Abrahamic America? A Label that Embraces But Also Excludes

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Samuel Gerrard says:
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I'm surprised a professor of religion (Prothero) would perpetuate the notion that Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. At its core, Hinduism asserts that there is one Supreme entity (God), and that all the universe emanates from this entity, known in Sanskrit as Brahman.
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To which I reply:
Well, but what is wrong with that? Are you going to also deny that the Ancient Greek religion was polytheistic, simply because Plato and Plotinus believed there was only one real god behind all the gods?

That would be a mistake, whether in the Ancient Greek religion _or_ in Hinduism. Both are polytheistic, _even though_ some of their adherents believed in one "super-god" behind all the many gods. Because both _did_ believe in these many gods.

Neither Christianity, nor Judaism, nor Islam do this. All believe in one God only. No many gods all manifestations of one god. Do NOT confuse the belief in saints and angels with the belief in God.

Now of course, I know _some_ carpers will be tempted to pipe up and object that the three persons of the Trinity are multiple gods. But that would just show deep ignorance of the most _fundamental_ principles of Trinitarianism, that all the persons of the Trinity are _consubstantial_. That is why _this_ enumeration into three, the three of the Trinity, _unlike_ any other enumeration, does NOT divide into individuals, much less into individual 'gods'.

Maybe Stephen's religious literacy test should have included something about the meaning of the word 'consubstantial';) It has, after all, been very important to Christianity ever since it was adopted for the Nicene Creed. Trinitarianism makes no sense without it.

Finally, yes, it is true: modern translations of the Creed that translate 'consubstantial' as "of one essence" really do obscure the meaning of the word.

Prothero says:
Or, as Supreme Court Justice William Douglas put it in 1965, we are “a nation of Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists, as well as Christians.”

Ironic that the Supreme Court Justice could leave out Masons and Deists, when the ideology of both has been _far_ more prominent (than that of Christianity) for _centuries_ in Supreme Court Rulings! Sounds like he should have taken one of your classes;)

I also can't help but wonder: where did he think Mormons belong? Was he really so ignorant of religion as to think that Mormons are Christian?

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A previous poster wrote:
"a quote attributed to Jesus: "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only."

That's not a quote from Jesus, it's a quote from James 1, which is a good chapter for Christians to learn how to put their faith into action.

I am a Christian and realize that I live in a multicultural world. Not everyone shares my faith, which is not a surprising. The Bible talks at length about those who will refuse to acknowledge God.

As for the comments from some of you who cannot stand Christians, may I just say that Christians do not claim to be perfect. We are human beings just like everyone else who has posted here. We are full of flaws.

However, it seems that we are often cornered like hunted animals and asked to defend our faith and when we do, we are called "intolerant." It is sad that those who back us into that corner do not see that they, too, are being "intolerant."

The truth is that Christianity is the most inclusive faith. You don't have to be smart or rich or perform any rituals to earn it.

Remember that the Bible says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Some will turn down God's offer of grace, and that's their option. It's my job as a Christian to tell others about God and his redemptive love for mankind.

I make no apologies for my faith. I will not keep quiet about it because it makes some people uncomfortable.

Cheeky,
You are a cheek after my own heart and I am getting in your spirit.

I am completely lost on what Prophi C. Here is talking about. But I thank him for revealing to me a 'religion' I never knew existed before - Americanism.

Is there a clergy? A priesthood? What are its tenets? What is its theology? Who got the divine revelation on this new religion? Is it from Almighty God or the Almighty Dollar? Does one makes pilgrimage to Fort Knox as a tenet of one's faith? Is one baptized in dollar soaked water?

If truth, righteousness and justice is the tenet of Americanism as a 'religion', than the lawyers are its priests, the judges its bishops and archbishops, and Supreme Court Justices are its Popes.

Please! We're all intelligent adults here. And yet: We still argue over theology? God is Santa Claus. Aren't we supposed to have all grown up and realized that the bible is a book, filled with stories no different than Homer's 'Iliad.' Can't we just find a new way to move forward, for GODSAKE?

As it is patently obvious that Bush committed 9-11; that his father helped, with the Roman Catholic-led CIA, to assassinate President Kennedy and Dr. King to send us to die for Roman Catholic interests in Vietnam; that his grandfather was, in fact, the money - on behalf of Rome's Fifth Column and their correspondent banker Rockefeller - behind the author of "I Paid Hitler," and that the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of the Holocaust ("A Moral Reckoning"): those whose affiliations, loyalty, or delusion prevent their confronting what is obviously G_d's truth - that America's Founder Thomas Jefferson was correct in his Whig perspective that Rome is the "real Anti-Christ," are victims of false religion. The only true "religion" any genuine American should ever discuss is Americanism.

Truth, Righteousness, Justice...the Heart of America.

Death for Treason.

Is everyone done on this to their satisfaction? What this thread proves is the obvious :

(a) people will fight to the bitter end on religion, dogmas and ideologies;

(b) the politics of exclusion is very much alive;

(c) my experiences is more valid than yours;

(d) people fear and hate what they do not understand;

(e) people really do not make an effort to understand or see things from the perspective of others;

(f) people will argue to the bitter end or to death for what they believe in; and

(g) the saner and informed voices get drowned in the atavistic and emotional rants of the secular and religious extremists.

We are going to see conflicts and wars to the end of time and to accept it, driven, as usual, by extremists whom the "moderates" are either indifferent, cowed, flustered, startled, or too well mannered to stop them. What else is new?

Susan Cinaz:

Way far up this thread about 100 comments ago, I pointed out that none of these belief systems being debated are American in origin. Thanks for reminding everyone that the only truly American religious beliefs were actually illegal in this country until Jimmy Carter signed the Native American Freedom of Religion Act in 1978. Years ago on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, a shaman showed me his grandfather's federal license (dated in the early 30s) to perform a ceremony that he had previously done jail time for. So much for this country being founded on religious freedom, eh? I feel very fortunate to have gotten a glimpse into this world. I have seen and experienced things that would qualify as "miracles" in other belief systems. Many of the shamans I have been exposed to have taken a lot of heat for sharing this knowledge with white people. Quite the opposite of other religion's mandate to go out and convert everybody by whatever means necessary. Blessings on you and all our relations.

Vincent Stanford: Thank you for your kind words. Though I still harbor a rather strong antipathy toward Christianists (I have yet to meet a true "Christian" if the Sermon on the Mount can be considered to at least partially define the essence of Christianity), I have mellowed somewhat over the years. From a purely rational point of view I now consider the "religion" in which I was raised to be no more believable than any of the other belief systems that I have encountered in my 32 years of travels around the world with my husband (we are both engineers with a large international firm). That being said, I still take comfort in the lasting ties to my family, my clan and my people that are strengthened by the beliefs of my childhood, beliefs that were never considered to be superior to the beliefs of others and which were never exploited as the basis for exercising dominion over others but were nonetheless suppressed by the Federal Government at the behest of Christianists. And I think therein lies not only my contempt for Christianism, but my absolute contempt for the dogma of any belief system that attempts in any way to dominate those who do not share its beliefs. Perhaps I am still a "little heathen" at heart.

"On Nazis and Fascists as Christians, I believe the point Prothero was trying to make was that these groups were calling themselves Christians."

And he had a valid point. Still, many comments on this site have used Nazism to try to slander either Christianity or atheism. People on each side are trying to prove that the other side's dogma inevitably leads to hate and genocide. I see it as a pointless argument.

On Nazis and Fascists as Christians, I believe the point Prothero was trying to make was that these groups were calling themselves Christians. So Christians in the US who didn't want to be seen as sympathetic started to call themselves "Judeo-Christians." For an excellent study of Nazis as Christians, see Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler (Yale University Press, 1985).

Dear Susan,

I admire your willingness to make an honest and personal post. It reminded me of when I was a boy, and my parents enrolled me in Holy Angels Cathedral School which was then staffed by the Sisters of Notre Dame. Many of these ladies were then getting on in years and came from a different more fundamentalist culture with many actually believing the idea that the world was created just four-thousand years ago. My parents were eventually asked to dis-enroll me because of my questioning of these beliefs. I would bring in magazines with articles about paleontology with time lines going back hundreds of millions of years. When the other boys saw how much this upset the Nuns I began to develop a following. I guess I was thought of as a "little pagan". Like you, I remember how hurtful and intolerant these people were to those who were different in any way. I also had an antipathy to Christians for years, but I have since concluded is not because these people were Christian that they were so hostile and rigid. It is possible that they would have been even worse on their own.

The story of The Fall seems more relevant over the years as I have encountered a wide variety of people and read more history. It is a life-long project to try to overcome and correct our flaws, shortcomings, and fallen nature. Over the years, I have increasingly found the primary Christian documents, if not all the practitioners, to be of interest. The gospels speak of imperfect people, and a call to a different way of life than what we mostly live.

The story of the Good Samaritan (with its temple priest who left a wounded man for dead because he did not want to become ritually impure by touching him and its much despised and discriminated against Samaritan who bound the man's wounds and secured lodging for him so he could recuperate) must have been dismaying in a world where it was normal to see neighboring tribes as inferior. It asked: who is the better neighbor the "righteous" priest, or the "inferior" Good Samaritan? This is a question that we have not finished answering as a society. So I think the so-called Christians you have met would do well read the material that they claim espouse. I am sorry to hear that you have been discriminated against by intolerant people who claim to be Christian. It sounds like you are doing a thoughtful and well considered job of your journey through life. All the best to you as you go.

Jack Carstens, just about every religion in the world has seen tremendous good and tremendous evil committed by its followers. We could spend months here analyzing those histories, but what would be the point? In my view, those histories do not prove that some religions are better or worse than others. To me, that just proves that the problem is dogma.

By "dogma" I refer to any belief system that demands that people accept it or face some sort of punishment, either from an earthly authority or by a supernatural authority. This definitely includes communism and fascism, which I see as religious dogmas without supernatural elements. No authority should ever require the individual to believe something. Not only is that against the principle of freedom of conscience, it is also against the principle of individual faith.

From the horse's mouth (or perhaps from the horse's a**):

The response of Pope Pius XII to the request that he condemn the Nazi invasion of (Protestant) Norway was that there were only 2,619 Catholics in Norway, and that "the Holy See must keep in mind the 30,000,000 German Catholics in its activities." (L'Osservatore Romano -- April, 1940).

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"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality." - Adolf Hiter, The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.

"Today Christians stand at the head of Germany. I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years." - Adolf Hitler. Ibid, pg. 871-872.

*******

Martin Luther's (prescient?) suggestions as to what should be done regarding the Jewish "problem" in Germany. From "The Jews and Their Lies," 1543:

"First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians."

"Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies."

"Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them."

"Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb."

"Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like."

"Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping."

"Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam."

How Christian !!!!

As a Native American (Apache, though I prefer the word "N'de"), I find discussions such as this both amusing and sad. As a child, numerous Federal laws -- actively supported by Christianists -- prohibited me from practicing my religion until 1978 when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed by Congress. As an example, an extremely important ceremony among my people is "na'ii'ees," the Sunrise or Puberty ceremony for young girls. Because this four-day ceremony, central to our culture and religion, was prohibited by Federal laws, my family and clan conducted it for me in secret and shortened it to a two-day ceremony. For many years I felt that part of my life and culture had been stolen from me by the government and by the so-called Christian teachers at the mission school who had a number of choice names ("little heathen" seemed to be the most popular) for a smart-a** girl who occasionally had the audacity to question their teachings.

I have since mellowed considerably, but my antipathy toward Christianists and Christianism remains to this day. As an aside, the only overt discrimination that I have ever experienced in my life has been that directed at me by so-called Christians.

As a consequence of my encounters with Christianists, I sometimes think of the following story -- perhaps apocryphal -- that was at one time told with great relish on the Rez: A young minister of the gospel came to a mission on the Rez to spread the word of god. After a few weeks, he was given the name "Walking Eagle" by the locals. The young reverend was very proud of his "injun" name and had it printed on the church bulletin and stationery which, unbeknownst to him, resulted in more than a few guffaws at his expense. You see, he was given the name Walking Eagle because he was so full of sh*t that he couldn't fly.

Dear Anonymous:

The statement "...in WW2 Europe Christians gave Christians a bad name by failing to stand up to the oppressive power of the Nazis and Fascists within their own society." should be reconsidered.

I used to have a friend who was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was a youngster in Poland in 1939. When I said something like you posted here about Christians who let this go on he told me a different story.

When the SS came to his village with their submachine guns to round up the Jews and kill them, the local Catholic priest interposed himself between the SS gunners and the Jews. He told them that they would have to kill him down to get a clear shot. They shot him down first. My friend escaped the slaughter and, after years on the run, he came to America. He died peacefully a few years ago of old age, with many Christian friends mourning his passing.

It is easy to make naive and simplistic judgements of others, but I wonder how long you would have lasted in front of SS machine guns; or if I would shown had the courage of that priest. Over twenty-five thousand of his brothers were hunted down and murdered in the camps and villages by the Nazis. The choices open to the average Germans and Poles were difficult beyond our comprehension.

Good points, Ba'al. I suggest that as far as government is concerned, terms like "Judeo-Christian" and "atheist" are irrelevant. Government has no position on whether God exists, or whether such a God fits the monotheistic model or the pantheistic model or some other model. Those matters are for the individual citizen to decide for himself or herself.

As an aside, I say again that the term "Judeo-Christian" is very annoying, since the core beliefs of the two religions are at their theological core incommensurable. You don't need to read very deeply to discern that the Gods portrayed in the Old and New Testaments are entirely different in tone, and the "paths to salvation" are completely different (insofar as the concept is more or less meaningless to Jews). The term also suggests a degree of tolerance that is very recent, and that is probably not very deep in certain areas to this day. There were legally enforced real estate covenants in place as recently as the 1950s that prevented my (Jewish) father from buying a house in certain areas.

Not surprisingly, this term is used primarily by political conservatives attempting to appeal to "values voters" on the basis of "moral issues". For that reason I consider the term an affront to all that is decent.

"Obviously, it admits Muslims in what had once been a Protestant-Catholic-Jewish club."

One can write nonsense like this only be ignoring what actually happens in this country. To see this, all you need to do is look at the response to the election of Keith Ellison, a Muslim, to Congress. Try Googling the names Keith Ellison and Glenn Beck and you will see what I mean. I was sarcastic when I suggested the idea that America should be called an "Abramamic" country a few days back, since the very hint of this would cause the heads of many conservative Christians to explode.

It is true that there are Hindus, Taoists, and Budhists in America. Not mentioned is that there are probably more atheists than these other groups combined if one uses any sort of reasonable definition of atheism. Such a definition would include all those who reject or very strongly doubt the existence of any sort of supernatural being that can intercede on one's behalf as a result of prayer, sacrifice or any other ritual. By that definition, people who hold a vague idea such as "God is in everything" are actually atheists, even if they would be horrified by the term; even if they occasionally attend a religious ritual as a celebration of their ethnicity.

Reading all this stuff leaves an interesting impression. The most pious posters all seem slightly insane to a dis-interested observer. It is amazingly true that if religion weren't so universal and acceptable, an individual person espousing religious concepts, ie, being prompted by "spirits", believing impossible things, etc., would actually be considered insane.

Is Cow also a God in hindus? And Is Ram fictional Character?

The statement "This began to change during World War II, when Nazis and Fascists in Europe gave Christians a bad name" misses the point in WW2 Europe Christians gave Christians a bad name by failing to stand up to the oppressive power of the Nazis and Fascists within their own society.

To a large extent, what most churches profess as christianity really has very little to do with what Christ taught. Christ taught inclusiveness and openly challanged oppressive power of both religous authority and the state. Christanity has been so throughly co-opted that it can not bring itself to challange oppressive actions by "so called" Christian authorities or the government.

If America were to become a practicing Christian nation we would most likely eliminate all but a small fragment of our military forces, seriously rethink controls on capitalism, and immediately focus the bulk of our wealth on fighting poverity both at home and overseas.

Christians in America all to often seek "cheap grace" without understanding the implications of claiming to be a follower of Christ.

Been several women posting. I'm the one who was rather taken with Mark Eaton's inclusion of longevity in his list of real, true values our country lacks.

I do indeed value longevity and believe it would make a very good basis for a religion. Indeed, if the vity were longe enough, the question of an afterlife becomes moot.

“…I am not nor ever have been in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people…"

-- Abraham Lincoln

Note to readers: HINDI is a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people inside and outside India. A HINDU is a person that practices or adheres to Hinduism. They are not interchangeble terms. As an Indian-American person I find it irritating when these terms are used as the same term. Also, it is derogatory to refer to someone of Indian descent as a Hindu, as not all Indians are Hindus.

Ms. Nafisah Mohamed,

If you're still reading this thread, note one reader's opinion that your post (the one that follows) comes the closest to commendable Christian charity of anyone's in the thread, even though you self-identify yourself as Muslim. Thank you!

"....and it is most fun eavesdropping into an American "conversation" on religion. Especially for a person of the "wrong" religion (Islam), gender (female,) colour (cafe latte), and region (third world/developing country/Asia).

"Think positive people. No one accused you or look at you weirdly in being adherents of a "false", "warped", "violent", "terrorist prone" religion. Whatever gets you through the night and day :)

"Anyone wants to think seriously about global warming, environmental degradation, poverty alleviation, diseases, inter-state and intra-state conflicts? Hair splitting about religion is of course, a luxury of the idle, the indulgent and seekers of alternate power and control. Ask any Muslim.

"Good night, good luck and may peace be with you all."

I'll append a quote attributed to Jesus: "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only."

FREETHINKER AND JUST WONDERING :
Thanks for the sanity check. Thank God for the inherent American decency and the ability to step back, note and and check excesses.

Excesses in religious beliefs and secular ideologies can and do kill, especially if one hold the view - there is two points of views,those that are wrong and my own.

The idea of speaking of America as if it were some identifiable entity with an awareness of deciding what it is or is not strikes me as ridiculous. Consider a population of two things, a 5 and a 7. What is the average ? 6. Is 6 part of the population ? No.

Child of Grace wrote: "I am saddened to see my tax dollars being used to teach children atheistic religion in public schools, but it does not make me hostile."

By "atheistic religion" do you mean "reality-based" worldview?

Just wondering....

Actually, Hinduism doesn't have many Gods, but rather one God with many faces.

"Hinduism" is not really a "religion" in the traditional meaning of the word. The word "Hinduism" was coined by people looking at Indian culture from outside. Indians accepted the term because of circumstances of history and because there was no better choice of words to define it to the outside world. The word Hinduism was mentioned only in relatively recent history. Likewise, the confusion whether "Hindus" suscribe to one God, multiple Gods or no God is a problem of understanding of Indian culture. "Hinduism" is a complex mixture of philosophy, belief systems and superstitions. The unique feature of the modern Indian belief system is tolerance and acceptance of multiple viewpoints and attempt to find some common grounds. Since every local diety is respected by everyone else the appearance is of the worship of many "Gods". Also, this system of tolerance has become enmeshed into the belief system because no one great "religious" leader exorted their followers to challenge that. Therefore, to pull in Hinduism in a discussion religions, is to simply the nature of Hinduism.

It's time our country evolve and espouse all religions and beliefs, including aethism.

It truly doesn't matter what the founding fathers thought at the time, or whether most of the country was Christian at the time of the country's inception.

Has no intellectual thought progressed since the time of the country's forefathers?

Hopefully we currently are more inclusive than our forefathers were. Hopefully that inclusiveness includes other belief systems - in particular those which seek communication rather than isolation.

The Bhagavad-gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to Krishna Consciousness (Introduction)

http://interracialvoice.com/NBR_Intro.html

....."I am saddened to see my tax dollars being used to teach children atheistic religion in public schools"

Let me guess; You're not a big fan of modern biology?

Well that's too bad, because Jesus belongs in biology class just as much as he belongs in metal shop or algebra.

I know it's been tough teaching your kids about Jesus after Bill Clinton closed down all of the churches and banned religion in the home. But really, just suck it up and go undergound like they did in Nazi Japan or somewhere.

Child of grace:
"I have no desire to make us a christian country. I have every desire to see my fellow americans come to know the joy of eternal life with Jesus."

Such an epitome of oxymoron!

child of grace:

I am sick and tired of my monmey going to religious organizations that try to force their lord born out of wedlock on the rest of us.
As for eternal life through Jesus , you have been lied to and haven't read your Bible

From Zion shall come deliverer;
he shall remove wickedness from Jacob (Not Mankind)
and this is the covenant I will grant them (Israel-not World)
when I wash away their sins (NOT ORIGINAL SIN)
It is the sins of the House of Jacob that Messiah was connected to and not Original sin. If you read any other Hebrew Lit. you will find there was never any belief that Messiah was to grant people a hereafter; only that he would lead Israel back to God and the Promised Land would be restored to it's former glory

For why you have been misled and lied to go to
religuinquestioned.com which has an offer to shut down

To Mike:
I don't hate Christians per se. What I hate are the hypocracy and self-righteousness often exhibited by Christians and Christianity. Admit it, Christians are intolerant of non-believers in the first place.

To the Moderate and alike:
Celebrities of science such as Newton provides only a data point of one (not to mention that he lived 400 years ago when Christianity was really dominant over European lives). What's more logical is to look at the public as a whole, in which case there's definitely an inverse relationship between education level and faith.

Are you saying Christianity had a good name before WWII?
If so that leaves out not only slavery and the mistreatment and hanging of blacks as well as witch trials and the writing of retsrictive covenant deeds thatprecluded both non Christians and non whotes from owning property.
The reason it became to be talked about after WWII is that people grew spines and started to talk out just like gays now coming out of closet.
With many denomination still hell bent on treating gays which Jesus never said one word about and women as second class citizens just show how many want to take us back to the dark ages.

I wonder what purpose it actually serves to attempt to label America in the first place. What good has come of labeling Iraq as a Muslim nation? Does that help us fit the Muslims into our world or does that aid us in fitting Iraq into an American world? Does it matter?

Is love and thereby God not most merciful when it refuses to be fit into a box? (or label, as it were)

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I have no fear at what government, ACLU, etc will do. Jesus promised He will build His church and hell itself will not stop it. I am saddened to see my tax dollars being used to teach children atheistic religion in public schools, but it does not make me hostile. I love this country and I care for those who don't know the joy of a relationship with God thru Jesus. I am thankful for freedom of religion. I have no desire to make us a christian country. I have every desire to see my fellow americans come to know the joy of eternal life with Jesus.

JUST WONDERING: Good post.

You ask: "Why can't we all get along?? It must be because someone always has to be right..."

I BELIEVE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS HAVE MANNERS that many in America have lost, specifically, mutual respect. You refrain from attempting to impose your beliefs upon each other.

For some incomprehensible (to me) reason, much of America has gone Evangelical, their hobby-horse, to proselytize the rest of us.

I WISH THEY'D READ YOUR POST...

I read all these posts and think to myself, "Are these all men? Where are the women? Don't they have any opinions? Do they read this stuff?". I think there was one woman called Caroline, but the rest seem to be men or unknown.

I am Roman Catholic, but I have many friends who are Jewish, Protestant, Hindi, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, you name it. I love them all - they are wonderful women. They love their children, as I love mine, and we highly value each other and each other's children. They are incredibly good people, by any religion's standard. They would NEVER want their children to die by being a suicide bomber, and I would NEVER want to send my child to kill their child. We are all children of some mother, and most mothers would rather die than have their child die.

My husband values children too, and would never condone such a waste of young lives, whether they are part of our blood, religion, country or not. Come on, already! They are supposed the future!

Are we liberals? Not really, so don't jump on that bandwagon.

Why can't we all get along?? It must be because someone always has to be right, and therefore everyone else who doesn't believe the same thing is wrong.

I can't even begin to express how painful this is, reading so many vituperative posts. But if I don't read, I'm living in an ivory tower or glass house. No matter where I look, it's shattering to someone. Who will pick up the pieces?

Different article, same silly comments.

We get it. A lot of you folks hate Christians.

I am a Daoist (or Taoist if you prefer), and have been so for over 25 years. And I heartily agree with the article.

As for ourselves, we do not follow gods, but a path that all may walk upon if they choose.

And that means everyone: gods, angels, demons, human beings, even animals sometimes use it. It is simultaneously crowded and almost empty. There is found none of the arguing of who or what is better (as demonstrated by so many other posters here).

To my mind, those that do not cause strife even while faithfully responding to the article seem to understand how that road works, too.

To David Crow:

Go slap Christians and see how many turn the other cheek.

They think the Virgin Birth is supposedly literally true, but the cheek-slap-turn part is obviously not meant to be taken literally. (Also the part about it being harder for a camel to fit through the needle of an eye than for a rich man to go to Heaven.) Listen to them yap about the war on Christmas! Onward Christian soldiers, boys! No turning cheeks HERE - it's us vs. everyone else! They look at you like you're nuts if you suggest they just have faith in their god to take care of these people - obviously their god relies on them to do His dirty work!

They will tell you that what Jesus said about prince of peace, lamb of god is either unimportant or misunderstood - because He also said "Think not that I come to bring peace, but a sword."

In any case, what Paul said is taken as far more important than anything Jesus said. If people just stuck with Jesus, they wouldn't get away with being such bullies. And it wouldn't be nearly so much fun.

Christianity have anything to do with pacifism? Are you on drugs? Since when?

Christianity is about being around when God the bogeyman comes and gets everyone else. There is no other logic and no other appeal.

Regarding Sukkee's post, while I appreciate someone remembering atheists of this country, it must be pointed out that atheisim is not a religion, thus requires no "faith". Rather, it takes logical reasoning, which renders it a philosophy. The entire faith-based model of America needs to be changed. I cannot think of anything more hypocrytical than claiming to be secular, and yet having every societal function based on religion. That really undermines the "separation of church and state" claim of this country (which is only on paper anyway). As far as the "American virtues", I fail to see any parallel with Christian preachings: you are condemed to hell if you don't believe us; what kind of liberty and equality is that?

To lump Christianity with Islam and Judaism as "monotheistic religions" overlooks the fact that both Islam and Judaism do not accept the divinization of Christ, which to them gives Christianity a polytheistic flavor.

Whatever your mind and experience have caused you to believe, well, that is fine and good - unless it intrudes on my beliefs. Monotheistic or not, secular humanist or not, in America, you are free to choose and be. The rest of the world can only marvel at that also and long to be here, where jobs, rule of law, and the urge-to-the-future all rule the day and the way. There is no God but there is an America. For that alone, I am thankful.

Thought-provoking reflections by Prof. Prothero. My main beef is that he seems to imply that Nazism and European Fascism gave Christianity a bad name. Fascism's glorification of power and force explicitly disdained Christianity's pacifism (e.g., Christ as "Prince of Peace" and "Lamb of God", his admonishment to "turn the other cheek").

The reshaping of America as a "Judeo-Christian" nation almost certainly owed to our collective horror we felt over the Holocaust, but not to a Christianity putatively discredited by Fascism. (It should be said that Latin American Fascism, on the other hand, explicitly allied itself with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, though not rank and file priests.)

Christianity doesn't need Fascism to discredit it. Those who call themselves Christ's followers, from Emperor Constantine to George W. Bush, have done a great job all by themselves.

It’s a good thing to be inclusive of diverse representations. I don’t think anyone would believe that this was written as much as it can be logically concluded. The unnatural aspect is for politicians to decide what sector must be included, or culture and religion to impose its superiority over another. When people advance and comprehend the true of nature, their mere logic would be found lacking in substance. I have come closed to the construction of the concept and it will be found to be a straight line between the material and the spiritual with concrete objectification towards a natural social order of society. When scientists and philosophers loose the positivism view of reality, nature may reveal itself to be the most beautiful phenomenon in existence. And no, it has nothing to do with New Age or Feminism or Macho for that matter…

Prothero gives a thought-provoking (or otherwise provoking?) analysis. While not Christian, even here in the Bible Belt I've come to love the general communal aspects of Christmas, Easter, etc. 'Peace on earth, good will to men' used to be a key theme of this season, and nobody sang Christmas carols more enthusiastically than I. One could handle the occasional over-zealous prosyletizer,
But the 'Jesus is the reason for the season' crowd has taken over, and thus excluded the wider community from anything other than frenzied spending and days off. Much worse, now that so many Christians are attending Christian schools, they are being indoctrinated in the idea that this is a Christian Nation (see 'Jesus Camp'). Some people actively promote the idea that Christianity be made our *official* religion. They cite the Founders as being Christian but refuse to distinguish between their practicing their faith in private and endorsing a national religion. Some zealots refuse to see that that because official state religions were the norm in the 18th century, the non-establishment of one by the Founders was effectively a repudiation of the idea.
Secular society (with private faith) is the backbone of America, reinforced by our public schools. I fear that people who separate themselves by going to 'faith' schools, listening to Christian music, reading Christian books, attending Christian events and yet try to force their morality and their 'values' on the rest of us are undermining what makes America great. God
help us.

"Read Dawkins: The GOD Delusion. Listen to Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God"

Checking on www.isaac-newton.org one finds that Newton left four million words on theology. The concept that great minds of science become atheist as they become more educated simply does not hold up upon examination.

....."Yeah, America IS grand! But we can't sing "God Bless America" ..."

You can't? Of course you can.
Paranoid much?

Oh, you mean that state employees cannot lead captive schoolkids in the singing of such a song.
Well, correct. And you should be glad it is so when the time comes that the state may be controlled by believers of a religion not your own.

Why anyone would listen to an author who claims that Christanity had anything to do with Aryan Nazism is beyond me. As well, why anyone would listen to someone who worships at the throne of "Science" is also beyond me. Ignorance takes many forms.

Season's Greetings For my Friends Belonging To Different Political Parties (The Revised Edition):

For My Democratic (and agnostic, and intellectual, and liberal, and atheist, and politically-correct-philosopher-loonies-like-Leonard-Peikoff) Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.

Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of their wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. Also, if you are gay, support gay marriages, favor abortions, favor keeping prayer and God out of the schools, favor illegal immigration, and the many other things that most liberal Democrats support, then you will understand more fully the reason for the following paragraph.

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

For My Real Friends:

May you have a Blessed, Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!!!

Ain't America grand? What other country, or religious-philosophical organization, would tolerate the above dialogue? Or is it a series of diatribes? Or is it an attempt at a dialectic? Or just a societal dynamic?

Yeah, America IS grand! But we can't sing "God Bless America" ...

"Read Dawkins: The GOD
Delusion. Listen to Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God"

Or you could read "The Fire in the Equations" by Ferguson; or Einstein's "Out of My Later Years", or note that Newton thought his theology was more important than his physics.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

--Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941 US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

The world would be a far better place if Abraham would have died in his cradle! The Abrahamic follies would be amusing if they didn't kill so many people. What has been done in the misguided assumption by so many who claim to know the soul of GOD is satanic at best and can not claim any descernable relationship to any sort of creator/ substainer. It can only be characterized as inhuman, evil by any definition.

Antiluminous:

You couldn't be more wrong:

You wrote:
"What other religion were the founders referring to when they devised the US Constitution? They weren't referring to Islam, were they? No, they were not."

But Jefferson wrote:
"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan (Muslim), the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

I believe in Neptune God of the Sea.
All other gods are just make believe.
Just made up by our unbelievably ignorant
ancestors back in the stone age.
But Neptune's different.
I KNOW he's real. I can feel him inside my head.
I talk to him all the time.
He's cool.
Trust me.Pray to Neptune and watch your luck change.
But be sure to face north by northwest otherwise he
won't hear you.
May Neptune watch over you.
kuyg

A POST-THEISTIC SOCIETY

STEVE N writes: "We're at the end of the Dark Ages concerning adult Santa Clauses. And don't flatter yourself that anyone 'hates' Christianity. We just find it increasingly irrelevant, especially as presented by spittle-sprayers like yourself (he was addressing Antiluminous)."

It will be thought of as a post-theistic society. Not atheist -- which implies an active disbelief in God / god -- but a society beyond caring about unprovable claims of the supernatural.

People will look back on the religious debates of our time as absurd -- in the same way that we look back on the arguments about, for example, the nature of the Trinity (consumed a lot of energy in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches) and the literalness with which they should interpret Transubstantiation (wine into blood, etc., ditto on the energy).

Today's debates will not be settled, just forgotten: Ho-hum.

Until then, we have our work cut out: Preventing the loonies from the Big Three Monotheisms from blowing up our world.

"Another reason for hatred of Christians is the fundamentalist claim that they know what happens to the souls of non-Christians, kind of like Christians have the spiritual lives of other folks in their hip pocket."

Mike G, I think your hip pocket simile is a good one. However, this is not about hating Christians or Muslims or atheists or anyone else. Surely one can despise a dogma without despising the person pushing the dogma.

I don't understand why some Christians and some Muslims tell unbelievers that they're evil and worthless, and why some atheists tell believers that they're stupid and ignorant. These people seem to believe that an individual's choice in religious belief is about them, or should be about them. Are there other evangelistic religions besides Christianity and Islam? And if so, do they also preach the noxious doctrine of eternal damnation?

J. R.,

"His purpose seems to have been to get the Jewish Menorah included in the festivities."

This is the right interpretation of "diversity": more representation of the holidays and fun of each group, not the suppression of any, including the majority. We should include more and share more of our joys and happy customs.

That some are upset when their neighbors have fun reminds me of the old definition of a Puritan as someone who has the nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere might be having fun.

The higher the level of education one has, the less one believes in
supersititions like santa and gods. Now why is that? Because
educated people are no longer ignorant of how the universe works. We
have learned that the earth is not flat, the earth goes around the
sun, that evolution occured, and so on. All these things were or are
resisted by religions, though some have caught on. How could God
possibly retreat at all? Only if he doesn't exist. The direction is
clear: we need to abandon religions, stop fighting amongst ourselves
over made up primitive stories and get to work saving the planet from
global warming (among many other serious problems). All this energy
and wealth directed towards religions and their ignorant leaders is
leading us towards catastrophy. Take courses in mathematics,
thermodynamics, physics, molecular biogy, genetics and other sciences.
Not only will you find it fun (!) but you will see that you can drop
your illusion that there are any gods. Read Dawkins: The GOD
Delusion. Listen to Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God",
http://tinyurl.com/fdfop
or
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2005/06/letting_go_of_g_1.html

Hey CJ:

LOL! Thanks for that hilarious, satirical stereotype of the ultimate American moron. Next time you should remember the "sarc" tag though, some people might think you're serious.

I will now straighten everything out with this short course in comparative religion:

Tao: Sh*t happens.
Islam: When sh*t happens, it is the will of Allah.
Hindu: This sh*t happened many times before.
Confucianism: Confucious say, "sh*t happens".
Buddhism: When sh*t happens, is it really sh*t?
Zen Buddhism: What is the sound of sh*t happening?
Judaism: Oy vey, why does this sh*t happen to me?
Catholicism: When sh*t happens, I deserve it.
Protestant: Sh*t won't happen if I work harder.
Mormon: Can we sell this sh*t to the Gentiles?
Jehovah's Witness: Knock knock, sh*t happens.
Unitarian: It's all good sh*t.
Pentacostal: Praise this sh*t!
Agnostic: What is this sh*t?
Atheist: There is no sh*t.
New Age: I feel your sh*t.
Rastafarian: Let's smoke this sh*t!

Belief -- which exists only because a cogency of evidence and knowledge are lacking -- proves absolutely nothing nor does the sincerity of one's belief or faith prove anything about the general validity of that belief. Except to oneself, of course. And therefore, each has an opinion based on what he or she believes, but can not prove, to be the truth. As a result, using a book written by men who believed the earth was flat and that the sun orbited the earth, can prove absolutely nothing to those who do not share a belief in that book.

And since the founding of this nation has been invoked, why not let some of the founding fathers speak for themselves?

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" -- John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England." -- Benjamin Franklin, from his "Essay on Toleration."

"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." -- Thomas Jefferson in "Notes on the State of Virginia."

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear." Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Peter Carr.

"I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshiped by many who think themselves Christians." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Richard Price.

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams.

"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to his nephew, Peter Carr.

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." -- James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

"Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind." -- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America."

I'd like to mention something about the comments being made about the incident of the removal of the Christmas trees in the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Several people have made mention of it in this section as though the Jews were attacking Christianity. Please read the news more closely. The Jewish Rabbi apologized for the unintended removal of the trees & said he never intended the airport to have to take them down. His purpose seems to have been to get the Jewish Menorah included in the festivities. Please don't jump to negative conclusions so fast.

I don’t see how Stephen Prothero can be surprised that the new inclusiveness of adding Islam to the public consciousness of our religion doesn’t include Buddhism or Hinduism yet. We haven’t had any public consciousness-raising experience of either (unless you count some 60‘s hippies). And there’s the factor of those both being non-Middle Eastern religions. Hinduism is descended from a more ancient religion than Judaism, & Buddhism is a much more modern non-theist non-violent philosophy. In a country in which most people still went to small Christian churches until just 1 or 2 generations ago, & were descendants of Europeans who had fought long bitter religious wars over which sect of Christianity deserved to be the ‘one’ true version, it takes time to get over that mindset (think “Onward Christian Soldiers“). It’s taken a world war with genocide to accept the Jews, & a massive public attack on our biggest city to bring our attention to Islam as a force worth reckoning with. I wonder what it would take to get our public attention to not just notice but to accept Hinduism, with it’s incredibly complex pantheon, or Buddhism with no pantheon. (I think it’s interesting they both came from the same place.)

To all of those ignorant of American history:

The phrase, "endowed by their creator..." was in the Declaration of Indepedence. It is not law.

There is zero mention of ANY deity in our country's laws, which is of course the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution specifically forbids the government to "respect any establishment of religion or prevent its free practice thereof." That's as multi-cultural as it gets. It's also the fabled wall between church and state.

I feel sorry for brainwashed haters like Sweetness and that ilk, who's driven by laughable religious hatred into insisting this is a Christian country.

This is a country of laws. Watch your mouth about "armed, militarized Christians." Any such creeps would be happily blasted into eternity, to meet their Maker, by those of us sick of intolerant religious weirdos. A hundred million? Do you REALLY think you'd get more than a couple of thousand shrieking religious extremists to consider "arming themselves?" Most Americans are rather lax in their religious practices, though they may express a surface belief in basic christian tenets.

We're at the end of the Dark Ages concerning adult Santa Clauses. And don't flatter yourself that anyone "hates" Christianity. We just find it increasingly irrelevant, especially as presented by spittle-sprayers like yourself.

Your pathetic "god" has a problem, besides not existing. If it did exist, it would seem it is a weak, pathetic god, more interested in electing right-wing politicians and helping football players cross goal lines than doing any real work in the world, like feeding the hungry that die every day.

And you, Sweetie Pie, express the typical intolerance and hatred that I've come to expect from all of the loud-mouthed christians who know and understand nada about the Golden Rule.

Good riddance to a fading religion - not that the religion bothered me; just Dark Ages folk like Sweetness.

Antiluminous:

As to all those hundreds of witnesses to the resurection of Jesus of Nazareth, I really would like to read the exact record of the testimony of each. Would you please find the primary source where each one of them recorded his/her own name and gave an affidavit in his/her own words, and then post those here? You do have them don't you? Please don't tell me that all you have is one person's heresay and that this person didn't even document the names of those 500 witnesses, much less give a verbatim transcription of what each said.

What if you were put on trial for a crime, and the only prosecution witness was someone who never met you, and who claimed that 500 people saw you commit the crime 70 years earlier, yet he cannot name those 500 witness nor give a verbatim account of what those 500 people said. Then the jury fnds you guilty and the judge, concurring with them, sentences you. Would you go along with that "evidence" being credible? I know, you think the evidence is credible because it's in your "bible". Well, there were many other "books" in contention to be included in your bible. Know how they decided which ones to include? Several hundred years after Jesus lived, thousands of people killed each other until those remaining agreed at a council held by a Roman Emperor (surely no politics here) that the "bible" should contain the books it does today. Now surely, we must agree that such a canon of literature must indeed be "HOLY"!!!

For all the "intellectuals" who mentioned the golden rule, if you are really an American you must know that it comes from the New Testament. To say that the United States is not a Christian country is like saying African countries are prospering; it simply isn't true. Most of the founding fathers were Christians, as were the overwhelmingly vast majority of the population at the time of the ratification of the constitution. To say that muslims deserve to have an equal share of credit in our cultural heritage is disgusting. Christians, and a couple Jews, founded this country. Muslims only truly entered its history as terrorists who made a cheap shot because they are too scared to fight like real men. While most muslims are innocent of any violence or hostility, virtually all the terrorists we are fighting now are muslim, and thus it is impossible to overlook that muslims are the enemy. So I'm glad we are crediting the enemy with what was a wonderful culture.
Burn in Hell Liberals.
Hail Victory and White Power!!!

One suggestion - let's first make sure we're all spotless in observing the precepts of whatever faith we profess, before trying to preach or impose it on others.

"Preach the gospel daily. When necessary, use words."

- Saint Francis of Assisi

Comrad Piekoff:

You must have stayed up all night writing that. Are you fillibustering? And I thought I was wordy.

Brother Prothero:

Perhaps you should check your numbers a bit closer. The actual percentage of practicing Christians in America is 7%. The survey that determins 85% of Americans are Christuians is done by "loaded" question that leaves no other answer possible except atheist. 7% of Americans is how many are willing to make a public display of faith. You are seriously outnumbered by atheists even, over 2 to 1, just to mention one group.

False premise must lead to false conclusion must lead to hell. http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul but don't expect much for it because the ministry has the market cornered.

One commenter mentioned that America was founded on the constitution giving people a voice in government, not on Judeo-Christian principles. But (going deeper than just the document and to the views that informed it) James Madison can rightly be considered a Christian political theologian. Federalist 10 is a direct indication that Madison employed a Christian anthropology--no doubt one he picked up largely from John Witherspoon--and that he was heavily influenced by Christian (or Reformed) notions about original sin, the Kindgom of God/Kindgoms of men distinction, etc.

Religion vs. America
By Leonard Peikoff

This lecture was delivered at the Ford Hall Forum on April 20, 1986.

A specter is haunting America--the specter of religion. This, borrowing Karl Marx's literary style, is my theme tonight.

Where do I see religion? The outstanding political fact of the 1980s is the rise of the New Right, and its penetration of the Republican party under President Reagan. The bulk of the New Right consists of Protestant Fundamentalists, typified by the Moral Majority. These men are frequently allied on basic issues with other religiously oriented groups, including conservative Catholics of the William F. Buckley ilk and neoconservative Jewish intellectuals of the Commentary magazine variety.

All these groups observed the behavior of the New Left awhile back and concluded, understandably enough, that the country was perishing. They saw the liberals' idealization of drugged hippies and nihilistic yippies; they saw the proliferation of pornography, of sexual perversion, of noisy Lib and Power gangs running to the Democrats to demand ever more outrageous handouts and quotas; they heard the routine leftist deprecation of the United States and the routine counsel to appease Soviet Russia--and they concluded, with good reason, that what the country was perishing from was a lack of values, of ethical absolutes, of morality.

Values, the Left retorted, are subjective; no lifestyle (and no country) is better or worse than any other; there is no absolute wrong or right anymore--unless, the liberals added, you believe in some outmoded ideology like religion. Precisely, the New Rightists reply; that is our whole point. There are absolute truths and absolute values, they say, which are the key to salvation of our great country; but there is only one source of such values: not man or this earth or the human brain, but the Deity as revealed in scripture. The choice we face, they conclude, is the skepticism, decadence, and statism of the Democrats, or morality, absolutes, Americanism, and their only possible base: religion--old-time, Judeo-Christian religion.

"Religious America is awakening, perhaps just in time for our country's sake," said Mr. Reagan in 1980. "In a struggle against totalitarian tyranny, traditional values based on religious morality are among our greatest strengths." (1)

"Religious views," says Congressman Jack Kemp, "lie at the heart of our political system. The 'inalienable rights' to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are based on the belief that each individual is created by God and has a special value in His eyes. . . . Without a common belief in the one God who created us, there could be no freedom and no recourse if a majority were to seek to abrogate the rights of the minority." (2)

Or, as the Education Secretary William Bennett sums up this viewpoint: "Our values as a free people and the central values of the Judeo-Christian tradition are flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood." (3)

Politicians of America have characteristically given lip service to the platitudes of piety. But the New Right is different. These men seem to mean their religiosity, and they are dedicated to implementing their religious creeds politically; they seem to make these creeds the governing factor in the realm of our personal relations, our art and literature, our clinics and hospitals, and the education of our youth. Whatever else you say about him, Mr. Reagan has delivered handsomely one of his campaign promises: he has given the adherents of religion a prominence in setting the national agenda that they have not had in this country for generations.

This defines our subject for tonight. It is the new Republican inspiration and the deeper questions it raises. Is the New Right the answer to the New Left? What is the relation between the Judeo-Christian tradition and the principles of Americanism? Are Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, as their admirers declare, leading us to a new era of freedom and capitalism--or to something else?

In discussing these issues, I am not going to say much about the New Right as such; its specific beliefs are widely known. Instead, I want to examine the movement within a broader, philosophical context. I want to ask: What is religion? and then: How does it function in the life of a nation, any nation, past or present? These, to be sure, are very abstract questions, but they are inescapable. Only when we have considered them can we go on to judge the relation between a particular religion, such as Christianity, and a particular nation, America.

Let us begin with a definition. What is religion as such? What is the essence common to all of its varieties, Western and Oriental, which distinguishes it from other cultural phenomena?

Religion involves a certain kind of outlook on the world and a consequent way of life. In other words, the term "religion" denotes a type (actually, a precursor) of philosophy. As such, a religion must include a view of knowledge (which is the subject matter of the branch of philosophy called epistemology) and a view of reality (metaphysics). Then, on this foundation, a religion builds a code of values (ethics). So the question becomes: What type of philosophy constitutes a religion?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "religion" as "a particular system of faith an worship," and goes on, in part: "Recognition on the part of man of some higher unseen power as having control of his destiny, and as being entitled to obedience, reverence and worship."

The fundamental concept here is "faith." "Faith" in this context means belief in the absence of evidence. This is the essential that distinguishes religion from science. A scientist may believe in the entities which he cannot observe, such as atoms or electrons, but he can do so only if he can prove their existence logically, by inference from things he does observe. A religious man, however, believes in some "higher unseen power" which he cannot observe and cannot logically prove. As the whole story of philosophy demonstrates, no study of the natural universe can warrant jumping outside it to a supernatural entity. The five arguments for God offered by the greatest of all religious thinkers, Thomas Aquinas, are widely recognized by philosophers to be logically defective; they have each been refuted many times, and they are the best arguments that have ever been offered on this subject.

Many philosophers indeed now go further: they point out that God is not only an article of faith, but that this is essential to religion. A God susceptible of proof, they argue, would actually wreck religion. A God open to human logic, to scientific study, to rational understanding, would have to be definable, delimited, finite, amenable to human concepts, obedient to scientific law, and thus incapable of miracles. Such a thing would be merely one object among others within the natural world; it would be merely another datum for the scientist, like some new kind of galaxy or cosmic ray, not a transcendent power running the universe and demanding man's worship. What religion rests on is a true God, i.e., a God not of reason, but of faith.

If you want to concretize the idea of faith, I suggest that you visit, of all places, the campuses of the Ivy League, where, according to The New York Times, "a religious revival is now occurring. Will you find students eagerly discussing proofs or struggling to reinterpret the ancient myths of the Bible into some kind of consistency with the teachings of science? On the contrary. The students, like their parents, are insisting that the Bible be accepted as literal truth, whether it makes logical sense or not. "Students today are more reconciled to authority," one campus religious official notes. "There is less need for students to sit on their own mountain top"--i.e., to exercise their own independent mind and judgment. Why not? They are content simply to believe. At Columbia University, for instance, a new student group gathers regularly not to analyze, but to "sing, worship and speak in tongues." "People are coming back to a religion in a way that some of us once went to the counterculture," says a chaplain at Columbia. (4) This is absolutely true. And note what they are coming back to: not reason or logic, but faith.

"Faith" names the method of religion, the essence of its epistemology; and, as the Oxford English Dictionary states, the belief in some "higher unseen power" is the basic content of religion, its distinctive view of reality, its metaphysics. This higher power is not always conceived as a personal God; some religions construe it as an impersonal dimension of some kind. The common denominator is the belief in the supernatural--in some entity, attribute, or force transcending and controlling this world in which we live.

According to religion, this supernatural power is the essence of the universe and the source of all value. It constitutes the realm of true reality and of absolute perfection. By contrast, the world around us is viewed as only semi-real and as inherently imperfect, even corrupt, in any event metaphysically unimportant. According to most religions, this life is a mere episode in the soul's journey to its ultimate fulfillment, which involves leaving behind earthly things in order to unite with Deity. As a pamphlet issued by a Catholic study group expresses this point: Man "cannot achieve perfection or true happiness in this life here on earth. He can only achieve this in the eternity of the next life after death. . . . Therefore . . . what a person has or lacks in worldly possessions, privileges, or advantages is not important." (5) In New Delhi a few months ago, expressing this viewpoint, Pope John Paul II urged on the Indians a life of "asceticism and renunciation." In Quebec some time earlier, he decried "the fascination the modern world feels for productivity, profit, efficiency, speed, and records of physical strength." Too many men, he explained in Luxembourg, "consciously organize their way of life merely on the basis of the realities of this world without any heed for God and His wishes." (6)

This brings us to religious ethics, the essence of which also involves faith, faith in God's commandments. Virtue, in this view, consists of obedience. Virtue is not a matter of achieving your desires, whatever they may be, but of seeking to carry out God's; it is not the pursuit of egoistic goals, whether rational or not, but the willingness to renounce your own goals in the service of the Lord. What religion counsels is the ethics of self-transcendence, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice.

What single attitude most stands in the way of this ethics, according to religious writers? The sin of pride. Why is pride a sin? Because man, in this view, is a metaphysically defective creature. His intellect is helpless in the crucial questions of life. His will has no power over existence, which is ultimately controlled by God. His body lusts after all the temptations of the flesh. In short, man is weak, ugly, and low, a typical product of the low, unreal world in which he lives. Your proper attitude towards yourself, therefore, as to this world, should be a negative one. For earthly creatures such as you and I, "Know thyself" means "Know thy worthlessness"; simple honesty entails humility, self-castigation, even self-disgust.

Religion means orienting one's existence around faith, God, and a life of service--and correspondingly downgrading or condemning four key elements: reason, nature, the self, and man. Religion cannot be equated with values or morality or even philosophy as such; it represents a specific approach to philosophic issues, including a specific code of morality.

What effect does this approach have on human life? We do not have to answer by theoretical deduction, because Western history has been a succession of religious and unreligious periods. The modern world, including America, is a product of two of these periods: of Greco-Roman civilization and of medieval Christianity. So, to enable us to understand America, let us first look at the historical evidence from these two periods; let us look at their stand on religion and at the practical consequences of this stand. Then we will have no trouble grasping the base and essence of the United States.

Ancient Greece was not a religious civilization, not on any of the counts I mentioned. The Gods of Mount Olympus were like a race of elder brothers to man, mischievous brothers with rather limited powers; they were closer to Steven Spielberg's extra-terrestrial visitor than to anything we would call "God." They did not create the universe or shape its laws or leave any message of revelations or demand a life of sacrifice. Nor were they taken very seriously by the leading voices of culture, such as Plato and Aristotle. From start to finish, the Greek thinkers recognized no sacred texts, no infallible priesthood and no intellectual authority beyond the human mind; they allowed no room for faith. Epistemologically, most were staunch individualists who expected each man to grasp the truth by his own powers of sensory observation and logical thought. For detail, I refer you to Aristotle, the preeminent representative of the Greek spirit.

Metaphysically, as a result, Greece was a secular culture. Men generally dismissed or downplayed the supernatural; their energies were devoted to the joys and challenges of life. There was a shadowy belief in immortality, but the dominant attitude toward it was summed up by Homer, who has Achilles declare that he would rather be a slave on earth than "bear sway among all the dead that be departed."

The Greek ethics followed from this base. All the Greek thinkers agreed that virtue is egoistic. The purpose of morality, in their view, is to enable a man to achieve his own fulfillment, his own happiness, by means of a proper development of his natural faculties--above all, of his cognitive faculty, his intellect. And as to the Greek estimate of man--look at the statues of the Greek gods, made in the image of human strength, human grace, human beauty; and read Aristotle's account of the virtue--yes, the virtue--of pride.

I must note here that in many ways Plato was an exception to the general irreligion of the Greeks. But his ideas were not dominant until much later. When Plato's spirit did take over, the Greek approach had already died out. What replaced it was the era of Christianity.

Intellectually speaking, the period of the Middle Ages was the exact opposite of classical Greece. Its leading philosophic spokesman, Augustine, held that faith was the basis of man's entire mental life. "I do not know in order to believe," he said, "I believe in order to know." In other words, reason is nothing but a handmaiden of revelation; it is a mere adjunct of faith, whose task is to clarify, as far as possible, the dogmas of religion. What if a dogma cannot be clarified? So much the better, answered an earlier Church father, Tertullian. The truly religious man, he said, delights in thwarting his reason; that shows his commitment to faith. Thus, Tertullian's famous answer, when asked about the dogma of God's self-sacrifice on the cross: "Credo quia absurdum" ("I believe it because it is absurd").

As to the realm of physical nature, the medievals characteristically regarded it as a semi-real haze, a transitory stage in the divine plan, and a troublesome one at that, a delusion and a snare--a delusion because men mistake it for reality, a snare because they are tempted by its lures to jeopardize their immortal souls. What tempts them is the prospect of earthly pleasure.

What kind of life, then, does the immortal soul require on earth? Self-denial, asceticism, the resolute shunning of this temptation. But isn't it unfair to ask men to throw away their whole enjoyment of life? Augustine's answer is: what else befits creatures befouled by Original Sin, creatures who are, as he put it, "crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous"?

What were the practical results--in the ancient world, then in the medieval--of these two opposite approaches to life?

Greece created philosophy, logic, science, mathematics, and a magnificent, man-glorifying art; it gave us the base of modern civilization in every field; it taught the West how to think. In addition, through its admirers in ancient Rome, which built on the Greek intellectual base, Greece indirectly gave us the rule of law and the first idea of man's rights (this idea was originated by the pagan Stoics). Politically, the ancients never conceived a society of full-fledged individual liberty; no nation achieved that before the United States. But the ancients did lay certain theoretical bases for the concept of liberty; and in practice, both in some of the Greek city-states and in republican Rome, large numbers of men at various times were at least relatively free. They were incomparably more free than their counterparts ever had been in the religious cultures of ancient Egypt and its equivalents.

What were the practical results of the medieval approach? The Dark Ages were dark on principle. Augustine fought against secular philosophy, science, art; he regarded all of it as an abomination to be swept aside; he cursed science in particular as "the lust of the eyes." Unlike many Americans today, who drive to church in their Cadillac or tape their favorite reverend on the VCR so as not to interrupt their tennis practice, the medievals took religion seriously. They proceeded to create a society that was anti-materialistic and anti-intellectual. I do not have to remind you of the lives of the saints, who were the heroes of the period, including the men who ate only sheep's gall and ashes, quenched their thirst with laundry water, and slept with a rock for their pillow. These were men resolutely defying nature, the body, sex, pleasure, all the snares of this life--and they were canonized for it, as, by the essence of religion, they should have been. The economic and social results of this kind of value code were inevitable; mass stagnation and abject poverty, ignorance and mass illiteracy, waves of insanity that swept whole towns, a life expectancy in the teens. "Woe unto ye who laugh now," the Sermon on the Mount had said. Well, they were pretty safe on this count. They had precious little to laugh about.

What about freedom in this era? Study the existence of the feudal serf tied for life to his plot of ground, his noble overlord, and the all-encompassing decrees of the Church. Or, if you want an example closer to home, jump several centuries forward to the American Puritans, who were a medieval remnant transplanted to a virgin continent, and who proceeded to establish a theocratic dictatorship in colonial Massachusetts. Such a dictatorship, they declared, was necessitated by the very nature of their religion. You are owned by God, they explained to any potential dissenter; therefore, you are a servant who must act as your Creator, through his spokesmen, decrees. Besides, they said, you are innately depraved, so a dictatorship of the elect is necessary to ride herd on your vicious impulses. And, they said, you don't really own your property either; wealth, like all values, is a gift from heaven temporarily held in trust, to be controlled like all else, by the elect. And if all this makes you unhappy, they ended up, so what? You're not supposed to pursue happiness in this life anyway.

There can be no philosophic breach between thought and action. The consequence of the epistemology of religion is the politics of tyranny. If you cannot reach the truth by your own mental powers, but must offer an obedient faith to a cognitive authority, then you are not your own intellectual master; in such a case, you cannot guide your behavior by your own judgment either, but must be submissive in action as well. This is the reason why--as Ayn Rand has pointed out--faith and force are always corollaries; each requires the other.

The early Christians did contribute some good ideas to the world, ideas that proved important to the cause of future freedom. I must, so to speak, give the angels their due. In particular, the idea that man has a value as an individual--that the individual soul is precious--is essentially a Christian legacy to the West; its first appearance was in the form of the idea that every man, despite Original Sin, is made in the image of God (as against the pre-Christian notion that a certain group or nation has a monopoly on human value, while the rest of mankind are properly slaves or mere barbarians). But notice a crucial point: this Christian idea, by itself, was historically impotent. It did nothing to unshackle the serfs or stay the Inquisition or turn the Puritan elders into Thomas Jeffersons. Only when the religious approach lost its power--only when the idea of individual value was able to break free from its Christian context and become integrated into a rational, secular philosophy--only then did this kind of idea bear practical fruit.

What--or who--ended the Middle Ages? My answer is: Thomas Aquinas, who introduced Aristotle, and thereby reason, into medieval culture. In the thirteenth century, for the first time in a millennium, Aquinas reasserted in the West the basic pagan approach. Reason, he said in opposition to Augustine, does not rest on faith; it is a self-contained, natural faculty, which works on sense experience. Its essential task is not to clarify revelation, but rather, as Aristotle had said, to gain knowledge of this world. Men, Aquinas declared forthrightly, must use and obey reason; whatever one can prove by reason and logic, he said, is true. Aquinas himself thought he could prove the existence of God, and he thought that faith is valuable as a supplement to reason. But this did not alter the nature of his revolution. His was the charter of liberty, the moral and philosophical sanction, which the West had desperately needed. His message to mankind, after the long ordeal of faith, was in effect: "It's all right. You don't have to stifle your mind anymore. You can think."

The result, in historical short order, was the revolt against the authority of the Church, the feudal breakup, the Renaissance. Renaissance means "rebirth," rebirth of reason and man's concern with this world. Once again, as in the pagan era, we see secular philosophy, natural science, man-glorifying art, and the pursuit of earthly happiness. It was a gradual, tortuous change, with each century becoming more worldly than the preceding, from Aquinas to the Renaissance to the Age of Reason to the climax and end of this development: the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. This was the age in which America's founding fathers were educated and in which they created the United States.

The Enlightenment represented the triumph (for a short while anyway) of the pagan Greek, and specifically of the Aristotelian, spirit. Its basic principle was respect for man's intellect and, correspondingly, the wholesale dismissal of faith and revelation. Reason the Only Oracle of Man, said Ethan Allen of Vermont, who spoke for his age in demanding unfettered free thought and in ridiculing the primitive contradictions of the Bible. "While we are under the tyranny of Priests," he declared in 1784, ". . . it ever will be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith." (7)

Elihu Palmer, another American of the Enlightenment, was even more outspoken. According to Christianity, he writes, God "is supposed to be a fierce, revengeful tyrant, delighting in cruelty, punishing his creatures for the very sins which he causes them to commit; and creating numberless millions of immortal souls, that could never have offended him, for the express purpose of tormenting them to all eternity." The purpose of this kind of notion, he says elsewhere, "the grand object of all civil and religious tyrants . . . has been to suppress all the elevated operations of the mind, to kill the energy of thought, and through this channel to subjugate the whole earth for their own special emolument." "It has hitherto been deemed a crime to think," he observes, but at last men have a chance--because they have finally escaped from the "long and doleful night" of Christian rule, and have grasped instead "the unlimited power of human reason"--"reason, which is the glory of our nature." (8)

Allen and Palmer are extreme representatives of the Enlightenment spirit, granted; but they are representatives. Theirs is the attitude which was new in the modern world, and which, in a less inflammatory form, was shared by all the Founding Fathers as their basic, revolutionary premise. Thomas Jefferson states the attitude more sedately, with less willful provocation to religion, but it is the same essential attitude. "Fix reason firmly in her seat," he advises a nephew, "and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." (9) Observe the philosophic priorities in this advice: man's mind comes first; God is a derivative, if you can prove him. The absolute, which must guide the human mind, is the principle of reason; every other idea must meet this test. It is in this approach--in this fundamental rejection of faith--that the irreligion of the Enlightenment lies.

The consequence of this approach was the age's rejection of all the other religious priorities. In metaphysics: this world once again was regarded as real, as important, and as a realm not of miracles, but of impersonal natural law. In ethics: success in this life became the dominant motive; the veneration of asceticism was swept aside in favor of each man's pursuit of happiness--his own happiness on earth, to be achieved by his own effort, by self-reliance and self-respect leading to self-made prosperity. But can man really achieve fulfillment on earth? Yes, the Enlightenment answered; man has the means, the potent faculty of intellect, necessary to achieve his goals and values. Man may not yet be perfect, people said, but he is perfectible; he must be so, because he is the rational animal.

Such were the watchwords of the period: not faith, God, service, but reason, nature, happiness, man.

Many of the Founding Fathers, of course, continued to believe in God and to do so sincerely, but it was a vestigial belief, a leftover from the past which no longer shaped the essence of their thinking. God, so to speak, had been kicked upstairs. He was regarded now as an aloof spectator who neither responds to prayer nor offers revelations nor demands immolation. This sort of viewpoint, known as deism, cannot, properly speaking, be classified as a religion. It is a stage in the atrophy of religion; it is the step between Christianity and outright atheism.

This is why the religious men of the Enlightenment were scandalized and even panicked by the deist atmosphere. Here is the Rev. Peter Clark of Salem, Mass., in 1739: "The former Strictness in Religion, that . . . Zeal for the Order and Ordinances of the Gospel, which was so much the Glory of our Fathers, is very much abated, yea disrelished by too many: and a Spirit of Licentiousness, and Neutrality in Religion . . . so opposite to the Ways of God's People, do exceedingly prevail in the midst of us." (10) And here, fifty years later, is the Rev. Charles Backus of Springfield, Mass. The threat to divine religion, he says, is the "indifference which prevails" and the "ridicule." Mankind, he warns, is in "great danger of being laughed out of religion." (11) This was true; these preachers were not alarmists; their description of the Enlightenment atmosphere is correct.

This was the intellectual context of the American Revolution. Point for point, the Founding Fathers' argument for liberty was the exact counterpart of the Puritans' argument for dictatorship--but in reverse, moving from the opposite starting point to the opposite conclusion. Man, the Founding Fathers said in essence (with a large assist from Locke and others), is the rational being; no authority, human or otherwise, can demand blind obedience from such a being -- not in the realm of thought or, therefore, in the realm of action either. By his very nature, they said, man must be left free to exercise his reason and then to act accordingly, i.e., by the guidance of his best rational judgment. Because this world is of vital importance, they added, the motive of man's action should be the pursuit of happiness. Because the individual, not a supernatural power, is the creator of wealth, a man should have the right to private property, the right to keep and use or trade his own product. And because man is basically good, they held, there is no need to leash him; there is nothing to fear in setting free a rational animal.

This, in substance, was the American argument for man's inalienable rights. It was the argument that reason demands freedom. And this is why the nation of individual liberty, which is what the United States was, could not have been founded in any philosophically different century. It required what the Enlightenment offered: a rational, secular context.

When you look for the source of an historic idea, you must consider philosophic essentials, not the superficial statements or errors that people may offer you. Even the most well-meaning men can misidentify the intellectual roots of their own attitudes. Regrettably, this is what the Founding Fathers did in one crucial respect. All men, said Jefferson, are endowed "by their Creator" with certain unalienable rights, a statement that formally ties individual rights to the belief in God. Despite Jefferson's eminence, however, his statement (along with its counterpart in Locke and others) is intellectually unwarranted. The principle of individual rights does not derive from or depend on the idea of God as man's creator. It derives from the very nature of man, whatever his source or origin; it derives from the requirements of man's mind and his survival. In fact, as I have argued, the concept of rights is ultimately incompatible with the idea of the supernatural. This is true not only logically, but also historically. Through all the centuries of the Dark and Middle Ages, there was plenty of belief in a Creator; but it was only when religion began to fade that the idea of God as the author of individual rights emerged as an historical, nation-shaping force. What then deserves the credit for the new development--the age-old belief or the new philosophy? What is the real intellectual root and protector of human liberty--God or reason?

My answer is now evident. America does rest on a code of values and morality--in this, the New Right is correct. But, by all the evidence of philosophy and history, it does not rest on the values or ideas of religion. It rests on their opposite.

You are probably wondering here: "What about Communism? Isn't it a logical, scientific, atheistic philosophy, and yet doesn't it lead straight to totalitarianism?" The short answer to this is: Communism is not an expression of logic or science, but the exact opposite. Despite all its anti-religious posturings, Communism is nothing but a modern derivative of religion: it agrees with the essence of religion on every key issue, then merely gives that essence a new outward veneer or cover-up.

The Communists reject Aristotelian logic and Western science in favor of a "dialectic" process; reality, they claim, is a stream of contradictions which is beyond the power of "bourgeois" reason to understand. They deny the very existence of man's mind, claiming that human words and actions reflect nothing but the alogical predetermined churnings of blind matter. They do reject God, but they replace him with a secular stand-in, Society or the State, which they treat not as an aggregate of individuals, but as an unperceivable, omnipotent, supernatural organism, a "higher unseen power" transcending and dwarfing all individuals. Man, they say, is a mere social cog or atom, whose duty is to revere this power and to sacrifice every thing in its behalf. Above all, they say, no such cog has the right to think for himself; every man must accept the decrees of Society's leaders, he must because this is the voice of Society, whether he understands it or not. Fully as much as Tertullian, Communism demands faith from its followers and subjects, "faith" in the literal, religious sense of the term. On every account, the conclusion is the same: Communism is not a new, rational philosophy; it is a tired, slavishly imitative heir of religion.

This is why, so far, Communism has been unable to win out in the West. Unlike the Russians, we have not been steeped enough in religion--in faith, sacrifice, humility, and, therefore, servility. We are still too rational, too this-worldly, and too individualistic to submit to naked tyranny. We are still being protected by the fading remnants of our Enlightenment heritage.

But we will not be so for long if the New Right has its way.

Philosophically, the New Right holds the same fundamental ideas as the New Left--its religious zeal is merely a variant of irrationalism and the demand for self-sacrifice--and therefore it has to lead to the same result in practice: dictatorship. Nor is this merely my theoretical deduction. The New Rightists themselves announce it openly. While claiming to be the defenders of Americanism, their distinctive political agenda is statism.

The outstanding example of this fact is their insistence that the state prohibit abortion even in the first trimester of pregnancy. A woman, in this view, has no right to her own body or even, the most consistent New Rightists add, to her own life; instead, she should be made to sacrifice at the behest of the state, to sacrifice her desires, her life goals, and even her existence in the name of a mass protoplasm, which is at most a potential human being, not an actual one. "Abortion," says Paul Weyrich, executive director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, "is wrong in all cases. I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for a new life on earth." (12)

Another example: men and women, the New Right tells us, should not be free to conduct their sexual or romantic lives in private, in accordance with their own choice and values; the law should prohibit any sexual practices condemned by religion. And: children, we are told, should be indoctrinated with state-mandated religion at school. For instance, biology texts should be rewritten under government tutelage to present the Book of Genesis as a scientific theory on par with or even superior to the theory of evolution. And, of course, the ritual of prayer must be forced down the children's throats. Is this not, contrary to the Constitution, a state establishment of religion, and of a controversial, intellectual viewpoint? Not at all, says Jack Kemp. "If prayer is said aloud," he explains, "it need be no more than a general acknowledgment of the existence, power, authority, and love of God, the Creator." (13) That's all--nothing controversial or indoctrinating about that!

And: when the students finally do leave school, after all the indoctrination, can they be trusted to deal with intellectual matters responsibly? No, says the New Right. Adults should not be free to write, publish, or to read, according to their own judgment; literature should be censured by the state according to a religious standard of what is fitting as against what is obscene.

Is this a movement on behalf of Americanism and individual rights? Is it a movement consistent with the principles of the Constitution?

"The Constitution establishes freedom for religion," says Mr. Kemp, "not from it"--a sentiment which is shared by President Reagan and by the whole New Right. (14) What then becomes of intellectual freedom? Are meetings such as this evening's deprived of Constitutional protection, since the viewpoint I am propounding certainly does not come under "freedom for religion"? And what happens when one religious sect concludes that the statements of another are subversive to true religion? Who decides, which, if either, should be struck down by the standard of "freedom for religion, not from it"? Can you predict the fate of free thought, and of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," if Mr. Kemp and associates ever get their hands fully on the courts and the Congress?

What we are seeing is the medievalism of the Puritans all over again, but without their excuse of ignorance. We are seeing it on the part of modern Americans, who live not before the Founding Fathers' heroic experiment in liberty, but after it.

The New Right is not the voice of Americanism. It is the voice of thought control attempting to take over in this country and pervert and undo the actual American revolution.

But, you may say, aren't the New Rightists the champions of property rights and capitalism, as against the economic statism of the liberals? They are not. Capitalism is the separation of the state and economics, a condition that none of our current politicians or pressure groups even dreams of advocating. The New Right, like all the rest on the political scene today, accepts the welfare-state mixed economy created by the New Deal and its heirs; our conservatives now merely haggle on the system's fringes about a particular regulation or handout they happen to dislike. In this matter, the New Right is moved solely by the power of tradition. These men do not want to achieve any change of basic course, but merely to slow down the march to socialism by freezing the economic status quo. And even in regard to this highly limited goal, they are disarmed and useless.

If you want to know why, I refer you to the published first drafts of the [1986] pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops, men who are much more consistent and philosophical than anyone in the New Right. The bishops recommended a giant step in the direction of socialism. They ask for a vast new government presence in our economic life, overseeing a vast new redistribution of wealth in order to aid the poor, at home and abroad. They ask for it on a single basic ground: consistency with the teachings of Christianity.

Some of you may wonder here: "But if the bishops are concerned with the poor, why don't they praise and recommend capitalism, the great historical engine of productivity, which makes everyone richer?" If you think about it, however, you will see that, valid as this point may be, the bishops cannot accept it.

Can they praise the profit motive--while extolling selflessness? Can they commend the passion to own material property--while declaring that worldly possessions are not important? Can they urge men to practice the virtues of productiveness and long-range planning--while upholding as the human model the lilies of the field? Can they celebrate the self-assertive risk-taking of the entrepreneur--while teaching that the meek shall inherit the earth? Can they glorify and liberate the creative ingenuity of the human mind, which is the real source of material wealth--while elevating faith above reason? The answers are obvious. Regardless of the unthinking pretenses of the New Right, no religion, by its nature can appeal to or admire the capitalist system; not if the religion is true to itself. Nor can any religion liberate man's power to create new wealth. If, therefore, the faithful are concerned about poverty--as the Bible demands they be--they have no alternative but to counsel redistribution of whatever wealth already happens to have been produced. The goods, they have to say, are here. How did they get here? God, they reply, has seen to that; now let men make sure that His largess is distributed fairly. Or, as the bishops put it: "The goods of this earth are common property and . . . men and women are summoned to faithful stewardship rather than to selfish appropriation or exploitation of what was destined for all." (15)

For further details on this point, I refer you to the bishops' letter; given their premises, their argument is unanswerable. If, as the New Right claims, there is scriptural warrant for state control of men's sexual activities, then there is surely much more warrant for state control of men's economic activities. The idea of the Bible (or the "Protestant ethic") as the base of capitalism is ludicrous, both logically and historically.

Economically, as in all other respects, the New Right is leading us, admittedly or not, to the same end as its liberal opponents. By virtue of the movement's essential premises, it is supporting and abetting the triumph of statism in this country--and, therefore, of Communism in the world at large. When a free nation betrays its own heritage, it has no heart left, no conviction by means of which to stand up to foreign aggressors.

There was a flaw in the intellectual foundation of America from the start: the attempt to combine the Enlightenment approach in politics with the Judeo-Christian ethics. For a while, the latter element was on the defensive, muted by the eighteenth-century spirit, so that America could gain a foothold, grow to maturity, and become great. But only for a while. Thanks to Immanuel Kant, as I have discussed in my book The Ominous Parallels, the base of religion--faith and self-sacrifice--was re-established at the turn of the nineteenth century. Thereafter, all of modern philosophy embraced collectivism, in the form of socialism, Fascism, Communism, welfare statism. By now, the distinctive ideas at the base of America have been largely forgotten or swept aside. They will not be brought back by an appeal to religion.

What then is the solution? It is not atheism as such--and I say this even though as an Objectivist I am an atheist. "Atheism" is a negative; it means not believing in God--which leaves wide open what you do believe in. It is futile to crusade for a negative; the Communists, too, call themselves atheists. Nor is the answer "secular humanism," about which we often hear today. This term is used so loosely that it is practically contentless; it is compatible with a wide range of conflicting viewpoints, including, again, Communism. To combat the doctrines that are destroying our country, out-of-context terms and ideas such as these are useless. What we need is an integrated, consistent philosophy in every branch, and especially in the two most important ones: epistemology and ethics. We need a philosophy of reason and of rational self-interest, a philosophy that would once again release the power of man's mind and the energy inherent in his pursuit of happiness. Nothing less will save America or individual rights.

There are many good people in the world who accept religion, and many of them hold some good ideas on social questions. I do not dispute that. But their religion is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem. Do I say that therefore there should now only be "freedom for atheism"? No, I am not Mr. Kemp. Of course, religions must be left free; no philosophic viewpoint, right or wrong, should be interfered with by the state. I do say, however, that it is time for patriots to take a stand--to name publicly what America does depend on, and why that is not Judaism or Christianity.

There are men today who advocate freedom and who recognize what ideas lie at its base, but who then counsel "practicality." It is too late, they say, to educate people philosophically; we must appeal to what they already believe; we must pretend to endorse religion on strategic grounds, even if privately we don't.

This is a counsel of intellectual dishonesty and of utter impracticality. It is too late indeed, far too late for a strategy of deception which by its nature has to backfire and always has, because it consists of confirming and supporting the very ideas that have to be uprooted and replaced. It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man's mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: "You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick."

If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is.

Namaste! My name listed below is linked to the Introduction of a manuscript -- entitled “The Bhagavad-gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to Krishna Consciousness” -- that I am actively pitching to the publishing industry. In the Introduction (http://interracialvoice.com/NBR_Intro.html) I make reference to the Western bias toward any religion that is not one of the three Abrahamic religions.

I left Christianity in general and the Baptist tradition specifically a few years ago. My work refers to America’s oppressive race-consciousness and how, in my humble opinion, studying the ancient Vedic texts is the best way for any individual to transcend such polluted thinking.

Thanks for the opportunity to post a comment.

Haribol! (Keep on chanting)

Charles M. Byrd

America is AMERICA,is liberty, is tolerance, is respect, is EVERYTHING.

So sick of religion. If you believe in "Belief A" but not "Belief B" then you get some fanciful place in "Heaven" or perhaps "Hell" or whatever. The fact that people like our illustrious president spout off religious platitudes while doing exactly opposite what their religion tells them to do, makes me want to vomit. When will people come to their senses that religion is just fantastic make-believe pushed because of the fear of death?

So Gandhi dies and goes to heaven and St. Peter shows him around.

First there is music and partying. This is where our Jewish brothers hang out.

Then, another site, there is massive meditation going on. This is where our Buddhists brothers hang out.

Then, another site, there is massive debate, back and forth. This is where our unitarian brothers hang out.

Finally, they come to a big wall. St. Peter says shhh...be very quiet. This is where our Christians are...and they really need to believe they're the only ones here.

GKAM, thanks for your kind words - I*m glad that you liked what I wrote.

RAKESH, you must know that the Buddhist *divinities and dieties* you mention are not equivalent to the God of the Abrahamic religions. They are merely energy vorticies with very limited roles in the scheme of things. They are the same as what 19th century American occultists called *thought forms*. They are a part of Buddhism's oriental cultural heritage, a part of its folklore, and, as you say, in no way central to the Buddha*s teaching.

As for the Abrahamic God, it*s worth reminding ourselves that the Cathers, a noble people exterminated by the Roman Church, considered Yahweh to be a self-deluded imposter. He thought he was the ultimate Godhead when actually he was a lesser being. He had the power to create the earth but he had no moral values. The Cathars called him *the Ignorant Demiurge*. The stories in the Old Testament about this *God* support the Cathars* view. He was a nasty piece of work.

What you believe is up to you but what I may believe is up to me! I will respect your right but will you respect mine?

Mark Eaton wrote: "Our country is on the way down, on the way out, because our country lacks values. Real, true, values. Honesty, integrity, strength of character, fortitude, longevity, morals."

Oh, I definitely value longevity!

"Islam, Christianity and Judaism are as separate as Republicans and Democrats"

Exactly.

We're all people - fallable, stubborn, upward looking, wanting a purpose to life, and loving to our families and strangers.

Ya gotta love them. Really. You have to; that's what all religions teach.

FWIW, I agree with Prothero's thesis: after 9/11 there is a movement on to enlarge the religious tent of America. There will always be Jew-haters and Anti-Papists, but on campuses across the US you see women in head scarves and Islamic students stopping to pray. It's becoming mainstream, and in in ten years it will be as mainstream in our cities as seeing a nun wearing a habit.

It'll be nice when there are Diwali specials on mainstream TV.

Antiluminous writes: "See, that is the foundation of the entire problem. Secularists want to destroy organized religion in favor of the construct of allowing humans to do anything that makes them "feel good" at the expense of moral society and order."

In some sense, this is correct. Religion might well be described as the root of most, if not all, evil, and so secularists might wish to do away with it entirely. But it doesn't seem logical to think that secularists are instead in favor of allowing humans to "do anything that makes them 'feel good' at the expense of moral society and order."

Who needs religion to behave well? Not me. I try to behave well because it's the right thing to do, not because I fear someone's "god" will do me harm after I'm dead.

....and it is most fun eavesdropping into an American "conversation" on religion. Especially for a person of the "wrong" religion (Islam), gender (female,) colour (cafe latte), and region (third world/developing country/Asia).

Think positive people. No one accused you or look at you weirdly in being adherents of a "false", "warped", "violent", "terrorist prone" religion. Whatever gets you through the night and day :)

Anyone wants to think seriously about global warming, enviromental degradation, poverty alleviation, diseases, inter-state and intra-state conflicts? Hair splitting about religion is of course, a luxury of the idle, the indulgent and seekers of alternate power and control. Ask any Muslim.

Good night, good luck and may peace be with you all.

Joseph Campbell wrote many comparative studies of religions (primitive, eastern, western, etc.). He provided one vivid analogy that still resonates with me today.

Imagine the peoples of the world living in small enclaves on different sides of a mountain separated by ridges. Each community agrees internally on a language for describing the mountain. When people from different communities get together, they disagree vehemently about what the mountain looks like without acknowledging that they are actually talking about different faces of the same mountain.

The mountain may be the creator, as religions have it, or it may be the prime benefit of religion: promulgation of behaviors that improve the survivability of society and admonition of behavior that does not. Most religions clearly identify a specific group of people as being chosen and requiring good conduct while externalizing undesirable behavior (see Dueteronomy for detailed specifications on which tribes Israelis can slaughter, which they can take for slaves, and which they must leave alone).

While Christianity contains some universalist principles in the New Testament, it is weighted with the tribalist dictates of the old and the notion that those with a different view of the mountain will suffer an eternity of misery.

The challenge in multicultural societies with varied religious beliefs (including agnostics and athiests) is identifying exactly what community or tribe really means. Religious tolerance requires that people identify those outside their traditional tribe but within the modern nation as deserving of the good behavior normally reserved for people within their traditional tribe.

That is, it requires that everyone recognize that the mountain, the ideals of harmonious society, are the goals of all citizens. How we describe those ideals depends on our view of the mountain.

The greatest advantage of a multicultural society is the opportunity to compile an accurate depiction of the mountain in all its facets through dialogue between the varied viewpoints.

The greatest risk is that traditional tribal identities threatened by more universal communities fracture into groups uninterested in commonality or dialogue, rejecting outright the notion that anyone sees or knows their mountain in any other light.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
DC Philosopher, maybe the secular elements of our society should restrict their teachings to private after-school clubs as well.

See, that is the foundation of the entire problem. Secularists want to destroy organized religion in favor of the construct of allowing humans to do anything that makes them "feel good" at the expense of moral society and order.

Organized religion on the other hand wants to prevent that deterioration of society because such deteriorations in the system equate to a reduction in the safety of society.

RESPONSE:
Bearing in mind that secular means separation of church and state, exactly which "teachings" should be limited to after-school activities? Secularists do not want to destroy organized religion as you portray...any statement otherwise is a flat out lie. Secularists just want to make sure that government and relgion are separate...just like the founders of our nation.

I don't disagree that there is a decline in "moral society" (but at the same time don't pretend that the "good ole days" were morally righteous and just)...but don't blame "secularists" for its demise...that's a cop out. Just because you can't convince people to go to church is not an excuse to utilize the government to spread your religious beliefs. When you go down that path you better support other religous governments (such as IRAN) that believe they are saving their society through organized religion.

Let us not forget that the original democracy, that of Athens, predated Christianity.
Does that mean that the United States is actually the creation of Zeus and Athena and their fellow Greek gods?
Does that make us a Greek nation?

The Roman Catholic Church and two popes are morally, legally, and ethically culpable of the Holocaust. When Rockefeller and the U.S. Catholic Church collection plate funded the rise of Hitler through Prescott Bush and Fritz Thyssen they accomplished through advances gained by the Industrial and Chemical Revolutions what the same papal aristocracy had done by "sword and flame" the preceding two-thousand years.

Rome's McCarthyistic neo-con American traitors of the Bush/Nixon faction have prevented Rome's receiving the justice it deserves.

Read Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "A Moral Reckoning" to know the truth of that which Jefferson, America's Whig Founder, called "the real Anti-Christ": Rome.

...isn't a 100% conviction rate for pedophile priests - at least one in each of 188 RC American dioceses, dozens in many - a bit of a tip off?

DC Philosopher, maybe the secular elements of our society should restrict their teachings to private after-school clubs as well.

See, that is the foundation of the entire problem. Secularists want to destroy organized religion in favor of the construct of allowing humans to do anything that makes them "feel good" at the expense of moral society and order.

Organized religion on the other hand wants to prevent that deterioration of society because such deteriorations in the system equate to a reduction in the safety of society.

As I mentioned before, we stirred up the hornets nest of Islam, and I would hope that we as a society do not do that with Christianity. If American society wants a war with Christians, chopping down Christmas trees and destroying other religious icons like mangers is the way to trigger it.

There is no conflict resolution found in that behavior, only war.

I have to go but it was nice talking to all of you and perhaps if another religious topic comes up I can hop into the fray again :)

Take care and Merry Christmas :)

I wasn't the one that asked you where god is (kim did that). I merely pointed out the logical inconsistancy in your comment that, on the one hand, mere mortals can't know where he is, but on the other hand, we certainly can know what he thinks or wants. It doesn't make sense.

Rose, the point is that the founders were able to agree that all men deserved guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No "creator" would allow anything less for humanity, would he?

Now you try to make light of the situation by asking me where God is. This is the type of conflict resolution problem that plagues the United States. Your appeal to popularity logic fallacy could have been addressed by me different than I addressed it, but rather than step into the gutter with you, I tried to show you something not only enjoyable about American history, but things that are important to humanity.

Maybe you should consider that before attacking the messenger.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
We need to bring back religious philosophy in school because folks need to learn about these things. American public schools are really marginal now.

RESPONSE:
Maybe you should be more concerned with teaching "these things" in sunday school at church instead of public schools. And if you feel the need to teach in school, there is no law prohibiting you from private schools...I am all for teaching religion in private school...having that option is only available because of the open-minded nature of our founders.

Kim: Whatever antiluminous may be, it's a sure bet that he or she is not a scientist. Scientists build reality based on evidence.

America is a world leader in a lot of things most important of all youth culture. Young people around the world have a strong believe and trust in the "goodness" of American culture. What people see of American culture is not really religion at all. Well some of it is religion but it is usually the 'me religion'.

American culture has raised the individual and given him to status of a god. Well that is American religion and and at it's root it does not conform to any other religions mentioned so far.

America can easily be a home for all if we let go of the 'me religion' and embrace whatever we believe in. The 'me religion' of today drives us away from our God and enslaves us to the god of this world. There are people whose interest's are served by the status quo and will not want any change.

Our God will set us free if we look to him/her and trust him/her.

DC Philosopher, the founders explained very clearly that our rights are derived from the "creator". That is why the founders separated from England.

The US Constitution was the definition of those rights given to us by the "creator". When the founders separated from England, it was a certainty that a written constitution would follow to explain the "creator's" definition of rights for humankind.

antiluminous.....

And you call yourself a scientist.
If god doesn't exist anywhere, then he doesn't exist anywhere. And yet, I will allow that God does exist in the souls of man. We have God inside us..... Which explains why every race has a god and they're all different.

But physically (as you agreed with me even if inadvertently) he does not exist. Your words betrayed you.

That Buddhism affirms no God and Hinduism affirms many Gods sounds inaccurate and in my opinion is a result of rather simplistically comparing apples with oranges (i.e.: Abrahamic religions with Eastern religions)

Buddhism in fact accepts the presence of divinities or deities as would be evident from many of the wonderful ancient paintings and sculputures that one can see all over Asia, especially S.E Asia. While Buddha's teachings are central, the dieties are often representative of forces conducive to attaining "nirvana".

In Hinduism, a God or a deity often has a much stronger presence than that compared to in Buddhism, but is nevertheless regarded as an expression of "Brahman" (The impersonal, transcendental truth) and also as a "vehicle" for attaining union with Brahman.

Antiluminous writes that to know where god is is "beyond the comprehension of mortal men".

Of course, on the other hand, knowing what god wants is completely obvious and accessible to a select few mortal men, who then proceed to try to shove it down everybody else's throat.

DC Philosopher, the founders admitted slavery was wrong when they told us that all men were "created equal".

However, since the slave trade was rampant due to European colonization in those days, the founders didn't get to their stated goal of dismantling slavery until they banned the slave trade in 1808.

Unfortunately, it took the United States to fight a very deadly Civil War to finally abolish slavery in 1861 - 1865 (including revolutionary activity).

So if you look at it scientifically, the United States really abolished slavery when the United States Constitution was signed, but it took some time to eradicate it afterwards. It always takes good government a long time to change perverse institutions of the state.

Sometimes it takes wars to bring such just changes.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:

Hey anonymous, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of the US government were designed as a system of "checks and balances" to prevent government from doing what: taking away your rights and my rights as given and guaranteed to us by the "creator".

RESPONSE (by the way, that was my post, I accidently left my name off of it):
I'd like you to show me where in the constitution it is stated that rights were given and guaranteed by the creator...it doesn't exist. If you would like to talk about factual representation of history you better take note of that. The exclusion of such language was NOT an accident. The founders wanted to keep such verbiage out of documentation which established law.

KIM, where is God? I am not required to know that, as you are not required to know that. It is beyond the comprehension of mortal men to understand that, as Plato did not understand the land of shadows. No one knows for certain how the universe was created, but all humans think about it. Humans are also inclined to worship things and they are hard-wired into doing so.

As a mortal human however, I am required to ensure that other mortal men do not try to take away my rights as guaranteed by the creator. No mortal human can disprove the existence of the creator, right? Take a look at the night sky some time and tell me how all of that happened. Do you really believe it was some type of scientifically theorized "big bang"?

The only thing I am required to know is that I have rights guaranteed by the creator and that is the foundation of America.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:

Rose, when human beings see something important, they write it down, right? That is what makes the philosopy of the bible and history so important. Now I recognize that religous philosophy isn't welcomed in American public schools anymore, but it used to be. The founders ensured that the bible was part of every citizen's curriculum vitae.

In fact, the United States Supreme Court used to reside in the basement of the Hart Senate Building until 1933. Up until that time, the USSC would meet with Christian clergy and perform religious ceremonies before they convened to hear cases brought before them. That is our country's history.

RESPONSE:
Our country's fiscal growth was based on slavery...should we continue in that as well?

Hey anonymous, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of the US government were designed as a system of "checks and balances" to prevent government from doing what: taking away your rights and my rights as given and guaranteed to us by the "creator".

The separation of powers in the US government was the only sure method that the founders could agree to in order to make sure our rights were not lost in the future, rights guaranteed by the creator, not a human mortal.

The founders wrote the US Constitution to protect the rights of all Americans as given to them by God.

Again, some early history would benefit those folks that are not aware of these truths of American history and our nation's founding.

The earlier entries in this thread are thoughtful. Now, it becomes an entertaining American "word" brawl on religion and secularism for all the world to read and see : ) I love it.
The passion, the obsession, the conviction to assert the rightness of one's view.

Freethinker, you are lapsing into a secular "fundamentalism" as much as the religious and/or spiritual fundamentalists you argued against. I agree with you that religion should be private and out of the public square. Problem is, churches, temples, mosques are in the public square.

Nafisah

antiluminous...

where is god right now? physically speaking? in some cloud? on some planet somewhere? where? seriously.

What we, as a nation, have forgotten is that this country was founded on the principle of freedom of religious beliefs, not freedom from religious beliefs.

Neither was America founded on modern-day secular fundamentalism! It was more likely founded upon a mixture of non-sectarian Protestant theism and Enlightenment philosophy.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's fair that churches are the only ones exempt from taxation...this benefit should be extended to us ALL!!!

DZ, there were no Catholics in Nazi Germany mass-murdering people. Germany was a Lutheran religious nation-state, and remains that way today. Study the history of Martin Luther. Germany broke from the Catholic Church in 1500s.

Hitler was no Christian, and servants of God do not exterminate millions of people to prove there is no God, which is what Hitler was trying to accomplish using the ideas of Hegel and Nietzche.

We need to bring back religious philosophy in school because folks need to learn about these things. American public schools are really marginal now.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
First, when the founders declared that all men were "created" equal, where were they deriving such creation? From the Koran? From the Epic of Gilgamesh? No, from the Old Testament.

RESPONSE: So any religion that believes in "creationism" and "equality" are christian in nature?

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
Next, the First Amendment directly reflects that the Congress shall make no law in the establishment of religion, etc. What that really means is that the founders already told us about the creator, and they didn't want some future as of yet known or unknown religion becoming popular with the people and then officially established by government. The founders knew that humans are creatures of worship and tend to gravitate to popular, fashionable things. The founders then were concerned that in the future some new religion would appear that might tempt the people into trading their rights for it.

RESPONSE:
I'll give you credit on this...the founders established the first amendment because they did not want a religion to gain control of the government and tempt people into trading their rights for it...but they were just as concerned about christian sects as well as "new" religions.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
Secularism, for example, could be defined as that "new religion", since religion is only defined as a "system of worship" and does not require the worship of deity. Secularism, like other human collectives, is a religion.

RESPONSE:
Secularism is not a religion...it is a total separation of religion and state. There is no debate in this issue. Please don't lie to the readers with your false definition of this term.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
The founders then drew upon the Old Testament and the New Testament to derive the first laws. The 10 Commandments, for example, are everywhere in Washington, DC, and yet the new political class has been trying to redefine those motifes as "the bill of rights". Orwellianism goes hand in hand with the new intelligensia.

RESPONSE:
Once again, explain to me what the Bill of Rights and 10 Commandments have in common other than 10 articles?

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
Admittedly, I am part of the American intelligensia, the learned class. My only interest here is conflict resolution, and I believe that it is a very dangerous situation in the United States whereby the secular religion is attempting not only to redefine the history of America's origins, but the rights of men as given to us by the "creator".

RESPONSE:
Again, please refrain from describing secular as religious...look up the word in the dictionary if you have a problem with this comment.

ANTILUMINOUS wrote:
The reason the founders left our rights in the hands of God is so that no human could step forward and claim they had the power to negotiate those rights or do away with them.

RESPONSE:
The founders did not leave our rights in the hands of God...I see a legislative branch, a judicial branch, and an executive branch...I do not see a God branch.

Tonio,
*I admire Bush for turning to his God to beat substance abuse. But I fear Bush when he says that God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.*
And so he did.

Bottom line, spirituality was created by God. Religion was created by men. How much better off would our world be if we each followed our own
God-given spirituality and gave religion the boot?
After seeing what has been happening to our precious world because of right-wing fanatics in our three major religions, it is hard to imagine that our world wouldn't be better off without religion.

Most of the above voices live to mainly talk - no "shout" and attack their fellow human's ideas and personally held beliefs. Arrogance abounds and certainty breeds contempt - for the "other" thinker...

This appears to be a planet of shouters and accusers rather than one of people who walk in the footsteps of Christ doing selfless acts of sacrifice and kindness. Humility remains in short supply as does true caring for our neighbors.

A world led by secular rationalists would be little different than the most arrogant and egotistical "ministers" that we are all too familiar with these days. Christ - The Buddah - were at their best - working for the repression of the ego. Secular thinkers are no different than the religious thinkers/believers that they attack and despise: they're human and both philosophy and religion are human practices. They are vulnerable to the same human proclivities of corruption - selfishness - and greed.

DZ:

"The Nazis were Christians - period. That is the historical fact. I'm sick of this Christian revisionism to escape accountability for what Christians perpetrated. Millions of German Catholics and Protestants murdered 11 million people. That's the fact."

Wrong on two counts: actually they killed many more than eleven million; and they were not Christian. Hilter was exceeded as a killer by his soul brothers, Stalin and Mao. Christianity had nothing to do with any of them.

Antiluminous wrote: "...when human beings see something important, they write it down, right?"

and

"Now, about the 10 Commandments, they existed because humans wrote about them and recorded them. That is what historians do. If you would read the bible you would know the history."

Do you believe everything you read, or have been told? Of course not...except for these stories, written by humans, and probably humans with an agenda, about a supreme being. Why does anyone continue to believe that nonsense? In many cases, there's a profit motive...you can earn a living, even great wealth, from "believing" and convincing others to do likewise. They'll give you money for that.

It's all nonsense. Let's put an end once and for all to all of the killing that's done in the name of "god".

"WHEN I DO GOOD, I FEEL GOOD; AND WHEN I DO BAD, I FEEL BAD. AND THAT IS MY RELIGION."

-- Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States.

"OUR COUNTRY HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY A BUNCH OF RELIGIOUS NUTS."

-- Seymour Hersh

Hey Anonymous. Yeah, never mind that the reservations are sovereign nations. Also, the darker (more Indian blood) Mexicans are the ones more likely to be coming over the border. At least they have some ancestors from this part of the world, unlike the people that are bashing them and blaming them for everything.

Another interesting point is that Native American beliefs do not necessarily preclude Christian beliefs. I sometimes attend inipi (sweat lodge) ceremonies run by a Comanche who also attends a Baptist church. I have never heard a Native American engaging in the kind of hateful religious bickering some are engaging in here.

Nafisah from Malysia has it right- lighten up y'all!

"LEAVE THE MATTER OF RELIGION TO THE FAMILY ALTAR, THE CHURCH, AND THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS, supported entirely by private contributions."

"Keep the church and state forever separate."

-- Ulysses S. Grant
General-in-Chief of the United States Army 1864-65, Eighteenth President of the United States

Rose, when human beings see something important, they write it down, right? That is what makes the philosopy of the bible and history so important. Now I recognize that religous philosophy isn't welcomed in American public schools anymore, but it used to be. The founders ensured that the bible was part of every citizen's curriculum vitae.

In fact, the United States Supreme Court used to reside in the basement of the Hart Senate Building until 1933. Up until that time, the USSC would meet with Christian clergy and perform religious ceremonies before they convened to hear cases brought before them. That is our country's history.

Now, about the 10 Commandments, they existed because humans wrote about them and recorded them. That is what historians do. If you would read the bible you would know the history.

I have been to Saint Catherine's Monastary in the Sinai security zone in Egypt and have walked the same route that Moses did when he received the 10 Commandments up Mount Sinai. You should go check it out because every stair, thousands and thousands of them, was carved by the ancestors of those who witnessed Moses carrying the 10 Commandments down the mountain.

Sure, all religions have certain degrees of faith in order to believe in them, but if the plan is to turn America into a secular religious nation-state like the former Soviet or National Socialism, I am thinking the American people have a right to know, don't you? Well, that is unless there is an end-around in progress and like a thief in the night the American nation is going to be transformed into something alien to what it is supposed to be.

touche anonymous. well said.

You're construal suffers from a couple of obvious problems. First, if you're going to mention every religious movement, you've stopped talking about "religions" at all--you're dealing with every philosophy and worldview (and you're simply being politically correct). Second, if you were half aware of the his-tory of religions, you would understand buddhism as a Hindu
offshoot (and heresy). It's disingenuous to speak of an atheist
belief system as a religion--unless your explaining it in terms
of its own "faith" system that falsely worships self instead of God. All your construal ends up being is an egalitarian and rel-ativistic wah-wah about everybody not getting a "seat" at the table--whatever that really means. Did it ever occur to you and others that the question of "truth" is a factor. As this is the case for most religious adherents, it's not at all just a matter of any and every voice getting an equal voice in the matter.

Matt Williams

"A JUST GOVERNMENT, INSTITUTED TO SECURE AND PERPETUATE LIBERTY, DOES NOT NEED A CLERGY."

-- James Madison
Fourth President of the United States 1809-1817, Primary author of the United States Constitution 1797, who OBJECTED TO THE EXEMPTION OF CHURCHES FROM TAXATION.

Freethinker wrote:

"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS NOT in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

-- Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
Ratified by the United States Senate"

That is an outstanding point that is well worth repeating to all of the readers that would prefer to just ignore it and move on:

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS NOT in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

-- Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
Ratified by the United States Senate

The Nazis were Christians - period. That is the historical fact. I'm sick of this Christian revisionism to escape accountability for what Christians perpetrated. Millions of German Catholics and Protestants murdered 11 million people. That's the fact.

"THE CLERGY CONVERTED THE SIMPLE TEACHINGS OF JESUS into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves. These clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."

-- Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States 1801-1809,
Author of the Declaration of Independence

Antiluminous:

The idea that the founders were putting basic human rights beyond the power of politicians to sell or negotiate is well said, and to the point. Thank you also for the casualty numbers in the wars of the atheist religions.

"It's all nonsense written by human beings long ago."

You don't know that. Were you there when all that nonsense was written down?

Mark F, I'm glad you know more about what "an eye for an eye" really means. And forgiveness is very nice, but it doesn't pay the rent. I wish I'd remembered to say also that "an eye for an eye" was never carried out literally, so far as has been documented. It was interpreted to mean the monetary value of an eye or tooth or whatever. If I cause you to lose your eye, and you are a jeweler, say, then I have to pay you the projected loss of your income over the span of your working life.

Judaism has a lot to say about forgiveness too. But justice still has to be done. And the man from Nazareth (I am not allowed to write his name, for religious reasons) taught Jewish law much more than many people realize he did.

The reason that America is the best country in the world is because it has the best stores. The finest retail at the best prices. The greatest malls, most beautiful shops, most convenient shopping, and cutest boutiques ever.

America has the highest standard of living in the world.... which of course means the best retail experience. Imagine living in a place where you would have to settle for less?

Ungodly, I would call it.

So that's the real meaning of life: the STUFF you surround yourself with. We celebrate this at Christmas by buying more STUFF. You can't escape it without appearing un-Christian. To renounce Christmas shopping is to renounce God himself. And to complain about Christmas shopping is to blaspheme against God himself.

So please, do your Christmas shopping now or you will go to hell.

Sorry, I thought "Antiluminous" had posted that comment but it was some other anonymous poster calling him or herself "anonymous".

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS NOT in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

-- Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
Ratified by the United States Senate

Antiluminous wrote: "When the first set of tablets were destroyed, it took God another 40 days to carve a new set. Jeez, you'd think MOSES could have done it himself in that amount of time..."

Are you trying to dismiss my point with humor? It's not funny. Millions of people are dying for what they believe "god" said or did at some point in time when none of us were born. It's all nonsense written by human beings long ago. Do you think that's funny?

Stephen,

If the Christians are to blame for the crimes of the Nazis, then the Atheists are to blame for the crimes of the Communists; who killed more Jews than the Nazis. The truth is that the great socialist experiments of the Twentieth Century, Nazism and Communism, killed more people, both Jews and Christians, than all religious wars combined. To blame those insanities on Christianity is either a rhetorical provocation, or just silly.

"Were you there when the 10 commandments were handed down? Of course not. So then, how can you be so sure that that actually happened? Isn't it possible (just, for a moment, consider the word "possible") that that story was concocted by human beings and not "God"?"

When the first set of tablets were destroyed, it took God another 40 days to carve a new set. Jeez, you'd think MOSES could have done it himself in that amount of time...

May the God of Abraham protect us from what he has wrought. Fueding intolerant children called Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Fred, I know that the courts, lawyers and all sorts of other bottom-feeders have confused folks about the US Constitution's utility of religion, so bear me out and I will explain it.

First, when the founders declared that all men were "created" equal, where were they deriving such creation? From the Koran? From the Epic of Gilgamesh? No, from the Old Testament.

Next, the First Amendment directly reflects that the Congress shall make no law in the establishment of religion, etc. What that really means is that the founders already told us about the creator, and they didn't want some future as of yet known or unknown religion becoming popular with the people and then officially established by government. The founders knew that humans are creatures of worship and tend to gravitate to popular, fashionable things. The founders then were concerned that in the future some new religion would appear that might tempt the people into trading their rights for it.

Secularism, for example, could be defined as that "new religion", since religion is only defined as a "system of worship" and does not require the worship of deity. Secularism, like other human collectives, is a religion.

The founders told us that man was "created" by the "creator". Humans couldn't "create" man, nor could humans guarantee "inaliable" rights. That is why the founders explained that only the "creator" could guarantee mortal men their inaliable rights.

The founders then drew upon the Old Testament and the New Testament to derive the first laws. The 10 Commandments, for example, are everywhere in Washington, DC, and yet the new political class has been trying to redefine those motifes as "the bill of rights". Orwellianism goes hand in hand with the new intelligensia.

Admittedly, I am part of the American intelligensia, the learned class. My only interest here is conflict resolution, and I believe that it is a very dangerous situation in the United States whereby the secular religion is attempting not only to redefine the history of America's origins, but the rights of men as given to us by the "creator".

What we are seeing then is the replacement of our rights with false-rights. The founders would be truly shocked and terrified about the America we have become, and the dream of what might have been.

I say that because secular religions have caused the most suffering and death of humans in the history of civilization. Communism was responsible for 150,000,000 deaths last century. Nazism almost 80 million. Maoism close to 100,000,000 including 50,000,000 in the Chinese famines in the 1950s. Pol Pot was responsible for almost 3 million. It goes on and on.

The reason the founders left our rights in the hands of God is so that no human could step forward and claim they had the power to negotiate those rights or do away with them.

As a scientist, I believe that my rights are better off left with the founder's interpretation of the omnipotent being, rather than a mortal human elected through popular and fashionable vote. No human should ever have the right to question the disposition of other humans. When we allow that, we seal our collective fates. It is in this spirit that I respect the idea of religion insofar as its utility to the state is critical to keep the state intact.

Learned men and women can walk away from that which they do not agree with without antagonizing very large and potentially very dangerous religious collectives. Unfortunately for humanity, the media has a very difficult problem performing that way.

To say that Hindus have many gods is not quite correct. What I learned is that there is one god, and the word that EXPRESSES that god is Om. The one god has three main manifestations: Brahma (creator aspect), Vishnu (preserver, maintainer aspect) and Shiva (destructive aspect). Then there are all the avatars of these three main manifestations. I know mostly about the Vishnu manifestations: Krishna, Rama, etc. Seems to me the basic idea with Hinduism is find the form that you can relate to and worship it, as opposed to the Christian/Islam version that says that there is only one (male) form and if you don't worship my definition of that form you are dammed to hell, etc.

The Muslim fanatics (and probably those of other religions, we are seeing mostly Muslim activity right now) take it one step further and assert that it is better to murder someone that is worshipping a false version of god (by their definition) than to let them live in error. Very convenient excuse for blowing people up.

MKT, the other night on Lou Dobbs, they asked the question: "Do Native Americans have the right to prevent U.S. Border Patrol agents from patrolling ALL of our borders?" The Dobbsian public, predictably, voted overwhelmingly that those injuns didn't have the right to stop us from keeping them mexicuns outta our country. Whenever it became "our" country...

Antiluminous wrote:

What other religion were the founders referring to when they devised the US Constitution? They weren't referring to Islam, were they? No, they were not. In fact, Islam has made no penetration into the United States other than in recent decades and this is derived by American addiction to oil. The secular claim that the US Constitution was developed to allow Islam to set up shop in America is pretty laughable. The founders never conceived such a situation. Do you honestly believe that the founders wrote the USC to provide Wiccans First Amendment protections, or Satanists, or fundamentalist Islam? You have got to be kidding!

RESPONSE:
So what religion were they referring to when they crafted the phrase: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"?

The founders absolutely set up the constitution to allow for the free expression of religions other than their own. They might not have believed in other religions, but that did not mean they would allow the suppression of other beliefs. If the founders had believed that the newly established country was a "Christian Nation" they would have EXPLICITLY stated laws to that effect...instead, they crafted laws that protected the rights of others who did not have the same religious beliefs as themselves. In that respect, they showed signs of true leadership that is sorely lacking in today's world...the concept of allowing viewpoints different than their own.

Earlier, "Antiluminous" posted the following comment:
"America is a Christian nation because God gave Moses the 10 Commandments to be the foundation of law for all nations. The United States was founded under Christian law in this way. Since God has yet to deliver another set of stone tablets with new instructions on them, no human can obviously redefine His laws."

Dear "Antiluminous":

Were you there when the 10 commandments were handed down? Of course not. So then, how can you be so sure that that actually happened? Isn't it possible (just, for a moment, consider the word "possible") that that story was concocted by human beings and not "God"? Concocted by, and embellished down through the ages, by humans, until you were born, at which time your mother and/or father fed that story to you. It's a story, and it was told to you, and you believe it. I don't believe it, and I also think there are a lot of other people who don't believe it. So please stop basing your arguments on something that can't be proven. Thanks for listening.

DISPUTATIO: When I said GET RELIGION OUT OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION and GET IT OUT OF THE DAILY NEWSPAPER, I was nostalgic for an earlier day when conflicting dogma had not set the population at each other's throats so constantly.

Example, one among dozens: We should be able to discuss stem cell research by rational debate, without claiming to read God's mind.

According to the manners of that earlier day, it was unseemly to attempt to impose your religious views upon others.

Perhaps this loss in manners has been one of the factors leading to our current partianship.

Dear Freethinker:

I am a Christian believer who thinks you should get the politics out of my spiritual discussion.

All:

What a load of hogwash. You are all uninformed, close-minded biggots who do not have a decent thing to say about anything. Too afraid to put your real name on the post and all trying to get a little attention by posting the most outlandish thing you can think. You all make me sick.

Not one of you can quote as many scriptures as you have fingers on your hand but you all think you can speak about Christianity. Same way Dr. Prothero does. Not one of you genuinely understands what the Bible says, let alone what the Bible means. You can all be called heathens by the way you speak about God and religion. Perhaps, that what you want to be. Sad, mighty sad. Without God in the world, you have no hope for tomorrow. You can only live for today. What a sad epitaph for your tomb...He lived only for today.

Our country once was a genererous place where your neighbor could be counted on, where you pulled your own weight, where you planned for the future, where you did not have to lock your doors, and where everyone was not trying to take what was yours. Not so anymore. Our country is on the way down, on the way out, because our country lacks values. Real, true, values. Honesty, integrity, strength of character, fortitude, longevity, morals. Most of you do not even remember the America I speak of. Your parents might. Your grandparents certainly do. But then, you probably do not value your grandparents opinions. Everything is sold for the young generation, yet all the wisdom in the world resides in the heads that sport grey hair.

Rant at me all you want. You all hate Christians anyway. I got onto this site with the thinking that we could get into a great discussion about our beliefs. Spiritual stuff. I am so disillusioned now. You all want to wank about politics and bash Christians.

motherof3, I agree. The law was meant to remove vengeance and leave only justice. As it should be. But the law of the Jews is not the law Christ taught. Christ taught turn the other cheek. Forgiveness for an eye. Forgiveness for a tooth.

Here's a news flash: America's true old-time religion predates Christianity by thousands of years. Try reading "Black Elk: The Sacred Ways of a Lakota" by Wallace Black Elk for an introduction. All these other belief systems are imported from elsewhere. Nothing wrong with any of them, but "American" they are not. Can't believe I am the first person to mention Native American spirituality in this thread.

Very eye-opening reading. Must be the only Muslim, from the developing world, reading all this and writing in.

Lighten up. This is the season of goodwill no? Invite you non-Judeo-Christian heritage friends over for dinner. Make it vegetarian so you won't offend Hindus who are mostly vegetarians and the most liberal won't take beef; Muslims who won't take pork nor drink alcohol (such party poppers); low carbs for dieters; and no seafood for those with allergies.

The world is full of people who can't take this and that mentally, physically, physiologically, and emotionally. And I am not talking about ideologies or religion as yet. Live with it.

Happy holidays and happy new year to you all.

Nafisah Mohamed
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Mark F, I have to agree with you except for one thing: your name for this religion that you call "new Judaism". Jewish law is often discounted by being called "old", but it is still in effect among Jewish people. I also want to point out a common misconception about "an eye for an eye." That phrase does NOT mean, "If you do to me, I'll do to you!" In ancient Babylonia, one could be executed for bumping into the king. Slaves and free people were not valued equally. "An eye for an eye" means just that: the punishment shall fit the crime. If I cut your finger but don't sever it, my punishment should not be the amputation of my hand. Judaism has been given a much undeserved bad name because people insist on misunderstanding "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth", "a hand for a hand" and "a foot for a foot".

"Tenets of the Hindu faith uphold the divine within each human."

So do the tenets of Christianity:

John 10

31 The Jews again picked up rocks to stone him.
32 Jesus answered them, "I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?"
33 The Jews answered him, "We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God."
34 Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, "You are gods"'?
35 If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be set aside,
36 can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?

It's all biology you know. The unfortunate reality is that the masses that inhabit earth are far too frail to accept that fact and therefore we have and will always have the delusion of a god or gods and the wild dreams of an eternal salvation. And of course the other driving force behind it all is that there's darn good money in it. Selling salvation.....it ain't cheap!

Anonymous - I left out that part in the interest of brevity, and because this government generally won't keep people from practicing this religion, unless it impedes somebody elses life or happiness.

"The difference is in your argument, nobody in the right mind cares for Satanism!"

And neither do I, but the US has no business prohibiting anyone from practicing it!

Perhaps God blessed Abraham when he stopped killing his son. Being crafty, Abraham revised the story.

There is a story about Mohammed negotiating the return of a sacred stone to its pedestal. Three chiefs each insisted that they should have this honor. Mohammed placed the stone on a blanket and they each grabbed a corner. The Prophet held the fourth corner in honor of his resolution.

Today maybe we have Jew, Christian and Muslim in each of three corners. The fourth is dedicated to their sons moving forward in peace.

Then again, the answer may come from outside Abraham’s exclusive sphere. Tenets of the Hindu faith uphold the divine within each human. Religion seeks to find that divine. All religions are equally legitimate. I prefer that view.

The thought of universal individual divinity echoes the Gospel of Thomas and other Gnostics (or, as Pagels calls them, Early Christians). Armstrong talks about Buddha and Christ hovering between the human and divine and revealing that higher order to a hungry world. The formalizing of the message generally leads to its corruption. The most corrupt are the most literal; those that fail to understand the metaphor’s attempt to overcome the limits of mere language. Or, in Elmer Gantry – George Bush fashion – prefer not to.

Let’s give “Christian Nation” a rest. It is too expensive.

Stephen,

If the Christians are to blame for the crimes of the Nazis, then the Atheists are to blame for the crimes of the Communists; who killed more Jews than the Nazis. The truth is that the great socialist experiments of the Twentieth Century, Nazism and Communism, killed more people, both Jews and Christians than all religious wars combined. To blame those insanities on Christianity is either a rhetorical provocation or just silly.

Freethinker, Wow! For a so-called Freethinker you sure are intolerant! "GET RELIGION OUT OF THE NEWSPAPER" Really? I'm beginning to wonder if free-thinking is incompatible with the 1st Amendment's free-press clause.

And K. Robinson, did your version of Jesus only go around doing good deeds? Or did he actually have something to say as well? Because the Jesus in the Bible was mighty in word and deed. For sure, he associated with the lowly and the outcasts, but he also told them that if they did not trust in him for eternal life then they would die in their sins.

No, I don't believe America is/was a "Christian Nation", but I would like to point out that the U.S. Constitution was written in the "the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven..." That is a quote, by the way. To what Lord could they have been referring? Buddha? Mohammed? Abraham? Confucius? Who am I forgetting? And does this sentence in the U.S. Constitution violate the so-called principle of "separation of church and state"?

Antiluminous - "Do you honestly believe that the founders wrote the USC to provide Wiccans First Amendment protections, or Satanists, or fundamentalist Islam?"

Yes I DO! And that you doubt that makes me want to send you back to basic civics class! They certainly believed in a creator, but they wanted to make sure that all Americans going forward would not be subject to someone else's religion!! That does not mean Islam, or Judaism is specific, but ANYONE ELSE'S BELIEFS AT ALL!! I am not beholden to you, nor you to me, etc etc etc!! That you don't understand that does not make America Christian, it makes you ignorant.

" now the secular leftist media wants all religions to be be morally relative of each other"

The media is irrelevant, as the US cannot pass a law establishing the preference of one religion over another, they are ALREADY on equal footing, despite the Christians crying about this.

"There is no such thing as Utopia"
Especially if people keep trying to shove their religion down other people's throats.

"Seriously, if Christ were to return today, would He recognize those “heavily-armed Christians” as His own?"

Matthew 26

51 And behold, one of those who accompanied Jesus put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear.

52 Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

Matthew 5

43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Evil:
You conveniently leave out *or prohibiting the free exercise thereof* of the 1st ammendment. Where does the goverment establish a religion??? That refers to preventing the Church from becoming the government. The difference is in your argument, nobody in the right mind cares for Satanism!

Never did understand what, "accepting Christ as your Savior," really means. What does a person have to do to convince anyone that she/he has accepted Christ as her/his savior? Do Christ/God sit in judgement of what constitutes acceptance?

DC Philosopher,

What other religion were the founders referring to when they devised the US Constitution? They weren't referring to Islam, were they? No, they were not. In fact, Islam has made no penetration into the United States other than in recent decades and this is derived by American addiction to oil. The secular claim that the US Constitution was developed to allow Islam to set up shop in America is pretty laughable. The founders never conceived such a situation. Do you honestly believe that the founders wrote the USC to provide Wiccans First Amendment protections, or Satanists, or fundamentalist Islam? You have got to be kidding!

Secularists believe that all peoples can live together in some type of peaceful utopia regardless of their points of origin, religious beliefs and other traits. I think that is fallacy, not because I want to see divisions in humanity, but in the truth that America is not prepared to construct such an arrangement. We can't even get along between Democrats and Republicans, but now the secular leftist media wants all religions to be be morally relative of each other?

To do that will require great applications of force by government at great expense. That is not unity and understanding. That is the concept of Utopia and we proved that Utopia and Marxism don't work.

If you think about it, there are really only a handful of issues that separate Christians from secularists. Issues like homosexuality, abortion, acknowledgement of God, and the like. Those issues are very few, yet the media and secular forces use those issues to drive irreconcilable wedges between the people.

There is no such thing as Utopia and it appears the USA, like the former Soviet, will have to learn that lesson the very hard way as the country is brought kicking and screaming into the truth.

antiluminous:

“We are talking about a situation where there are up to 100 million heavily-armed Christians in the United States.”

*** “heavily-armed Christians”, now there is an oxymoron! How heavily armed was Jesus in His own time? What does being “heavily armed” have anything to do with being a Christian? Seriously, if Christ were to return today, would He recognize those “heavily-armed Christians” as His own? And can anyone really believe that those same “heavily-armed Christians” would recognize Him? It seems most unlikely to me either way.

"Horror is practiced in God's name;why doesnt he/she/it do something about it?"

If God were aware of our suffering, it would truly be suffering and we would truly be lost. As it is, we share our insanity with each other, but our Father does not share it with us. Be thankful for that. God created Truth and only Truth. Our nightmares don't touch that Truth in any way.

Hey, what about adherents of Gaia? And agnostics and atheists as someone already mentioned?

By the way, I disagree with the view that values stem from religion. Rather, various religions codified principles that people had learned allowed them to live together in something better than complete anarchy. Values preceded the current crop of religions.

Antilumonious - "Fred, the author of the article is right. America is a Christian nation."

Sorry...I missed that in the Constitution...or ANy of it's amendments...in fact, the very first one disproves it in that Congress shall create no law establishing a preferred religion. What that simply means is that Americans can believe what they want, but the government is going to stay out of it! NO ESTABLISHMENT of religion means that America is NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION!!

'Look at our founding documents, that all men are "created" equal. It says all men are not just "equal" but "created" equal by the "creator".'

True, but I missed the part where it stated they were created by Christ.....care to point that out?

'Then you have the first 10 Amendments of the US Constitution, matching in a foundation way the 10 Commandments'

Really? I tried matching them up...nowehere in the amendments does it mention adultery...or holding false idols...nor do the ten commandments claim that there is a right to peaceable congregation, or a right to free speech...
The only thing in common is the number 10..not a very substantive argument.

'Fred, atheists like Hitler always publicly announce that they are "followers" of religion until they seat power. They wouldn't get elected otherwise. "The people" never elect the "godless", do they? No, they do not.'

Are you attempting to draw a comparison between Hitler and Bush? Even if you haven't, it's a pretty good case! And doesn't that actually only provide evidence of the bigotry of the masses?

'Hitler thought he was god, and by slaughtering 6 million Jews he was trying to prove it.'

OK, do we need to go over the concept of Atheism now? Thinking you are god is megalomania, not atheism.

'Is "separation of church and state" anywhere in the US Constitution?'

Not as such, but if you read the first amendment, and consider it very carefully, it's the same thing, just worded differently.

I AM A FREETHINKER WHO IS WEARY OF HEARING the claim that this is a Christian nation when the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly forbids an establishment of religion. While the Big Three monotheisms are always in Orwellian war with each other, the rest of our society is quietly going post-theistic. GET RELIGION OUT OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION. AND GET IT OUT OF THE DAILY NEWSPAPER. Let the church bulletins have a go at each other. I DO NOT WANT TO READ IT.

If you check your history you will find that islam is NOT Abrahamic. They glummed onto some Christian and Jewish rules and laws and made some things up conveniently to legitimize their religion. Yet even these arrogant, violent people are welcome here, this is the land of the free. Which makes this nation inviting to all types of beliefs, Hindu, Buddhist should never have been left out. The only group that cannot reconcile freedom with their religion would be the muslims.

What have the ten commandments got to do with the foundation of the US? I've read the Constitution through and through. I have found no mention of honoring your father and mother. It is silent about coveting your neighbor's ass. Working on the sabath is not unconstitutional, and that goes for male and female slaves and livestock too. You can check out the others for yourself.

Many of the founding fathers were outright antagonistic to established religions. Jefferson famously wrote his own replacement bible with all the supernatural stuff and dogma removed.

The founding fathers gave us a framework under which the government is supposed to stay out of the religion business.

Wow! Reading the comments posted on this topic proves that Hatred is all too evident in a topic of religion. Its seems as though if you do not agree with someone or something, then its okay for people to dump all on you; or gang up on you if you do not believe the same, do the same, or look the same. This is more prejudice, hate, and a debate, than it is answering the question that was asked.

Why do we hate? Why do we think it is okay to hate and mistreat those who are different? Is that the Christian way? Would Jesus hate and mistreat a sinner? No, he wouldn't; but some how we think we can and that its okay. We are all sinners. None of us are perfect.

Why do churches and ole saints preach and teach from the old testament more than the new? Is it because they believe more in an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and life for a life? It sure seems that way. We all acts as if Jesus never showed up at all to teach us anything. Jesus' birth made all the difference in the world. Jesus tried to teach us forgiveness, charity, compassion, and love; but we still hold on to the old ways and old thinking.

If Jesus was here today, where do you think he'd be? You think he would be at the White-House having dinner, and having tea with the rich and famous? Well you are wrong. He would be where we all should be; helping our fellow men. He would be on K Street in DC where the homeless and prostitutes are and not seeking to be around high minded people with expensive luxury toys. He would be in Africia where Aids is the worst. We all could learn something from a Jesus instead of bickering back and forth. Go out, get out and make a difference in the world, no matter how small, just make a difference. Martin Luther King Jr. was someone I know Jesus was very proud of, he care for everyone and about everybody, not just his kind.

I hope and pray for Christmas, that God brings you all some Peace, Love, Wisdom & Compassion this year; because we all sure need it, even those who don't believe. This I pray in Jesus' name.

K. Robinson

Disputatio, fair point about Islam. But I don't consider Islam an "Eastern" religion because it comes out of the Abrahamic tradition. In my view, the Eastern religions include Shintoism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

And your point about political life - no religion owns the idea of American freedom, which in my view transcends all religion. If new religions arose and most Americans converted to these, hopefully our principle of secular, religion-neutral government would remain intact.

I think it is a fair question to ask-- whether the worldview of Eastern religions could possibly have lead to the political identity that characterizes what we know as America? I believe the answer to that question is "No." (e.g., Islam would not have produced the 1st Amendment as we know it.) Now this does not mean that followers of Eastern religions are not welcome to practice (privately and publicly) their religion in America. But it does mean that the more we allow Eastern norms to influence our POLITICAL life, the more we should expect for America's political identity to change. I am not making any sort of judgment as to whether this is good or bad, but I do believe this fact must be acknowledged.

It has been brought up in another fashion, Shawn, but thanks for filling me in about Brahmin. I didn't know that.

I'm not sure if this point has been raised yet in these comments, but I thought it significant to note that Hinduism is not actually a polytheistic religion. The one God of Hinduism (Brahman), however, is far different from the Abrahamic God in that it is not a personal god. No human being can actually communicate directly with Brahman; rather, it is the fundamental nature of all matter in the Universe. The "many gods" to which the writer referred are actually various incarnations of Brahman as a way for the divine to interact directly with humans. The impersonal God is an interesting contrast to Western monotheistic philosophies and should be understood as such.

Let me rephrase: Do you think the chief purpose of religion is to ensure we all co-exist peacefully? If it is, would it be a good thing if there were one, universal religion, accepted by all, but recognized by the elite as a bogus entity designed strictly to keep the people happy and behaving well?

you try to smoothe things out, but in doing so you neglect a large and growing numberr of us are non believers, who may still be spiritual,Many of stopped believing after incidents like holocaust rwanda, daifur and the Islamic fundamentalists. Horror is practiced in God's name;why doesnt he/she/it do something about it?

"The major conflict among people is to share resources. A balance between capitalism and socialism is needed for people on Earth. The population needs to be limited due to limited resources on Earth. The consumption per person needs to be limited. Rich people needs to help poor people more through tax and micro credit low interest loan. Cooperation with fair prices is better than competition with varied prices. Heaven is for socialists but not for capitalists. There is not much class difference in Heaven. Do you want Heaven come to Earth?"

So you think religion should serve the utilitairan purpose of making sure we all get along without killing each other?

There is a new Judaism in the world. Its followers take their guidance from the Old Testament, build their beliefs around the old Jewish law of "an eye for an eye" and largely reject the teachings of Jesus Christ. Tolerance, love and forgiveness are for "lefties" and "liberals"--not "true christians" who, it seems, have not read the part in their Old Testament where God claims that the right of avenging sin belongs to Him alone. They call themselves Christians, but they despise and reject most of what Christ taught, preferring instead to look to old Jewish law and teachings for guidance. Their claim to being Christian lies in the single act of one day "accepting Christ" as their "savior". In fact, Christ serves as little more than a good luck charm in their lives, while they have changed little about their behavior and they way they treat their brothers.

Luke 13:23-28

What happened to your beloved "consistency?" You keep saying you're leaving, but you keep coming back.

And, of course, I never called you a "child molestor." I used a conditional, just like you, to prove the point that conditionals can be used to attack other people. Since you were offended by it, consider that point made.

Oh, Jeez. That's about the worst thing you could have said. Alas, I'm 'piscy too. So I'm not going to engage in this any more, out of some degree of deference to a co-religionist. But you might want to consider that no matter how provocative you found my original entry, it assumed NOTHING about you in particular -- you chose to respond to it with non-substantive answers.

Hmm?? it seems to me that everyone is a bit confused. America is a secular state. We are not ruled by clerics or priests...

We do still have separation of church and state and freedom of belief. No matter what anyone says..that is what the law states...

THat is what our forefathers died for and that is perhaps what our young men today are trying to show to the remote places of this world...

Freedom from oppression....of any type....

If ours is a Christian nation, the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis in a war based on the lies of the government of this nation has given Christianity an indelible scar of immorality, especially because none of the Christian leaders who so strongly support the President have said a single word about the immoral basis of these killings.

Of course I didn't call you a child-molester. I made a conditional, "if then" statement, just like you did.

I made my conditional to prove that they can be used to personally attack other people and I guess I was successful at it because it seems you have taken it personally.

And, of course, your assumption that I am "viciously against Christianity" is also a dead giveaway that you are totally paranoid, since I am a practicing Episcopalian. I just request that you be honest about your motives.

The primary problem is when any religion becomes a cult. To clarify, that means the mentality becomes the idea/practice that a single solution is the answer/tool for every problem. Whether in politics, religion, or professions, when one has more opinions than facts -- (a minimum of a one-to-one ratio required for rationality) then one is creeping towards a cult mentality.

The secondary problem is when secular belief goes so far as to deny the existence of true evil. My take is, the existence of evil is the strongest evidence for the existence of God. Otherwise, it would be chaos. The Hindus are historical human bedrock religion not in denial of this reality. Each subsequent branch from the tree is worthy of study by the healthy mind not ruled by the herd.

Hilter's father was an atheist, his mother a catholic. He was involved deeply in the occult - the Indiana Jones movies have more than a little bit of accuracy in them. The occult was very popular among the upper classes in Germany in the early 1900's.
One of the most fundamental differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that Islam is not eschatalogical - both Jews and Christians believe that God will come as judge and Lord at the end of time. Christian teaching states that only God knows when that time is, though each generation has its end-of-the-world predictors.
Islam believes that God's followers must and can set this world right but, there is no designated end where God will come as ruler and judge.

I'm out of here, but Hoenig, if you really think that being told to 'grow up' and being called a 'child molester' are the same thing, you really need help.

Faith is to set up relationship between myself and God if I believe in God. Faith can also be used to set up relationship between me and others no matter if I believe in God or not. The foundation of faith to each other is the love and hope to each other. This faith needs to be amplified to all animals, plants, and environments on Earth, perhaps, even to other planets, galaxies, universe, and multi-verse if exists.

The major conflict among people is to share resources. A balance between capitalism and socialism is needed for people on Earth. The population needs to be limited due to limited resources on Earth. The consumption per person needs to be limited. Rich people needs to help poor people more through tax and micro credit low interest loan. Cooperation with fair prices is better than competition with varied prices. Heaven is for socialists but not for capitalists. There is not much class difference in Heaven. Do you want Heaven come to Earth?

Thanks for proving that my child-molestation analogy was right on the mark, since you took it personally -- just like your "conditional" was a personal assault on those who disagree with you.

ANTILUMINOUS:
Then you have the first 10 Amendments of the US Constitution, matching in a foundation way the 10 Commandments even if they are designed for a different purpose, and that purpose is to define the "rights" of all men that were "created" equal by the "creator".
To deny America's Christian founding is to deny reality.

Curious about this one, since when did the concept of a "creator" only apply to christianity? And exactly what do the 10 commandments have in common with the first 10 Ammendments to the Constitution other than each having "10" of them?

Finally, what are your thoughts on the concept of "Separation of Church and State". Should it exist and is that the intention of the 1st Ammendment to the Constitution?

If you are desperate enough to have to compare Christianity in America to the oppresive version of Islam in Saudi Arabia to make American christianity look good, then I would say that you've probably already lost the point you were trying to make.

America is not anything specific in terms of religion, and everyone here knows that! One of the basic tenets upon which this country was founded was the express freedom to do whatever you wanted in terms of religion, and not to have any religion crammed down your throat. In fact, YOU DON'T HAVE TO PRACTICE ANY TYPE OF RELIGION AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO BELIEVE IN GOD! Gasp!

As much as some people don't like to admit it, there are people who do not believe in a god. There are people who do not go to church. There are people who do not practice religion. The U.S. is by design a secular nation, it is NOT a "Christian" nation in any way, shape or form, and it is the land of freedom of religion and freedom to not practice any religion if you don't want to. The United States is a secular nation. It is not a Christian nation.

"But to say other people our hypocrites because, in a thread talking about Religion in the United States, they opt to talk about religion in the United States instead of religion in Iran, is just plain silly."

And yet religion in Germany seems entirely on-topic, doesn't it?

I'm tired of this, so here's the bottom line: My view is that many people in the United States who criticize Christianity for its many failings don't apply the same standards to other religions, whether here or abroad. I think this is hypocrisy.

You can go on and on about how that's changing the topic, but it isn't, really. It's challenging the folks who are viciously against Christianity to assess whether they are fairminded in that assessment *as it relates to this debate*.

But you can't or won't see that. So instead you've called me paranoid and made analogies to child-molesting.

I'm calling it a day. Good luck with all that.

america is a nation that will adapt to a certain degree especially on religion, but stil not provide that new religion with too much stature, god forbid for them that the nation became majority jewish or muslim. it would turn the whole judeo-christian model upside down
and screams "Islamists have taken over"
and politics of post 9-11 dictate whether a politician will try to bridge gaps between religions or help in widenign that gap, because he comes from a district that is more conservative
In the end though politicians will be politicians, but will have to adapt to their environment as it changes,which is a natural progression of weeding out people who do not conform or help make up that community.

These are the thoughts of KLOC

Questions and conditionals can be easily phrased to attack, even without the dead give away "Grow Up" at the end of yours. And your "If then" was a plain attack. Throwing a question mark at the end of it doesn't absolve from that culpability.

The only point that matters is that the United States of America is, by definition (First Amendment), not a Christian state. Most American's poll as Christian, but the term is too general to be meaningful. Almost no Americans poll as Jews, however, so the notion that we are a Judeo-Christian people is ludicrous, particularly if we begin to discuss Israel and the Palestinian problem, or any other religiously divisive issue (Arab / Jew, etc.).

America respects all personal beliefs and challenges all faith-based assertions in the public sector, equally. The U.S. was designed that way by law.

Have a warm and wonderful holiday.

DV Sikka (2:04 post): The hatred of many Christians for the lives of non-Christians is also obvious and sad.
One reason for hatred of Christians is their imposition of their values in such areas as victimless 'crimes', such as marijuana and other drug use and prostitution. Prohibition kills as we just saw in Ipswich, England and are seeing on a ongoing basis in Mexico (Neuvo Laredo, Acapulco, etc, etc,), Afghanistan and too many other places to mention.
Where does anyone get the gall to use killer alcohol and tell other folks they can't use marijuana? In the land pledged to liberty and justice for all no less.
Another reason for hatred of Christians is the fundamentalist claim that they know what happens to the souls of non-Christians, kind of like Christians have the spiritual lives of other folks in their hip pocket.

Oops, that should be "deserves much more condemnation than it currently receives."

"If you think X about A, to be consistent you would have to think X about B, because A and B are similar or identical. If you can't prove that, then you are inconsistent."

You forgot to add "Be sure to put the phrase 'Grow Up' at the end of your logical construction to make it perfectly consistent.

That is what you did, right? Nothing ad hominen about that, eh?

Hoenig writes: "If you don't start molesting kids, I'm going to call the cops."

Wouldn't the cops find it odd that you want me to start molesting kids or believe it to be a crime if I don't? You are quite a strange one.

To expand on Fred Evil's point, there's an inherent danger to everyone from all religious extremism, and the brutal treatment of women in the Middle East deserves much more condemnation than it currently deserves. But as a practical matter, my wife and two daughters are more directly affected by Christian extremism in America, even though it is much less brutal. A very relevant example is the fundamentalist opposition to the HPV vaccine. It outrages me that anyone would want to increase my daughters' risk of getting cervical cancer, just to frighten people into abstinence.

Fred, atheists like Hitler always publicly announce that they are "followers" of religion until they seat power. They wouldn't get elected otherwise. "The people" never elect the "godless", do they? No, they do not.

You see, how could any religious person genocide 6 million Jews? Hitler thought he was god, and by slaughtering 6 million Jews he was trying to prove it. If Hitler had killed all the Jews, he would have then said that there was no such thing as God as Hegel claimed, and he had proven it because God surely would have not allowed the Jewish people to wiped out.

So your example is almost as bad as the "separation of church and state" letter by Jefferson which the hostile secular left uses to attack America's Christian founding on a regular basis in American courts.

Is "separation of church and state" anywhere in the US Constitution?

Please forgive my typos. Unlike you, I never prclaimed myself to be smart. Or a good typist for that matter.

I am disappointed that a "Chair of the Department of Religion" continues to propogate the popular misconception that Hinduism is a religon of 'many Gods'. The Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads - Hindu scriptures clearly refer to God as One who is formless, nameless and attribute-less. There is NO ambiguity in this matter. Due to the abstract nature of God, and the inability of the human mind to comprehend such an abstraction, Hinduism allows one to 'imagine' or 'visualize' God any way he or she wants. Thus the concept of 'many Gods'.
Shame on the Professor for propogating such misconceptions! Religon already has created such extreme opinions, we don't want more to be created, especially fueled by someone in a credible position.

That's moronic, Hoenig. Talk about off topic.

If you insist on crafting an analogy, it would work like this:

"If you think X about A, to be consistent you would have to think X about B, because A and B are similar or identical. If you can't prove that, then you are inconsistent."

I don't know how to work paedophilia into that because it isn't something I think about, but maybe you can fill in the blanks and make it work.

After the Yule tree incident at Seatac airport I have been asking myself a simple question, 'is it the end of paganism in America'. The hatred for Norse mythology is obvious and sad.

The article was about Religion in the United States. If you want to talk about religion in other countries, fine. More power to you. But to say other people our hypocrites because, in a thread talking about Religion in the United States, they opt to talk about religion in the United States instead of religion in Iran, is just plain silly.

Yeah. Here's an "If then" for you:

If you don't start molesting kids, I'm going to call the cops.

Nothing illogical or ad hominen in that conditional,eh?

Fred, the author of the article is right. America is a Christian nation.

Look at our founding documents, that all men are "created" equal. It says all men are not just "equal" but "created" equal by the "creator".

Then you have the first 10 Amendments of the US Constitution, matching in a foundation way the 10 Commandments even if they are designed for a different purpose, and that purpose is to define the "rights" of all men that were "created" equal by the "creator".

To deny America's Christian founding is to deny reality.

You know, recently there were some folks that went on a tour to the USSC building in Washington, and tour guides hired by the government were handing out tour brochures that had the audacity to claim that the 10 Commandment motifes in the USSC building were depictions of the bill of rights! Talk about Orwellianism! o.0

Is this country going secular wacko or what? Anyone interested in conflict resolution should begin to ask themselves why such aggressive action is being waged against Christians to create conflict with the Christian religion.

Fred Evil writes: "I have even less respect for religions that require women to stay home from work, hide their faces in public etc. But they're not trying to make my wife or daughter conform to their beliefs, or debating why their faith ISN'T the official religion. Christians ARE...."

See, Hoenig, that's an actual response to my hypothesis. Disproving it, in fact. Mr. Evil notes that he's not a hypocrite, and provides an argument to support that. His response was substantive. Yours have been wooden and procedural.

That's my bro!

love ya!

Antiluminous - You are claiming that Hitler was an ATHEIST?! That's COMPLETE hoogwash, and I'll not stand idly by while you compare me to Hitler. It's NOT true. He was VERY much a believer in god, although he didn't specifically follow a particular church, he was NO atheist!

From Mein Kampf - "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work."

Definitely NOT an atheist!

No, I didn't, Hoenig. This is what I wrote:

"All of you who seem intent on saying that Christians are hypocrites, etc., I wonder if you make the same argument in other contexts. Do you claim that Iran or Saudi Arabia are "not really Muslim nations" because their leaders don't follow "the real teachings of Islam" or something like that?

If not, then _you_ are the hypocrites. I'm calling B.S. on your multi-cultural anti-Americanism. Grow up."

Obviously stated as an "if-then". Which people like you were invited to rebut, if you like. But you won't. Instead, you pile procedural argument on top of procedural argument, with some name calling thrown in to boot.

If you had asked a legitimate question without the inherent presumption of "guilt" that you applied before giving anybody a chance to respond, that would be expanding the debate. What you did was launch an ad hominen that merely served to satiate your paranoid mind.

You critisized people for not, ahem, "expanding" the debate to these other countries when you have no idea what they think about religion in these countries. You merely PRESUMED to know what they thought about religion in these countries.

Hitler wasn't a Christian. Hitler made the Vatican sign a surrender treaty during World War II. Hitler was an atheist and the German nation was comprised of people that had moved away from religion as Hegel instructed.

Sweetness - "many on this thread express HATRED for Chrisianity but don't apply the same standards to other religions"

That's because the article isn't about other religions, but rather the author's (rather arrogant) insistence that America is a Christian nation. I have even less respect for religions that require women to stay home from work, hide their faces in public etc. But they're not trying to make my wife or daughter conform to their beliefs, or debating why their faith ISN'T the official religion. Christians ARE....

Ok, Hoenig, I can't bother with this any more. You won't answer my question or respond to my substantive point because you are mired in an invented procedural limitation on the scope of the debate.

Very illiberal of you. "The article was only about America." Blah blah blah. Do you conduct all of your conversations in this fashion.

Don't answer that. I don't care.

If you guys want to talk about religion in Saudi Arabia and Iran, I'd be more than happy than join in. However, the context of it was brought up out of the blue to attack people for not discussing it beforehand to the poster's liking. It was a remark intended to distract only, not to expand or enlighten the debate. Truth be told, you have NO CLUE what others here think about the state of religion in those countries, and yet you make some really incredible assumptions and think you can read other minds. This is a byproduct of your paranoia.

Hey Petunia, how can there be Christmas without a Christmas tree and a manger and a Menorah?

See, that is my point. You say Christians are mean, ad nauseum, but you know what? I have never been intimidated by Christians, ever. No Christian has ever come over to my house and intimidated me, nor have they ever gathered together to intimidate me.

That said, many, many times I have seen the secular state try to intimidate people.

Attacks on Christmas and Christianity are the source of all the mean-spirited people out there. When this country begins to have a debate about whether or not a Christmas tree should be shown in public during the Christmas season, you know America is in a lot of trouble. Do the folks chopping down Christmas trees on public dispay really have an interest in "peace and goodwill towards men"? I don't think so. Seems to me they want conflict.

What is particularly laughable too is that while the secular factions attacking Christmas trees with chainsaws do so, they claim that they are doing it to be "tolerant" and "non-judgmental".

I am thinking that atheist secular totalitarianism is much more dangerous than Christian secularism, but I am sure you will disagree.

"You are?! So being multi-cultural is Anti-American? I disagree!"

No, I think one can be multi-cultural w/o being anti-American. Indeed, without the rest of the hostility one sees here it's a pretty good worldview. My point (see the futile debate with W. Hoenig) is that many on this thread express HATRED for Chrisianity but don't apply the same standards to other religions. In this sense, I meant that they elevate all of the minority cultures here and abroad to some kind of holy status, while dragging Christianity thru the mud. That's what I'm saying with "multi-cultural anti-Americanism" -- I mean it is a form of hypocrisy and bigotry that revels in criticizing Christians but eschews criticizing any other religion.

I had never heard that Christians got a bad name as a result of WWII, compared to whatever reputation they had prior. Does anyone have any documentation of that -- a speech, an article, essay, etc. from the time period? Is the author speaking of a particular group that changed their opinion of Christianity as a result of WWII, or he is referring to a general global opinion? I assume the author is talking about the Holocaust in particular, and not just the war that Germany, Italy, and Japan waged?

You weren't "expanding" the debate, you were trying to steer it in a direction where you could successfully launch ad hominen attacks at will.

"The issue being discussed."

You sure are committed to the idea that a debate must be contained within certain extremely limited parameters.

A bit anal, no?

Sweetness - " I'm calling B.S. on your multi-cultural anti-Americanism."

You are?! So being multi-cultural is Anti-American? I disagree! And if you want to stick to that statement, I'll let you go converse with my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Mulroney over the meaning of a 'Melting Pot' I've always thought it meant a blending of multiple peoples and cultures...but apparently that's Anti-American...

"The word "minority" means . . . wait for it . . . that you aren't in the majority"

VERY true! But it does NOT mean that minoroties are supposed to lay down and let the largest faction run over their beliefs and habits like a runaway freight train! Ever heard the phrase Tyranny of the Majority? They practiced it in England before our ancestors, the Pilgrims, left to find a place where they wouldn't have someone else's religion shoved down their throat! DOES THAT RING A BELL?

You whined about people not critisizing Saudi Arabia or Iran when the topic was clearly relgion in the United States. It was an ad hominen attack on your part to distract from the issue being discussed.

Hoenig blubbers: "You tried to change the topic, and then accused me of... changing the topic."

No, I tried to expand the topic to illustrate a fundamental inconsistency that in my view proves hypocrisy by some of the writers on this thread.

You can't face up to that, so you adopt a formalistic "it's not in the debate" position that is wooden, artificial, and ultimately unimpressive.

If someone is comfortable calling American Christians 'hypocrites' and claims that they don't follow the actual tenets of their faith, and yet cannot or will not say the same thing about, e.g., Iran, then that person is applying different standards to different people.

Usually, this is the realm of bigots.

It even works in both directions: either you hold Christians to higher standards and are unfair to them, or you hold Muslims to lower standards and exhibit bigotry thru thinking them beneath the higher standards applied to Christians.

Antiluminous - "many folks who attack Christians are doing it because they have a problem with God or the bible, not the people that believe in Christianity."

you have it completely backwards, dear. Most of us have no problem with Christianity as a philosophy, its God, or its Holy Book. Its people though, not so nice. Some of the meanest, most vicious, small-minded, hard-hearted, sanctimonious folks I've ever met professed to be Christians and went to church every Sunday and Wendesday.

K.M., only the desperately naive would declare war on Christianity. That is my point. We are talking about a situation where there are up to 100 million heavily-armed Christians in the United States. Many of them are veterans of previous wars. Starting a war on Christianity would be like hopping into a bathtub full of gasoline and then striking a match. No competent individual would ever do it.

What I see is a secular media that doesn't want Americans to be judgmental about the behavior of other Americans using the bible. Some Americans want to publicly embrace behaviors that offend Christians, even make industries out of those behaviors.

You have to give the Christians credit here because they have not organized to confront that yet. They have accepted it, even though they disagree with it.

However, media is now trying to criminalize Christianity as media seeks conflict resolution with fundamentalist Islam. To me, that is a very grave mistake. The reason I say that is because you don't want the secular state forcing Christianty into an alliance with Islam. If that were to happen, the secular state would cease to exist.

So I am thinking that if the parties are sincere and really want conflict resolution, chopping down Christmas trees and torching mangers probably should stop in the interests of all those who want peace between men.

You tried to change the topic, and then accused me of... changing the topic.

I don't think you're that smart.

"America is most adamantly NOT a Christian nation. It is a SECULAR nation with a predominantly [C]hristian populace."

Exactly. I don't see why affirming this simple point, which Petunia states so clearly, has to involve dragging a religion thru the mud with all sorts of name calling. The hostility reveals so much about the other writers in this thread, and so little about anything else.

BTW, I don't think consistency, in and of itself, is a virtue.

As Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Just look at where Bush's foolish consistencies in Iraq have landed us.

Vincent Stamford has a point. I don't think the barbaric Nazi experience proves anything about any religion, whether it's Christianity or atheism.

Hoenig, you are dense. A debate need not be limited to the four corners of the article.

Again, and again, you avoid answering the question. "It's off topic" is so very lame. It reveals a lot: you won't answer the question because you'll either have to lie, or admit that you are inconsistent.

In other words, anti-Christian.

Fess up. I'm not paranoid. I'm just smarter than you.

Dr. Prothero, what planet are you on? Or more specifically, what ivory tower? Americans are absolutely prejudiced against Muslims right now. Don't believe me? Just try living as one in most of the US and see how welcome you are. You proclaim Christianity, Judaism and Islam as the three religions that are the "legitimate expressions of public faith", yet don't refute that position as being bigoted and in conflict with our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Please promote religious liberty with more affirmation, or you are just part of the problem. It's the American thing to do.

Mike G.

I thought christians lived by the ten commandments, one being thou shall not kill. Bush is supposed to be a born again christian isnt he? This man is a mass murderer and has taken your country on a killing spree. So the answer to your question is NO

The one true faith in the USA is Materialism, always has been, always will be. It's what gave us our great victory over the original inhabitants of this land, so that we may be blessed with plenty. God helps those who help themselves you know. We separated from England over money. Our Civil War was as much about two competing economic models as it was about a moral obligation to the enslaved.

What do you spend more time doing - Watching TV or Praying? We are most definitively in Mammon's corner.

Frankly, as an American of British ancestry, I wish we had never stopped being Druids, it's my cultural heritage.

from James Remsberg's "Six Historic Americans" - quote

"When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. *He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution*. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, *and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it*.... There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. *Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity*.... Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian."

'Nuff said. America is most adamantly NOT a Christian nation. It is a SECULAR nation with a predominantly christian populace.

There are many multi God type religions growing and getting stronger these days. Pagan religions are actually doing quite well. Odd thing is they are always left out of the American mix.

They are a strong part of the mix of religions and the VA just last month finally allowed a Pagan/Wiccan Soldier to be buried witha marker with the symbol of his faith on it in Arlington.

The exclusion you speak of will never go away unless we understand we are a multifaith country, multicolored and multicultured. Your neat little files of faiths and people are no longer going to do the job.

What is there about Americans that the melting pot will not let everything melt into a good strong country?

Hey Barry, every single Islamic fundamentalist terrorist that the United States has captured globally has refused to acknowledge our laws and want trials by Sharia Law. Every single one.

Sure Christain scholars recognize that Islam views Jesus Christ as a prophet. Islam had to do that in order to survive when it first appeared. Muhammed was smart enough while he was chilling out in Medina to recognize that to ignore the existence of Christ would cause his floundering religion to be attacked and routed. We are not talking about the 6th Century. We are talking about the 20th and 21st centuries.

Islam claims that the Prophet Muhammed was the last prophet. That means Islam is claiming hegemony overall other religions on Earth and its position is irreconcilable because it is theocratic. Sharia Law is the only law Islam follows because to follow western law is to follow Christian Law.

You talk about reasoning and things like that. I don't see much reasoning from the media as it tries to figure out what fundamentalist Islam is all about. I think that media is just as desperate as government to figure it out.

The fact is, it is easy to figure out. Islamic fundamentalism is a new form of totalitarianism. Media won't admit that, even if some folks that work in media understand it. They are too busy chopping Christmas trees down instead lol.

There goes your paranoia screaming loud and clear again.
The article start off like this:

"The United States may be secular by law, but it is Christian by choice, and for much of American history Christians have lorded over American culture."

It is you that is choosing to be inconsistent and to change the topic.

If you don't think the current push to 'Christianize' the United States and re-write this country's history has gone too far, check out "Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights", by Tina Kelley, in the New York Times online edition.

Many in the community of Kearny, New Jersey are backing a teacher's right to proselytize about his Christian beliefs in a high school class. In the article, even a spokesman for the conservative Rutherford Institute agrees the teacher stepped across the line and went too far.

So much for claims from evangelical Christians that they're being unfairly discriminated against. Often (usually?) the exact opposite is the case...

What gave Christianity a bad name in 1930's Germany were the Christians who watched Hitler come to power and did nothing about it.

Vinny...
Jewish people believe that god is beyond human comprehension and for humans to say they know what god is or who god is blasphemy.

Walter Hoenig writes: "This article was not about Iran or Saudi Arabia. It was about the United States. That you would lash out on this against legitimate arguments about the undo influence some self-proclaimed religious leaders have over public policy only goes to show your own paranoia."

No, it doesn't. It shows that you cannot address my argument on the merits. Instead, you have attempted to change the subject to my mental state. Let's try again: Do those of you who consistently belittle the notion (which I don't even agree with, see my post above) that the United States follows a Christian path or Christian leaders in is policymaking by calling self-proclaimed Christians in leadership roles "hypocrites" apply the same standards to other analogous situations (e.g., Iran).

Get this into your little brain, Hoenig: consistency matters. Can you understand that? And if so, can you demonstrate it?

If not, again, you are a hypocrite. Get used to the term.

You begin your article with a factual blunder:

"This began to change during World War II, when Nazis and Fascists in Europe gave Christians a bad name."

To the extent that the Nazis had any religion it was a pre-Christian mystisism. They killed over twenty-five thousand Catholic priests in Poland. Is the rest of your work of this poor?

To Antiluminous: The term "War on Christianity" was made up by the media to appeal to people like you, who see open dialogue that questions Christianity as threatening.

The moment any "Christians" become "militarized" because someone questions a manger in a town hall or because a public school is told to stop allowing morning prayers, the "war on Christianity" will be valid.

Just reading through these responses it's striking just how divisive religion is, and I put a lot of the blame on the current fundamentalist Christian leadership and the far right politicians.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist church in a time when Christians embraced "peace on earth, goodwill toward men" at Christmas. My fundamentalist parents taught me to respect other's religious values, and be sensitive to their feelings at Christmas. We were taught to say Happy Holidays to non-Christians.

Since then Fundies have become increasingly shrill and paranoid about how much secular society "discriminates" against them, hates them. They have become mean-spirited bullies, trying to intimidate stores that wish customers "Happy Holidays," trashing the ACLU for having the temerity to stand up for non-Christian's rights, etc. Sadly, conservative politicians and right-wing Christians have decided that by demonizing non-Christians, and those who teach tolerance for others, is a great way to energize their base and their congregations. Fortunately for them (and only them) there is no god to punish them for their wickedness. It is the rest of us who suffer.

"All of you who seem intent on saying that Christians are hypocrites, etc., I wonder if you make the same argument in other contexts."

This article was not about Iran or Saudi Arabia. It was about the United States. That you would lash out on this against legitimate arguments about the undo influence some self-proclaimed religious leaders have over public policy only goes to show your own paranoia.

There is absolutely no way that the Fascists and Nazis of the World War II era could be described as "Christians". Any priest or minister who stood up for Christian principles in Nazi Germany was eliminated. Hitler was a neo-pagan. His favorite philosopher was Nietzsche, a reviler of the Christian way of life. Mussolini bullied the Catholic Church, but was forced to make some accomodations simply because of the strength of Catholicism in Italian society. Please! A little respect for historical facts.

OpenMinded - "Nowhere in the Constitution is it suggested that all religions should be equally popular or get promoted equal play time"

That is true, however in the FIRST amendment, it states - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

Which means that no ONE religion should be considered more 'American' than any other...even SATANISM is to be held on equal footing, as it is considered a 'real' religion.

You believe what you want, I'll believe what I want. I won't go demanding Satanic demonstrations on public land, you can refrain for asking for Christian demonstartions on public land...it's easy! If only Christians would stop demanding that the US enforce it's religious beliefs...

The author writes: "The United States may be secular by law, but it is Christian by choice, and for much of American history Christians have lorded over American culture. This began to change during World War II, when Nazis and Fascists in Europe gave Christians a bad name."

How can one say that pagan Nazis give Christians a bad name? Hitler and his philosophical grandfather Nietzche hated Christianity as a religion that emphasized the weak (a humiliated, murdered savior) and lured the volk away from their butt-kicking Norse gods like Odin and Thor.

The fact of the debate is this: America is a majority-Christian nation. The little minorities that are also here (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, etc.) are just what I described them as: minorities. The word "minority" means . . . wait for it . . . that you aren't in the majority.

As for whether the country follows Christian prinicples in its public decisionmaking processes, well, I don't think so. Our institutions are pretty secular, apart from a little "God Bless America" window dressing now and then.

All of you who seem intent on saying that Christians are hypocrites, etc., I wonder if you make the same argument in other contexts. Do you claim that Iran or Saudi Arabia are "not really Muslim nations" because their leaders don't follow "the real teachings of Islam" or something like that?

If not, then _you_ are the hypocrites. I'm calling B.S. on your multi-cultural anti-Americanism. Grow up.

antiluminous:

You could be more wrong, but not by much. Take a look …

“Since God has yet to deliver another set of stone tablets with new instructions on them …”.
Well, actually, that happened when Moses received a 2nd set after the first was broken, in which the 10th and last Commandment was “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”. Yeah, we do that all the time here in the good old U.S. of A.

“Islam appeared in the 6th Century …”.
That w/b the 7th Century.

“… and why Islamic adherents only value Sharia Law and ignore western law.”
N-o-o-o, Muslims follow the laws here in the U.S.; otherwise you're claiming that there are 5.6 million Muslim-Americans law-breakers following only the Sharia. That is both false and libelous.

"Jesus Christ is a prophet of Islam. … Christians will never accept that.”
First, you don’t speak for all Christians. Roman Catholic scholars, e.g., allow that Jesus is indeed a prophet in Islamic tradition. Second, I accept it even though raised as a Methodist.

“Christians right now are taking things on the chin … having mangers ripped out of the ground over Christmas, getting harassed by government for practicing their faith, ad infinitum.”
OK, name me ONE incident where “a manger was ripped out of the ground”. And how exactly are Christians “taking it on the chin”? This shows me you bought into that silly, sad, and ultimately self-serving nonsense about “Christians being persecuted”, a stance fronted by the Religious Right’s moneygrubbers to keep the donations rolling in.

Christianity flourishes here like no other country on earth. THAT is fact, and irrefutable.

Your post is, at best, uninformed with a serious reasoning deficit. Just practice your faith and stop being paranoid over how others view it. It's between you and G-d after all. Nothing else should matter, otherwise you are profaning the sacred by pulling G-d into temporal matters (the lick against the "media", e.g.).

He's big enough to handle these matters without your help, don'cha think?

Tenets of the US faith: 1) Loveth thyself as thou wouldst have others love thee, 2) Doest unto thyne enemies ere they doeth unto you; 3) Hail to the chief, and let not the wicked liberal media leadeth one astray; 4) Curseth thy neighbor (probably an illegal) and the mote in his eye, lest thou remember the log in thyne own; 5) Have thee but one spouse (at a time); 6) Always repeateth God Bless America, since surely He is in our image; 7) Hoardeth thou a great treasure and buy that which is deluxe, that all may envy thee; 8) Remembereth that the right to life endeth at birth and that charity belongeth at home; 9) Let no craven image interfere with thy self-esteem; 10) Readeth not any Scripture that shalt shame thee, but waveth and thumpeth thy Bible in the faces of thyne opponents, for the holy doth love a bully and a hypocrite.

As a Christian clergyperson, I prefer to think of the United States not as a 'Christian nation,' but one in which the Constitution provides for freedom of conscience and religious expression for persons of all faith as well as those who profess none. President Lincoln resisted the attempts of a group to add a strong statement of this being a Christian nation to the preamble of the Constitution. We should have freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. Let people practice faith as they see fit.

Thanks for the kind replies to my question about the stone tablets of the 10 Commandments. We know they exist because there was a written record of them in the bible, for those who have asked that question.

The only reason that I am commenting here is due to the fact that I am becoming very concerned with all of the attacks upons Christianity in the United States. In that sense, O'Reilly is right.

Christians aren't forming military wings to respond to these attacks yet. Now if media attacked Muslims in the same way, Islam would burn down embassies, buildings, riot in the streets, set off bombs and shootings, and the journalist that did it would be beheaded and a jihadi video would be made of the beheading and put on the internet for all the other jihadists to download and share.

So why is it that the United States is engaged in a dangerous war with fundamentalist Islam, that folks in the US want to open up an even more dangerous war against Christianity?

To me, I don't want to see Christians militarize. We are talking about people that invented the atomic bomb, anthrax weapons, nerve agent and all the other horrors of humankind. Why would anyone in their right mind antagonize Christians while we have a war going on against fundamentalist Islam?

So the next time you all see a sculpture of Christ at an art show floating in urine, or see Christmas trees get chopped down, or mangers ripped out of the ground, please consider that folks like me that really want conflict resolution see nothing but another even more dangerous war in the making.

It has also been my experience that many folks who attack Christians are doing it because they have a problem with God or the bible, not the people that believe in Christianity. Just because folks disagree with His laws, doesn't mean that Christians should be attacked for it. If folks don't like what is in the bible, that is fine. Why should folks who do believe in the bible and bother no one be attacked for it by secularists?

See, what it all boils down to is that folks want God to tell them that their behavior or how they want to live is OK and free of sin. Human Christians can't OK it. That is God's will alone. So the war on Christianity by the media may in fact be a war on God and harmless Christians are caught in the middle.

We wiccans are amused when you talk about exclusion. There's a reason you don't know who we are or what we believe.

Like it or not, the social contract we live under is the Constitution. What the founders wrote down is what we agree to live by -- not your interpretation of what they thought when they were writing it down. Most right-wingers proclaim themselves "strict constitutionalists" but when policies start going directions they don't like, the constitution is the first thing the abandon for ideas and formulations not laid out by the founding fathers.

Don't forget the growing number of atheists or agnostics.

"C'mon people, how can anyone say that this is not a Christian nation, it is! At least it was founded as such."
This country was founded on the constitution. Where in this constitution does it see that we should follow Christian Pricinples?

To Major John Cartwright
Monticello, June 5, 1824

I was glad to find in your book a formal contradition, at length, of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to shew when, and by what means, they stole this law in upon us.
...What a conspiracy this, between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!

Let's pretend that the entire world lived worshipping a single God. Let's say that that God condmened wars and the inequal distribution of wealth and advocated humans using their brains in a truly rational scientific way to perhaps ease their suffering on earth. Then let's say that only a few leaders at the top knew that this God was entirely bogus, but His "existence" help bring peace a prosperity to the earth. No wars, no serious crime, no poverty. Would that be an acceptable world to live in?

Religion, by its very nature, is catagorical, exclusive, divisive and political. The difference between all of the world's religions is to what extent are they any of the above?

For example, religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam have developed sects and/or subgroups within their ranks who subscribe to differing points of view of their own religious dogma. The development of these subgroups has often been violent and the source of much bloodshed.

Of course, as recent events still point out, you can forget feeling the warm welcome of your congregation if you're gay.

America desperately needs to become a place where basic constitutional rights are held sacred. Forget The Bible, give me a constitution to swear on!

God Bless America is said because of the very reason this country was founded...freedom to worship whomever or whatever one chooses. This is how it still remains today. Although the needs of the minority in this country seems to take priority over the majority in everything else in this country, the majority of the faithful are Christian and so these voices are more likely to be heard over others. There is no inclusion or exclusion here that I see, but rather freedom of choice. What part of this don't people understand? Our Constitution protects the freedom of religion with no Government establishment of one religion. Nowhere in the Constitution is it suggested that all religions should be equally popular or get promoted equal play time. Do you suggest that the more popular religion should be hammered down to equal proportions with all others? This is as wrong as giving special treatment to one over another because of the color of his or her skin!!! Many atheist seek to disrupt freedom of religion by suppressing the rights of christians freedom to worship!

C'mon people, how can anyone say that this is not a Christian nation, it is! At least it was founded as such. The USA is in this paradox where we try to accomodate all religions when, by definition, the religions don't allow for the existence of any religion but their own. I'm Christian and my Holy Bible says quite clearly that there is one God and faith in His son Jesus Christ is the only means by which we get into heaven. Jews believe that their savior has not come yet. Muslims do not accept God as the Bible says. If there is one truth, which these "big 3" faiths claim, they cannot co-exist. We, in America, try to make them co-exist...it'll never happen.

It's crazy that we are at the point where you can file a lawsuit against somebody for infringing on your religious views but you have to put your hand on the Holy Bible in the courtroom.

Open your Bibles, compare it to historical facts, then open your heart and let Christ in. Your eternal destiny will thank you. : )

Merry CHRISTmas to all of you and God Bless!

Bible Man -black guy with dreadlocks- was spreading his racist message filled with hate yet again this weekend at the Shoppers grocery store in Forestville, MD. This time he attacked an older white man and his black grandson with his racist tirade. All in the name of Jesus. I suppose he's never cracked open the bible he holds up.

Surfgeorge, I'm not prepared to dismiss other people's religious beliefs as delusions, partly because they could turn around and say the same thing about my beliefs. My concern is not so much with people's beliefs as with how those beliefs influence their actions toward others. To use our President as an example, I admire Bush for turning to his God to beat substance abuse. But I fear Bush when he says that God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

God is in the mall. Your Christmas gift is your expression of your love for God and for the recipient. Your statement is ready and may be accessed at our web site. To apply for a credit increase, press 3 now.

Representatives from all religious groups down through time have tried to claim superiority...from the "chosen people," to the "crusaders," and the "jihadists". If we can overcome that tendency, maybe we still have hope to become a "Christian nation" in the true sense of that description. After all, Jesus preached the equality of all humans in the eyes of the creator, and that is an aim that will always be worth striving for.

Reading these posts is a real education in what my fellow Americans truly think. I'm reminded of something I once came across about a celebrated female, Muslim poet who lived in the Golden Age of Islam (Christianity's "Dark Ages"). She wrote, "Since no one can know anything about god, anyone who says he does is just a troublemaker." Amen.

Great comment.

Thank you Norrie Hoyt for making me realize that I am closer to Buddhism than anything else.

I guess you missed that idiot on television (i.e., "media") who actually asked Keith Ellison (a Muslem) if he could prove he wasn't working for the enemy.

Christians don't have a monopoly on harassment as much as they would like to believe.

Novus Ordo Seclorem: The New Secular Order

Those who failed the shibboleth at the brook Kidron were cut down.

Whig America has been usurped by the Roman anti-Christ and their Fifth Column Nazis...Prescott Bush, working for Rockefeller, was the money behind the author of "I Paid Hitler." Google: "Prescott Thyssen Auschwitz"

Now his son helped kill JFK to keep us in Vietnam and the Fed unconstitutionally in control of the money supply, and his homosexual draft-dodging grandson has committed 9-11 to control Afghan heroin and Iraqi oil.

If our fraudulently appointed "leader" serves the Devil and The People remain silent? But G_d is not mocked.

Gee wiz! "Can't we all get along" if without religion? Christians to the right of me and Muslims to the left, or should that be reversed? In an age when those possessing cutting-edge technology are threatened from within and by those foraging for food who find and kill with the discarded dregs of innovation, it is curious to think some have decided the solution to being enslaved by a godless technology is the return to the religious state, where fundamentalists stand on opposite sides of the river and cast disparagements at those who tattoo their opposite cheeks. Is it the fear of being controlled by our own technology that makes us rush back to the bosom of religion? It should not be difficult to imagine the dangers of returning to a sectarian state. Rational thinkers should cringe at the hypocrisy of ultra-conservatives, when they threaten constitutional brinkmanship, if they are confronted with the choice of allowing science to relieve human suffering with the advancements made from stem cell research, or to protect the religious belief of creation. Is this a case of the tale wagging the dogma? One could only wonder how much profit will have to be promised to those thwarting the diminution of suffering before their portfolios take precedence over their bibles. The latest estimates are ink is at a discount, while the price of oil is now as high as heaven.

York Van Nixon III
Washington, D.C.

I'm afraid it's going to be a long long time (never?) before most humans are capable of noting that their beliefs in "supernatural" and "spiritual" entities and events are illusions and delusions. All those believers and many of their actions scare me, and sadden me. I can only take some comfort from my distress by reading what others who have broken through the conditioning/brainwashing have said. One shining example for me is Carl Sagan: "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

What a can of worms you have opened; I guess we could add Humanists to the list also; you know like Albert Einstein, for instance.
I am a person who has no problem with religion; it isn't the religion that hates or kills; it's the people who use it and stand behind it for there own ends.
I think that faith and belief has helped a lot of people; this done through one religion or another.
So, even though I have nothing against religion, organized or not, I don't believe I need it either and choose not to use it or to preach it.

NO!

Religion is too easily turned into a tool to control or manipulate the masses, or at least sedate them enough to not really look at really what's going on by those in power. Politicians and right wing zealots of our time have banded together in the modern republican party for their mutual benefit: the extreme "religious" get to spread their hatred with real political tools, and the wealthy get to ignore the real message of Christ by embracing religious ideas that suggest making loads of many is not only not bad, but a moral imperative.

How can we be Christians when we teach and preach hate from the pulpits of our churches; we teach class and division; we judge when we ought not to judge cause thats God's job. We teach and pass down hatred, greed, and selfishness.

We hate blacks, we hate gays, we hate prostitutes, we hate foreigners legal & illegal, and we teach our children and society that it's okay; we judge everyone and we are so judgmental and teach that is it okay; then we call ourselves Christians. It is so bad, that the blacks even hate themselves and don't even realize it, and we (america) taught them that. We call ourselves Christians?

We are unsincere people with no compassion, and we call ourselves Christians. We teach division, separation, and hate and call ourselves Christians.

We lie so much, we can't even be honest with ourselves; and we call ourselves Christians?

Wake up American. Wake up Blacks. We ought to stop lying to ourselves, and face the mirror to see the horror of our own reflection. May God truly have mercy on us all in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. I hope each and everyone of find peace.

Professor Prothero, I*m really surprised that you call Buddhism a religion - it*s not. It*s a cosmology, a psychology, and an ethical system. A cosmology in that it undertakes to describe the nature of all the universes. A psychology in that it minutely details the nature of the mind and psyche, how to deal successfully with them, and how to use them on the path to enlightenment. And, of course it, has its ethics, superior to Christianity*s in that treats humans and animals as equal beings, deserving of the same benevolent treatment.

I'm also surprised that you describe Christianity as monotheistic. Seen through the eyes of a Muslim, Christianiy appears to be polytheistic because of its worship of the Trinity. Who*s to say the Muslim view isn*t the right one?

Commentator antiluminous writes that *America is a Christian Nation because God gave Moses the 10 Commandments...* Was Moses a Catholic or a Protestant? I bet the people at the foot of Sinai to whom Moses related the Commandments were Presbyterians. What say you?

The official, if unanounced religion of America is Consumerism. It's alter, fairly enough, is the vacuum tube, whose holy blue glow bathes the worshipers brows in ever increasing intervals of time. People don't hate Christians, we are tired of having the bastardized version shoved down our throats by sanctimonious hypocrites.

All one has to do is to study the evolution of man's religions, to realize they are all based on psychological need to invent some SuperDaddy who will always take care of us poor, helpless, insignificant lifeforms crawling agound a small planet circling a second-rate sun in just another of the 200 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of other suns with planets.

We comfort ourselves by telling ourselves these ridiculous stories from the past. Looked at unemotionally, it points to mental illness.

Wow, . . those are tough words to even write, let alone delving into the implications of it all.

Yes, exactly--a rear guard action, and utterly phony. As a Jew I've never felt truly included in the rhetoric of Judeo-Christian whatever, especially since it's often used to support positions that are profoundly at odds with the core of Judaism or the religion as it's practiced today. In general, Christians know as little about Jews as straights know about gay people, and they see Judaism through a very distorting lens. The term Judeo-Christian is, as I've seen it, typically used by people who have very little understanding of Judaism as a faith. The symbolic truncation of Judaism into a modifier of Christianity ("Judeo-") says it all. Just as Christianity hijacked our texts and called them "The Old Testament," issuing coountless mistranslations, and continues to tell Jews what to think of them, so the term Judeo-Christian arbitrarily yokes Jews into supporting often offensive and hateful ideas and expression. I reject the term completely.

Praise The Lord and Pass The Loot! Keep transferring America's tax burden to the poor so we can buy more incendiary weapons to fight the war on Christmas - I mean terror.

Jeb Haggard Bush
PTL Club

Where are those stone tablets? The second set I mean. I know the first set was broken.

What did they say? Is the text in Exodus 20 or Deutornomy 5 the accurate text?

There is just as much evidence that God gave tablets to Joseph Smith as Moses. Why do you say, he hasn't produced anything since the ten commandments?

If the US is a christian nation founded on the laws of the bible, why are only two of the commandments US laws?

Why do christians break one of the commandments as a matter of policy by keeping the first day of the week holy instead of the last?

The US Bill of Rights provides for freedom of religion. The ten commandments expressly do not. The biblical punishment God customarily displayed for not following the first, second and third commandments was religious genocide. When people advocate for a "Christian nation" are they suggesting such a policy.

Great points everyone.

"But by stressing such Western religious staples as monotheism, it obviously excludes religions that affirm no God (Buddhism) and those that affirm many (Hinduism)."

That is until there is a political use for proclaiming support for Buddhists and Hindi.

Until then the powers that be will continue to draw lines between the Monotheists and the rest, but only because it is easy to have the public believe that a NON-monotheist God is a MYTH. Our society has grown ignorant to the fact that the Christian God is MYTH as well.

The concept of GOD today is merely a politically exploitable inveterate of society which distracts us from using our MOST POWERFUL philosophical minds.

Kill your religion; get back to being a philosopher.
There is NO REASON to be WILLFULLY IGNORANT.
Just like TIME, God is MAN MADE.

Philosophical independence is true liberty.

Where do you find these nuts to write this trash? You dare compare our culture to the Nazi's? What a horrible little person. Must live under a bridge.

Antiluminous states - "Media would never dare do that with Islam. Why does media do that to Christianity?"

Didn't you hear? there is a 'War on Christmas'! As popularized by America's #1 culture warrior O'Reilly!

The media isn't slamming christmas, but CHRISTIANS who insist that every day from Thanksgiving to Christmas be referred to as the 'Christmas Season' and everyone needs to respect and repeat their catch-phrase 'Merry-Christmas!' Christians choose to ignore that there are 4 or 5 other significant religious holidays that occur during this month-long 'Holiday.' Christians scream when the government won't donate time, money or land to help them celebrate their religion for four weeks, while simultaneously decrying any other holiday mentioned during that time as part of the 'War on Christmas!'

As for Muslims not being harrassed, I take it you've not traveled during the last 4 years? Given my druthers, I'll take media harrassment over Governmental harrassment any day!

We Americans are a nation of Greedy-Hypocrites. Nothing matters to us Americans more than money, fashion, entertain, who is sleeping with who, whos gay, who got the most money, the most fame. We are shallow, materialistic, money-hungry, fake, judgemental, self-righteous, unappreciative, hypocrites with no compassion. Our leaders and representative are worst. We are full of hate that we try to coverup with what we call courtesy or manners. Who do we think we are? Ask other countries how they view us and feel about us, and you will see what I have said is true. Who do we think we are. We are so fake. I would not be surprized to find out that America is the root of all evil and causes most of the worlds problems.

Let me not forget to mention our partner in crime the British. We practice hate within hate, selfishness, and greed at everyone's expense. Now someone, please tell me that I am wrong. Christians my foot, don't make me laugh. We are faking religion as well as what we preach. We've taught blacks how to hate themselves, place drugs in their communities and kill each other; then we turn our heads. We go to foreign lands and countries and get to divide, conquer, and satisfy our own personal greed for Oil. Divide & conquer, our favorite stragety, it has work for hundreds of years. We've stole, rape, robbed, lied, covered-up, and done all kinds of evil and we call ourselves Christians. We are as fake and two face as the day is long. We have no sincerity or compassion in our hearts and only think about ourselves. Americans christians, get real.

Antiluminous:

The Jewish people adopted 8 of the 10 Commandments from the Babylonians. If you consider that God's "giving" to Moses, then maybe you're right.

The United States was a unique experiment NOT founded on "Christian Principles" but on the rule of law expressed by the constitution where the power of the government was given to the people.

Antiluminous - The 10 Commandments provide a solid foundation of morality for many people, to be sure. However, the USA was founded under the rule of law, above all other forms of authority like God or King. This is what makes our country's potential so great. May all Gods bless America!

You got it.

http://scorpionbowl.blogspot.com/2004/07/sacred-versus-secular_108949956869116042.html

"God gave Moses the 10 Commandments to be the foundation of law for all nations."

That is not a fact. That is only the teachings of two religions. And pointing that out does not represent hostility to either Judaism or Christianity. Government is not supposed to endorse any religious doctrine at the expense of other doctrines. Using the claim above, do we really want government to pass laws requiring people to worship Yahweh, or banning all statues and paintings?

Cut out the crap. See the stats on each group and quit the attacks. A declining minority of 1.3%-1.88% is trying to wag the dog on all their media,even as their Lobby is trying to polarize the world for Armageddon, and an inevitable backlash will ensue.
Our established religion in capitalism, where they shine. Sad, sad, sad.

Is America a christian nation, in a word, no.

It is true that we are all spiritual, but not all religious, which entails ascribing to somebody else's ideas of dogma or Absolute Truth.

But why would one assume that we were capable of even recognizing Absolute Truth?

We believe in religion because of need, not facts. If we do not outgrow it, it will kill us.

After the tree incident at Seatac airport I have been asking myself a simple question, 'is it the end of christianity in America'. The hatred for christianity is obvious and sad.

I'm surprised a professor of religion (Prothero) would perpetuate the notion that Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. At its core, Hinduism asserts that there is one Supreme entity (God), and that all the universe emanates from this entity, known in Sanskrit as Brahman.

America is a Christian nation because God gave Moses the 10 Commandments to be the foundation of law for all nations. The United States was founded under Christian law in this way. Since God has yet to deliver another set of stone tablets with new instructions on them, no human can obviously redefine His laws.

Islam appeared in the 6th Century, 600 years after the death of Christ. The Prophet Muhammed and his advisors claimed that he was the last prophet of God. That sort of makes Islam irreconcilable with other religions, and why Islamic adherents only value Sharia Law and ignore western law.

In fact, when the Pope was in Turkey recently a lot of folks in the huge crowd that protested his visit held signs that read: "Jesus Christ is a prophet of Islam."

Christians will never accept that. Jesus Christ was ressurected with many witnesses. No other interaction with God has ever occured at that level. Saying Jesus Christ is a prophet of Islam is like saying Stalin was a capitalist.

The secular left would really like to do something about religion run amok in the world, but it is unreasonable to assume that Islam, Christianity and Judaism will sit down together as one big happy family as government tries to bribe compliance with all those goodies in "faith-based" services.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism are as separate as Republicans and Democrats. Christians right now are taking things on the chin, things like seeing Jesus Christ dipped in urine for art shows, having mangers ripped out of the ground over Christmas, gettiung harrassed by government for practicing their faith, ad infinitum.

Media would never dare do that with Islam. Why does media do that to Christianity?

This entire conversation proves the point that the government should not be in the religion business.
Once one is included it is endless.

Americans should get hope and inspiration from their belief in democracy and in the Constitution. These are truly unifying: if you don't endorse these values, we have the right to shun you. These other things people are discussing are simply divisive superstitions.

"Organized" religion seems to be the cause of much bloodshed in world history. Once like-minded folks get together and establish a cause they start bashing people with a different point of view. The U.S. was established by the Enlightenment generation. They wanted to avoid such conflict and thought the Bill of Rights, first amendment, would calm the god-people. Sadly, this doesn't always work. Seperating theology, ethics and politics is heavy lifting.

American conceptions of God strike me as exclusive and provincial -- perhaps mirroring the exclusive pride that many Americans feel simply because they are American.

When our political leaders say "God bless America" I always wonder: Why should the creator of the Universe be so particular as to single out America over all other nations?

America's God is still very much a patriarchal and tribal god -- and that distresses me.

America is no longer a Christian nation. Indeed, most "chistian" leaders are not Christian. The leaders of Evangelical and Fundimentalist churches have chosen to side with the princes of this age, rather than with Christ. They seek political power, rather than understanding of Christ and Christ's message. So we witness men like George Bush and Dick Cheney, pretending to be Christians, but belittling Christians as nut cases behind their backs and doing all manner of evil while befuddled and misled Christian men and women are used up like so much toilet paper.

What a relief to feel the loosening grip of righteous Christian leaders...Doh! Only to be replaced by the hands of this multitude of leaders waiting for their chance to pontificate on the state of our American soul. I applaud the inclusion of other faiths in the litany of those worthy of inclusion in political blather. I think their good works should also be recognized. Those of us who happily choose to live our lives free of religion will be asking for an equal voice and equal freedoms. So, please be gentle with us...as we've been so patient for so long.

The exclusion of Buddhists and Hindus isn't the only exclusion there is. Atheists are regularly demonized and hated upon by virtually every member of the cloth in some way or another. How can you claim that there is freedom of religion when one is cast out and impugned when they have no belief in ANY deities?

America is NOT Christian by choice, but by the might of numbers overwhelming and crushing minorities under it's heel! Not that that's a first for ANY religion.

America does follow 'Christian Values,' but not because they are Christian, but rather because they are generally decent and respectful of all people involved. The Judeo-Christian ethic boils down essentially to the following of The Golden Rule. 'Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.' A rule which begs for fairness and justice on all sides. A rule which we could all learn from, including Christians.

I believe you are ignoring a large and growing number who call themselves spiritual but not religious. We believe in the one God that the others believe in but do not believe in the dogma that the various religions support. It is the dogma derived from individual interpretations of their religious books that causes the tension between the various religious groups as well as religion vs the secular part of USA's society. Todays headlines are filled with examples of dogma conflict within the religion itself - Christian as well as Islamic.

How about atheists or agnostics? They have their own "faith" about god or religions. America should be big enough to embrace them also.

All religions the politicians and the wealthy they serve can co-opt to suit their power-hungry and insatiable materialistic needs will be the ones that survive. That's where the real danger lies: not that religion will take over politics, but that politics will take over religion.

If one observes or follows hinduism or buddhism deeply they would notice that it does not fall under the tree called religion. it is much wider in scope. hinduism has many parallel streams in it. india was arguably exposed to the word religion after the advent of christianity and islam. before that they regarded these streams as mere philosophies which have been many and many have merged or dished out during the passage of time.

it requires a totally different and fresh mind for a westerner to take a look at indian spirituality. when seen with a western religious prism lot of things may not be visible.

uuykukukuiuiukukuk

Congratulations to us all.

Thanks for putting Buddhists and other non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths on the table. The discussion that I have seen on this site thus far has basically centered around the idea that "religion" equals "worship of one God," and a search for a commonality among religions founded on that basis. I would rather see the discussion expanded to not only include other faiths, but also expanded to embrace a wider range of discussion on the viability and worth of religion, particularly as to whether or not they "make sense" and as to what effects, good and bad, religoius faith may have.

Thank you for including Buddhists and Hindus among the list of Americans. This is the first public posting I can remember that gives Buddhist and Hindu Americans the feeling of being included.

It may also be noteworthy to mention that the values and morals between all the faiths that you mention are overwhelmingly similar, rather than dissimilar. Thus it is not entirely clear what the notion of Christian America actually includes or is trying to exclude. Perhaps it is ultimately a racial or ethnic ambition. It is certainly a divisive approach.