Need help refuting Church & State LTTE

[NewJeffCT]

It looks like the God Squad is on the loose... I'd appreciate any help in compiling data to refute. Oh, it's anonymous, so DUers, feel free to submit a reply as well. Thanks:

Here it is:

I encourage everyone who is adamant about separation of church and state to read the Constitution. Nowhere does it say anything about this. In fact, the preamble to the constitution talks about the “blessings” of liberty. Where do blessings come from if not God? Amendment #1 says “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” All this means is that congress cannot enact a law that says what religion everyone should be. Everyone forgets the second part, the part about congress not being able to prohibit us from exercising our religious beliefs. Read about the men who wrote the Constitution and their intent for “one nation under God.” It is amazing and sad to see how far we have come from what our founding fathers originally intended for our country.

http://www.remindernewspapers.com/daily/Skins/Vernon/navigator.asp?skin=Vernon&BP=OK (if you dig further, my LTTEs are "The Middle Class" and "Scandal in DC")

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Well, you might try

picking through my blog entry on this. It was mostly just a crap pice of RW email and some quotes from some websites that refute it, but you might find it helpful since it is about separation of church and state.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gpv/1281.html

I also have lots of links to other leftwing religious sites speaking FOR separation of church and state: http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/liberalchristians.htm#row1

[NewJeffCT]

14. thanks

I will do that tomorrow.

[marbuc]

2. I suggest THEY read about our founding fathers

and how they wrote about the need for separation. I've been meaning to reread the Federalist Papers, do you they have even heard of them?

[BlueJazz]

3. Where do blessings come from ?

..I've said the phrase "You have my Blessings" several Times..
I guess I'm a God.

[we can do it]

4. We were just talking about that last night, here's some info.

PBS has a great site: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/churchandstate.html

"JEFFERSON'S WALL OF SEPARATION LETTER...Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American 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. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802."
<http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html>


PBS has a great site: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/churchandstate.html

"Separation of church and state" is probably a familiar phrase. While it's one of the most frequently debated issues about the Constitution, those exact words don't even appear in the original document.
...Delegates of the Constitutional Convention believed that religion was a matter best left to the states. The only mention of religion in the Constitution was that there should be no "religious test" required by any federal officeholders and that one could "affirm" rather than "swear" in taking the oath of office.

COUNTER ARGUMENT:

Since it would appear to be Christians who are putting forth the
aforementioned balderdash, I'd like to begin by quoting an authority
whom some may have respect for, who spoke on the separation of church
and state. His name was Jesus of Nazareth, and he has been quoted as
having said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to
God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17), which I believe indicates
a clear distinction being made between things secular and things
spiritual. It would appear, Christians, that your own founder
was in favor of keeping church and state separate!

[XemaSab]

5. I'd do some research on the Deists

first and foremost.

[endarkenment]

6. There is no direct mention of a Deity in the document.

Aside from their idiotic 'blessings' inference, the closest you can get to a Deity in th constitution is the date at the end of the document, expressed in the vernacular of the time as 'in the year of our lord...'.

'One nation under god' is the phrase inserted in the 1950's into the pledge of allegiance so that everyone would know that we were not a nation of godless atheists like those damn commies. That has nothing at all to do with the intentions or beliefs of the founders.

For some insight into the religious beliefs of one of the more prominent founders, a certain T. Jefferson, see his book "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth". Jefferson removes all miracles and attributions of divinity from the first four gospels to produce a rationalist text with jesus as a human being who we should admire for his ethics and exemplary life.

The USSC has long held that the 'establishment clause' includes a prohibition on all legislation that directly or indirectly advances one religion over another, and since the 14th has extended this protection to cover all states, prohibiting each individual state from acting in a similar fashion. And thus, and quite consistent with the second clause regarding the free exercise of religion, prohibits directed prayer in school but also forbids the exclusion of undirected voluntary prayer.

[wryter2000]

7. Sorry for the funky formatting

Thomas Jefferson
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of
religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use
government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights.
Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

[wryter2000]

8. Of course, private religious practice is protected

The very first part of the very first amendment regards religion. The state was to be protected from interference from religion, and private religious practice was to be protected from the state.

The non-establishment clause does exactly that. The state is required to refrain from endorsing religion. Period.

[never cry wolf]

9. Here's some quotes for you

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian Doctrine."
~George Washington

"I do not find in orthodox christianity one redeeming feature."
~Thomas Jefferson

"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 mind is my own church."
~Thomas Paine

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give the assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
~Abraham Lincoln

[NewJeffCT]

12. Thanks

great quotes.

[wryter2000]

10. Oh, and

One nation, under God was written in the 1950s. The pledge, itself (minus under God) was written long after the deaths of the Founding Fathers. I don't now when they got around to declaring this a country under God.

May I add that I'm thoroughly sick of these assholes and the same argument over and over and over and over and over...ad nauseam.

[EVDebs]

11. The Founders were mostly Freemasons and therefore ...

being from the origins with the Knights Templar, who were originated by the Pope ... and disbanded by the Pope (Clement V and King Philip IV of France, who wanted their monies and lands).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar

Oddly, they evolved into the Freemasons organization, although many would deny this. Their feud from the 1300s to around 1948 with the Knights Hospitallers, now known as Knights of Malta deserves a look on its own merits.

Templars/Freemasons became fiercely anti-Papists. They feuded with the Knights Hospitallers

"Robinson pointed out that this over-riding desire to destroy the Hospitallers makes little sense - except when seen in the light of that Order's profiting by the Templars' fall from grace 70 years before." from

http://www.maknap.com/MysteryTV/history/templars/articles/mhte_17b_survival.htm

When the Protestant movement began, they joined. See also The Catholic Origins of Futurism and Preterism

www.aloha.net/~mikesch/antichrist.htm

which shows the origins of Bush and the novelists of Left Behind 'dispensationalism' is actually the 'futurism' of the Jesuits, and the counter-reformation's defenders of Catholicism.

Nowadays, since the post WWII era with the creation of the state of Israel and the potential for a Third Temple, you have a CIA (newly created with mostly Knight of Malta in the leadership cadre - Donovan, Casey, Dulles, Colby, Angleton, the list goes on) that may have wanted a Third Temple in Jerusalem...please read

Impact of Millenium on The Holy Land
www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week319/cover.html

along with George Monbiot's

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy
www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week319/cover.html

which mistakes the origins of dispensationalism as in the mid 1800s, forgetting to go back to the Jesuits in the 1500s and Francisco Ribera,

and don't forget Chris Hedges Soldiers of Christ II Feeling the Hate
www.harpers.org/FeelingTheHate.html

Needless to say, modern evangelical Protestants have embraced the formerly Catholic 'futurist' end times eschatology (study of the end times). This preoccupation with the Temple in Jerusalem, to the exclusion of the rest of the Gospels, has left religion in the US in the hands of .... guys just like George Bush.

Go figure. And watch what they DO and not what they SAY.

The Founding Fathers Freemasonry kept their religion to a spiritual Great Architech of the Universe and secret signs and code-talk. Outward preference of one religion would be seen as 'bad form'. Please note that George Washington's letter to the synagogue in Rhode Island

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/bigotry.html

is read annually there, and Washington himself a devout Christian was also considered the Grand Master of the Nation (my phrasing) in Masonic terminology.

The Founders kept it all 'generalized' and kept petty religious differences out of their brotherhood. America was lucky that way.

[zbdent]

13. If they want to be very strict on the interpretation of the First Amendmen

then they should realize that the Second Amendment is all about the right for the US to have A WELL-REGULATED MILITIA . . . not just a bunch of drunken (and, at that time, weed-smoking) yahoos with howitzers . . .