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Religions > Atheism |
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12 Jul 2006 05:33:16 AM |
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STOPTHERELIGIOUSRIGHT.ORG |
http://community-2.webtv.net/Tales_of_the_Western_World/STOPTHERELIGIOUS/
WELCOME TO STOPTHERELIGIOUSRIGHT.ORG
THIS IS HISTORY WITH A PUNCH!
"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated
hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions
with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of
the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly
increased by the total separation of the Church from the State." (James
Madison, letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819, 30 years after leading the
way in drafting the Constitution)
Articles and commentary:
TOC: The Rise of Church-State alliances: Emperors, Decrees and Church
Councils: 306-565
The Constitution and the Commandments
Liberty Movements: Women's Suffrage
Liberty movements: Interracial Marriage
Social Conservatism as a tool of the State
American Enlightment: Classical Temple Architecture and Archetypes of
Washington, DC
Einstein said what?
Recent Surveys on the changing Religious Identification of Americans
The Bible Belt: CDC & FBI slides and statistics
Ring Species, Evolution and why the Intelligent Design hypothesis isn't
considered a scientific one
Contact
Profile
FROM OTHERS:
American denominations' official support of slavery: Recorded minutes of
major church councils, circa 1840
Historical Revisionism: David Barton's Christian Nation
Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest
Sexual orientation in nature
Article The Biological Basis of Morality by twice Pulitzer Prize winning
scientist, Edward O. Wilson
One of the ways to address the attack on American principles of liberty by
the religious right is to address their revisionism, misinformation and
distortions. This site is an educational site regarding claims found in the
religious right's propaganda, which, not surprisingly, is not founded in
historical, legal, or scientific facts. An especially profound error is
their spin on Christian history and Christian principles. The oft repeated
claim, "America was founded on Christian principles" is seriously flawed.
They don't seem to know how to separate law from heriage and tradition. Or,
likely, it is deliberate among the most fanatical, issuing from the
compulsion to evangelize at any cost. America's sage, Thomas Jefferson
spoke against these people wanting to shove their religion down people's
throats. (See Jefferson church-state separation quotes page)
The theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in religious
intolerance, a strongly founded religious principle found in both the Bible
and the Koran. But the United States Constitution embraces principles of
liberty that would have been considered heresy by Christian leaders of
Massachusetts. In the General Councils of the past that shaped doctrine,
the decree would be "Let them be anathemized", a popular decree of
condemnation. Biblically sanctioned religious intolerance was codified in
Massachusetts. Indeed, that America was founded on Christian principles;
specificly principles of religious intolerance made painfully clear in the
Bible. Christianity's way or the highway to hell. Those are Christian
principles and they are firmly grounded in the Bible and are expressed
throughout Christianity's history. Nothing else is acceptable. Reading both
the Bible and Christian history shows us that liberties of religion,
speech, assembly and the press are clearly not Christian principles. Other
ideas are forbidden so speaking or writing them has always led to
persecution and much of the time, violence. Liberty principles are humanist
principles, both religious and secular, that arose in opposition to
injustice of Biblical and ecclesiatical decrees. Tolerance, democracy and
liberty are not the virtues nor ethics found in the Bible. For more on the
Bible and the Constitution, see my Ten Commandments essay. This essay also
shows the battle between the old order's Patrick Henry, who sought to have
government financially support Christian teachings, and the Jefferson -
Madison alliance that sought to separate religion and government. Madison
and Jefferson won that battle in 1786 with the passage of the Virginia
Statute on Religious Liberty, which became the model for the US
Constitution's 6th Article and 1st Amendment.
Leaders and followers of the right have difficulty differentiating between
religious ethics with liberty ethics. The ethics of equity and liberty are
ethics of fairness and tolerance. The Bible opposes tolerance in many
spheres of life, especially religious tolerance. It is so complete in it's
doctrine of religious intolerance that no matter which Christian sect was
in power over the centuries; Arianists, Monophysites, Catholics,
Montanists, Lutherans, Calvinists; they are all extremely intolerant of
other religious beliefs and most used the state and violence whenever
possible in order to gain power. It is impossible to get any traction with
this issue in the denominational battles: Catholic vs Protestant for
example. What Justinian did, so did Emperor Valens, Luther and Calvin. A
similar religion, Islam, has the same ethical problems.
Although overlapping in some areas, liberty ethics and values are not
always the same as religious ones (nobody needs religion to know that
lying, stealing or destroying other's property is wrong). Sometimes their
principles are polar opposites like the first commandment compared to the
the first amendment. Part of Christianity's decline is due in part to more
liberal Christians embracing humanist values of tolerance. In the USA, less
than 10% consider themselves evangelicals and more than half of the 77% of
Americans that identify as Christians are nominals who reject a literal
reading of the Bible. Critical thinking and education over the centuries
has increased the numbers of liberal Christian humanists, deists, sketics
and unbelievers. For more statistics, see the page on surveys by the
Christian evangelical organization BARNA and the American Religious
Identification Survey (ARIS2001) of 50,281 households in 2001
We are seeing that splintering right now as humanist Anglicans and
Episcopalians reject the intolerant nature of the Bible regarding sexual
orientation. They refuse to take the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality
literally because they deem it homophobic and unjust. They have chosen
reason and justice over blind faith in a literal reading of the . A few
years ago the Texas Baptists split from the Southern Baptist Convention due
to its position on women being submissive to their husbands. The Southern
Baptists have also recently condemned some Baptist colleges who are also
rejecting the homophobia of Leviticus and Paul's letters. In fact, the
number of churches who accept gays and lesbians is growing steadily while
the more jihadic religious fundamentalists are losing ground in the culture
wars. The Promise Keepers also embrace a "biblically accurate" submissive
role for women in society. The Methodist and Baptist Churches also split
over slavery; the northern liberal churches choosing humanism and the
southern conservatives choosing biblically accurate support of slavery. It
was the same kind of story with the suffrage movement, too: Conservative
Biblical literalists vs religious and secular humanists who knew the Bible
was bankrupt regarding the issue. Again, it is and was Christian values of
intolerance, discrimination and inequality at odds with the principles of
liberty found in our Constitution, which, incidently hasnt one Christian
principle in it. Actually, it legally ended fifteen hundred years of
authoritarian church state alliances based on this commandment below. In
the Suffrage essay, I show an 1850 NY newspaper article that attacks the
unBiblical idea of making the races and sexes equal, complaining that these
socialists and infidels are rejecting the social order of the Bible which
has worked well for so long. The culture wars are not just 5 decades old!
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Comparing the 1st commandment with the 1st Amendment is a clear example of
colliding values. Religious radicals tell us that our laws are based on the
commandments. In fact, our first and amendment makes the first and second
commandments illegal. Yes, unlawful and thoroughly unconstitutional. Why
evangelical activists make such an irrational and possibly dishonest claim
is at the heart of their jihadic agenda to proselytize at any cost. Is it a
blindness? They are much like radical Muslims who also rage at secularism
and demand 'governments of God'.
Adding that unbelief is a capital offense or one deserving eternal torment
in the Bible only makes the distinction clearer. The 6th article's 3rd
clause makes one'e religion constitutionally irrelevant as a value for
public service by banning religious tests, which are requirements for
Christan declarations of faith.
Clause 3: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the
Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial
Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be
bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but NO
RELIGIOUS TEST shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or
public Trust under the United States."
It revoked the long established Christian principle (no other religion
tolerated) of religious tests and declarations, aka confessions. This
religious test ban impairs the Christian goal of making all confess to
Christianity by excluding the requirements of test and declaration in oaths
for public office. In fact, the 6th Article and the 1st Amendment
neutralizes the 1st and the 2nd commandments as the foundation of any laws,
which they were in the old order. The Constitution marked the end of an
age; a new dispensation of liberty had arrived to replace the old era. A
new order for the ages. What did they men by that bold motto? A: A bold
break from the legal traditions the past. The government was now
religion-neutral, no longer based on any religious faith, and a protector
of all religious liberty. No religion was second class anymore as
Christians usually demand, then and now. With the ratification of the
Constitution, unlike the period with Christian traditions of religious
tests for pubic service (afterall, 'every tongue shall confess' so why not
start at the gates of civil government), no person could be excluded from
public service and office holding because they weren't of a required
religious persuasion. It was now against the law to require any religious
faith for oaths of office yet the religious right makes such religious
declarations a requirement for "worthiness"; precisely the attitude the
founders were countering in the 6th Article, Clause 3. No Religious Test -
'Your religion is your own matter; what we are concerned about in an oath
is guarding THIS code of laws. Not that one. Article 6, Clause 1 says there
is no higher law. It is "the supreme law of the land". The oath is to that
highest law. What the Christian reconstructionists fail to see is that
there is a difference between heritage and law. Religious tests were
tradition and they were law. After the ratification, this tradition was now
against the law. It took until 1824 and1836 before the last states (CT &
MA) made their transition to constitutional adherence by legally
dis-establishing religion and ending religious tests. Adams and Jefferson
were gleeful regarding the end of the "Protestant Popery" in Connecticut.
It was a representative of the old order; of church and state alliances.
There are hundreds of laws, considerered tradition and heritage from the
past, that have been ruled unconstitutional. It is a necessary adjustment
over time after the ratifcation of the Constitution. Things weren't
automatic. Becoming a nation of new political orders and conventions takes
time. Old laws and unconstitutional convention didn't disappear over night.
They had to be rooted out, and with a fight at times. It took more than
seven decades for slavery to end. It took even longer, 120, for women's
suffrage. It took 170 years before the USSC ruled that laws banning the
marriage of interracial couples were wrong. (Only in 2000 did the last
state, the people of Alabama, vote these unconstitutional laws off their
books with 40% still supportng laws against mixed race marriages. And that
long before blacks could sit in the front of the bus. And who was there to
fight liberty? Religious conservatives every time.
And there are other important rulings that keep the government out of our
bedrooms, our ideologies, our literature, and our doctor's office. The
Christian religious right, like the most radical Islamists, wants into your
bedroom, into your love life, into your reading room, into your
bloodstream, and into your doctors office. A big say in your private life.
They are the ones there to oppose the expansion of liberty because that
means a freer and more diverse society. They want uniformity, not
diversity. They are not religious humanists; they are authoritarian
totalists. The expansion of liberty means the end of some customs; (some
finally deemed illegal). So did the Industrial Revolution and the liberty
to shop on Sundays. We survived all the changes.
Part of the foundation of Christianity's long history of religious
intolerance is the so-called 'great commission' of Matthew 28:19-20. It
leaves no room for religious diversity, anywhere.
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to
obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to
the very end of the age."
Not a recipe for religious tolerance and diversity, which is required in a
free world. God's words in the Pentatuech's made wrong belief and unbelief
capital offenses. The Bible teaches religious intolerance from cover to
cover. Pagans had lived in a culture of religious diversity and tolerance
before Christians came along and claimed their religion the only legitimate
religion on Earth. Christians were called "atheists" because they denied
the existence of the gods. A few emperors saw Christanity as uncivil and a
danger to Roman social order, which rested on a foundation of religious
diversity. Religious coexistence was just as necessary for public order
then as it is now. It worked then, too. It was Christianity that brought
religious wars to Europe. We are now back to the paganish world of
religious diversity and codified tolerance that Christians wiped out in the
4th, 5th, and 6th centuries.
Believers are charged with converting people, not being supporters of
religious diversity. The commission makes it clear. Religious intolerance
becomes a virtue. Respecting other religious beliefs as equals is
antithetical to the Biblical charge to evangelize and convert. The modern
western ethic of "live and let live" is virtually nonexistent in the Bible.
It is painfully obsessed with control and the making of a uniform
authoritarian religious collectivism. It is all about individual conformity
in a uniformly Christian society. But has it ever worked? No, as far as the
principles of liberty go. The conservative forces of Christianity, those
that think the Bible is the inerrant word of God, whether they are in the
laity, the government or the clergy, have fought the majority of rights
movements in western history. Throughout history, canon law, edicts and the
diverse alliances of religion and government have opposed many of the
liberties we now take for granted in modern times.
How is it that people say we are founded on Christian principles when
Christianity is intolerant of other religions and counts them as fraudulent
and demonic? We aren't. It's a cultural myth that perpetuates itself in
being oft repeated. Our constitution does not promote any religion and
contains not one Christian principle. In fact, it takes the views of
classicists, pagans and enlightenment thinkers on the subjects of rights
and the separation of powers.
The religious right continually confuses heritage with constitutional law.
Somehow they think tradition gives them the right to use the state's
functions and properties to promote Christianity. Somehow they think
religious liberty is the liberty to use the state as their evangelical
vehicle. That was never the founder's intentions. When Madison wrote the
Bill of Rights with the Constituional Congress, he meant for church and
state to be separate. That is clear in his letters years later. The people
of the day knew what the last 1500 years of Christianity and the State had
given Europe; that it is the nature of Christianity to feel compelled to
dominate and be in control of all the people's religion and speech. They
are still with us, the most zealous stopping at nothing to ChristianIze the
world under the guise of "religious liberty", which they clearly don't
understand. The US Constitution prevents that and protects us from those
who think religious liberty is the right to use the time, functions and
property of the state as a vehicle of evangelism. The Constitution's two
religious clauses were crafted with the history of religion and
authoritarianism in mind.
Below are examples of "Biblical principles". When incorporated as law, they
represent the antithesis of the principles of religious liberty. So when
people say America was founded on Biblical principles, it is just empty
rhetoric with no basis in reality. You can always ask them "which ones?". I
ave yet to get even the simplest answer. They just keep repeating the same
mantra, somehow assuming that saying so makes it so. The Constitution is
the USA's foundational law. Nothing else is. It is the Supreme Law of the
Land. It is based on humanist principles of diversity originally found in
classical cultures, reborn in the Renaissance and matured into the best
ideas of the European Enlightnement. Nothing beforehand counts except on
hisorical, social, and cultural terms. The religious ideas of the Plymouth
Bay colony and any other colony before the ratification of the US
Constitution were part of the 'old order for the ages' and were
antithetical to the new orders of liberty and government organization
founded in the federal constitution.
Deuteronomy 7:5: But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down
their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their
Ashe'rim, and burn their graven images with fire.
Deuteronomy 12:3: you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces
their pillars, and burn their Ashe'rim with fire; you shall hew down the
graven images of their gods, and destroy their name out of that place
Philippians 2:10-11: every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things
in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord...
It should not surprise many that for 1500 years, up until the ratification
of Constitution, people had to make such confessions as part of their oath
of office. One could call them Nicene, trinitarian confessions. The US
Constitution outlawed those demanding laws based in the Christian
principles of universal confession and religious intolerance. Our nation,
before the ratification, was nearly as religiously intolerant as England.
Our government's legal foundation is not based in the principles of the old
order found in governments based in Christianity. Those were Medieval
conceptions and principles.
THE CONSTITUTION'S 6TH ARTICLE
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall
be made in Pursuance thereof; and ALL TREATIES made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the SUPREME LAW of
the Land; and the JUDGES in every STATE shall be bound thereby, any Thing
in the CONSTITUTION or LAWS of any STATE to the Contrary notwithstanding.
ARTICLE 11, 1797 TREATY OF TRIPOLI
"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense
founded on the Christian Religion--as it has itself no character of enmity
against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen......
"Now be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of
America, having seen and considered the said treaty do, by and within the
consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every
clause and article thereof."
THE CONSTITUTION'S 1ST AMENDMENT
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 right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There are no Biblical or Christian principles above. People seem to refuse
to see that the establishment clause is a CONDITION of the free excercise
clause. It is much like the conditions we have on 'free speech', press and
assembly. You cant say anything you want, anywhere you please or anytime
you like. There are conditions to rights. There are responsibilities. There
are social contracts. There are the classical and enlightenment humanist
principles of 'live and let live'.
It amazes me what people want to see. Myopic evangelicals can not fathom
why our government is religion-neutral. A little history education would
help. Most Christians dont even know the history of their religion. They
don't really understand how it got into power in Europe. They have been
taught a rosy revisionist story. They have no idea that other religions
(and classical ideas) were forcibly wiped out with violence and judicial
savagery founded on scripture. I tell a factually accurate story of
Christianity's rise in late antiquity in my Christian History section (See
my SOURCES page in the Christian History TOC). It is a story very similar
to how many 20th century dictators achieved their rise to power. And a
totalitarianism much like the beliefs of today's radical Islamists: by it,
it rose to power and by it, it maintained its power over the masses.
Theodosius even outlawed the Olympics because they were 'pagan' ideas. It
would be 15 centuries before they returned.
Due to images and the loading time of the next part, I have placed a page
break here. What follows are short introductions to many of my essays, with
a link at the end of each one for continued reading.
[next page ]
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
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