I love you. No I'm not gay.Easykill said:This thread contains far too much hate.
I love you. No I'm not gay.Easykill said:This thread contains far too much hate.
They, might have been Christian, but they knew what happens when you mix religion with pollitics. The proverbial oil and water, mate. It's been said on this very thread that it's a country of christians, not a christian country.MuffinKing42 said:Your all not terrible smart are you? America is supposed to have state religion, hell the fuckin people that founded this country were exiled from their own because of religious persecution, also there is that whole..separation of church and state thing. That and the constitution and all that jazz was written by people who belong to the Freemason society, which was very open mind and was really "christian" In fact religion has done absolutely nothing to benefit this country.
The dude who is doing it is totally barking though. He has started up his own atheist "church" and has being suing everyone in sight who might have anything to do with possibly believing in god.Alex_P said:Most people posting here can't understand the difference between an injunction to stop Obama from saying the words and an injunction against Roberts to stop him prompting Obama to say them.cuddly_tomato said:What the people outlined in the op are doing is unreasonable and is petty. Even most atheists posting here apparently think so.
-- Alex
Erm... Extremes are bad?Shakespear said:I love you. No I'm not gay.Easykill said:This thread contains far too much hate.
Frankly no.Cheeze_Pavilion said:Obama, just like every other Federal officer when acting in his capacity as a Federal officer, has the Constitutionally mandated duty to refrain from acting in a way that entangled government in religion. He doesn't give up all rights to practice his religion when acting as President, but he certainly gives up some.cuddly_tomato said:Obama, just like everyone else in the United States, has the constitutionally protected right to practice whatever religion he so chooses.
This is about him getting Inaugurated, not how he spends his Sundays--you do realize that, don't you?
Exactly. So what's the big deal? The man might be religious, who cares? He is going to say 4 little words at a ceremony, he hasn't herded people up at gunpoint to attend church. Fight to have equal rights in the workplace and protection from getting fired, fight to have religious instruction removed from state run schools, fight to have evolution put into science books and taught to kids.Cheeze_Pavilion said:That people are trying to defend this on all the wrong grounds, like 'this is a Christian nation' or 'the First Amendment only applies to laws' or 'it's his Constitutional right to practice his religion' and not something like 'look, it's just ceremonial deism' or 'hey--it's more about our admiration for George Washington than any kind of religious issue'.Maybe it is my Europeanness coming out here but what the hell is the big deal?
And how does strawmanning all his arguments help the situation at all?cuddly_tomato said:The dude who is doing it is totally barking though. He has started up his own atheist "church" and has being suing everyone in sight who might have anything to do with possibly believing in god.
I disagree. This is a religious issue, and it is right it should be addressed as one. These kinds of atheists deserve to be criticised as harshly as those theists who want gay marriage outlawed or who want evolution to be taken out of schools. They are trying to shove their own particular belief system on other people.Cheeze_Pavilion said:What worse is that that people are going too far in criticising those atheists, trying to defend this on all the wrong grounds, like 'this is a Christian nation' or 'the First Amendment only applies to laws' or 'it's his Constitutional right to practice his religion' and not something like 'look, it's just ceremonial deism' or 'hey--it's more about our admiration for George Washington than any kind of religious issue'.
Seriously, having the word "god" on the dollar bill isn't going to fuck up planet earth anytime soon. There are bigger issues to get all pissy about, and the fact this man can even bring such ridiculous lawsuits, while at the same time creating his own little "church", speaks volumes about his character. And examination of the character behind this sorry business is warranted.Alex_P said:And how does strawmanning all his arguments help the situation at all?cuddly_tomato said:The dude who is doing it is totally barking though. He has started up his own atheist "church" and has being suing everyone in sight who might have anything to do with possibly believing in god.
He's suing the government -- not "everyone in sight", the government -- for anything to do with believing in God. Because he says that's not the government's job.
I think his arguments are on the trivial side, but the rebuttals are pretty damn weak, too. All the courts have given us is "Oh, hey, all these references aren't really religious despite the fact that they were created with religious intent and the entire Republican Party goes howling mad about how people are trying to destroy religion every time they question a little thing like this". That's pure evasion and handwaving.
-- Alex
except for the fact that he sends anyone He doesn't like to eternal hell...ScAR_TiSsUE said:God is supposed to be a symbol of everything good. Therefore, if a president looks to god or is inspired by god, to be a good president, you can't argue against that.
last time I remembered...it was the crazy Christian guy holding signs on my college campus...Taerdin said:What the hell? Whats with atheists and always pushing their beliefs on other people... I'm getting awfully tired of it
Well, a lot of these bits of tradition don't really go back to that, even. Oftentimes the unofficial versions go back to times when the nation was suffering -- "In God We Trust" was first added to some of our money around the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction, "so help me God" seems to have really only picked up after FDR uttered it during the Great Depression. And the official endorsements of stuff like this go back to the 50s, when people were seeing godless communists under every rock and convening special witch-hunt committees to ferret them out.Cheeze_Pavilion said:That is the problem--what do you do with these bits of tradition that go back to a time when the idea of all Christians being equal was a ridiculously radical idea, and that if the Republican Party goes howling mad about this stuff had been born back in those times, they would have wanted to burn most of the Founding Fathers at the stake.
Yeah but what about all the atheists trying to stop us from celebrating christmas or easter in a public place? What about the atheists trying to strike god from the constitution and national anthem?antipunt said:last time I remembered...it was the crazy Christian guy holding signs on my college campus...Taerdin said:What the hell? Whats with atheists and always pushing their beliefs on other people... I'm getting awfully tired of it