Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jeremy Pallant · 12-09-2002, 07:30 PM

Actually, according to the "most recent posts" listing in his profile, he's posted only four times today, the last one being around 9:30am.

Yellum Notnef · 12-09-2002, 07:33 PM

Has anyone bothered to check out the board Radorth menaced before coming here?
I wonder if he`ll try out this little gem again......
God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it.

This guy is totally loco,but he sure has moxie.

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Fenton Mulley ]

hezekiah jones · 12-09-2002, 07:54 PM

God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it.

Ye

gods.

He's nowhere near as wacky 'round these parts.

Philosoft · 12-09-2002, 08:34 PM

Seems the SteelAngel server clocks are a bit off...

Toto · 12-09-2002, 09:01 PM

<a href="http://www.steelangel.com/skeptic/forum/viewtopic.php?t=204" target="_blank">God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it.</a>

If God showed such foresight and good taste to pick those Deists and Freethinkers, what came over Him in the 2002 election?

Buffman · 12-10-2002, 01:18 AM

Daggah

Thank you for the vote of confidence. However, I fear you are basing it on shaky ground. I am merely a retired person who enjoys learning new things. Naturally I attempt to learn what is accurate and what is not. Quite some time ago, I found that a goodly number of statements being made and spread by a group of inerrant Bible believing Christians were in error. I also found that a goodly number of statements being made and spread by some devout atheists were also in error.

Getting to an original source document(s) in order to confirm or correct an alleged quote/position of a founding/framing father can be an extremely difficult and time consuming task. I post my findings here where I believe they have the greatest opportunity for an objective, critical, review. I honestly don't care whether those findings support theism or atheism just as long as they are the most accurate ones I can find.

Naturally many of them will tend to appear to be anti-Christian because they tend to reveal the propaganda campaign that certain Christians have undertaken in order to recruit adherents and advance their religious agenda by laying claim to righteousness by a fallacious Appeal to Authority...the statements of the founding/framing fathers and recorded documents of this great nation.

<a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/author.html" target="_blank">http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/author.html</a>

I believe there is a world of difference between the accuracy of the posts of a Christian the likes of a Radorth and those of a Conservative, who happens to be Christian, like 'fromtheright'. That is one of the more difficult problems I have encountered here. Determining the differences between Christians who happen to be Conservatives and Conservatives who happen to be Christians. Obviously there are many Christians who happen to be Liberals or Moderates, and Liberals or Moderates that happen to be Christians. I believe it is safe to say that majority of votes for Clinton and Bush were cast by Christians. Unfortunately, even with all the so-called media coverage of their election campaigns, the American public was never adequately informed, nor educated, about the accurate underpinnings of the candidates' personal character or their philosophies concerning our Constitutional liberties. What has bothered me the most is that far too many Americans don't seem to care about either of those factors. They seem to be more concerned about who will win the next Super Bowl or Oscar...or which political party will put the most money in their pocket for the least amount of effort or sacrifice.

Though I have not validated the authorship of the following quotes, nor do I consider myself a Libertarian, I am in complete harmony with the content of their message.

<a href="http://www.freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm" target="_blank">http://www.freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm</a>

Stephen Maturin · 12-10-2002, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Toto:
If God showed such foresight and good taste to pick those Deists and Freethinkers, what came over Him in the 2002 election?

Either age has reduced God to a state of gibbering incontinence or He's powerless against the true Axis of Evil (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas) and its minions (O'Connor, Kennedy).

Stephen Maturin · 12-10-2002, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Philosoft:
Seems the SteelAngel server clocks are a bit off...

New Year's Eve 1969 must have been one helluva party. You've gotta hand it to those guys. They read and type very quickly! Note that all those posts were made early in the evening, presumably before everyone got completely gooned up.

nogods4me · 12-10-2002, 05:18 AM

Oh c'mon now. The connections are obvious:

10 Commandments - 10 Amendments, do you need any more proof?

Radorth · 12-10-2002, 06:52 AM

We have every reason to believe Constitution could not have been created without the inspiration of God and IMO Christ, to wit:

1. There are virtually no important democracies, except that in Greece, originally created by anybody except Christians and absolutely none, EVER where there was complete freedom of worship. If you want to give 4 founders the majority of the credit, go ahead, but 55 signed the Constitution and made it work. I believe Washington to have been most instrumental and to have been a Christian based on some recent discoveries of my own, but there is absolutely no doubt of the beliefs and contributions of John Jay and Samuel Adams, whom we NEVER hear skeptics talk about.

2. Without the support of Christian clergy, there would be no Constitution. The right to worship freely without interference from the state was the primary reason they accepted it, but there were other reasons. They realized that there was absolutely no alternative to allowing every person to worship mountain goats if they so wished, if they were to maintain their freedom of religious thought and expression. They also surely realized that for the first time in history, the Gospel could be preached without hindrance.

3. Jefferson deserves great credit for his contributions, but he held office at the will of a Christian majority, I believe in large part because of the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence. Skeptics will disagree vehemently I suppose, but where did Locke, Bacon, and Hooker get their ideas about the importance and sacredness of each human life? That we are all equal in the eyes of God and endowed with the same rights? Jefferson may have put it most eloquently into words, but these men saw it long before him, and were "fundamentalists" by any modern definition. Skeptics act like they were closet deists or something and Christians could not possibly have seen these ideals in the Bible. Jesus dying with and taking a common thief to heaven? Jesus saying "the meek will inherit the earth"? Paul saying "the things that are nothing will bring to nothing the things that are." Jesus exalting the generosity of a poor widow nobody else noticed but he? These are not a prophecy of things to come, first in the spiritual, but then in the natural?

4. The vast majority of the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army, whom I consider the real founders of the country, were raised on Protestant Christianity and I see no reason to think they would accepted suffering as they did without supernatural inspiration. Skeptics like to give Paine credit for inspiring them of course, but "as a man believes, so is he."

5. Then there's the little matter of Thomas Hooker, 17th century clergyman and one of the Puritans forced to flee to Holland, then America was instrumental in the formation of representative government way before any deists jumped on the wagon.

The folowing is taken from this site <a href="http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctto17" target="_blank">http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctto17</a>
"On October 11, 1633, Thomas Hooker was ordained pastor of the congregation in Newtown, now Cambridge. He quickly became one of the religious and intellectual leaders of Massachusetts Bay and was given the responsibility for defending Puritan orthodoxy against the heresies propounded by Roger Williams at his trial in 1635.
The Newtown people were not happy in Massachusetts Bay due to a lack of arable land and because of religious and political differences with the rulers of the colony. Therefore, in June 1636 with the reluctant approbation of Massachusetts Bay, Hooker led about one hundred persons from Newtown to the site of Hartford. The Newtown group, preceded by a Dorchester group which settled at Windsor and some thirty Watertown families which migrated to Wethersfield, formed the nucleus of the colony of Connecticut. The three towns acknowledged the overlordship of Massachusetts Bay for one year and then in 1637 established a rudimentary representative government. By 1638 some more regularized governmental structure was required. Hooker gave direction in a famous May 31, 1638, sermon in which he forcefully asserted that the choice of public magistrates belongs to the people, that the privilege of election belongs to the people, and that those who have the power to appoint officers of government have the right to limit the power they hold. This sermon provided the impetus for the Fundamental Orders adopted in January 1639, the frame of government for the colony until 1662."

On a wall near the cathedral in Chelmsford, Essex is a plaque, which states, "Thomas Hooker, 1586- 1647, Founder of the State of Connecticut, Father of American Democracy."

From the site <a href="http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap07.htm" target="_blank">http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap07.htm</a>

"Thomas Hooker is considered by many to have played the role of John the Baptist for Thomas Jefferson in the sense that he laid the foundation for American republican democracy. Again, though, Hooker's primary concern was not politics, but the establishment of assemblies of worship resembling the churches found in the Book of Acts. Indeed, this was the consistent pattern behind the settlement of New England, with each colony attempting to create a more pristine Christian society, and each founder, usually a minister, trying to "out-Protestantize" everyone else. Hooker, for example, apparently felt that Winthrop's efforts in Massachusetts Bay had fallen short of the mark. According to Cotton Mather, "The very spirit of his [Hooker's] ministry lay in the points of the most practical religion, and the grand concern of a sinner's preparation for, and implantation in, and salvation by, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ."
By May 1637, the inhabitants of Connecticut were holding their own General Court. Hooker, unlike Bradford and Winthrop, did not keep a journal. So the facts of his Hartford ministry are fragmentary, derived from letters and notes taken by those who heard him. His most famous sermon, delivered before the Connecticut General Court on May 31, 1638, inspired the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was the first written constitution in America, and very much resembles our own Federal Constitution. Direct quotes are impossible to reconstruct exactly, as they exist in a barely decipherable journal, written by 28-year-old Henry Wolcott. But the essence of Hooker's Election Day sermon was as follows:

The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance.

The election must be conducted by the people, but votes should not be cast "in accord with their humors, but according to the will and law of God."

Those who "have the power to appoint officers and magistrates also have the power to set bounds and limitations on their power" so that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people," because "by a free choice the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen, and more ready to yieldobedience."

On January 14, 1639, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were adopted. The deliberations of the assembly have perished, but, as Marion Starkey points out in her book, The Congregational Way, the principles are a mirror of the mind of Thomas Hooker. The Fundamental Orders included many provisions essential to free and open government. Each town was to have proportional representation, and each was to send its elected representatives to the government in Hartford. In the event that the governor failed to call a meeting of the General Court, or attempted to govern contrary to established laws, the freemen were entitled to "meet together and choose to themselves a moderator,"

The logic is this: No Jesus, no John Locke, no Bacon, no Hooker, no preaching on liberty of conscience, no appreciation for freedom, no Constitution, no America

I trust any skeptics who manage to think up something new or who spearheaded a movement would get all the credit in this forum, but the Christians will get none, as usual. But of course extraordinary ignorance and belittling of Christian contributions to our ideals we see here is simply proof of my assertions.

Rad

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

12-09-2002, 07:33 PM	#12
Yellum Notnef Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Gone Posts: 4,676	Has anyone bothered to check out the board Radorth menaced before coming here? I wonder if he`ll try out this little gem again...... God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it. This guy is totally loco,but he sure has moxie. [ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Fenton Mulley ]</p>

12-10-2002, 06:52 AM	#20
Radorth Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,872	We have every reason to believe Constitution could not have been created without the inspiration of God and IMO Christ, to wit: 1. There are virtually no important democracies, except that in Greece, originally created by anybody except Christians and absolutely none, EVER where there was complete freedom of worship. If you want to give 4 founders the majority of the credit, go ahead, but 55 signed the Constitution and made it work. I believe Washington to have been most instrumental and to have been a Christian based on some recent discoveries of my own, but there is absolutely no doubt of the beliefs and contributions of John Jay and Samuel Adams, whom we NEVER hear skeptics talk about. 2. Without the support of Christian clergy, there would be no Constitution. The right to worship freely without interference from the state was the primary reason they accepted it, but there were other reasons. They realized that there was absolutely no alternative to allowing every person to worship mountain goats if they so wished, if they were to maintain their freedom of religious thought and expression. They also surely realized that for the first time in history, the Gospel could be preached without hindrance. 3. Jefferson deserves great credit for his contributions, but he held office at the will of a Christian majority, I believe in large part because of the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence. Skeptics will disagree vehemently I suppose, but where did Locke, Bacon, and Hooker get their ideas about the importance and sacredness of each human life? That we are all equal in the eyes of God and endowed with the same rights? Jefferson may have put it most eloquently into words, but these men saw it long before him, and were "fundamentalists" by any modern definition. Skeptics act like they were closet deists or something and Christians could not possibly have seen these ideals in the Bible. Jesus dying with and taking a common thief to heaven? Jesus saying "the meek will inherit the earth"? Paul saying "the things that are nothing will bring to nothing the things that are." Jesus exalting the generosity of a poor widow nobody else noticed but he? These are not a prophecy of things to come, first in the spiritual, but then in the natural? 4. The vast majority of the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army, whom I consider the real founders of the country, were raised on Protestant Christianity and I see no reason to think they would accepted suffering as they did without supernatural inspiration. Skeptics like to give Paine credit for inspiring them of course, but "as a man believes, so is he." 5. Then there's the little matter of Thomas Hooker, 17th century clergyman and one of the Puritans forced to flee to Holland, then America was instrumental in the formation of representative government way before any deists jumped on the wagon. The folowing is taken from this site <a href="http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctto17" target="_blank">http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ctto17</a> "On October 11, 1633, Thomas Hooker was ordained pastor of the congregation in Newtown, now Cambridge. He quickly became one of the religious and intellectual leaders of Massachusetts Bay and was given the responsibility for defending Puritan orthodoxy against the heresies propounded by Roger Williams at his trial in 1635. The Newtown people were not happy in Massachusetts Bay due to a lack of arable land and because of religious and political differences with the rulers of the colony. Therefore, in June 1636 with the reluctant approbation of Massachusetts Bay, Hooker led about one hundred persons from Newtown to the site of Hartford. The Newtown group, preceded by a Dorchester group which settled at Windsor and some thirty Watertown families which migrated to Wethersfield, formed the nucleus of the colony of Connecticut. The three towns acknowledged the overlordship of Massachusetts Bay for one year and then in 1637 established a rudimentary representative government. By 1638 some more regularized governmental structure was required. Hooker gave direction in a famous May 31, 1638, sermon in which he forcefully asserted that the choice of public magistrates belongs to the people, that the privilege of election belongs to the people, and that those who have the power to appoint officers of government have the right to limit the power they hold. This sermon provided the impetus for the Fundamental Orders adopted in January 1639, the frame of government for the colony until 1662." On a wall near the cathedral in Chelmsford, Essex is a plaque, which states, "Thomas Hooker, 1586- 1647, Founder of the State of Connecticut, Father of American Democracy." From the site <a href="http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap07.htm" target="_blank">http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap07.htm</a> "Thomas Hooker is considered by many to have played the role of John the Baptist for Thomas Jefferson in the sense that he laid the foundation for American republican democracy. Again, though, Hooker's primary concern was not politics, but the establishment of assemblies of worship resembling the churches found in the Book of Acts. Indeed, this was the consistent pattern behind the settlement of New England, with each colony attempting to create a more pristine Christian society, and each founder, usually a minister, trying to "out-Protestantize" everyone else. Hooker, for example, apparently felt that Winthrop's efforts in Massachusetts Bay had fallen short of the mark. According to Cotton Mather, "The very spirit of his [Hooker's] ministry lay in the points of the most practical religion, and the grand concern of a sinner's preparation for, and implantation in, and salvation by, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ." By May 1637, the inhabitants of Connecticut were holding their own General Court. Hooker, unlike Bradford and Winthrop, did not keep a journal. So the facts of his Hartford ministry are fragmentary, derived from letters and notes taken by those who heard him. His most famous sermon, delivered before the Connecticut General Court on May 31, 1638, inspired the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was the first written constitution in America, and very much resembles our own Federal Constitution. Direct quotes are impossible to reconstruct exactly, as they exist in a barely decipherable journal, written by 28-year-old Henry Wolcott. But the essence of Hooker's Election Day sermon was as follows: The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance. The election must be conducted by the people, but votes should not be cast "in accord with their humors, but according to the will and law of God." Those who "have the power to appoint officers and magistrates also have the power to set bounds and limitations on their power" so that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people," because "by a free choice the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen, and more ready to yieldobedience." On January 14, 1639, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were adopted. The deliberations of the assembly have perished, but, as Marion Starkey points out in her book, The Congregational Way, the principles are a mirror of the mind of Thomas Hooker. The Fundamental Orders included many provisions essential to free and open government. Each town was to have proportional representation, and each was to send its elected representatives to the government in Hartford. In the event that the governor failed to call a meeting of the General Court, or attempted to govern contrary to established laws, the freemen were entitled to "meet together and choose to themselves a moderator," The logic is this: No Jesus, no John Locke, no Bacon, no Hooker, no preaching on liberty of conscience, no appreciation for freedom, no Constitution, no America I trust any skeptics who manage to think up something new or who spearheaded a movement would get all the credit in this forum, but the Christians will get none, as usual. But of course extraordinary ignorance and belittling of Christian contributions to our ideals we see here is simply proof of my assertions. Rad [ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ] [ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ] [ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

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12-09-2002, 07:30 PM	#11
Jeremy Pallant Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Tucson, Arizona, USA Posts: 1,242	Actually, according to the "most recent posts" listing in his profile, he's posted only four times today, the last one being around 9:30am.

12-09-2002, 07:54 PM	#13
hezekiah jones Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: WI Posts: 4,357	God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it. Ye gods. He's nowhere near as wacky 'round these parts.

12-09-2002, 08:34 PM	#14
Philosoft Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Southeast of disorder Posts: 6,829	Seems the SteelAngel server clocks are a bit off...

12-09-2002, 09:01 PM	#15
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	<a href="http://www.steelangel.com/skeptic/forum/viewtopic.php?t=204" target="_blank">God picked this countries primary founders and beat the Devil while he was at it.</a> If God showed such foresight and good taste to pick those Deists and Freethinkers, what came over Him in the 2002 election?

12-10-2002, 01:18 AM	#16
Buffman Beloved Deceased Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: central Florida Posts: 3,546	Daggah Thank you for the vote of confidence. However, I fear you are basing it on shaky ground. I am merely a retired person who enjoys learning new things. Naturally I attempt to learn what is accurate and what is not. Quite some time ago, I found that a goodly number of statements being made and spread by a group of inerrant Bible believing Christians were in error. I also found that a goodly number of statements being made and spread by some devout atheists were also in error. Getting to an original source document(s) in order to confirm or correct an alleged quote/position of a founding/framing father can be an extremely difficult and time consuming task. I post my findings here where I believe they have the greatest opportunity for an objective, critical, review. I honestly don't care whether those findings support theism or atheism just as long as they are the most accurate ones I can find. Naturally many of them will tend to appear to be anti-Christian because they tend to reveal the propaganda campaign that certain Christians have undertaken in order to recruit adherents and advance their religious agenda by laying claim to righteousness by a fallacious Appeal to Authority...the statements of the founding/framing fathers and recorded documents of this great nation. <a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/author.html" target="_blank">http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/author.html</a> I believe there is a world of difference between the accuracy of the posts of a Christian the likes of a Radorth and those of a Conservative, who happens to be Christian, like 'fromtheright'. That is one of the more difficult problems I have encountered here. Determining the differences between Christians who happen to be Conservatives and Conservatives who happen to be Christians. Obviously there are many Christians who happen to be Liberals or Moderates, and Liberals or Moderates that happen to be Christians. I believe it is safe to say that majority of votes for Clinton and Bush were cast by Christians. Unfortunately, even with all the so-called media coverage of their election campaigns, the American public was never adequately informed, nor educated, about the accurate underpinnings of the candidates' personal character or their philosophies concerning our Constitutional liberties. What has bothered me the most is that far too many Americans don't seem to care about either of those factors. They seem to be more concerned about who will win the next Super Bowl or Oscar...or which political party will put the most money in their pocket for the least amount of effort or sacrifice. Though I have not validated the authorship of the following quotes, nor do I consider myself a Libertarian, I am in complete harmony with the content of their message. <a href="http://www.freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm" target="_blank">http://www.freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm</a>

12-10-2002, 05:18 AM	#19
nogods4me Contributor Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Baltimore, MD USA Posts: 17,432	Oh c'mon now. The connections are obvious: 10 Commandments - 10 Amendments, do you need any more proof?

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