[quote=pri_dk][quote=Djshakes]Beside, how is the notion that our nation was founded on Christian values SOOOOOO offensive and damaging?[/quote]
I’m not offended by it. I’m just pointing out that it is completely incorrect.
If anything bothers me, it’s the fact that so many people refuse to acknowledge the lack of Christianity in our founding documents.
Even Allan dissapoints on this one.
But I could turn the question around: Why are you so offended by the idea that our nation was not founded directly upon Christian values. What does it change?
[quote]The foundation of this nation is our freedom. Therefore, threats against this foundation are the most offensive. I have never heard of Christian values threatening this.[/quote]
You’ve just lost all credibility with that last sentence. I enjoy a good debate, but there has to be some semblance of reality in the opposing point of view.[/quote]
I’m not offended by it. As a previous poster mentioned, our founding fathers were mostly Christian but in writing the constitution wanted to make it clear that there was NOT a state or national religion. Now, with that said, to think that any of their religious values didn’t influence when setting the foundation is absurd. They were great men…but still men. However, I think they did a great job at being as objective as possible.
Interesting tid bit I read:
“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.”
[June 28, 1813; John Adams Letter to Thomas Jefferson]
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” –October 11, 1798
Thomas Jefferson and some of the other founders were deists. They believed a higher power set the universe in motion, then left it alone. The term “separation of church and state” is from a letter Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association:
“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, prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
When Thomas Jefferson wrote his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association he never intended the words “Separation of Church and State” to be taken out of context and used as a substitute for the First Amendment, but for all practical purposes that is what the courts have done. The wall was between practitioners of peaceful faiths and the federal government’s intrusion in any capacity, not between the peaceful practitioners and their ability to practice how they want where they want.
What the 1st amendment protects against is the government establishing a state religion AND infringing on any citizens’ right to practice their religion. It does not permit the federal government to stop someone from practicing their religion anywhere unless they are violating the life, liberty or private property of another individual. The terminology “Congress shall make no law…” could not be clearer. The restriction is on the government, not the people.
The nation was founded on the principles of Natural Law which are generally in congruence with Christian ideals. Humanity has 3 inalienable rights – Life, Liberty, and Private Property. Humans created governments to protect those rights. Because governments write laws and law’s sanction is force, government’s only role can be to protect rights. Because governments are made up of men with the same fallibility as everyone else, they are no better able to direct individuals than free individuals direct themselves. Therefore, to keep men free government must be kept strictly limited.”
Again, can we get off the religion and onto the topic of multiculturalism this thread was started for. I’m about to give up on this thread.
