Posted on 02/10/2005 8:00:51 AM PST by PresbyRev
“The lesson the President has learned best—and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him—is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration’s current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.” Thus begins an article by Brooke Allen that was posted on the website of “The Nation” on February 3, 2005.1 It’s obvious that Allen has not...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanvision.org ...
No he didn't...and Adams did not have spell check to boot....You must not have much to do, and I bet you really get on people's nerves with your corrections.
I notice that none of your quotes came from the Constitution.
> You brought up Numbers 16. Did you even read it? They rebelled against God's chosen.
16:41 But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD.
Murmur = rebel?
> Yes, that did merit death.
So: anyone who murmurs against the government of the United States merits death? Keep in mind... the claims is that the US is based on the Bible, and since the Bible clearly states that murmuring is a capital offense...
> Quote the spot where I said it was
Did I say it was you? Strange that you would suddenly get paranoid and defensive when someone mentions dishonest people...
Moses had the charge to lead the Hebrews out of slavery to the Egyptian State into a land of freedom.
Included in that charge was the continuation of the Covenant. The Messiah who would redeem the world would come through the Covenant people. That would not happen if the Hebrew nation had fallen into chaos and disintegrated in the wilderness. So, the early Hebrew nation, in the exodus and the conquest of the Promised Land, was required to protect itself and eliminate threats to its existence, not only for the sake of the people themselves, but ultimately for the benefit and blessing of the entire world through Jesus Christ. God provided miraculous deliverance to the Hebrews and protection from their mortal enemies time and again. Science, medicine, education - all the attainments of modern Western Civlization rest on the foundation of Biblical Religion.
As an agnostic, you haven't explained how you seem to believe their are ethical standards that you may call others to account for. How are those standards established? Where do they come from? What is your epistemological basis for making any truth claim? How do you know truth from falsehood? You are using the borrowed capital of revealed religion in order to critique revealed religion. From a position of epistemological agnosticism, you have no ground on which to offer any moral commentary on anything.
The Moral and Civil Law of Israel provides a basis for thinking God's thoughts after Him as we frame civil laws for our own place and time. It sometimes requires careful deliberation and exgesis in the context of the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Law in order to determine what and how exactly a particular case law in the Old Testament might be applied today.
To establish a precise parallel between Moses in the exodus and the United States is unwarranted and not what is under discussion. No one on this thread has advocated that view - you are insistent however on attacking that straw-man over and over.
The Bible, as the Creator God's Law-Word, provides an absolute standard of righteousness. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. You are responsible for the safety of those on your property. Don't lend money at interest to those in need. Don't cheat people with unjust measures/weights. We find general laws, often presented as case law, in the Old Testament. Aside from the Ceremonial Law and certain of the Holiness Codes peculiar to national Israel prior to Christ's ministry, the Law, still stands as the Standard for human righteousness.
DeMar writes in Christian Reconstruction: What Is It?
"What is natural law? As one might expect, there are numerous definitions of natural law depending on which tradition one turns to. Should we follow the natural law system advocated by Cicero, Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, Aquinas, Montesquieu, Blackstone, Grotius, Pufendorf, or Locke? After taking all of the systems inot account, the following definition adequately represents the many natural law theories: 'Natural law theory rests on the assumption that man has an innate quality - reason - which enables him to perceive and live by natural laws which are 'self-evident truths' manifested in our natural surroundings.'
But there is a problem. While the above definition might work in a Christian context, where people generally understand (1) that rebellious man's autonomous reason should not be trusted, and (2) that there are certain moral absolute values. In non-Christian cultures, righteous natural law is an impossibility. The reason? As the late Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson declared, in expressing the implication of a consistent evolutionary theory of law and justice, 'Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes . . .' Natural law depends on an existing theological framework that takes into account God's sovereignty and ethical absolutes." 108-09.
Self-evident rights and natural law works in America because of the Christian foundation and worldview of our culture. Other cultures, pagan societies, have invariably been unable to create or maintain free and broadly representative republics. Why? While there is common grace and a measure of truth and light available through the general revelation of the created order, apart from God's Law in Scripture, there is no sure and certain Word; no fixed absolute standard for righteous law. So, there is always that tendency to idolize the State and seek salvation from it; substituting the created for the Creator.
So?
Someone who defends what he believes in never lies...
The point is what is the foundation for our country. If we cannot use Jeffersons letter that describe sthe "Wall of separation between church and state" because it is not in the Constitution, neither can you use extra-Constitutional sources.
>As an agnostic, you haven't explained how you seem to believe their are ethical standards that you may call others to account for.
Some things are self-evident. How do you know up from down? Do you need the Bible to tell you?
> How are those standards established?
Reason and logic.
> Where do they come from?
Cause and effect.
> How do you know truth from falsehood?
If Kerry's lips are moving, it's a falsehood.
> You are using the borrowed capital of revealed religion in order to critique revealed religion.
Even if theis were so, and it's not... so what?
> The Bible, as the Creator God's Law-Word, provides an absolute standard of righteousness. Don't murder.
If only the Bible was consistent upon that point. Hell, the Bible calls for not only the murder of adults, but the murder of children... and the murder of the *unborn.*
Hosea 13:16
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
> We find general laws, often presented as case law, in the Old Testament.
As we do in a great many religious texts. The OT remains staggeringly un-unique in that regard.
> Other cultures, pagan societies, have invariably been unable to create or maintain free and broadly representative republics.
Untrue. The Icelanders did a good job... until they Christianized. Their economy collapsed, property rights vanished, and theocratic monarchy came in and sat on their culture.
It may well be your job, but it is NOT your job at FR.
I do not mind someone, with a measure of humor, poking fun...I too not take myself too seriously, however, most at FR understand that as we type on the fly as we are busy with work, we often misspell words. In fact, we have fun with the words "serious" and "huge", which you will often find intentionally misspelled as "series" and "hugh".
Please don't attempt to correct these, you will only draw well deserved fire.
Get a hobby...get a life...
Reason can only exist in a rational world. Further, your only basis for asserting the primacy of reason or rationality is by presupposing and assuming those as self-authenticating verities.
Reason and logic can only exist a a world that is orderly; that is reasonable. A world of order, law, reason must have a Creator who is Himself reasonable, logical, etc. Self-evident is a Creator who has made a world of beauty, law, order, rationality and created the human mind to think God's thoughts after God.
Cause and effect point to the same thing. Why does your reason suggest cause and effect have meaning? Because cause and effect operate in an orderly world of law. That is why science developed in the West. In a world of chance - whether atheistic evolutionary in nature or the world of the pagans - contingent upon spirits and sprites and magical thinking - science could not develop as it did in the Christian West. Because we live in an orderly universe with a Creator, cause and effect have meaning. Experiments based on the scientific method can be carried out - but only in the Christian's universe/world. That is an excellent illustration of how those who deny God's existence, postulating a world of random chance and chaos, yet presuppose the very attributes of a Theistic universe in order to live, to deny God and so forth.
I can only say your condemnation of accounts in the Bible based on a supposed moral outrage is silly for a practical atheist such as yourself. Only by adopting the existence of objective morality from Theism can you in turn try to sit in judgment on God and God's Law-Word.
The Old Testament permitted capital punishment in at least sixteen cases - to be implemented only after due process. The murder of individuals by other individuals was forbidden. War and capital punishment were permitted.
The culture of the Canaanites in that era had become so morally, spiritually and physically diseased that they called down on themselves God's judgment. The herem was a limited deal; purely related to the expulsion of the degenerate peoples from the promised land. See: Deuternomy 9:4; 18:9-12; Leviticus 18:24-25, 27-28. They would have pulled the Hebrews into their own moral abyss and destroyed that nation had they not been in large measure pushed out of the land.
How do you feel about the bombing of Dresden by America or Britain? Do you believe Hiroshima and Nagasaki should not have happened? Was it unacceptable that German or Japanese non-combatants were killed; that children were killed? Even in light of the larger desire to preserve American life; to hasten the end of the war to stop even more extensive destruction and death? Was it the lesser of two evils to carry out total war in light of the fact of the tremendous blessing that America has been to the world - even to its former enemies - in the last half century?
Wherever you come down on those questions - by using moral faculties and reasoning, in being troubled by suffering - consider that those things point to God and turn from your spiritual and intellectual rebellion against your Creator and trust in Christ for enlightenment and salvation.
> Reason and logic can only exist a a world that is orderly; that is reasonable.
Basically logical.
> A world of order, law, reason must have a Creator who is Himself reasonable,
Illogical. "Reason" does not imply a Creator of "any" type.
> In a world of chance - whether atheistic evolutionary in nature or the world of the pagans - contingent upon spirits and sprites and magical thinking ...
Or in the world of a Vengeful God who will wipe out people because of something someone *else* did.
> Because we live in an orderly universe with a Creator, cause and effect have meaning.
Because we live in an orderly universe, cause and effect have meaning. Whther there is a Creator or not is not only undemonstrated, it is unecessary for the use of logic.
> Experiments based on the scientific method can be carried out - but only in the Christian's universe/world.
Sadly for you, Greek scientists were carrying out experiemnts using the modern scientific method LOOOONG before Christianity showed up. The determination of the Earth's diameter being an excellent example. A natural phenomenon was noted, a hypothesis to explain it was made, an experiment was designed, the experiment carried out and the data correctly analyzed and interpretted. No Christians needed.
> How do you feel about the bombing of Dresden by America or Britain? Do you believe Hiroshima and Nagasaki should not have happened? Was it unacceptable that German or Japanese non-combatants were killed; that children were killed?
Bombs carried by B-17's cannot be made to *not* target innocents. Ripping opan a woman's womb and murdering her baby while she dies in horrific agony requires the direct and intentional action of a psychopath.
Your attempt to link the personal atrocities of the OT to impersonal war puts you in the same ethical camp with bin Laden who sees intentionally murdering civilians to be a good thing to do for his cause. *Americans* make the effort to *not* kill the innocent. We're a little un-Biblical that way.
> atheist such as yourself
Which I'm not.
Of course Numbers 16 was pulled out of the Bible and made by you as an example of "biblical democratic governance" or the lack thereof. A strawman which you can knock down and make further absurd claims about "murmering" as a biblical capital offense. Hogwash.
Korah, Dathan and Abiram "took action" (16:1) and rose up before Moses (with a sizeable force of 25) and questioned his God-ordained authority. Moses let God show them who was His chosen. (Numbers 14:20-21). If you have any complaints, take them up with God.
So: anyone who murmurs against the government of the United States merits death?
How might one "justly" apply the model demonstrated in Numbers 16? I wouldn't suggest that you "take action" and question the authority of the Constitution, raising a sizeable force of senators and reps to overthrow that authority. (You decide to recognize yourself or someone else as the legitimate POTUS, for example.) You will be guilty at the very least of perjury (having foresworn your oath to uphold the COTUS) if not open rebellion. God may not swallow you up in an earthquake, but you may get impeached, convicted and held over for trial. If your conspiratorial words and deeds are considered treasonous, you may die.
Your ability to rightly apply biblical doctrine is not simply lacking but shows a willingness to pervert the truth to achieve your aims. You'd would have probably been among the followers of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.
I did not assert, and in fact have directly maintained, that human beings may from general revelation, as the Greek philosophers often did, come to insights and partial truths about ethics, science, etc.
Greek 'science' never went anywhere because of the essential limitations of man's reasoning apart from the special revelation of Scripture.
You refuse to live consistently with your irrational worldview and resist reasoning consistently with your agnosticism (I don't blame you). You haven't accounted for your use of moral categories or reason or the uniformity of natural law in a world uncreated and ungoverned by a Super Intelligence/Intelligent Designer. I'll leave my comments to stand.
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