Posted on 08/09/2005 6:45:50 PM PDT by Crackingham
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that allows the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors to exclude a local witch from leading the prayer at open meetings.
The ACLU of Virginia yesterday filed its petition with the court seeking to reverse a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, said ACLU attorney Rebecca K. Glenberg.
"Our position is that the 4th Circuit did something really extreme in its decision," she said. "It held that it was acceptable for a government body to treat people differently because of religion."
Cynthia Simpson, a witch who lives in Chesterfield, requested in 2002 to be placed on a list of religious leaders invited to deliver the invocation at meetings of the Board of Supervisors. So far, her request has been denied.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
Wicca?
Since you seem to be absolutely ignorant of, and derisive of, Wicca, I'll educate you. Yes, bearing false witness would be wrong. It breaks their Rede (golden rule) of not doing harm to others, and invokes their Three-fold Law (the harm you caused will come back to you three-fold).
They number in the millions. There is a naming problem in that many who are pagan may be lumped together as Wiccan by others although they do not call themselves Wiccan.
And it's an invented crock of nonsense anyway.
That's what I think about ALL religions, although I don't say it in such disrespectful language.
Why should anyone of any religion be allowed to force themselves on people who don't want to listen, any more than you or I should be forced to attend any religious (or other) ceremony we don't wish to attend?
Reminds me of prayer at a football game or graduation. Wait, the Christians want that to happen.
#4 applies only in the sense that you can say "Michael Newdow pursued his anti-Christian agenda with a religious fervor." It doesn't apply to atheism in general.
I visit FR religiously. Can I apply for non-profit status?
Unless those who dig us up are atheist or pagan, in which case we'll be seen as the quaint, backwards ancient society. Or maybe then they'll be into polytheism, and think we were weak because there was only one god.
I believe our values are more accurately reflected in the phrase "In God We Trust" than "Kumbaya".
I believe our values are more accurately reflected in "From many, one." That's the very definition of this country. We pull people from all countries and all religions to live here as Americans first and foremost. IGWT destroys that great concept.
2) Do you interpret the words "no law" in the first amendment differently than "shall not be infringed" in the second?
3) Would your reaction be the same if a Rabbi were denied? What about an Evangelist Preacher? What about a Protestant Parson?
4) Different people have different names for the Almighty Creator. She probably uses some variant of "Earth Mother" or "Goddess". You probably use "The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". I just use G-d. There is no logical argument that can prove any of us right or wrong, that is why it is called faith.
If the School Board feels it is proper to invoke a higher power before the meeting than any religious leader of any of the families that attend the School should be allowed to do so.
In the Dark Ages, little distinction was made between statutory and common law. Since few could read, it made no sense to codify legal boundaries. ALL laws were passed down via tradition much more than by document. What few documented laws existed were principally derived from the teachings of the Church, and were Latin in origin. Most of our law remains rooted in the Latin for that very reason.
By the way, the presumption all along has been that Christianity did not reach England until around 700 A.D.. In point of historic fact, St. Augustine was dispatched on a mission to King Ethelbert of the Saxons at the end of the 6th century. The Archbishopric of Canterbury was established around then. Celtic churches were already well established in the northern regions of what is now Ireland and Scotland. The Synod of Whitby (664 A.D.) reconciled numerous differences between the Celtic and Roman churches.
Many of the legal (Saxon) traditions loosely defined as "common law" were destroyed when the feudal system was discarded and later with the Enlightenment. Jefferson and Co. were powerfully influenced by that novus ordo and rejected many antiquated notions, including the few shreds of pre-Christian common law that survived Charlemagne, Runymede, and Cromwell.
The Founders were also well acquainted with the Classics -- Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Marcus Aurelius -- and derived much of their political philosophy from them. Add to that the humanist mix just starting to emerge in the writings of Rosseau, Locke, and Hume, and it is disingenuous at best to trace our legal roots back solely to Saxon common law. It is most certainly simplistic to assert that our entire CULTURE derives from that root.
Other codified law also predates the 10 Commandments by about a thousand years (Urukagina's Code), and the 10 Commandments pretty much mirrors earlier law.
Just as a culture is more than the sum of its laws, Christianity is more than the Ten Commandments. If your point is that Christianity is derivative of earlier monotheistic religions, for one I think this debate has mushroomed far beyond its initial scope, but for two, I won't contest that point. However, having amalgamated the beliefs of a host of other religions into itself, Christianity then took on a life all its own and became much greater than the sum of its parts. It arose to become the defining force of Western culture.
It still is.
BTW, Hitler naturally used a cloak of piety for his movement. Especially in the beginning. He was trying to (and with some success) dupe foolish followers, who were themselves to blame as well. Additionally, as soon as the Nazis came to power, they removed all the church leaders (the German government had the power to do that) and replaced them with pro-Nazi men.
In a few minutes I will post an article (first I'm going to see if I can link to it instead) called "Hitler's Library" that goes quite deeply into Hitler's personal philosophy. Any "god" he believed in was purely subjective - i.e., himself.
So we can't know that God exists? Have you refuted every argument for the existence of God?
I'll leave you with just one argument to refute for now.
We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
Pearls before swine.
LOLOL!! You really outed yourself there.
Millions of Wiccans! LOL! But they don't know it!
Rich, my friend, rich.
You do your namesake proud.
Outed as what? Learn about Wicca and paganism, and you'll understand. Otherwise, the ignorant should not speak.
I have indeed read about Wicca and paganism. Those who like to fancy themselves pagans and witches shouldn't believe their own propaganda. They find themselves quite befooled.
First notice "may" and "could" near the beginning. The rest falls on "may" and "could" being true. The argument requires me accepting all of the "if," "may," and "could" statements. I do not. It is simply a convoluted logical exercise, proving nothing.
Second, it assumes time works as we think it does. Ever heard of negative information -- if I tell you then you have less information? Ever heard of a physical object being in two places at the same time? Ever heard of something having two opposing states the same time? Quantum physics has already shown that most of our laws, and indeed our logic, don't apply in certain situations. Time is another of our understandings that can completely change due to this.
You make the same argument when you say God is outside of time, and therefore he himself does not require a creator.
Outed yourself as a shill for Wicca.
"The problem with your assessment is that is just that - your personal opinion."
Well, your view of your Religion, and it's truth or lack there of are exactly the same thing, personal opinion. You can no more prove the "facts" of your Religion, than could a Wiccan, or someone praying to the invisible Holy Cloud Being.
But isn't that really the very basis of the argument. All Religious "beliefs" are in fact personal opinion. Why then exclude one group over another, in a Public Forum. If what we were discussing was a Church meeting, I would agree that not allowing someone of a different denomination, faith, etc would be perfectly fine. It would be a pointless exercise for a Wiccan, a Mormon, a Hindi, a Buddist, etc to say the opening prayers at your Church.
However, a Governmental (City, County, State, Fed, etc) Meeting is meant to serve ALL the members of a community, not just a select few, which is what you seem to advocate. Religious prejudices have no place there.
Jeremiah, in past posts you have used the relative minority of Wiccans (Which, BTW, your numbers of how many Wiccans, where exactly do you arrive at those numbers?)as apparent justification for exclusion.
So, I stand by my Opinion that if this Board of Supervisors feels compelled to have prayers, and the need to exclude members of their community who hold different Opinions about who or what they are praying to, then they should eliminate the prayers from their meetings all together and get on with the work they are tasked to accomplish.
Each one of those Board members is perfectly free to stop by their local Church, Mosque, Temple, Shrine, or Altar before the Meeting and get whatever Refreshment, Guidance, or Religious fix they need to do their Job before the Meeting.
That cosmopolitan tradition owes much to the Christian (or at least Deist) principles incorporated into this nation's founding. Initially, the Colonies were hardly models of religious tolerance. It wasn't until a Republic was founded that a NATIONAL religious freedom was codified. An invocation by a county Board of Supervisors in no way contravenes the First Amendment.
"In God We Trust" boils down a plethora of Judeo-Christian sentiments into one pithy apothegm, one descriptive of the culture that gave it birth.
Here's a link to an article posted on FR a couple of years ago, and the last three or four paragraphs. It is a fascinating article, and I suggest you read it if you think Hitler was a Christian.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/895696/posts
Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for God
The Atlantic Monthly ^ | May 2003 | Timothy W. Ryback
Posted on 04/18/2003 3:21:14 AM PDT by gd124
In this densely written treatise Riedel established the groundwork for his "new religion," replacing the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with a new tripartite unity, the "Körper, Geist und Seele"-"body, mind, and soul." Riedel argued that traditionally mankind has recognized five senses, which relate only to the physical aspects of our existence, and that this hinders our ability to perceive the true nature of our relationship to God and the universe. He offered seven additional "senses" that every human being possesses, which are related to the subjective perception of the world; among them Riedel included our inherent sense of what is right and wrong, our emotional sense of another person, our sense of self-preservation. On a two-page centerfold he illustrated his theory with a circular diagram in which various concepts-"soul," "space," "reality," "present," "past," "possibility," "transformation," "culture," "afterlife," "humanity," "infinity"-are connected by a spider web of lines. "The body, mind and soul do not belong to the individual, they belong to the universe," the author explained.
Riedel's "trinity" seems to have attracted Hitler's particular attention. A dense penciled line parallels the following passage: "The problem with being objective is that we use objective criteria as the basis for human understanding in general, which means that the objective criteria, that is, the rational criteria, end up serving as the basis for all human understanding, perception and decision-making." By using the five traditional senses to achieve this "objectivity," Riedel declared, human beings exclude the possibility of perceiving-through the additional seven senses he identified-the deeper forces of the world, and are thus unable to achieve that unity of body, mind, and soul. "The human mind never decides things on its own, it is the result of a discourse between the body and the soul," he claimed.
The sentence not only caught Hitler's attention-beneath it is a thick line, and beside it in the margin are three parallel pencil marks-but was echoed two years later in one of his monologues. "Mind and soul ultimately return to the collective being of the world," Hitler told some guests in December of 1941. "If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know I have acted in good faith."
As I sat in the rarefied seclusion of the Jefferson Building's second-floor reading room one day, listening to the muffled roar of traffic and the distant wail of police sirens in late-summer Washington, I attempted to comprehend the full significance of this sentence to which Hitler seems to have responded so emphatically. Back in 1943 Walter Langer had concluded-correctly, to my mind-that in order to understand Hitler one had to understand his profound belief in divine powers. But Hitler believed that the mortal and the divine were one and the same: that the God he was seeking was in fact himself.
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