that as if somehow we will come to believe it.....sorry...

...we were a Christian nation right from the start.....the Constitution was based on the existence of God.....and we started off being a very Christian society...and are still today to a great extent...

Secularism did not even exist back in 1776...atheists did not even have a rational explanation for the world until Darwin came along in the next century...thus people were very religious in almost all ways...

However....our founders did not wish to favor one religion over another....they did not want a theocracy....this is why they came to America....to get away from theocratic religions...which is the reason for the no establishment of religion clause...however that certainly didn't mean religious values and principles couldn't become law...in that day there were by and large no other kind of values in existence...

Are you talking about the Pilgrims? The Anglican Church? They came to America and immediately oppressed the Quakers.

That's why there is no mention of God in the Constitution.

The government is secular. No divine kings here.

Wrong premise. Again. The government doesn't have to be secular to deny the divinity of kings.

SE didn't say secularism was a necessary condition for the denial of he 'divine right to rule'.

You attacked someone earlier of reading comprehension?

 

[JBeukema]

No, Jefferson was a Christian by his own admission. Yes, Franklin was a Deist, although he questioned his Deist beliefs later in life. See my reply to you earlier (post #415).

Not quite. He called himself a Christian, but did so while redefining the world to mean something totally different- like democratic socialists and progressives calling themselves liberals.


If only I still had that Jefferon Bible.

[SIZE=+1] I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other. [/SIZE]

This puts him at odds with a fundamental pillar of Christian theology.

The Jefferson Bible: Syllabus

Actually he defined it as something different from orthodox Christianity. His words show he believed in following the tenants that Christ taught with his words “...in the only sense in which he (Jesus) wished us to be”. He was similar to many other Protestants who fought against religious practices they felt were not what Christ taught, such as Martin Luther. To me, it shows he was a good Christian to say such a thing.

To claim Jesus was not divine if the to throw away the entire premise of Christianity- that the LORD payed for your sins by sending his only begotten son, who was of himself (the concept of divinity multiplicity goes back to Genesis)to live a sinless life and pay what he owed Satan in accordance with the greatest bet ever made. This carries over into Revelation, where it is made clear to those familiar with Jewish property laws that the debt is payed, yet God has not yet claimed back the Earth, though it is his to rule and he holds the deed to creation, sealed with seven seals.

If Jesus was not divine, he cannot be sinless, since we are born imperfect and blighted by the stains of the world's fallen state (see: original sin and 'noone is without sin'). Hence he cannot pay the the price (the life of a sinless man) he payed upon the cross ('it is finished'). Hence salvation is not possible through Jesus- unless h was divine, starting with a clean slate upon his birth, and lived a sinless life.

 

[THE LIGHT]

James Madison;
"Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson

John Adams;
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."

Thomas Jefferson;
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
- "Notes on Virginia"

Ben Franklin;
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
- Works, Vol. VII, p. 75

Thomas Paine;
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians

 

[AllieBaba]

You don't have to guess when it comes to Jefferson. He clearly stated freedom and liberty came from God and God alone.

And he also clearly didn't like government favoring one religion over another.

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom - Religious Freedom Page

In fact the term separation of church and state comes from one of his letters.

No shit?

 

[Walt]

The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity
Many Christian's who think of America as founded upon Christianity usually present the Declaration of Independence as "proof" of a Christian America. ...
The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity - Cached - Similar

Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians They were men of The Enlightenment, not men of Christianity. .... Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural .... He led the men who turned America from an English colony into a self-governing nation. ...
Thomas Jefferson - John Adams - Benjamin Franklin - Thomas Painefreethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html - Cached - Similar

Just two questions. Which religion did they put in the schools. Which book did they print and distribute to said schools?

 

[frazzledgear]

The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity
Many Christian's who think of America as founded upon Christianity usually present the Declaration of Independence as "proof" of a Christian America. ...
The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity - Cached - Similar

Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians They were men of The Enlightenment, not men of Christianity. .... Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural .... He led the men who turned America from an English colony into a self-governing nation. ...
Thomas Jefferson - John Adams - Benjamin Franklin - Thomas Painefreethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html - Cached - Similar

Oh PULEEZE -can't you do better than to drag out this old, tired standby of the left who want to pretend the founders were anything but Christian?

Next thing you know you'll be insisting Christ was actually a communist. There are more than 200 founders of our nation. Do you really have no clue why people like you want to focus on just a couple to the exclusion of all others -even when the writings of those people prove you aren't being truthful? What you WISH to be true will never make it so -but your ilk have sure been giving it your best shot since the 1930s. Ever study THAT phenomenon along the way? LOL

 

[Care4all]

Not quite. He called himself a Christian, but did so while redefining the world to mean something totally different- like democratic socialists and progressives calling themselves liberals.


If only I still had that Jefferon Bible.

This puts him at odds with a fundamental pillar of Christian theology.

The Jefferson Bible: Syllabus

Actually he defined it as something different from orthodox Christianity. His words show he believed in following the tenants that Christ taught with his words “...in the only sense in which he (Jesus) wished us to be”. He was similar to many other Protestants who fought against religious practices they felt were not what Christ taught, such as Martin Luther. To me, it shows he was a good Christian to say such a thing.

To claim Jesus was not divine if the to throw away the entire premise of Christianity- that the LORD payed for your sins by sending his only begotten son, who was of himself (the concept of divinity multiplicity goes back to Genesis)to live a sinless life and pay what he owed Satan in accordance with the greatest bet ever made. This carries over into Revelation, where it is made clear to those familiar with Jewish property laws that the debt is payed, yet God has not yet claimed back the Earth, though it is his to rule and he holds the deed to creation, sealed with seven seals.

If Jesus was not divine, he cannot be sinless, since we are born imperfect and blighted by the stains of the world's fallen state (see: original sin and 'noone is without sin'). Hence he cannot pay the the price (the life of a sinless man) he payed upon the cross ('it is finished'). Hence salvation is not possible through Jesus- unless h was divine, starting with a clean slate upon his birth, and lived a sinless life.

NOT TRUE. there are several religions that claim to be Christian that do not view Christ as God, they view him as the Son of God, or as the messiah, but not God himself.....Unitarians, Mormons as 2 examples...

 

[Care4all]

One more time.

Jefferson was a Christian by his own words, your opinion of his religion has a lot less weight than his words do.

Jefferson was a Deist. Why do you think he cut and pasted his own bible?

Let's ask him.

He described his own compilation to Charles Thomson as "a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen." He told John Adams that he was rescuing the Philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches and power for themselves." After having selected from the evangelists "the very words only of Jesus," he believed "there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."

The Jefferson Bible

He said elsewhere that it was clear to him the hands of Man had corrupted the texts to serve personal and political ends through he ages.

Basically, he was like Muhammad and wanted to correct what people had done to it.

In Jefferson's opinion, he was the true Christian....the true follower of Christ's teachings....does that make him muslim?

 

[Care4all]

Are you talking about the Pilgrims? The Anglican Church? They came to America and immediately oppressed the Quakers.

That's why there is no mention of God in the Constitution.

The government is secular. No divine kings here.

Wrong premise. Again. The government doesn't have to be secular to deny the divinity of kings.

Read the Constitution. No God there. It's a secular document.

there would be NO Constitution, without the Declaration of Independence....the two go hand in hand....