Subject:
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Re: One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 28 Jun 2002 05:02:11 GMT
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Viewed:
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2224 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti writes:
> http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/alley_18_4.html
>
> Okay, now I'm really done. I'm not wasting any more time on someone who
> doesn't know any better, and doesn't want to know any better.
>
> Read other branches of the thread, John. ALL of the rest of us are wrong
> about Jefferson, and you know better -- is that it? You are about as wrong
> on this point as wrong gets, just get over it.
>
> That we are suffering under a presently widespread culture of xtian
> foolishness and hypocrisy I can't argue with. You are 100% correct on that
> score. Take a bow.
This has nothing to do with Christianity-- you are the one who mentioned it and
thus you are the one who denegrated this debate to sarcasm and whatnot (and in
doing so missed my initial point entirely).
Read Jefferson's Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom
http://churchstatelaw.com/historicalmaterials/8_1_3_3.asp
Look at his *language* here in the opening paragraph:
"WHEREAS Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to
influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations,
tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from
the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and
mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his
Almighty power to do;..."
In a *statute of religious freedom* he uses "God" language. Again, I am not
making any assertions as to the understanding of this language; I am merely
pointing out that it is there. It's everywhere in the early FF's writings. I
point this out not to endorse a belief in God or anything, but to show that
that type of language is an interwoven theme throughout the history of our
country. You can write it off as appeasement, as cleverness, whatever. But
it's there. It's thematic.
Of course it was a joke when Bill Clinton would say, "God bless America"-- he
wouldn't know God from a cigar butt, but he still said it. Because it's
American. It's as American as baseball and apple pie. What? You don't like
baseball? Tough. The same goes for God language.
-John
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