Thanks for your support, but Kevmo's posts seem to be exactly what spirited irish wants.
I've seen people like Kevmo on Free Republic, on rare occasions before.
Usually they burn themselves out eventually, but "eventually" can take a long time coming...
tactcalogic: “I think we have much more serious political issues to deal with right now than hunting heretics.”
Spirited: It’s because you do not know the definition of heresy that you do not recognize yourself as well as BroJoek as heresy hunters.
Both of you are at variance with the essay “Damnnable Heresy,...” because the theories and opinions you hold are contrary to those delineated throughout the essay.
So what is heresy? According to on-line dictionaries, the definition of heresy depends on particular religious beliefs, even those thought to be ‘scientific.’
For example, Christianity loosely defines heresy as opinions and teachings (i.e.), contrary to revealed truth. This makes evolution a heresy since it is contrary to creation ex nihilo.
Miriam Webster on-line further defines heresy as dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice.
So for example, to dissent against the theories of Darwinism and Dialectical Materialism in the Soviet Union was to be branded an evil heretic deserving of death. Disbelief in either of these evolutionary conceptions was not tolerated. Thus Soviets “burned at the stake” in excess of 60,000,000 heretics, and other undesirables.
It is because of the particular theories and opinions held by BroJoeK and tacticalogic which are in opposition to those advanced in the essay that they are “hunting intolerable heretics” in this thread. Going by the relentless attacks launched by BroJoeK against Linda Kimball, YHAOS, and Spirited Irish, it appears they are particularly evil heretics. Thus he does his best to verbally “burn them at the stake” over and over and over.
§ 1841. The remaining part of the clause declares, that "no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States." This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test, or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in the history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew, that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of the civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility. The Catholic and the Protestant had alternately waged the most ferocious and unrelenting warfare on each other; and Protestantism itself, at the very moment, that it was proclaiming the right of private judgment, prescribed boundaries to that right, beyond which if any one dared to pass, he must seal his rashness with the blood of martyrdom. The history of the parent country, too, could not fail to instruct them in the uses, and the abuses of religious tests. They there found the pains and penalties of non-conformity written in no equivocal language, and enforced with a stern and vindictive jealousy. One hardly knows, how to repress the sentiments of strong indignation, in reading the cool vindication of the laws of England on this subject, (now, happily, for the most part abolished by recent enactments,) by Mr. Justice Blackstone, a man, in many respects distinguished for habitual moderation, and a deep sense of justice. "The second species," says he "of non-conformists, are those, who offend through a mistaken or perverse zeal. Such were esteemed by our laws, enacted since the time of the reformation, to be papists, and protestant dissenters; both of which were supposed to be equally schismatics in not communicating with the national church; with this difference, that the papists divided from it upon material, though erroneous, reasons; but many of the dissenters, upon matters of indifference, or, in other words, upon no reason at all. Yet certainly our ancestors were mistaken in their plans of compulsion and intolerance. The sin of schism, as such, is by no means the object of temporal coercion and punishment. If, through weakness of intellect, through misdirected piety, through perverseness and acerbity of temper, or, (which is often the case,) through a prospect of secular advantage in herding with a party, men quarrel with the ecclesiastical establishment, the civil magistrate has nothing to do with it; unless their tenets and practice are such, as threaten ruin or disturbance to the state. He is bound, indeed, to protect the established church; and, if this can be better effected, by admitting none but its genuine members to offices of trust and emolument, he is certainly at liberty so to do; the disposal of offices being matter of favour and discretion. But, this point being once secured, all persecution for diversity of opinions, however ridiculous or absurd they may be, is contrary to every principle of sound policy and civil freedom. The names and subordination of the clergy, the posture of devotion, the materials and colour of the minister's garment, the joining in a known, or an unknown form of prayer, and other matters of the same kind, must be left to the option of every man's private judgment."
Kevmo’s posts seem to be exactly what spirited irish wants.
***Is that true, Spirited? Or do you think that it would have been better to open up this thread under the religious forum guidelines (even “open” in the RF has good rules) and brojoke’s early projections of his own intentions would have been deleted. We would not have ended up where we are now, but on the other hand it is doubtful that a genuine heretic such as brojoke would be exposed.