This is like proclaiming you support our troops while advocating everything possible to undermine them. I don;t have the time or inclination to rebut every misstatement in this post, but I will note that religious tolerance flourished in our country while it operatd under the very principles you decry, principles which Romney merely restated in his speech. You simply misstate the historical record in claiming that our early history was not dominated by Christianity. Even the Supreme Court is on record saying America is a Christian country. The idea that the Founders desired modern day secularism is absurd on its face. The public displays and traditions that are under legal assault by anti-Christian groups like the ACLU were commonplace in the Founders' day, both before and after formation of the new republic. To think they would adopt a Constitution that banned contemporary religious practice is irrational.
You whine loud. Any normal white person wouldn't want to be around you. Why make baseless claims. Obviously different religions are for different races. If you can't handle that you must have a problem with their being different races.
The founding fathers were largely Universalists and Deists -- they believed in a single God and rejected the Trinity. The historical record is strong and clear that many of the Founding Fathers were not Christian. See "Our Godless Constitution" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050221/allen passage from the article: If we define a Christian as a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, then it is safe to say that some of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians at all. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine were deists--that is, they believed in one Supreme Being but rejected revelation and all the supernatural elements of the Christian Church; the word of the Creator, they believed, could best be read in Nature. John Adams was a professed liberal Unitarian, but he, too, in his private correspondence seems more deist than Christian. George Washington and James Madison also leaned toward deism, although neither took much interest in religious matters. Madison believed that "religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize." He spoke of the "almost fifteen centuries" during which Christianity had been on trial: "What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." If Washington mentioned the Almighty in a public address, as he occasionally did, he was careful to refer to Him not as "God" but with some nondenominational moniker like "Great Author" or "Almighty Being." It is interesting to note that the Father of our Country spoke no words of a religious nature on his deathbed, although fully aware that he was dying, and did not ask for a man of God to be present; his last act was to take his own pulse, the consummate gesture of a creature of the age of scientific rationalism. Tom Paine, a polemicist rather than a politician, could afford to be perfectly honest about his religious beliefs, which were baldly deist in the tradition of Voltaire: "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.... I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
we have debated this many times before. First of all deism back then is unlike deism today. Next Thomas Jefferson in one of his inaugural speeches defined the Creator as the God of Abraham Issac and Jacob. Next the establishment clause as part of the the bill of rights became part of the constitution because many of the states already had ties to Christianity and they did not wish to have a National denomination. At the time of the constitutional convention a majority of the states had established religion like tests for people holding office. The office holders had to swear an oath in which they proclaimed a belief in God at a minimum. All this was cited by me on elitetrader in the past. Look it up. The US supreme court declared the U.S. is a Christian nation and went through a long restatement of the reasons why. Contrary to some arguments the case has never been over ruled. Up until the 1950s state govts funded Christianity in government paid for institutions like schools. Since the 50s the supreme court started taking religion out of public institutions. I think it would be fair to say that because of activists courts we are no longer a Christian nation. In fact if you were to argue we may now be a secular nation - I would not argue with you. But it is ignorant of our history to state that Evangelicals are attempting to turn the U.S. from a secular nation into a theocratic one. Evangelicals are only trying to stem the tide of an aggressive organized campaign to denude this nation of its Christian roots. Frankly - I think it was the enlightened Christian values (which were the foundation of this nation) which allowed all these other religions and atheism to flourish. As we remove good Christian values from the nation - the vacuum will be filled with crap. And eventually some form totalitarianism may to take its place. The question may be will P.C. lead to a socialist/communist anti - religious regime or will some other type of religious law become supreme. In my opinion messing with the great Christian values of the best county in history is an experiment not worth taking. Just look at what has happened to our public schools. But, if that what the people want fine. I believe in democracy. I am just against it being done by judges.
Gee, i think someone got up on the wrong side of christmas this morning. You seem to be forgetting, the good christian values you speak of WERE the very basis of native slaughter, civil war, slavery, trial by bible, not evidence. It never occured to you, that "atheism" flourished as a direct backlash to the appalling hypocrasy of evangelicals, canned, forced religion, of "fallen women", astonishing sexual discrimination, overwhelming industrial scale malevolence http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=660 lynching's, and sheer warmongering? Activist courts, surely you jest-i dont understand , how you fail to veiw the society of say, 1820-80, as somehow less of a totalitarian regime, by bible, than what you seem to fear now. The values you seem to beleive in, never really existed, IMO, its simply that those on the other side of them (take your pick) were excluded, marginalised, beaten, murdered, in not too different a manner than modern islamic societies. To speak of values, in a christian sense, when the bible itself contains but a few pages of christs words, (if that) none of which are particularly adhered to by "christians", seems somehow absurd. Im certain i understand what your saying, it just rings hollow, on assesment of facts, to me. Allowing atheism to flourish? No, STOPPING non-beleif isn't totalitarian. If the bible was so damn good, if the beleif structure was so friggin great, then SURELY it must stand on it's on two feet , and people would simply say "wow, this is the real deal, im so happy no-one shoved it down my throat from the day i was born" buuuut........thats not how it actually works, is it. Oh, and merry christmas/saturnalia.
The Constitution, the document that gives this nation and its people its distinct identity, is based on the Enlightenment thought of John Locke,Baron de Montesquieu, and others. If the US were a "Christian nation", I'd expect Christian principles (Jesus as Saviour and Son of God) to be a part of the Constitution. Fortunately, it is not. The religion of the Founding Fathers--many of whom were deist--is irrelevant. It is what they produced--the Constitution--that establishes the Enlightenment foundation of this nation.
The God I call "our Father" is not the god of this world...the god of governments, ect. There is no comparison, no relation, no connection. Back in the day, when gods were feared, it was good to have a bad ass god in your national arsenal as part of a psy-ops campaign. It would be akin to having a nuclear warhead dedicated to a mutually assured destruction policy. And hopefully the superstition of surrounding nations would prevent them from attacking yours first. Israel built a mystique around such a god. Kings use such gods to build loyalty among the people for the king's government. A king who takes orders from a bad-ass god could be credited with enough saber-rattling craziness that other nations would simply not mess with Texas, so-to-speak. People who serve such gods make excellent citizens. So the tradition of having some kind of god relative to the government lingers, and works well especially for those nations with imperialist motives. Jesus