CNN to air God's Warriors beginning tomorrow

[tomarin]

It’s so tiring to see Christians accused of trying to “impose” their blah, blah, blah on others.

so tiresome – and so ahistorical. thanks for id’ing the minister and completing his quote for me.

bless you, blessedtoo.

tomarin

 

[Dancelittleewok]

I watched all three nights of “God’s Warriors.” I was most interested in the Christianity segment since they focused on Evangelicals. I was really shocked when Amanpour suggested that Ron Luce’s Teen Mania Ministry was likened to the Taliban.

 

[Palladio]

The Carter left is Baptists who favor all the over-the-top ‘rights’ dear to any leftist: gay marriage, abortion, multiculturalism.

I am told that these folks will support Hillary, are already organizing to do so.

You are right to suggest that, given the insane perspective of the last segment, non-believers will take only certain kinds of Christians as Christians.

It is true that R v Wade will not be overturned if a dem wins.

So the dems must lose.

 

[Mirdath]

I thought the same thing! I was so thrilled to see someone finally point this out. It’s so tiring to see Christians accused of trying to “impose” their blah, blah, blah on others. The truth is that this country operated under a code of moral law that was based in Judeo-Christian belief for over 200 years. It is the secularists that have tried to impose their “beliefs” (or lack thereof) on the majority in America. This preacher simply pointed out that “Christians were here first. It is the secularists who are the illegal aliens”.

Ahem.
Treaty of Tripoli:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Dates from the late 18th century, was ratified by the United States government (itself founded by a bunch of liberal Deists on the principles of Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and John Locke rather than those of Moses or Jesus).

The United States of America is not and has never been a Christian nation. If I was inclined to thank God for anything, it would be that.

 

[MarkR]

I’ll never forget watching Amanpour reporting live from the Vatican during JP2’s funeral, almost getting trampled by people half her age as she was opining as to what the Catholic Church had to do to remain “relevent” in the 21st century. It was the most iconic thing I’ve seen! Young people rushing toward the Vatican and an aging, secular Boomer telling the viewers what’s what with her back to it. Then came the election of B-16! Lol. Not an easy time for their world view.

Nothing funnier/sadder than an an aging Baby Boomer thinking that he/she’s “progressive” and cutting edge as reality almost runs them over.

 

[Palladio]

Ahem.

Dates from the late 18th century, was ratified by the United States government (itself founded by a bunch of liberal Deists on the principles of Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and John Locke rather than those of Moses or Jesus).

The United States of America is not and has never been a Christian nation. If I was inclined to thank God for anything, it would be that.

None too convincing: John Adams, George Washington… (long list)

Declaration of Independence: endowed by their Creator… The signers were Christian (by affiliation, to take one measure) to a man, and included one Catholic (most were Episcopalians).

Puritans?

Who founded the first colleges here?

Your notion of Christian is too narrow.

Liberal Deists? Like those you mention? They were all about some notion of liberty–with restraints built in from start to finish–and in that sense liberal.

You should read an interesting little book: Liberty Before Liberalism.

 

[blessedtoo]

I said:

based in Judeo-Christian belief

and you said:

The United States of America is not and has never been a Christian nation.

So I don’t know who you are arguing with.

It is, however, interesting to look at the stats which consistently put the percentage of Christians in America at 76%.

adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions

 

[Mirdath]

Palladio:

Declaration of Independence: endowed by their Creator… The signers were Christian (by affiliation, to take one measure) to a man, and included one Catholic (most were Episcopalians).

Christian? If one stretches the definition to and possibly past the breaking point, I suppose. Have you looked into the Jefferson Bible?

A good many of them were Deists and/or Masons; some, Christians. This is readily apparent to any student of history.

I said: [based in Judeo-Christian belief]

and you said: [The United States is not and has never been a Christian nation]

I also quoted the Treaty of Tripoli, in case you missed it: the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

It is, however, interesting to look at the stats which consistently put the percentage of Christians in America at 76%.

Over 80%, last I checked – numbers from the 2001 census, if I’m remembering right. That does not in any way affect the principles upon which the nation was founded.

 

[blessedtoo]

That does not in any way affect the principles upon which the nation was founded.

Where did those principals come from? On what, in your opinion, were they founded?

 

[Palladio]

Christian? If one stretches the definition to and possibly past the breaking point, I suppose. Have you looked into the Jefferson Bible?

A good many of them were Deists and/or Masons; some, Christians. This is readily apparent to any student of history.

I also quoted the Treaty of Tripoli, in case you missed it: the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

Over 80%, last I checked – numbers from the 2001 census, if I’m remembering right. That does not in any way affect the principles upon which the nation was founded.

I am a student of history. So I can say that to quote the Treaty of Tripoli is, well, not what a serious student of history would do.

Nor would he dismiss facts–as you did–germane to the question and ignore the rest (college foundations, Puritans…).

Nor would he make facts up: deists and masons! Too much Da Vinci Code.

No, your idea of Christian is simplistic: these were believers who went to church prayed to God before state meetings had their children baptized, etc. A majority were Episcopalian.

What else would they have been but Christian? Inevitably, Christianity enters into the spirit and the letter of the foundation. Nowhere but in Christendom was liberal democracy born, and from there it has tried to spread.

 

[Mirdath]

Where did those principals come from? On what, in your opinion, were they founded?

On the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith.

Palladio:

I am a student of history. So I can say that to quote the Treaty of Tripoli is, well, not what a serious student of history would do.

And, pray tell, why exactly not? What would a serious student of history cite?

Nor would he dismiss facts–as you did–germane to the question and ignore the rest (college foundations, Puritans…).

The Puritans; that’s Massachusetts. There were twelve other colonies, lest you forget; founded by and for people from Catholics to Quakers to convicts.

Nor would he make facts up: deists and masons! Too much Da Vinci Code.

I’ve never read the da Vinci Code. Many of the founding fathers were Deists and/or Masons.

What else would they have been but Christian? Inevitably, Christianity enters into the spirit and the letter of the foundation. Nowhere but in Christendom was liberal democracy born, and from there it has tried to spread.

You mean like in ancient Greece and the Roman republic? ‘Serious student of history’? Are you an astronaut and a fireman too?

Sweet zombie Hobbes, give me strength!

 

[Palladio]

On the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith.

And, pray tell, why exactly not? What would a serious student of history cite?

The Puritans; that’s Massachusetts. There were twelve other colonies, lest you forget; founded by and for people from Catholics to Quakers to convicts.

I’ve never read the da Vinci Code. Many of the founding fathers were Deists and/or Masons.

You mean like in ancient Greece and the Roman republic? ‘Serious student of history’? Are you an astronaut and a fireman too?

Whatever I am, I am not a clown.

Whereas you are playing with words, ignorantly and arrogantly: neither Greece nor Rome, slaving-holding societies, had liberal democracies. I read Greek and Latin, but you cannot have read so much as a decent history book to come up your bad palaver. It was Christian, Catholic to begin with (circa 1300), Humanists who brought back the Greek and Latin authors who, with the Bible, shaped Europe and America in the arts and sciences from cradle to grave until recently.

But you won’t read Liberty before Liberalism, will you? You must be one of those internauts reading only what comes at the click of a mouse. It’s very short, if that helps, and is written in English.

I suspect that MA would figure, like PA and a few other colonies, very centrally in the founding, since the Revolutionary War began there. I’ve not forgotten other colonies–they weren’t yet states–but you are right, somehow, to bring up the Christian religions of immigrants. Again, however, you overlook the argument: the founders including signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution belonged to Christian churches to a man.

But you’ve given nothing like evidence or argument, and end with an insult, so I am being charitable in replying to you in the first place.

God bless.

 

[Mirdath]

Whereas you are playing with words, ignorantly and arrogantly: neither Greece nor Rome, slaving-holding societies, had liberal democracies.

In that case, neither did the United States until the mid-late 19th century.

I read Greek and Latin, but you cannot have read so much as a decent history book to come up your bad palaver. It was Christian, Catholic to begin with (circa 1300), Humanists who brought back the Greek and Latin authors who, with the Bible, shaped Europe and America in the arts and sciences from cradle to grave until recently.

Christians have certainly had a great deal to do with it; but the philosophies upon which the American ideals were based are not religious but purely humanist.

And I have never seen you cite any source to validate any assertion you have ever made – not one. If you would criticize another for being ignorant, first show that you’re not pulling all your ‘facts’ out of your ear.

But you won’t read Liberty before Liberalism, will you? You must be one of those internauts reading only what comes at the click of a mouse. It’s very short, if that helps, and is written in English.

If I run into it, I’ll check it out. Did you expect me to get up immediately and lurch drunkenly to my car at 2am to break into a bookstore or something?

I suspect that MA would figure, like PA and a few other colonies, very centrally in the founding, since the Revolutionary War began there. I’ve not forgotten other colonies–they weren’t yet states–but you are right, somehow, to bring up the Christian religions of immigrants. Again, however, you overlook the argument: the founders including signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution belonged to Christian churches to a man.

Christian or ‘Christian’? A good many were the latter at absolute best – Masons, Deists, Unitarians. You can find a quick rundown of a few major figures here.

 

[Palladio]

In that case, neither did the United States until the mid-late 19th century.

Christians have certainly had a great deal to do with it; but the philosophies upon which the American ideals were based are not religious but purely humanist.

And I have never seen you cite any source to validate any assertion you have ever made – not one. If you would criticize another for being ignorant, first show that you’re not pulling all your ‘facts’ out of your ear.

If I run into it, I’ll check it out. Did you expect me to get up immediately and lurch drunkenly to my car at 2am to break into a bookstore or something?

Christian or ‘Christian’? A good many were the latter at absolute best – Masons, Deists, Unitarians. You can find a quick rundown of a few major figures here.

So you now agree that, to a man, the signers were Christian, and that Greece and Rome did not have liberal democracies (even if you point out the obvious about the U. S.). If you don’t want to count Uniterians as Christian, it’s o.k.: among the signers, they were about as small in number as Catholics, or little bigger.

I do not accept that the term ‘purely humanist’ as at all meaningful–and I study humanism in the Renaissance.

Why should I cite books here when I am in possession of the facts in the first place?

Your greater error is to think that Greek and Roman and Renaissance philosophy, as read, interpreted, and applied by Christians, resulted in a nation nothing but Greek and Roman and Renaissance. But Christianity itself was born and developed in the Greco-Roman world and the Renaissance was Catholic first, Christian later.

You, like a lot of people, want to make over the founders in light of our now thoroughgoing secular society, which each and every one of the men whom you cite could never have intended and at which they would recoil in horror.

Unlike the founders, most Americans today have not the slightest culture to appreciate the very works from Homer onward (peruse Jefferons’s Commonplace Book) which formed the first Americans and their institutions. But the founders would have laughed to imagine we would divorce their Christianity from their culture, when no such divorce was necessary, desirable, or practicable. The very fact of separation of church and state legitimizes both to flourish each on its own while making no fiction as to the necessity of conscience being formed by a church and by other means. In the RCC, faith and reason go together, and so it was for the vast majority of Christians more than two hundred years ago.

 

[Mirdath]

Why should I cite books here when I am in possession of the facts in the first place?

Since you cannot verify, validate, or back up any point you make with a credible citation – and indeed refuse to do so, both here and elsewhere, I am forced to conclude that the entirety of your posts are completely worthless and you are making up your points out of whole cloth.

If you possess the facts, you should be able to back them up – since, of course, you shouldn’t be the only person in possession of them. If you cannot produce a credible source, your facts are just as believable as the fact that the moon is made out of green cheese. If you refuse to produce such a source, you have failed completely at any semblance of debate or discussion.

---

So, Palladio’s unnameable sources aside, the Treaty of Tripoli (among other things) establishes quite well and legally that the government of the States is not predicated upon the Christian religion in any way.

That doesn’t mean we’re a secular society; American citizens are among the least secular people anywhere. What it does mean is that everybody has free exercise, government does not – or at least should not – concern itself with religion, and our laws have nothing whatsoever to do with the Decalogue or any Christian moral standards beyond a passing, coincidental resemblance. Certain Christian mores are good sense – and they were so before Christianity was a twinkle in Moses’ eye!

 

[blessedtoo]

This is way off topic and I want to get back to the OP. But I must respond the assertion that an obscure little treaty is somehow “proof” that America was not founded on Christian principals.

The point to be made here is that America was in no position, at this time in the 1790s, to worry about the minutiae of the Treaty. A treaty had to be negotiated, for as the site also notes, “The Barbary states considered themselves at war with any country that did not have a peace agreement with them.” Delays in negotiation meant more piracy, more being at war with the pirates, and more possibilities of innocent Americans being captured and sold into slavery, and more economic burdens for businesses in the fledgling nation. With no help forthcoming from the international community – who preferred to use the pirates, even against America, as lackeys to destroy the small fry – and with treaties taking such an extraordinary amount of time to negotiate and agree to – what would the American government be expected to do? Even if anyone objected to Article 11, it would have been foolish and counterproductive to send it back for re-negotiation. We would suggest that matters were weighed in the balance, and that it was considered more important to get the Treaty through than to rework it.
**With that said, it is well to note that when the Treaty was reworked 8 years later, Article 11 was conspicuously absent. **In that context it is also well to note that by this time, America had the upper hand and was in a position to give the pirates the short end of the stick.

tektonics.org/qt/tripoli.html

From Our Country’s Declaration of Independence:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/images/w.gifhen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

[Palladio]

Since you cannot verify, validate, or back up any point you make with a credible citation – and indeed refuse to do so, both here and elsewhere, I am forced to conclude that the entirety of your posts are completely worthless and you are making up your points out of whole cloth.

If you possess the facts, you should be able to back them up – since, of course, you shouldn’t be the only person in possession of them. If you cannot produce a credible source, your facts are just as believable as the fact that the moon is made out of green cheese. If you refuse to produce such a source, you have failed completely at any semblance of debate or discussion.

---

So, Palladio’s unnameable sources aside, the Treaty of Tripoli (among other things) establishes quite well and legally that the government of the States is not predicated upon the Christian religion in any way.

That doesn’t mean we’re a secular society; American citizens are among the least secular people anywhere. What it does mean is that everybody has free exercise, government does not – or at least should not – concern itself with religion, and our laws have nothing whatsoever to do with the Decalogue or any Christian moral standards beyond a passing, coincidental resemblance. Certain Christian mores are good sense – and they were so before Christianity was a twinkle in Moses’ eye!

Well, since you backtrack, shift ground, cannot argue or adduce evidence, speak in trivialities and fail to address the op, I’ll not worry overmuch about your views.

Your post here is just more of the same claptrap.