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Did you forget what you smugly implied - there will be more goat sacrifices as we get bluer. I was more worried about the witchcraft as we get redder. What has Franken got to do with it???? Besides, Palin is not yet a blip.
Unless I mistook the poster's intentions, the original references to goats and witches (and, I believe, frogs in logs) were exaggerated and metaphorical. My point was that the wilder and woolier the public displays, and the more atavistic the totems of contemporary culture, the more obvious that the "progressive" (a misnomer if there ever was one) forces have taken over...
Franken is a symptom of what I have described. Why, he even looks like a frog.
Well I see the whole, "In God We Trust" on the money as a very generic use of the term "God". That God may be the God Abraham worshiped, or it may be Thor, Zeus or the magical frog in the hollow log in the enchanted forest. I'm inclined to go with the frog myself.
If they meant Thor or Zeus, I'm inclined to believe that they would have said Thor or Zeus. How many religions are there that name their deity God and spell it that way? And in any case, how does any religion at all rate free advertising space on our money? Suppose instead they put The All New Dodge Durango...RAM Tough! on the back of every bill for free! Would that constitute an endorsement, would you think?
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Originally Posted by TnHilltopper
Things like the 10 commandments hanging in the entryway of my local county governmental administrative offices do not bother me, as I chose to live in the belt bucket of the bible belt.
It isn't whether or not you receive and recognize a message. It's whether the government is sending one. The government is to remain neutral in the matter of religion. There is no way to discover neutrality in the government's hanging an overtly religious icon in a prominent place within a building where citizens of all faiths and none are compelled to come.
If they meant Thor or Zeus, I'm inclined to believe that they would have said Thor or Zeus. How many religions are there that name their deity God and spell it that way? And in any case, how does any religion at all rate free advertising space on our money? Suppose instead they put The All New Dodge Durango...RAM Tough! on the back of every bill for free! Would that constitute an endorsement, would you think?
Interesting riff. What is it that the Christians are selling, do you think, other than the message of all the great religions: encouragement, hope, and exhortations of brotherhood (all free of charge -- such a deal!)?
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It isn't whether or not you receive and recognize a message. It's whether the government is sending one. The government is to remain neutral in the matter of religion. There is no way to discover neutrality in the government's hanging an overtly religious icon in a prominent place within a building where citizens of all faiths and none are compelled to come.
How does denying Christianity and its central role in the formation of our culture and moral code constitute neutrality? If anything, your way of thinking, while masquerading as iconoclasm, constitutes the enshrinement of the sour gestalt of nullity -- the void.
Replying to the OP, I would have to say that I was a little uncomfortable at the level of goddiness that prevailed on Tuesday. Unlike some posters here, though, I realized that such exrpessions were an attempt to unify the country by reassuring people of faith that the emergence of the new Democrat majority did not mean that Bibles would be confiscated, churches sacked, and crosses banned. We did elect Obama, after all.
The price that we pay as Americans is patience with those who express an excess of religiosity, and tolerance for those for whom the beliefs of others constitute contemptible ignorance. Without the latter, the former would have no one to save. Without the former, the latter would have no one to insult. And then both groups would turn their attention to the rest of us...
Last edited by gallowsCalibrator; 01-23-2009 at 06:44 AM..
Reason: Removed personal attack
So go arrest the President. Tell him he parked in your no-praying zone.
More rambling irrelevancy. You seem willing to discuss any point but the one at hand. The President does not stage his own inauguration with his own money. The JCCIC stages the inauguration with taxpayer money as an official function of government. The law constrains the government from providing any endorsement of one religion over another or of religion over non-religion. The rich texture of religious life in this country flows directly from that constraint. It is troublesome when laws are broken by the government. The President's individual decisions regarding if, when, where, or how to pray don't enter into the matter at all.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
I'll put my information up against yours any day, particularly since so much of how you were informed has made you supercilious and bitter; you may suggest anything you wish; your dog's information may indeed be superior to his owner's.
You don't HAVE any information to put up against anything. You claim Obama for your cause on the basis of nothing at all. You don't begin to know whether or to what degree Obama was inspired by Warren's invocation, or whether instead he sat there thinking Aw jeez, the Lord's Prayer? Maybe it was a mistake to have invited this guy!
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
What rights might those be? The right to mock other people's beliefs? Or the right to make a mockery of himself? He seems to be exercising both quite freely...
The well-established right to guide his child's religious upbringing without the state compelling her into indoctrination in contrary religious beliefs. This is the right twice upheld by the 9th Circuit in the Pledge case and avoided by the Supreme Court via its dubious resort to matters of standing. Newdow himself is Jewish and observes the festivals of his history in his home. He has no interest in mocking your beliefs or anyone else's. He merely asks that those be kept in their proper place in accordance with the laws of our nation. As you ought to know, he argued his own case in front of the Supreme Court and received high to effusive praise for that work from startled and usually staid court observers. We should all mock ourselves so.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
The notion that I find so appalling, and that has resulted in so many innocent lives being taken, is the absence of enactments by any legislature, in favor of a fast track to infanticide at will, on behalf of people who wouldn't know an appellant from an appendage, and whose only interest is in themselves.
To refresh your memory, Roe v Wade came in the wake of multiple state legislatures having passed exactly such enactments as you allege not to have occurred. Your appeal is to a record that was never laid down. To educate you further, and as the courts have repeatedly affirmed, every woman has a Constitutional right not to be pregnant. She may not be compelled to become pregnant, and having become so against her wishes, she may not be compelled to remain in that condition. Your support for compulsory childbirth (and that's all your position is) runs entirely contrary to principles of individual autonomy inherent in the unenumerated right to privacy that exists and has always existed behind the 9th Amendment and which is well reflected in various others. The Bill of Rights gives specificity to two larger human rights that the Federalists thought so obvious as to make unnecessary any formal statement of their particulars: the right of free conscience, and the right to be left alone. You and your allies regularly seek to violate them both.
Interesting riff. What is it that the Christians are selling, do you think, other than the message of all the great religions: encouragement, hope, and exhortations of brotherhood (all free of charge -- such a deal!)?
Are you claiming to be dense enough not to realize that what matters here is whether Christianity is a religion, and not at all the particulars (good or bad) that its adherents may claim to be embodied in its message? The government is not constrained from providing endorsement to BAD religions. It is constrained from providing endorsement to ANY religion or to religion in general.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
How does denying Christianity and its central role in the formation of our culture and moral code constitute neutrality? If anything, your way of thinking, while masquerading as iconoclasm, constitutes the enshrinement of the sour gestalt of nullity -- the void.
What characteristic of DENIAL do you find in insisting that Christianity remain on the same official footing as every other religion? What aspect of NEUTRALITY could you discover in granting Christianity a sole and priveleged role and position instead? Your arguments here are hopelessly clouded by your bias. Clear thinking seeks to overcome its own biases...yours does not.
The "central role" of Christianity in the formation of our culture and moral code is meanwhile quite debatable, but this thread may not be the place for that debate. Suffice it to say that religion is more typically a reflection of culture and morality than a source of it.
My "way of thinking" masquerades as nothing. It depends upon the assessment of pertinent and established facts through arrays of valid and logically appropriate analytical processes. Each is open to the world for comment or criticism. Your groundless complaints over the answers derived here may qualify as comment, but they fall far short of criticism.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
Wow. Are you a Buddhist secret agent?
No. As if it would matter that I were. You would still have failed to establish any credible case.
Last edited by saganista; 01-23-2009 at 06:57 AM..
Unlike some posters here, though, I realized that such exrpessions were an attempt to unify the country by reassuring people of faith that the emergence of the new Democrat majority did not mean that Bibles would be confiscated, churches sacked, and crosses banned.
Were it not for the "politics of fear" and those of insincerity who regularly seek to exploit faith for purposes of gaining deceitful political advantage, there would never have been a need for "reassurance" to have been so much as contemplated.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
The price that we pay as Americans is patience with those who express an excess of religiosity, and tolerance for those for whom the beliefs of others constitute contemptible ignorance.
A typical false dichotomy. Define a binary construct, then hold that all those not included in one are included in the other. There are many who express an excess of religiosity in this country, and a few who label religion as contemptible ignorance. Between those margins lie the majority of Americans. They either hold or do not hold religious convictions as their consciences have led them to find most fit. They are content, as our laws require in any case, to let others follow their own consciences in the self-same way.
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Originally Posted by Yeledaf
Without the latter, the former would have no one to save. Without the former, the latter would have no one to insult. And then both groups would turn their attention to the rest of us...
Cover and camouflage. Along with a misclassification of your own positions, which have been far too consistently extreme to merit "rest of us" status. That group seeks not to save, nor to insult, nor to raise entirely false or illegitimate claims of having been insulted...
Last edited by saganista; 01-23-2009 at 08:23 AM..
Perhaps there should be a separate thread discussing a universal basis for morality that is not bound up with a specific religion and that does not invoke the supernatural. As an atheist myself, I was uncomfortable with the displays of religiosity during the inaugural. But I did appreciate Pres. Obama's acknowledgement in his speech that non-believers are also part of the United States and should not be excluded from the body politic.
Well - here is the bottom line:
A) There were prayers at the inaugural including the Lord's Prayer
B) The phrase "So Help me God" were expressed in the Oath even though someone tried to get a court to enjoin such use
C) "In God we Trust" is on our currency and, for the foreseeable future, will remain on our currency
D) The President and Members of Congress will continue to say "And may God Bless America"
The above are factual and undeniable.
You have omitted a long list of things that -- like each of these -- has not been in dispute and is not relevant to the debate. Many find fishing to be an enjoyable hobby, for instance. The question at hand is which if any of these and other undeniable facts shall have become so by means that are consistent with the US Constitution. Whenever you'd like to get back to that matter, feel free...
Last edited by saganista; 01-23-2009 at 08:24 AM..
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