America is a Christian nation

Look, I am not on board with the militant atheists either, but I do find them less threatening than the Bible-thumpers who want to replace science with their superstitions and slam the door on anyone of a different creed.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God"s.

Mundane government is here to see to our flesh and the churches to see to our spirits. Don't blur that line. You might wind up with the banksters getting hold of the churches and turning them into institutions that teach kids to respect money over the environment.

And foget about any improvement in the status of women anywhere.

No thank you.

 

Bible Thumpers are no longer prevalent in the Republican Party. This is a Party of modern thoughts but it has retained its values. The Republican Party believes that America is One Nation Under God.

We don't fully Endorse Religion in Politics; the Constitution was ratified to make sure that never happened. But we value Freedom of Religion. And our view is the 1st Amendment was not put into effect to put a wall between Religion interfering with Politics. It's there to assure Politics doesn't interfere with Religion.

Kennedy let us know that the Pope wouldn't be running the country, but he was still a Catholic. Sure Romney isn't a mainstream Christian, but he believes in certain values that Republicans, and moderate Democrats alike do value.

White Collar Secularists, Homosexuals, Transgenders, Single Mothers, and Environmentalists makes it difficult to create a Coalition that Wins.

 

America is not a Christian nation.....America is a nation of religious freedom that just happens to have a Christian majority.....but that does not give Christians the right to dictate the law or to try and strip other religions of their rights.

 

To be fair, that doesn't stop America from being a Christian nation. I don't think a predominantly Muslim country would need to impose Sharia law to me considered a Muslim nation.

 

Even within Christianity there are several diffrent branches of confessions. Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxism to name a few. They're all part of Christianity, but still differ in their beliefs. So calling America Christian is as meaningful as calling it white.

 

I completely agree. But where do you see Christians trying to strip other religions of their rights and dictate law? Not saying there isn't a small majority that would like to, but you have that 10% in everything. Most Christians aren't like that. Now if you want to compare that with Islam, I won't argue with you.

Going to breakfast.

 

Yes. I also know that the Law of the Land of THIS nation....the Constitution...contains ZERO references to Jesus or God or "Creator" or "Divinity". So obviously the men who wrote it did NOT wish to create a "Christian nation", but a pluralistic one.

 

You create a false separation, between the parent and the child. It is incredibly dishonest to equate refusing a blood transfusion to child rape.


The family follows a religious code. You are acting as if the child was not a Jehovah's witness. We don't preclude religious freedom from people until a certain age. Unless shown otherwise, the child's faith is the parwnt's faith. Had you shown an example of a 16year old wiccan daughter of a Jehovah's Witness, that'd be a separate case.

Regardless, it is a greater endangerment to everyone's freedom to have the state make our family and religious decisions for us than it is for parent's to make religious decisions. For their children.

 

Well you obviously don't know what a nation is. What you are talking about is the state. A nation, i.e. the American nation, is a group of people defined by commonalities.

The simple fact that 80% of Americans are Christian means that America is a Christian nation. Whether or not we are a Theocracy has no relevance.

 

I don't agree. I think religion was left out of the Constitution because they meant to keep it strictly about how the government and states should operate. We can see the importance of religion in our Bill of Rights, that they felt religion was important. Enough so, to be the very first amendment that they added. You can also see the importance that all the states put in religion, as all their state Constitution's preamble opens with the mention of God. That's right, all 50 of them.

States Rights | How Could All 50 States Be Wrong?

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/staterights/50wrong.html

 

Lack of blood transfusion -> death. It is perfectly acceptable to compare the two. The child has no faith. A newborn child can no more be a baptist than it could be a secular humanist.

There is no way around this. The child's right to life is more important than the parents' religious preferences.

Still you have refused to discuss FGM. Brushing it off as "oh that's cultural, not religious" doesn't cut it. First it shows that you think religious opinions should outweight equally deeply held secular opinions and furthermore you fail to address my hypothetical regarding FGM being religiously mandated.

 

I think you mean a small minority. We'll always have fundamentalists. I'm a devout Christian, but I realize it's safer for me to practice my beliefs if every religion is allowed. To exist in peace

Now i think the main confusion has been simply in the meaning of the word "nation." Yes, the state is our government, and the nation is our people. It's perfectly fair to say that our people are Christian, there will always be that other 10%,.

 

no one is trying to take a faith away from anyone... everyone makes that choice for themselves... at least after they become adults they can


.

 

No, it's not! Your suggestion would leave us with "guns don't kill - lack of immediate medical care kills."

You are still left with, in your opinion, the parent's bear the full weight of responsibility to provide for the child, but not the right to make decisions for the child when your bigotry would have it otherwise.

 

Shouting bigot won't make you right. The child has certain rights which the parents cannot infringe. You would not allow a child to be raped on the basis that the parents wanted it. On this we agree. Do you think the state should intervene if the kids are being routinely starved? or beaten?

 

You are a bigot when you shrug off religious beliefs as superstition, and when you discount religious practice as preference. Your bigotry doesn't make you any more right, and if I were shouting, it'd be in caps.

You continually compare refusing medical care to an active harm against the child. It is, if anything, an inactive harm, not comparable to the parents doing anything. If there is a car accident and the parents don't permit a blood transfusion, what killed the child? The car. There are multiple reasons to decline blood transfusion, personal, religious, and medical.

Now I have recognized that the parents shouldn't refuse medical transfusions, but that's their right to. It is not something comparable to rape. It's comparable to refusing life support - or should the government not permit the family to make that decision? At what point does the government right to intervention stop?

 

Not true. If I wanted to take the time I could make one long thread here of posts where people have said their is no God. That religion should be band, and etc.

I got this today, some might find it interesting.

http://stg.do/Iwpc

 

Without proof religion is indistinguishable to any other belief, astrology, alien abduction etc. etc. superstition is the best word for it. Does that statement make me a bigot?

What is interesting however is that you refuse to consider secular objection to a law. If someone objects to a law on secular grounds should they be given the same exemptions as those objecting on religious grounds?

And not feeding your child? I mentioned this example. It is called neglect. Allowing your child to die when it can easily be prevented (leaving aside the case of comas etc.) is neglect.

That is the question we have been talking about, when does government interventions stop. You seem to believe that if a man cries god then he can medically neglect his child. I say that the child's right to life (and in this circumstance we are not talking about being a vegetable) is more important than the parents' right to believe whatever they want. I do not think that the state should decide what colour shoe the child should wear or what time they go to bed. However, in certain circumstances the state must intervention, these cases are abuse and neglect.

Finally, answer my question about FGM without brushing it off as cultural (why is a secular cultural belief less important than a religous belief?)

 

There are nominal Christians and there are real, practicing Christians. I'd be willing to bet that 75% of your 75% are no more than nominal Christians. Christianity is not much more than a political cudgel in this country.

 

This is an outright lie. You've already displayed that you don't know what a conscientious objector is (it does not require a religious reason to object). The case you brought up was a distinctly religious one.

A false comparison. One is constant, one is circumstantial. The constant is the basic requirement of parenthood, to provide the basic necessities for the child. The circumstantial only applies to specific circumstances, and even then it's not as drycut as you would like it to be. It's not option a child lives, option b child dies. It's option a child has a 80% chance of living, with a small chance of lingering complication (HIV, Hepatitis, TRALI, Fever, Hives, acute immune hemolyctic reaction, Human T-lymphotropic virus, West Nile virus, Sepsis, delayed hemolyctic reaction, iron overload, Graft-versus-host disease, etc.), vs. the child has a 20% chance of living.

On the other hand, pull life support and the child has 0% chance of living, and keep it and it has 100% chance of living. Based on what you seem to have laid out as the rules - the right to life preempting - pulling children off of life support should be illegal at all turns.

You keep avoiding the point. "Well, in certain circumstances..." No, lay out a clear parameter for determining when the state has the right to intervene. You keep trying to get down to specifics, trying to paint my view on the matter (rather than let me do that) and avoid principles or rules, so I'll lay down some clear guiding principles that I believe. You don't need to share them, but at least I can lay down some principles beyond my own case-by-case personal view.


The right to make decisions regarding the child defaults to the parent. The state may intervene when the parent inflicts serious direct harm to the child, or when the parent fails to provide basic necessities for the child for an extended period of time of a length of which to endanger the child's life.

 

I will say we are and always have been a nation dominated by Christians. I will also say separation was never what our forefathers wanted as the 1947 USSC ruled. I think this video shows that, along with many other things I have shown.


http://stg.do/Iwpc

 

But that is changing. Even the "Christians" here have changed over time.

I'd be the last person to say religion isn't allowed, but I'm certain that all we'd have if religion were actually 'imposed' upon individuals is 'strife'. That is the reason that many years of settled-law grants people the literal right to be FREE FROM the imposition of religion.

One can read the Constitution and come up with any number of interpretations; I've seen thousands of people do that. But there are certain things that law professionals can interpret more completely than any layman might imagine. I recently completed jury duty... and I realize that law/rights aren't as simple and clear-cut as we often imagine.

 

In your eyes but not in the eyes of the Catholic church and the 40 lawsuits against Obama

 

I don't know how you can make the disgusting argument that children should be allowed to die because of a parents belief in a fantasy. I believe in religious freedom, but there is a line. Purposely refusing care for a sick child crosses that line. I can't believe that there are people so sick out there that they would rather watch their child die than give them the necessary care because of some strange belief in garbage. I'm seriously at a loss of words here. Religion is not a coverall for abuse, and no just god would want such abuse to begin with. Then again we're talking about a god who kills just to (*)(*)(*)(*) with people.

 

Far righters christians wanting gay marriage banned because it's against their religion is a great example.