Posted on 12/15/2002 8:04:45 AM PST by stoney
Leave Our Holidays Alone Sandra Hartle 12/12/2002
Every year at this time the atheist, and whoever, crawl out from whatever rock they hide under most of the time with their barrage of complaints about Christmas and the icons of the Christian Religion.
Well I have some news for you folks, this country was founded by Christians, and continues to be 85% Christian in it populous. That's right we are the majority. Not you. So I am going to write this article, and then I am going to make every effort I can to put an end to the minority running over the top of the majority in this country with their cries of fowl when it comes to anything Christian.
This means that 15% of the total populous of America is either some other religion, or they practice no religion at all. That of course is their choice and that choice is protected by the Constitution of this country. However, so are the rights of the remaining 85% of the population’s rights protected by that same Amendment.
Let's look at what it says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
(Excerpt) Read more at juntosociety.com ...
There are a number of different issues percolating around this question.
First, the context of the times was that the "norm" around the time of the Revolution was Christian, and overwhelmingly Protestant (with the exception of Maryland which had a strong Catholic presence courtesy of the Calverts). Congregational in New England, Presbyterian in the Middle Atlantic, and Anglican in the South, with a scattering of Anabaptists, Mennonites, Dunkers, and other small sects. An unbeliever or "infidel" was ostracized by most communities.
Among the upper class and college educated (the class from which the Founding Fathers and Signers largely hailed) the philosophy of the Enlightenment encouraged speculation and Freethinking. But this was primarily philosophical and not religious. Jefferson was roundly criticized for his rejection of parts of the Bible (something that the "biblical scholars" do all the time these days) and his doubts on the divinity of Christ. His enemies openly attacked him as an atheist. And my own great great great grandfather created a minor scandal by being a Freethinker in the 1860s!
The other thing you have to consider is that when many of the Founders appear to be attacking the Church from our point of view, what they are actually attacking is the Established church, that is to say an official government church supported by taxes levied on all the people, believers or not. Many founders objected to this on the principle of religious freedom, not because they necessarily agreed with the Nonconformists from a doctrinal standpoint. We haven't had an Established Church in so long that we've completely forgotten that issue, which was VERY hot at the time.
I am an atheist, I have not once complained about the Christian practice of Christmas. I have questioned the Christian practice of Satanism on Halloween:
An Atheist Questions the Practice of Halloween...
Atheist Questions the Practice of Halloween...
Question the Practice of Halloween... Or the Christian Practice of Satanism
But since you mention it in such defamatory terms... Are you practicing the Christian Christmas or the idolarous pagan replacement for it?
As an atheist, I maintain that the societal practice of abortion is ritual mass murder upon the altars dedicated to idolatrous vanities, a collective human sacrifice to pagan idols.
It boils down to a question of who is practicing what for me...
Consider Thomas Hobbes:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of DarknessChap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.
Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is erroneously listed as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. English has more commonalties with Greek and Latin.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. This cannot be reconciled with the fact that it is a Hebrew word...
Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin by age 9, has this to support my assertions in Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
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