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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 12:27:51 PM

CuriousLord

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KenDckey

I always thought plants and animals are food.

Spoken just like a man who's never had to endure the various atrocities made from soy.

Seriously, "soy pudding" has been at the dessert bar for weeks now. Most pudding tastes good, despite its appearnce; this clearly breaks the puddling law.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 12:28:21 PM

TheHeretic

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

Actions speak louder than words.

Always. Plenty of hypocrites and frauds out there, but I don't know of any sect that embraces the straw-man ideology I was replying too.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 12:30:04 PM

KenDckey

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I have vegan family members believe me I know what soy is. and I still think plants and animals are food.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 12:31:52 PM

CuriousLord

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You poor, poor fellow. The soy's obviously afflicted your cognative processes. Now it's only a matter of time before it starts demanding you make everything you'd normally eat out of it, thereby completing another step in its conquest to take over the world's food supply.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 1:45:37 PM

DomKen

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I've had an evangelical xtian minister tell me point blank that "Thou shalt not lie" and the other behavior commandments only apply to other believers under the theory that only other believers are part of their communit and those commandments only apply to the community. Unfortunately posting a link to the usenet thread would out me which I'm simply not doing.

I will also point out that in my childhood I was taken to Baptist church services for a while. Before being tossed out for laughing at the sermon I distinctly remember hearing the frequentlyrepeated tenet that "once your name was in the Book of the Lamb you were saved forever." Since this is a flourid way of saying baptized/saved/born again I cannot see how you could possibly claim the largest protestant sect doesn't hold that pillar of faith. I certainly didn't make up the terms "once saved, always saved" or "eternal security"

As to my consuming of living things. Yes, I do it and I still view life as precious. I do however do make an effort not to eat foods raised or processed in inhumane ways. I also do my best to minimize my waste of food so that nothing died simply to be thrown away.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 1:57:35 PM

bipolarber

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DomKen,

Excellent approach to being an omnivore!

I was brought up on a farm in the middle of what the politicos like to term "fly over country." We were always taught that waste was the real sin when you are dealing with livestock. You try to use as much of an animal as you can.

I've also always held the belief that more people should have to go through the process of killing something, and dressing out the carcass, if they are to earn the right to eat meat. People just seem to think that it shows up at Kroger and has always looked like a red patty. You tend to be a little more respectful of where your food comes from, if you have to look it in the eye first.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 2:07:18 PM

Real0ne

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KenDckey

I was sitting here comtemplating some of the arguments that I have seen and heard on the affect that religion has/should have on the political races. I remember that when JFK was running the fear was that the pope would run the country. A big deal seems, at least to me, that because of religion, Obama, Romney and Bush are all criticized. It is almost to the point, my opinion, that if a candidate has a religious background that they aren't qualified to run a country. I personally don't understand what the problem is. Therefore I would ask that someone explain it to me.

look at bush. has nazi in the family history and has done more to create a totalitarian police state in this country than a few generations oif his predecessors.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 5:21:59 PM

Feric

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Preachers in politics have always run into the national fear of a religious figure sitting in the White House. William Jennings Bryan ran for President three times, and always lost, largely on the basis of that fear. Pat Robertson ran into it as well, and IMHO it's the reason why Mitt Romney is now going down in flames as well. The separation of church and state was probably the greatest line in the Constitution ever written. I've talked via IM with a number of people in different countries who truly admire that little proviso; they wish their own country had that as well.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 5:55:43 PM

Sanity

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Well, except for the fact that that line isn't in the Constitution anywhere. That's a myth.

You're probably thinking of the first amendment, which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

quote:

The separation of church and state was probably the greatest line in the Constitution ever written.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 6:02:53 PM

KenDckey

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

Well, except for the fact that that line isn't in the Constitution anywhere. That's a myth.

You're probably thinking of the first amendment, which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

quote:

The separation of church and state was probably the greatest line in the Constitution ever written.

The way I see it, is that the 1st Amendment seperated the state from the church. Not necessarily the other way around.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 6:07:13 PM

Sanity

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Right, that was the intent. Athiests were burned back then. Well, practically. Most everyone was extremely religious back then, and the notion that the founders meant to keep religion out of state affairs is nonsensical. They would have seen that as collective suicide!

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 6:09:58 PM

Alumbrado

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Framers, not founders...the 'founders' were loyal subjects of the Crown, and held many beliefs that are refuted by the Constitution.

< Message edited by Alumbrado -- 2/3/2008 6:10:15 PM >

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 6:14:46 PM

Sanity

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Thank you for correcting me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

Framers, not founders...the 'founders' were loyal subjects of the Crown, and held many beliefs that are refuted by the Constitution.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 7:41:55 PM

TheHeretic

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      Not knowing what bizarre individuals you may have talked with online, or what peculiar little sects you may be drawing your ideas on what Christianity is about from, I'll refrain from any rash statements. That you have an undercover identity on their board/s suggests you found the extremes you were looking for.  I've heard stranger than that in little cults that gather in living rooms.

     I'm not very good with the chapter and verse stuff (and don't feel link Googling up a concordance), but Jesus said clearly that there will be many who worked in his name, but never knew him. Plenty of that sort around the Baptist school I spent a couple years incarcerated in.

     I've developed a rule in recent years.  I won't buy goods or services from anyone with the little fish on the business cards or sign. I figure, if they have to tell me there, I'd never figure it out by how they treat the customer.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/3/2008 9:00:37 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

Right, that was the intent. Athiests were burned back then. Well, practically. Most everyone was extremely religious back then, and the notion that the founders meant to keep religion out of state affairs is nonsensical. They would have seen that as collective suicide!

No. the intent was to completely seperate church and state. Jefferson and Madison made this quite clear in any number of letters and speeches.

The 1st ammendment isn't the only place that keeps that functions as a wall of seperation in the US Constitution. Article VI forbids any religious test for any office in the US.

As to the framers being very faithful, that is simply not correct. Mant were deists and Jefferson had to defend himself from accusations that he was an atheist when he ran for president. The claims that all were devout christians are of recent manufacture. Mostly created by David Barton who simply made up quotyes by some of the framers and took others out of context or selectively edited them to make his case.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/4/2008 12:45:02 AM

SugarMyChurro

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The founders of this nation were often deists, probably because liberal thinking hadn't reached the word "atheist" just yet. It takes time for ideas to form and to take a name in common parlance. Philosophically speaking they had just gotten over the idea that the king had a direct relationship to god thanks to John Locke, and they had just taken up the notion that politics had more to do with what we all expected from each other thanks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

They were hardly social outcasts for expressing strong views against religion. That's just idiocy, or at the very least insanity.

-----

Deism: [1]deúism. noun. The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble."
-- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Ezra Stiles March 9, 1790

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
-- Benjamin Franklin, in Toward The Mystery

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-- James Madison, letter to William Bradford April 1, 1774

"The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to his nephew, Peter Carr

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814

"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 . . . Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

"...denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian."
-- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-- and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religous opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
-- Joel Barlow, Article 11 of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the US and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, written during Washington's administration, ratified during Adams' administration.

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
-- John Adams

Further refs:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b44ab97110d.htm
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6177
http://www.deism.org/foundingfathers.htm
http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1413815&mesg_id=1413815

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/4/2008 1:14:20 AM

meatcleaver

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KenDckey

I was sitting here comtemplating some of the arguments that I have seen and heard on the affect that religion has/should have on the political races. I remember that when JFK was running the fear was that the pope would run the country. A big deal seems, at least to me, that because of religion, Obama, Romney and Bush are all criticized. It is almost to the point, my opinion, that if a candidate has a religious background that they aren't qualified to run a country. I personally don't understand what the problem is. Therefore I would ask that someone explain it to me.

Religion is based on fantasy not rational thinking. I for one prefer to leaders to be rational unlike the messianic Hitler (Catholic), Stalin (seminary educated),. Let's come down to earth a little in our choices. Tony Blair, whose sole defence of joining the Iraqi dabacle was 'I believe it was right', you can't make a rational argument against that sort of stance. You believe of don't believe. He needed no evidence to believe in God and he needed no evidence to think there was WMDs in Iraq. A person who believes in god (most people believe through socialisation) should not be allowed in charge of a country. The next thing you know, they will think we are being attacked by pink fairies and the only way to stop them is nuke them.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/4/2008 1:23:25 AM

Zensee

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We are never going to separate the wheat from the chaff on this one. There is no fair and reasonable way to deny candidates the right to run, based on religious or philosophical grounds. However, as part of a standard questionnaire for candidates, a detailed survey of their core beliefs should be demanded. I mean questions particular to their beliefs, like - do you believe in heaven and hell, do you believe your holy book is the literal truth, has a deity ever spoken to you directly and, if so, what did they say?

Honest answers to these questions would be very useful helping me choose. And the "I don't mix politics and religion" dodge should not be allowed for candidates because we have as much right to know about the sub-floor of their platform as we do about the visible planks. I'd take a refusal to answer as evidence of a shady character.

Regretably, in western democracies, where a frightening percentage of citizens believe the world is only six thousand years old and that the dinosaurs died in the flood, it is the candidate who professes to believe in regurgitated myths or to converse with invisible beings who is best suited to the tastes of the majority.

Let us pray for intervention.

Z.

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/4/2008 5:39:08 AM

Sanity

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One of your links actually went somewhere that wasn't unsubstantiated far-left mantras, and here's some of the things written there:

quote:

And not all the Deists were that open about it either. Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen were quite open about their Deism, but they didn't hold elective office. Jefferson, in contrast, was quite skeptical of Christianity in his private diaries and letters, but showed up in church when he was running for office. George Washington was, by all appearances, a devout Christian, although Gouveneur Morris wrote in his diary that he thought Washington didn't really believe in Christianity but just did it it for show.
The era of the Founding was quite obviously influenced both by Christianity and by the philosophy of the Enlightenment; anyone who tries to minimize either influence is not telling the whole story.

John Quincy Adams - 1795: “The highest order of the American Revolution was that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”

Benjamin Franklin - "He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world.”
John Jay - (first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) - "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
James Madison - (chief architect of the constitution) - “..we have staked the future of all of our political Institutions upon the capacity of all of us to govern ourselves based upon the 10 Commandments of God.”
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the whole people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof thus building a wall of separation between church and state"
and
"The reason that Christianity is the best friend of Government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart."

Take note of the first quote "legislature should make no law ... building a wall of separation between the church and state"
Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. Read more here

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b44ab97110d.htm

Just a tip - you might want to check those links!

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RE: Religion and Politics - 2/4/2008 6:18:27 AM

SugarMyChurro

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I'm open-minded about the idea that these guys had changing views and could even be hypocrites about their views. You made the outrageous, hyperbolic claim that they burned atheists at the stake and that being non-religious was political suicide. I just showed that you were wrong, or at the very least that you overstated the matter greatly. You tend to show all kinds of ignorance in these finer philosophical matters. And even the way you want to reassert your position is ham-handed.

Unsourced quotes from the comments section of that page hardly persuades me, BTW. Lots of people object to the idea that the founders were not as zealously christian as many would now seem to claim and pepper sites like that with misinformation in the comments.

These are complex ideas for a time in which real atheism - the idea of atheism had barely gotten a foothold. Jefferson, while not being a Christian, edited a version of the bible in which he hoped to capture the principles taught by Jesus whom he admired as an historical figure. It's also the case that John Locke's works were heavily religious in nature and these guys understood that many ideas were being taken from the bible and Mosaic law. The founders used some of these ideas to form a new form of republican government. I get all that.

I also understand that they pointedly protected religious freedom, or freedom from religion, in a handful of places in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and elsewhere.

I'm really not here to school you. School yourself.

P.S. This is my last post on this digression as I don't want to hijack the thread in this manner. It just annoys me when some ill-informed person tries to make silly claims. You might well surmise that my bit on deism is a cut and paste job that I have used for several years (dead links and all). I really don't have the time to argue over these largely settled matters of philosophical history for one closed-minded person. You are most welcome to your own blinkered viewpoint.

< Message edited by SugarMyChurro -- 2/4/2008 6:26:04 AM >

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