Hey schmuck and paste....the ten commandments were for moses and the JEWS......Funny how, right away Christians are mocked.....Where do all the Jews out there stand on this???
"Get the religious [stuff] out of government" might get you a round of applause at an ACLU meeting but it is totally out of step with the history and traditions of this country. The Founders were heavily influenced by religion, and many of the religious traditions incorporated in our government originated with them. The First Amendment bars two things regarding religion: "an establishment of religion" and "restricting the free exercise thereof." The first prohibition bars a state church or a religious test for office. It has never been interpreted to mean that any trace of religious faith or expression must be cleansed from government. The 10 Commandments case does not involve federal property at all. It involves a state courthouse. The chief judge had a monument erected that was intended to reflect the 10 Commandments' influence as a source of morally based law. Predictably, groups that want to expunge religion from our public life objected and found some judge who ordered it taken down. A three judge federal appeals court agreed. The state judge has refused to comply. I think this case has the potential to be a real blockbuster. The liberal press is treating it as analogous to state officials defying school desegregation orders. I suppose it is superficially similar in that it involves the question of unelected federal judges dictating public policy to state officials. The major difference is that no one is being directly affected by this monument. It is at worst a symbolic irritation to the ACLU crowd. Ultimately, if the Supreme Court upholds the original order or declines to hear the case, the Bush administration may face a real problem. I think the spectre of federal marshals going to an Alabama courthouse and arresting the chief judge over displaying the 10 Commandments is political suicide for Bush in the South. One of Bush's most important constituencies is the so-called religious right. They will definitely not be pleased. Certainly it is not something JOhn Ashcroft, a committed Christian and son of a preacher, would want to order. Perhaps the Justice Department should have thought of this beforehand and intervened in the case. It may still do so. The best outcome would be for the Supreme Court to use the case to resolve the muddy precedents concerning religion. Its jurisprudence on this issue has been an unmitigated disaster, leading to endless litigation and hard feelings over petty issues that should have been left to local authorities. There is nothing in the Constitution that would automatically prevent local authorities from displaying religious symbols on state property or from allowing public prayer. Indeed, it was standard practice for most of our country's history. No doubt atheists and members of some religious groups will feel marginalized, but that does not seem to me to rise to the level of a Constitutional issue.
we know better now. if in the constitution it said that the sun revolves around the earth, would we still continue to operate that way today?! NO! we know more about the universe now than we did when the constitution was written. who cares what bogus beliefs they had back then! i don't care what lines you can cite wherever. the government should have NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!!!! as long as it does, THERE'S GOING TO BE TROUBLE!
just saw this judge on the o'reilly factor. what a scary individual. this guy is a judge? :shakes head: he kept repeating that he is fighting to acknowledge god. he went on to say that the founders of our country fought and died for this. UH, OK, IDIOT. you can still acknowledge any god you want...JUST DO IT WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT INVOLVED, YOU RELIGIOUS NUT. ROCK
It's liberals like you that don't want a moral base in this country. You beg for the federal funding of abortion (genocide), you beg for liberal judges that are way too soft on hard criminals, you don't give a shit about family values, You support organizations like the ACLU who use our tax dollars to support groups like MAMBLA (man and man boy love association) a group that actually teaches older men how to rape young boys, you don't care about parental responsibly and raising our children correctly, you support a president who sees nothing wrong with getting a blowjob in the oval office while his wife and daughter are waiting for him to come home for dinner. I could go on and on. If we lived in the liberal world you want us to god help us all. Would there be any respect for human life? Criminals would roam the streets freely, our children would grow up with no moral backbone in their body. No thanks man. The fact of the matter is our founding fathers put religion in our constitution for the purpose of having a moral and decent society. This is their country, not yours. You are only here because you immigrated here or your ancestors did. If you don't like our country move to France. No is forcing you to live here.
Believe It, or Not By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times Today marks the Roman Catholics' Feast of the Assumption, honoring the moment that they believe God brought the Virgin Mary into Heaven. So here's a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent). So this day is an opportunity to look at perhaps the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith. Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea. Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.) The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll. My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half. The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America. Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way: "God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God's intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God's choice." The Virgin Mary is an interesting prism through which to examine America's emphasis on faith because most Biblical scholars regard the evidence for the Virgin Birth, and for Mary's assumption into Heaven (which was proclaimed as Catholic dogma only in 1950), as so shaky that it pretty much has to be a leap of faith. As the Catholic theologian Hans Küng puts it in "On Being a Christian," the Virgin Birth is a "collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary" narratives, an echo of virgin birth myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world. Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Yale historian and theologian, says in his book "Mary Through the Centuries" that the earliest references to Mary (like Mark's gospel, the first to be written, or Paul's letter to the Galatians) don't mention anything unusual about the conception of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke do say Mary was a virgin, but internal evidence suggests that that part of Luke, in particular, may have been added later by someone else (it is written, for example, in a different kind of Greek than the rest of that gospel). Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians. I'm not denigrating anyone's beliefs. And I don't pretend to know why America is so much more infused with religious faith than the rest of the world. But I do think that we're in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society. But mostly, I'm troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. I worry partly because of the time I've spent with self-satisfied and unquestioning mullahs and imams, for the Islamic world is in crisis today in large part because of a similar drift away from a rich intellectual tradition and toward the mystical. The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.
What is this nonsense? Do you really believe that not wanting religion in the government is equal to not having a moral base? to abortions? to being soft on hard criminals? What the hell are you talking about? what is this MAMBLA absurdity, what does it have to do with not wanting religion in the official institutions of our goverment? Many of the latest convicted boy rapers were priests!!!! You really want to open that can of worms???? You are not only a foot, but also a bigot. Go back to your KKK camp.