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Old 01-24-2009, 04:48 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,378,135 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ndfmnlf View Post
Check out the demographics in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York City, etc and you will know what I mean. Catholics far outnumber other religious groups in these cities.
Check out the demographics of the Supreme Court...
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Old 01-24-2009, 05:08 PM
 
4,183 posts, read 6,502,168 times
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More than half of the SC justices are Catholic: Religion of the Supreme Court

John Roberts - Catholic
Stephen G. Breyer - Jewish
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Jewish
Anthony M. Kennedy - Catholic
Antonin Scalia - Catholic
David H. Souter - Episcopalian
John Paul Stevens - Protestant
Clarence Thomas - Catholic
Samuel Alito - Catholic

This website says that 53% of the US population is Protestant, while 24% is Catholic. But Protestants outnumber Catholics only because all Protestant denominations are lumped into one category. If you separate out the Protestant denominations from each other, the Catholics will come out the majority. For all practical purposes, I consider the US to be a Catholic majority country because Catholicism has a centralized organizational structure and well-defined membership, whlie the various Protestant sects are a chaotic medley of competing organizations, not to mention theologies.
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Old 01-24-2009, 05:21 PM
 
Location: Near Manito
20,170 posts, read 24,238,374 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista View Post
As the troublesome nature of Bush's lawbreaking was trumped by phony issues of national security? The age of convenient coverup and lowly excusification of lawbreaking is over. That is what was inspiring about the inauguration. That cheap version of inspiration that you would apparently prefer is available gratis down at your local revival tent. The government is meanwhile enjoined from providing any such thing.
A false and silly comparison. There has been no repeat of 9/11; the vast majority of Americans were heartened by the inaugural observations, particularly the spiritual components which you found so troubling. It's all of a piece: one either believes in right and wrong or one does not. And it is the spiritual dimension which provided for all and provides for many the compass for judging which is which.

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Not at all my supposition. Raised only as an alternative supported by just as much information and evidence as was your own. One indefensible fraud placed beside another.
Well, the fact that Obama's people, and others designated by him, planned the ceremonies woud seem to offer some sort of eivdence....

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You pile digression on top of digression. Apparently, you are willing neither to concede nor discuss the rights violated that formed the basis of Newdow's Pledge suit. Not surprising, since he has both the law and the facts on his side.
A view which has yet to be vindicated.

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As to your new gibberish, Congressional prayer is not legal either, but remains as a tolerated vestige of traditions that began at the nation's founding
That's the kind of tolerance we need more of. Please practice it. Your digestion will thank you.

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The new capital was little more than a dank marsh with a few rutted roads when the First Congress convened. Houses of worship were all but non-existent. Clergy were recruited to meet the spiritual needs of lawmakers then, much as cafeteria staff are recruited now. Sunday services themselves were conducted within the Capitol until well into the 19th century. Today, of course, a temple of almost any faith at all could be found within easy walking distance of any legislator's office. The original justification for the practice has long since disappeared. The practice itself will one day also.
Speaking of gibberish...Look, please don't hold your breath until that great gettin up day arrives. We need you here as a model to be studied and marveled at for its bloodlessness.

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There are three signficant friezes within the Supreme Court chambers. On the east wall, above the Justices, are male figures representing the Majesty of Law and the Power of Government. They are surrounded by characters depicting various aspects of Wisdom and various aspects of Justice. On the north and south walls, there are depictions of noted law-givers from many times and cultures. Those depicted include Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius, Octavian, Justinian, Mohammed, Charlemagne, King John, Louis IX, Hugo Grotius, William Blackstone, John Marshall, and Napoleon.
Diversity to be celebrated, old chap. And at the base of it, the spiritual underpinnings of all thoughtful people, which informs their majesty for the law animated by the ethical considerations of our forebears.

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As an emergency room physician, it was ambulances that chased Newdow, not the other way around. In a laudable example of personal responsibility, he obtained his law credentials for the very purpose of defending his parental rights...the ones that you've refused to recognize.
Mr. Newdow certianly has the right to divest himself of any reminder of religion. He may give away his currency, shield his family (most of which refuses to share his quixotic views) from the forbidden words and ideas he so fears, and boycott the inaugural of our first African-American President (in honor of which many proclaimed "THANK GOD ALMIGHTY we are free at last!"). His rights to do so, however, do not spill over and negate those of the rest of us, who find these aspects of our public life and national consciousness both historically just and deeply inspiring.

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He certainly does join with millions upon millions in taking a scornful view of the faith of others when that faith is accompanied by an unconstitutional (and un-Christian) insistence upon officially exalting it to a favored station as the one true faith to be recgonized and admired as above and beyond both all other faiths and no faith at all. Like Jesus of Nazareth long ago, Newdow takes a rather dim view of religious hypocrites.
An exhaltation is not synonymous with "Congress....pass(ing a) law establishing a religion". That's the sole leg of your little stool; perhaps the switching of a bovine tail may have rendered you blind to what this country was cheering about last Tuesday. As to comparing Newdow to Jesus, I'll leave any commentary on that to the Christians on the Forum.


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No, the climate of bitterness and division is created by religious zealots alone.
Please don't tell us that you count the President among their number.

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The founders suspected, you see, that people such as yourself might one day come along.
Only in their most hopeful epiphanies. The rest of the time, they dreaded the advent of you and Mr. Newdow.

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It is also an argument that you invented.
No, it is a logical inference from your absurd assertion.

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Women have the right not to be pregnant.
Ah yes, the Constitution is very clear on that. Article Eleventeen. The Birkenstock-shod and Not in the Kitchen Clause.

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Learn as well that expectations of abstinence are as futile as futile gets.
It is true as well that an absence of expectations leads to failure, poverty, and misery. But hey whatever floats your root beer.

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Such a nice segue from the Federalists, but God's pile is nearly three times larger. Complain to Him sometime. After that, explain how free-floating fetuses derive any right at all to invade and occupy the bodies of living human beings against their will. Explain how such an unwanted intruder can come in fact to acquire super-rights that trump any and every right of its entirely unwilling host. Your morality is a despicable morality of wanton exploitation, all carried out as an indulgence to personal partis pris. No soup for you.
And to think that you were once such a little intruder. Or would you have us believe that you sprang full-blown from the brow of William O. Douglas?

Sigourney Weaver, where is your blowtorch?
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Old 01-24-2009, 05:41 PM
 
Location: Near Manito
20,170 posts, read 24,238,374 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista View Post
No, the Establishment Clause actually exists in concert with better than two hundred years of law and jurisprudence that I'm sure you would like to throw away. Those centuries provide specificity to the Clause under hundreds of alternative circumstances. The founders did not feel it worth their while to attempt anticipation and resolution of every conceivable controversy that might arise over the rest of time. They simply left their clear and simple words and therefrom the self-evident overarching dictum that the government is to remain neutral with respect to religion. If that is all I have, it is more than enough to crush your feeble protestations.
Show me that word "neutral" in the Constitution. Otherwise, I'll be forced to conclude that the only crushing that has taken place is of your silly attempts to make "pass no law" mean "eschew all mention." Really, now. (Actually less of a crush than a puree...)

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Acknowledgement of religion is very different from the open practice of it, especially so when that practice is of one religion only, and it is carried out under the auspices of the state. You need to tighten up your vocabulary.
Absurd. So any word of a religious nature constitutes "open practice"? You're going to have to have Dianne Feinstein arrested for saying "God bless you" when Harry Reid sneezes. And all those prayer breakfasts. Government documents teeming with terms like "St. Louis"...."Sacramento"....and the ever-troublesome Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, bearing as they do the names of Norse deities. No wonder you're bothered. Not top mention bewitched and bewlidered. You need to tighten up your restraints.


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What's annoying are continuing attemtps by zealots to induce the state to favor one religion in particular over all others, and certainly religion over non-religion. when the law quite clearly says that you may not do that. How difficult is it really to get this entirely simple principle into your head?
1. One man's annoyance is another's obsession. You have moved into the latter camp.

2. The law says no such thing. The Constitution says that Congress may not pass laws establishing a religion. It has not done so. The rest is (or ought to be) silence. But some people just can't shut up.

3. See number 2 for cranial query.


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From my morning paper, it seems we have a predilection toward armed robbery as well. I don't suspect that this predilection will be given much weight by any eventually presidng judge in the matter of considering sentence. Your so-called point of view boils down to a simple disrespect and discounting of law that you don't feel like obeying. Our prisons are full of such. Our society depends on the rule of law. You seek instead to undermine it.
Our society depends on the search for virtue and human joy. You seek not only to ignore this but to denigrate it. Why?

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Threatened??? Such flights of fancy you are given to. But I suppose this pales after the sour gestalt of nullity.
Oh, that's right. Not threatened. Annoyed. Enough to go on and on page after page. One pictures a dog with half the newspaper in its jaws and half stuck in the door slot. Only the newspaper is the most inspiring Inaugural of modern times, and the rest of the nation is tugging joyously on the other end.

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The national consciousness meanwhile drifts today toward greater oversight and greater assurance of compliance with applicable law than what our late administration was ever able to manifest. In that light, Rick Warren did no honor in his lone moment upon a national stage by interjecting an overt practice of sectarian prayer that is patently forbidden in official conduct to any agent of those who brought him to that stage. He cheapened the proceedings in that insult.
That is your opinion. It is a very depressing one.


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Yes, much more credible than your arguments, as I indicated earlier. In fact, it was a great triumph for Americans united in the hopefulness of liberalism, presaging a new American era founded upon the same that promises to stretch to 2012 and well beyond. A dark chapter closed, and a far brighter one now opened...
God willing. Insha'allah. And so forth.

Last edited by Yeledaf; 01-24-2009 at 06:26 PM..
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Old 01-24-2009, 06:05 PM
 
29,939 posts, read 39,338,812 times
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Quote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence

Quote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their State with certain negotiable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence in the future
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Old 01-24-2009, 08:10 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,378,135 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
Patently false. You've been reading too much "revisionist history" written by people whose purpose it is to deny our heritage.
What would be to gain from "denying our heritage"? Yes, the bible-pounders were present in 1787, though their names are mostly forgotten to all but scholars in this latter day. And their ideas for Jesus-this and Almighty God-that were all summer long rebuffed in no uncertain terms by the votes of those whose names a latter day school child might rattle off with ease.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
They left us a "Godless Constitution"? Please.
The only reference to Him comes in the traditional Year of our Lord defining the date at the bottom. References to any deity were otherwise assiduously avoided.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
Neither did they leave us a "secular" government, but only a government that, per the Constitution, was not to "establish" and official church.
No, they quite particularly crafted a document to define religion as a matter of individual conscience. The state was to have no role nor any influence, save in securing and protecting individual rights from the anticipated assaults of some who might mistakenly feel much as you would seem to today.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
It was not their intent to establish a government without God. In fact, most believed that a nation without God could not be free; that freedom and democracy depended on a people who respected God.
You confuse government with the indivdiuals who serve as its functionaries. Government itself was quite clearly intended to be godless. Not so the citizens who worked within it, save as those might have arrived at a godless state through the exercise of their own consciences.

It was not the dogma, meanwhile, but the network of religion that was important to the early republic. No TV in those days, and no internet. The two most widely distributed networks for social cohesion, debate, and communication in those days were churches and taverns. In one form or another, these two have in fact been competing industries over much of recorded human history, and there have certainly been centuries, and indeed perhaps millennia, during which better ideas were coming out of taverns than churches. The value of religion then was in its powers of communication, its moral suasion, its ability to encourage broadly the more noble instincts of a rabble of a population that had rather suddenly become members of a democratic republic, even though most were unable to participate directly in it. There was no thought of elevating or revering any doctrine or catechism, but rather the hope of a people properly suited to the government they'd been given.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
From our very beginnings, our leaders in government have prayed for guidance from God, and they didn't see anything wrong with it, nor did they think it "unconstitutional" to do so.
More often they simply sought the blessing of divine Providence, noting that a sometimes fearsome world seemed to bestow both good fortune and bad, and that who- or whatever might be in charge of that seemed in the long run to favor those who were better behaved and mindful of higher purposes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
It wasn't until groups like the ACLU came on the scene and started whining and advocating for atheists, that it was unconstitutional to pray in public, or for our leaders to lead or be lead in prayer.
It wasn't until the ACLU came on the scene that ANY First Amendment case was won against the government. You think government intrudes upon your life now? Things were quite a bit more brutal prior to the founding of the ACLU, an organization that you blatantly misrepresent, in that it works tirelessly to defend your right to pray in public, and certainly defends the right of leaders to lead and be lead in prayer in their capacities as individuals. It is only when acting in their official capacities to advance or diminish religion or religious rights that leaders will run afoul of the ACLU.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy View Post
Nobody is calling for any such "union of church and state". But one cannot leave their deeply held religious beliefs behind when considering important legislation or contemplating military strategy. Nor should they. To do so, to leave God out our our thinking and decision making, would be to turn the processes of government over to the thinking of only one class of people, the unbelievers, leaving the rest of us with no voice at all. This is definitely not what the founders intended.
Nor does any advocate for it today. All that is asked is that lawmakers observe the not-so-fine line between being informed by their own religious views and acting to enforce those views upon others. The latter is clearly over the line and should be resisted by any American, regardless of personal religious view.
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Old 01-24-2009, 08:43 PM
 
Location: North Pacific
15,582 posts, read 7,467,260 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by happ View Post
Yesterday both Presidents Obama & Bush attended together a Christian prayer service in a church. After that at the inaugural Christian pastors prayed at the start & end of the swearing in of Obama. Today all of Obama's administration attended another Christian prayer service where they prayed to Christ.

Does it make you a little uncomfortable that our secular government is so close to the Christian faith?
One Nation Under God it isn't any more is it? That's okay because it is as it is suppose to be. Without God we loose our power and that will be as they say is that.

America was founded on Christian morals and beliefs from George Washington forward and we were a very strong powerful nation that others feared, yet knew they could trust. People from other countries did whatever they could do to get to our land so they could prosper and be safe from harm. What was it they said, our street were laid with gold?

We didn't need all of that power and respect any way. It's added responsibility...who needs that any way. Let's just be a nation and go on about our business as usual with out a thought as to what might have been if we had stayed a Nation Under God. (Its prophetic)

I don't find it uncomfortable that Obama might pray in public, I find it odd as we drift farther and farther away from such practices.

Last edited by Ellis Bell; 01-24-2009 at 08:46 PM.. Reason: answered the question
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Old 01-24-2009, 10:28 PM
 
Location: Michigan
12,711 posts, read 13,430,224 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by texaschic View Post
the original post about masons did not clarify that the teachers/historians/prof. were not masons; therefore one must assume that they were as they were in a documentary about masons.... ugh.
No, one "must" not "assume" that at all unless one is a complete retard.
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Old 01-24-2009, 10:30 PM
 
Location: Michigan
12,711 posts, read 13,430,224 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greatday View Post
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
OK, so you are challenged to find something in the Constutition, and your response is to produce something that definitely is not in the Constitution.

Grade: F
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Old 01-24-2009, 10:37 PM
 
Location: Drury Lane
825 posts, read 2,809,414 times
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Default Uncomfortable with a benediction that cheapened the ceremony

I liked the religious aspect of the ceremony. I didn't like the last few lines of Lowry's (sp?) benediction. I've never heard a prayer with such cheesy lines. Is it true when he eulogized Coretta Scott King that he made it political? There's a time and a place for everything right?
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