Mageth

I trust you appreciate extremists on both sides make up stuff...
...
BTW, it has been only skeptics who have recommended God interfere in human affairs by making the laws of physics arbitrary and negating the principles which motivate the ACLU. He obviously prefers to let people make their own religious decisions.
...

Jiminy Christmas!

But that is the ironic effect, as God well knew

You too are free to believe any nonsense you want. Thank the founding fathers for the first amendment!

MrDarwin

Radorth, here are three very important principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence:

Please demonstrate the Christian or Biblical basis for all men being created equal.

Please demonstrate a Christian or Biblical basis for humans being endowed with certain "rights".

Specifically, please demonstrate the Christian or Biblical basis for for rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

Please demonstrate the Christian or Biblical basis for the principle that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

lpetrich

I notice that Radorth has to throw out most of the history of Xianity -- for much of its history, someone with his opinions on religion and government could have been burned at the stake.

The idea of separation of religion and state grew up after the inconclusive outcome of the Wars of Religion, in which neither the Catholic Church nor any Protestant sect was the clear winner. Yes, Radorth, all the participants in those Wars of Religion considered themselves Xians.

And why did none of the Constitution's writers ever publish a derivation of the Constitution from the Bible?

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Radorth:
It is very difficult for me to believe that you don't realize the amount of doublethink and self-delusion going on here. Unfortunately I DO believe it, but only because I have seen so many examples of how religion destroys critical thinking processes!

Hint:

Name ONE "important Christian democracy" which is entirely free of Greek cultural influence.

Every single one of your "Christian democracies" got the idea from the Greeks. They did NOT get the idea from Christianity!

Why?

Because it isn't in the Bible!

...And I think you know it. The whole of the rest of your post is fluff and misdirection. You are deliberately evading the topic of this thread.

Why am I not surprised?

Radorth

"God is no respector of persons."


Read a Quaker history and get back to me.

Democracy is not an ideal government. The ideal government in God's eyes is that of consenting servants doing the will of the greatest example of all servants. Nevertheless if the former is the only way to permit the spread of spiritual truth and gaining all possible servants in this dispensation, then democracy is the only practical ideal. Ironically, only opressive governments have really low crime rates, so there is no ideal solution other than willing servants who obey out of wisdom and love. Hooker said almost exactly that, and he also claimed that only through "mutual submission" (a NT concept many skeptics denigrate) can government even function.

Rad

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

Psycho Economist

One of the reasons this question is being asked is Christianity has blended itself into Western culture like strawberries into yogurt. It's easy for people to assume a false equivalence between "Western" and "Christian". I can't imagine that anyone here is truly ignorant of the fact that demographically speaking, colonial and revolutionary America was predominantly Christian. But there's a difference between saying that the population is demographically Christian and saying the society (let alone the government) is characteristically Christian. Some Christian societies are Western. Some Western societies are Christian. That's not news.

Here, I think we are looking for official (religious or government) texts or actions that demonstrate that the Constitution is Christian in its character... but saying that Christians had a hand in writing it, and that they approved it says more about the demographics of revolutionary America than it does about the character of the Constitution.

It's true that democracy was resurrected as a system of governance in Chris'ndom but how is that more than an accident of history? (And saying "God likes democracy" won't get you anywhere.) The fact that it was the Christians, not Muslims or Chinese, to dig up rule by the people seems to stem from the West's veneration of pagan Greece and Rome.

These ideas (of Locke and Bacon) are all coming out of post Magna Charta England... not from anywhere else in Christiandom, nor anywhere else in the world. The Magna Charta was the first breath on the cold embers of democracy in about a thousand years, and it sprung from a rebellion against "God-annointed" king John. A weak Norman king challenged by vassals who'd gone somewhat native in the Anglo-saxon countryside.

I'd say the peculiar history of England has more to do with American democracy than Christianity, which is by turns communistic and authoritarian.

Cheers!

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>

MrDarwin

Now, on to the Constitution.

The founding fathers may well have been inspired by democratic principles, but the government established by the U.S. Constitution is a republic, not a democracy. Although we've fiddled with the formula a bit since the Constitution was written, the hallmark of the United States of America as a republic is that we elect our representatives, our senators, and our president.

Radorth, please demonstrate the Christian or Biblical basis for the representative form of government, in which the people elect those who govern them.

Stephen Maturin

Radorth,

The First Amendment goes far beyond merely prohibiting the establishment of a state religion. We could debate the meaning of the Establishment Clause forever, I suppose, but let's set that aside for a moment and concentrate on the Free Exercise Clause: "Congress shall no law * * * prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]." Now suppose Congress codifies the First and Second Commandments, thereby mandating that there is no god before Yahweh and prohibiting worship of graven images and the like. Such a law undeniably violates the free exercise rights of anyone who practices a non-Abrahamic religion and would never stand up against a First Amendment challenge.

I think the above is what Mageth had in mind when he wrote of a "conflict" between the First Amendment and the First and Second Commandments. (Mageth, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) Seems to me that he has a valid point.

Jack the Bodiless

Perhaps it's worth re-posting the original post from <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=001433" target="_blank">the RRP thread</a> that spawned this one:
Note the sentence "I'm not asking you whether Christianity and democracy can coexist, nor am I interested in the question of whether the Founding Fathers were Christians, Diests, Agnostics, or Scientologists."
Hence, all mention of the "Christianity" of the Founding Fathers is irrelevant and off-topic.

Mageth

I think the above is what Mageth had in mind when he wrote of a "conflict" between the First Amendment and the First and Second Commandments.

Verily I say unto you, you have hit the nail on the head.

You could reverse the point and say that in OT Israel, under the Law, the First Amendment would have been anathema. Remember what they were directed to do, and did, to those who exercised freedom of religion!