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The founders wrote a lot about the importance and value of religion of society. I doubt they considered the thoughts of people who are anti-religious. They just wanted to avoid a Church of England type existence.
The Founders were deists, not Christians AND ... they wrote a lot about how religion is bad. Ever read the Treaty of Tripoli?
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If ppl are really leaving the churches in droves then we would see the churches close up their doors as they can't pay the bills with an extreme decrease in offerings revenue.
*snicker* The church two doors down from me was turned into a private residence and another church not far away was turned into a VFW post.
As for the Constitution, you don't have the right to violate my freedom of religion, but that is exactly what you want to do so you can have freedom FROM religion.
You really don't understand how it works, do you.
The problem you have is that you're so complacent due to Christianity being a majority that you've never stopped to think what could happen if that were to ever change. You should be happy that we have freedom from religion ... because without it, a well-funded Muslim special interest group could get a law passed requiring your wife to wear a burqa. A Jewish special interest group could force all businesses to close on Saturday. Lutherans could tell Methodists which hymns to sing; Pentacostals could tell Universalists which verses in the Bible to emphasize... and on and on and on.
You have NO idea just how much YOU and your beliefs are protected by having a "freedom from religion" clause in the U.S. Constitution.
If the only thing we had was "freedom of religion," then each religion - and each denomination of each religion - would be tearing our courthouses apart in a never-ending war of dominance.
Now ... is the "right" to stick crosses on public property worth losing that protection? Is it really worth it?
Amen, sparrow. This is an absurd extremist over reaction and deliberate misrepresentation of the church/state separation paradigm. There is NO issue of establishment of a religion involved here . . . and everyone knows it. This is a false and mean-spirited attack on ANY public expressions that even hint that anyone has or ever had a belief in God. I can only hope that this psychological over-reaction about belief in God playing out in the public square and the courts will run its course and lose steam in the future as these irrational zealots die off. Abreaction is a normal result of long-term frustration . . . and atheists have had a lot of that.
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Originally Posted by monumentus
So you are joining Jeff in that misrepresentation - by pretending that an active issue with a public institution advocating a religious icon - is an attack on any public expression of faith of any kind?
Quite telling that so many of you theists have to pretend it is more than it is - in order to manufacture some kind of point about it.
There is no misrepresentation. There is NO issue of establishment of a religion involved. It is a memorial to a beloved teacher. The fact that it is an ex post facto attack on an existing memorial is probative.
[As for the Constitution, you don't have the right to violate my freedom of religion, but that is exactly what you want to do so you can have freedom FROM religion.
Nor do you have the right to violate my freedom and yet for the past couple of centuries your Christianity has done nothing but impose itself on my culture when it was unwanted. My people have been murdered and persecuted by your religious belief because of our culture. A great deal of people have died in this land because of your religious beliefs and your religious beliefs has violated our freedom in many different ways.
The founders wrote a lot about the importance and value of religion of society. I doubt they considered the thoughts of people who are anti-religious. They just wanted to avoid a Church of England type existence.
They also wrote that it was best that religion and government stay separated. Chances are they were looking for a modern Government in which religion didn't influence it's decision making than just looking for a Church of England being propped up in America.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Furthermore, this propoganda that Christianity is in a rapid severe decline is pretty much hogwash. A deeper analysis reveals that it is usually the people who were Christian by generational culture only have only dropped off.
The decline is slow, not rapid. It's been creeping into society since the 1970's though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
OTOH, I certainly don't see empty parking lots in the churches. I see about the same attendance year after year. If ppl are really leaving the churches in droves then we would see the churches close up their doors as they can't pay the bills with an extreme decrease in offerings revenue.
I however have seen a decline just by driving past a few local Methodist and Catholic Churches in my area on Sundays. None of them have the parking lots as full as when I was a little kid. Churches only close when they can no longer serve the community. Just because the attendance declines doesn't mean they are going to close right away. You can of course google the subject and see that mass closings are happening.
The founders wrote a lot about the importance and value of religion of society. I doubt they considered the thoughts of people who are anti-religious. They just wanted to avoid a Church of England type existence.
Furthermore, this propoganda that Christianity is in a rapid severe decline is pretty much hogwash. A deeper analysis reveals that it is usually the people who were Christian by generational culture only have only dropped off. OTOH, I certainly don't see empty parking lots in the churches. I see about the same attendance year after year. If ppl are really leaving the churches in droves then we would see the churches close up their doors as they can't pay the bills with an extreme decrease in offerings revenue.
In both of the communities that I know about, the number of active churches has declined a great deal in the past 40 years or so. In one case, two congregations merged. Where 40 years ago, each had 150-200 people in services on Sundays, each had fewer than 50 people vote on the merger. In another case, a Lutheran congregation with a large stone building merged into another Lutheran congregation in the same city and the sanctuary still has many empty seats on Sunday morning. The local civic theater group has moved into a church building no longer in use in two cities I know a little about. Yep, first hand observation shows me that yes, churches are indeed closing their doors "as they can't pay the bills with an extreme decrease in offerings revenue."
about two years ago in the city of Cambridge, Ohio there were four large Catholic churches, as of today there is only one Catholic Church in all of Cambridge.
The problem you have is that you're so complacent due to Christianity being a majority that you've never stopped to think what could happen if that were to ever change. You should be happy that we have freedom from religion ... because without it, a well-funded Muslim special interest group could get a law passed requiring your wife to wear a burqa. A Jewish special interest group could force all businesses to close on Saturday. Lutherans could tell Methodists which hymns to sing; Pentacostals could tell Universalists which verses in the Bible to emphasize... and on and on and on.
You have NO idea just how much YOU and your beliefs are protected by having a "freedom from religion" clause in the U.S. Constitution.
If the only thing we had was "freedom of religion," then each religion - and each denomination of each religion - would be tearing our courthouses apart in a never-ending war of dominance.
Now ... is the "right" to stick crosses on public property worth losing that protection? Is it really worth it?
That's not my point of all. Your examples have to do with the establishment of religion. Such as forcing people to participate in religious practices. Freedom from religion in the atheist agenda sense has to do with erasing or scrubbing any public display of religion to the point where Christians must only display or practice their faith behind private closed doors. This agenda has already been taken to extremes where there have been examples of school kids being punished for praying out loud at school. That has NOTHING to do with establishing a religion. If I want to say a prayer to Jesus Christ on the courthouse lawn, I should have the freedom to do so, but your side distorts the Constitution so much that somehow you claim this is government favoring a religion.
If denominational religious propaganda is allowed on a public death memorial, than all religious and non-religious propaganda should be allowed, if religious has special exceptions for oppressing non-religion, then all religious propaganda should be allowed on public death memorials. The religious will rue the day they established that organized hysteria needs to be respected... They will see that the non-religious can organize hysteria also (like they did in France). But also they should remember that the religious always organize hysteria against each other.
about two years ago in the city of Cambridge, Ohio there were four large Catholic churches, as of today there is only one Catholic Church in all of Cambridge.
Sounds to me like the Catholics are doing just fine:
"Church membership in 2013 was 1.147 billion people, (17% of the global population at the time) increasing from the 1950 figure of 437 million (17% of the global population at the time) and the 1970 figure of 654 million. On 31 December 2008, membership was 1.166 billion, an increase of 11.54% over the same date in 2000, only slightly greater than the rate of increase of the world population (10.77%). "
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