Posted on 05/30/2005 12:47:24 PM PDT by LS
John Adams: Place of Burial: First Unitarian Church, Quincy, Massachusetts.
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Sounds like an interesting book I'd like to read. I read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography a while ago and it was highly interesting. He may not have attended church, but he certainly (as per his book) had faith in God, prayed himself and advocated prayer and religious training and practice.
Let me know if you want on/off this pinglist.
Robert Treat Paine's grandfather, Samuel Treat was a Reverend, most likely Congregational.
Harvard was originally founded by those "unenlightened" Puritans, as were most of the New England communities in early colonial times.
If it had been the intent of the founders to fully seperate church & state, don't you think they would have addressed that in the Federal Constitution, instead of leaving that power to the states?
In colonial times your religion was the religion of the colony you lived in.
Not true.
That was changed by the separation of church and state.
However did that happen, when most of the states had official state churches at the time of the founding?
Do you really believe that separation of church and state would have been overwhelmingly supported if all those guys were Christian and wanted a Christian America?
It takes someone with no understanding of the Christian faith to make that statement. You are confusing "Christian state", national, with "Christian state", as in states, based on the "community standards" of each of the states.
Please provide the clause in the Constitution got rid of official state religious. After you fail to find it, check out the years that the original 13 disestablished on their own.
I'm combining this from two of your posts to make your statement clearer.In colonial times your religion was the religion of the colony you lived in. That was the law in those days. It was not enforced in some of the backwoods counties, but is was enforced law in most of the colonies.
People had to contribute tax dollars to maintain their state churches. People had to be members of good standing with the official state churches to be made freemen there. However, people did not have to worship in churches of the religion of the official church & there were churches of other denominations within most of the colonies.
Only about half of the Pilgrims were members of the church of the other half of the Pilgrims. None of them were Puritans. Puritans founded Salem & Scituate. Here you have two different religions within the same colony & neither of them were exactly in "backwoods counties". The colonists had a fit about the Royal Governor putting an Anglican church in Boston because if was offensive, not because it was "illegal".
During the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Ben Franklin suggested they start the convention with prayer. His suggestion was rejected and the convention was held without prayer.
Members of the convention were different religions, so the rejection of Franklin's suggestion makes some sense. It had nothing to do with any kind of rejection of Christianity.
Those founders not only rejected prayer, they demanded separation of church and state.
They rejected creating a national religion. That is hardly a demand for the separation of church & state.
All of the above are facts of American History that can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica or any book on American history.
There are facts & there are interpretations of what those facts mean. If you don't believe my interpretation, keep sifting through the Constitution to find that clause which forced all of the states to disestablish.
Now, I ask you this: If the founders were Christians who wanted a Christian America, why did they reject prayer at the convention?
No prayer would have been appropriate for everyone there. In those days, most prayers weren't the watered down versions of prayer that are common today. Most of these people were heavily schooled in the doctrine of their faiths. Saying some kind of universal Christian prayer would have been akin to a Roman Catholic taking communion at a Baptist church, sure to offend everyone.
Why did the enact Separation of Church and State?
They didn't.
Why does the Constitution not mention Jesus, or God.
Religion was left to the states.
Why does the Declaration of Independence refer to the Deist "Nature's God" instead of the Christian Jesus God?
It was a good way to poke a finger in the eye of the monarch.
I understand the Constitution and the words of the Deists who wrote it.
Could you splain why Paine, clearly a deist quoted extensively from the Old Testament in "Common Sense"?
Deists pray to Nature's god in the name of Paine? He died for them? LOL Muslim's think Jesus was a prophet. Christians don't.
You say I do not understand Christianity,
You clearly don't.
but you do not understand Deism.
I don't think you're um, enlightening me about it, if you're trying to tell me that Paine is a prophet of the erm, "faith". I'm tempted to ask you to try to untangle the mess you've made while trying to enlighten po ignorant me. I think your explanation would prolly be a real hoot. If you're gonna try anywayz though, feel free to talk down to me.
To answer my own question for you, the Lord tried to warn the Jews not to raise up kings over themselves. They didn't listen. The rest is history & God's warning was proven correct. Any Deist would agree, which is why Paine used it in his argument to toss out the monarchy.
I'm still waiting for that clause of the Constitution that forced all of the states to disestablish. Show me the rejected text the founders tried to include in the Constitution, which would have built a wall of separation.
I think I kinda understand the words if and is. If I run into trouble, could I please ask you to help me figger 'em out? Like I said, "If you're gonna try anywayz though, feel free to talk down to me."
Now where were we? Ah yes, we are back here again. If Deism had prophets, Paine would be to Deists as Jesus is to Christians.
It's unfortunate that your beliefs have closed your mind so tightly that you seem unable to understand my response to you. Christianity recognizes many prophets. Jesus is not one of them. Trying to equate Paine to the prophets or to Jesus in any way is ignorant, less you wanna try to tell me that nature's god spoke to him or that people thought it did. That's not what you're trying to tell me, is it?
What's your point?
My point has to do with the fact that Paine's understanding of Christianity added to his understanding in general. Although he was a deist, his beliefs did not close his mind. That allowed him to argue his points to Christians in their own language, instead of looking as foolish as someone who tries to do the same from a position of ignorance. Modern deists & agnostics could learn something from Paine. Instead of running away screaming from every idea that comes from someone else's religious teachings, they might actually find truths that speak to them in the texts too.
Are you trying to instigate me into posting Paine quotes calling on Deists and Unitarians to unite against Christianity?
What makes you think I'm trying to instigate you into doing anything?
Shall we turn America into Bosnia with a religious war?
Why would we wanna do that?
Ever heard of the first amendment?
Okay, I'll bite. What is it?
How about the tenth?
Tenth verse, same as the first.
Don't debate me on the issue...Take it up with the Supreme Court...They have ruled on it numerous times in our history.
Send 'em over. I'd be more than happy to straighten them out. Still, you're starting to make me feel old here. SCOTUS never really got around to doing it until it was within my lifetime. How bout you? Were you born before or after 1961 & 1978, the years the mighty robed deities finally straightened out Maryland & Tennessee?
The "rejected text" you speak of was the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson. It became law in Virginia on Jan 16, 1786.
Looks to me like that means he knew it was a state issue, less you're gonna try to tell me that states had to recognize all of the provisions of other state constitutions, through full faith or something like that...
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was based on that act.
Full faith & all that, right? LOL Looks almost like you're making all of this up as you go.
If the first amendment was the big fix, why didn't all of the states quickly drop the religious clauses from their state constitutions? Take a look. Every single state constitution has a religious protection clause. Instead of dropping the clauses, all of the states tightened up the religious clauses in their constitutions, generally towards more state protections, IE, "freedoms".
If things keep going in the direction they have been going, the states will be required to drop their clauses soon, because SCOTUS is heading in the direction of establishing "none of the above" as the official state religion.
Prior to the first and tenth amendments, religious discrimination was written into the constitutions of various colonies.
I got news for ya, a bunch of things on your list lasted past the ratification of the Bill of Rights. States generally disestablished without any help from big brother.
Nothing like talking down and lecturing another on dogma! Two sides to that coin fella. I don't see you willing to learn other dogma from someone else.
I would flunk the religious tests of colonial times, because I am not a member of any church & haven't been since I was a teen. I disagree with the politics of most, if not all of the organized faiths.
Learning other people's dogma has never been a problem for me, other than I forget more of it than I remember. It's not that it offends me, rather, much of it looks hollow or empty to me. I read "Reason" & it looks like meanderings of an author's bitterness spilling out, though it is likely that it "speaks" to you. Different strokes for different folks...
It is not that I want to inflict my world view or beliefs on anyone, but I resent the hell about the way that secularism has been inflicted on me & mine. It was done to me in the name of freedom, but it is no different than what was done in earlier days in the name of state religion.
Because of the side of the argument that I take, people tend to make that assumption about me. I sure as heck am not going to tip my hand before there is any lucre in the pot. :o)
Lets clear the water. I like Paine, but I do not take him seriously.
One of my colonial ancestors was a Thomas Paine (1612-1706). He was Robert Treat Paine's great grandfather. I tried to find out if the revolutionary era Thomas Paine was related. As far as I know, there is no connection. Anyway, I've read a lot more about him than by him.
"Common Sense" was like a best seller, but don't ask me to remember the number of copies printed. The number was amazing, considering the size of the population. It had a huge impact on the history of our nation.
Secularist zealotry is just as dangerous as religious zealotry and I oppose them both.
My own special niche seems to find opposition by all! lol
America belongs to all of us.
Sure, but all I want is my own little corner of it. I think that is pretty much what most of us want.
Both those who demand America be a Christian nation
It is a Christian nation, but there is no law that makes it a Christian nation. It is built into it, through the majority of it's people. No piece of paper, no matter how well thought out defines a nation. A nation requires a certain amount of agreement about what is on that piece of paper. Zealots are working hard to change what's on the paper, without bothering to change their fellow citizen's hearts.
The secularists push to change the what's on the paper. They hope that pushing all signs of Christianity out of view will make it lose it's place in the society. The Romans tried it & that was back when we were really outnumbered. To me it seems kinda stupid to ignore the parts of history that you don't like.
The secular push causes the deeply religious to push back. I'm ready to give each side their own corner, so they can have everything they want. My only rule would be that both sides have to leave everyone else alone.
and those who demand America be Godless scare the hell out of me.
They don't scare me. I still have the basic fabric of the country watching my back.
That's where I'm coming from.
I figured as much. You should have started laffing earlier. I was pushing the ridiculous button pretty hard.
I'd say that there are good odds that they knew each other or at the least, knew of each other. R.T. Paine was a signer of the DoI & a Rep of Mass in the Continental Congress. He was in the thick of things, leading up to the Revolutionary War & beyond.
All of Thomas Paine's roots were in England. He grew up there. I think Franklin met him in London & liked his ideas, so brought him over to Philly. It's been awhile, so don't quote me, though I do know the part of him not being a colonist is correct.
If there is a family connection it would be in the 1600's or earlier, as my Thomas Paine was a Mayflower descendant. Also, their families were from different parts of England.
Wanna know my connection to Franklin, Washington, Nathaniel Greene & Nathan Hale? All of them are a near miss. LOL I've spent some time working to find a connection to John Paul Jones (the name Jones is almost as bad as Smith) & trying to connect my Monroes with James Monroe, but so far I have not had any success.
My distrust of Christian zealotry is a product of my age, I think. God loving Germans were chanting "Germany is a Christian Nation" in the thirties. That resulted in the murder of millions of God loving Jews. That happened in my lifetime.
All of the business that led up the the Nazi's is a heck of a lot more complicated than just hyper-Christianity or hyper-nationalism, as I'm sure you know. It took over a century of the Preussen education model, devised to create German militarism to reach fruition. Throw in the popularity of eugenics with the international elite thinkers & very bad things are bound to happen.
The Russian secularists murdered millions of their own in their quest to do away with God.
True & we have people who think too much like them running our schools. That is creepy to me, but not scary, if you know what I mean.
That's what makes FR so much fun. If we did that in real life our neighbors would call the men in the white coats to take us away!
I actually do the same in real life. My ex-husband threatened to call the men in white coats a few times. lol No, that is not why he is my ex. We agree more than disagree about politics.
Before my older sons moved out we used to regularly have good knock down, drag out debates. I told them if they ever resorted to calling me names, I won. I miss having those debates with them & FR has helped to fill that hole. Both have somehow ended up politically liberal. I blame their father & he blames me. lol I should have home schooled them, but they are both smarter than I am & I had to study to help them with their homework.
Are you sure you are in the right discussion board?
Your beliefs would seem to be much more in tune with DU.
ROFL!
You can't backup your claims with factual data like I requested, so you jump over to this thread to attack me here.
Show me a post where I praise free use of narcotics.
Distrust?
You're right, I do distrust Christian zealots and that is because of people like you.
Christian charities?
I'd be willing to wager that I contribute more to Christian charities than you make.
Am I on the right discussion board?
I don't know, you are apparently familliar with Du. Are you trying to recruit me over to your liberal board?
I'll repeat my reply to you on the other thread in case you can't find your way back.
Can you produce one single fact to back up your claims? All I've seen from you is hot air!
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