Hah! Yep, here's the old atheist himself, just before Valley Forge:
Posted on 08/27/2003 8:59:09 AM PDT by NWO Slave
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A chorus of demonstrators joined an irate man in screaming "Put it back!" Wednesday morning after a monument of the Ten Commandments was wheeled away from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.
"Get your hands off our God, God haters!" yelled the wildly gesturing, red-faced man who initiated the chanting.
Workers used a dolly to move the 5,280-pound granite marker from the rotunda to another, undisclosed place in the courthouse building.
Meanwhile, a Wednesday afternoon hearing to consider a lawsuit to keep the monument in the rotunda was canceled.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Mobile on behalf of a Christian radio talk show host and a pastor, says forced removal of the monument would violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.
Christian Defense Coalition Director Patrick Mahoney told the crowd of demonstrators that he wasn't told where the monument had been taken.
Because of its size and weight, the marker was presumably moved to another location on the ground floor of the building.
Mahoney said the monument would not be covered, and that he would be allowed inside to see it once it was moved. Mahoney said he was informed of the plans by building manager Graham George.
Mahoney didn't know whether the monument's new location would be accessible to the public.
The federal court had said the monument could be in a private place in the building but not in the highly visible spot in the rotunda directly across from the building's entrance.
Protest organizers asked the crowd outside not to rush the building or do anything else except pray. Some people seemed to be listening, with dozens kneeling, bowing or lying face-down in prayer in front of the judicial building and on the steps before and after the monument's removal.
The marker was wheeled away in a matter of minutes.
A federal judge in Montgomery ruled last year that the monument, which Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore (search) installed two years ago, violates the Constitution's ban on government promotion of religion and ordered its removal by Aug. 20. The U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to hear Moore's appeal.
But Moore refused to comply. Eight associate justices voted Aug. 21 to remove the monument, and Moore was suspended the next day.
Attorney General Bill Pryor, defending the associate justices, filed a motion Tuesday afternoon to dismiss the latest lawsuit, saying the Mobile court lacks jurisdiction and the complaint lacks merit.
About 150 monument supporters marched on Pryor's office Tuesday, demanding he resign for supporting the associate justices' decision. Seven representatives were allowed inside to meet with Pryor's chief deputy for about 20 minutes. The rest remained outside, chanting, "Resign now! Resign now!"
Gatherings of pro-monument demonstrators outside the judicial building have grown each day in the past week to at times number in the hundreds.
People seeking removal of the monument from its public site had said they were grateful that it was finally being moved, a week after the deadline set by a federal judge.
"This is a tremendous victory for the rule of law and respect for religious diversity," the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said before the monument was rolled out of the rotunda. "Perhaps Roy Moore will soon leave the bench and move into the pulpit, which he seems better suited for."
Lynne's organization was among groups suing to remove Moore's monument, which he installed without telling the other eight Supreme Court justices.
Demonstrators promised to keep up their protests of the removal.
"If it takes 75 years to reclaim this land for righteousness, God find us and our children and our children's children ready," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the national clergy council.
Affirmative Action Judge Opposing Judge Roy Moore
Unless, of course, you happen to be a Christian teacher (or student) or office worker who, in this free country of ours (Remember that?), always carries a Bible to read at available opportunities, much as others might carry the latest Stephen King novel or the latest "how-to-be-a-nauseating-liberal" book, but heaven forbid they should actually be caught reading it where someone might actually (*GASP* - horrors) see them. Why, that is ever so much worse than allowing kids at the public library to access porn on the internet.
I might not believe in gravity, but my not believing in it has absolutely no effect on whether or not it has an impact on me if I jump off a building. There are spiritual laws just as there are physical ones and your NOT believing that they exist has no effect on their impact on your life.
"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corin. 2:14)
Yes, I think I understand. You're a juvenile.
Please do try to control yourself. In the rare instances when this actually happens (when someone is offended by a person reading their Bible in public), the people responsible for such censorship are obviously idiots.
I agree with that...but they are dangerous idiots. They are haters of liberty, haters of God and lovers of the state. While I may be very caught up in this particular issue at the moment, I do see beyond what is going on right now and what I see is that unless we turn back the encroachments on our freedoms, which is seeming more unlikely every day, we are not too very far from the day that we will wake up and realize that we no longer have any.
"George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance." From: George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
I don't blame you for not wanting to post any references...
How does that work? How is it a tremendous victory? What did they win? You'd think people were screaming in agony from radioactive death rays emanating from the monument, and now they've thrown off the yoke of religious oppression and they're in ecstacy.
Hah! Yep, here's the old atheist himself, just before Valley Forge:
Which are you, Roughie? Worse than an infidel, or just plain wicked?
4th President of the United States and Chief Architect of the Constitution
"We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
See, one can take every statement the forefathers ever made out of context to support their arguments. I question the context of the comments that you posted.
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