Pastor Dennis Terry and Santorum

[SexMachine]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
ANd also SM said only Jefferson and maybe Franklin were non-Christians, which is untrue.
[/quote]

No, I said they were the only deists of which I am aware.[/quote]

Ok.

Since you didn’t know that, you could look into reading Thomas Paine’s book Age of Reason. I haven’t read it myself just know of it.

"The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason[/quote]

Oh I missed this. Yes Tom Paine. The English radical and Socialist. I’ll give you the background. When Edmund Burke published his treatise in opposition to the French Revolution(Reflections on the French Revolution.) Tom Paine published a reply to Burke(Rights of Man) in which he called for worldwide revolution and socialism - yes, it’s all there: the government is an instrument to bring about radical social and political “change”, “free” education, graduated income tax etc

Paine emigrated to America on the eve of the revolution, made a name for himself with a rousing pamphlet(Commonsense) calling for a “fight to the finish” and then gained office in the first Congress for a short time before returning to England. He then fled to France to escape prosecution and became a member of the French Convention. He then lost favour with his patrons in France and fled to America to avoid the guillotine where he was despised for his anti-Christian diatribe. It is recorded that Paine was once “denied a place on the American stage-coach” for his published views. He died virtually an outcast. Well there you have it raj.

[Makavali]

.

[pat]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
ANd also SM said only Jefferson and maybe Franklin were non-Christians, which is untrue.
[/quote]

No, I said they were the only deists of which I am aware.[/quote]

There were other deists or those having deistic characteristics. You can be both Christian and deist. Technically, the deist posits that you can know of God’s existence by his creation and that you don’t need religion to know that God exists. I whole heartily agree. But you can also hold this position and be a religious person. Interestingly, the two above were probably more strictly deist than others and were also the worst behaved.
Neither Jefferson nor Franklin were angles by any stretch. Franklin was a well known adulterer and Jefferson, was probably the only staunch emancipationist who absolutely refused to give up his slaves even in death. He was a conflicted character.

[pat]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]ZEB wrote:

Majority and history of majority.[/quote]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh so that’s how it works.

Well you’re a predominately white nation.

Wait a second you’re also 51% female.

So how about a white female christian nation? Does that sound good to you madam?

[quote]ZEB wrote:

Most were Christian…what are you looking for? Oh never mind I know you’d like to rewrite history in to your inane secular leftist view point.

Oh darn–YOU CAN’T DO IT.

[/quote]

My contention is that the US is not a Christian nation, instead a secular nation full of Christians.
[/quote]

I agree it’s not a ‘Christian nation’ in terms of being a theocracy and nor would I want it to be. Bad things happen when you mix church and state. A secular society where religious freedom is absolutely and fiercely protected is the only way to go. Religious freedom IS the foundation of this country. It’s why people came here in the first place.

[pat]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

Absolutely. The majority of the founders were against slavery - even many who were slave owners. The constitution is an anti-slavery document. The three-fifths compromise was about represenative power in the U.S. HoR. The unalienable rights of all men of all faiths and creeds are proclamed in the declaration and the constitution.[/quote]

If they owned slaves, they clearly weren’t all that against slavery.[/quote]

No, that’s not clear at all. I suggest you actually read about the period in question. I know you’re smarter than all the founding fathers and you’ve got a better constitution/bill of rights you figured out yourself and all that. But you really need to actually know something about a subject before you can develop an opinion worth expressing.[/quote]

One thing is clear: They didn’t work tireless to end slavery.

[/quote]

Well, there was a problem. There were many cries to end slavery right from the get-go, but basically it came to a choice, fight to end slavery or fight to split from England.
In order to get all the colony’s to sign on to fight, you had to leave slavery alone. Otherwise the southern colony would have never gone along with it. Without the south, you have no revolution. It was the ol’ rock and the hard place.
The keystone was Virginia, it was the richest most powerful state and a slave state.

[pat]

[quote]therajraj wrote:
So say Sloth a pro-lifer at your church gets his gf pregnant. He decides to get an abortion because he doesn’t feel he’s ready to raise a child.

Would you categorize him as a pro-lifer based on the fact that he says he is, or would you classify him as pro-choice based on his actions?[/quote]

He would be a lying pro-abortionist piece of shit and a hypocrite.
Nobody is ever ‘ready to raise a child’. Such a person doesn’t exist. A person who feels they are ready is living in a fantasy.

The person who ‘feels ready’ is just lying to themselves. They don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

[pat]

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
I am not sure where you got this graph from, but I highly doubt it was Gallup.[/quote]

From the link to gallup I provided.

First, there is no way that gallup would present their data this way. Why would they lump the “legal in a few cases” in with “illegal in all cases?” If I had to guess, I would say that that graph was produced by a third party in order do deceive others into thinking that anti-abortionists are “winning.”

Heh, the graph IS from gallup.

Americans Still Split Along "Pro-Choice," "Pro-Life" Lines

Third graph down…

In fact, I went to Gallup’s website and that graph does not match up with their data at all. In fact, gallup seems to only have three categories: Legal in all circumstances, illegal in all circumstances, and legal in some cases. They do not have a distinction between “a few” and “most.” Here is a link to the website with their actual data from 1975 to the present. It shows that the “illegal in all cases” currently is about 20%, which is almost exactly what it was in 1975. There has been a slight increase in the percentage of supporters in the past few years (from a local minimum of 15% in 2006), but not outside of the margin of error for this poll, so there is no possible way to honestly say that anti-abortion is on the rise.

If it was up to the public, according to gallup, abortion would only legal in a few circumstances.

[quote]Here is where I got my data from:

Abortion

Now add up the illegal under all, and legal in only in a few, and you have the gallup graph I produced.
[/quote]

I didn’t see a link provided, so I apologize. Actually, that data is also on the link I provided, just not in graph form. I wonder why they need two different pages on the topic? It is still a very misleading graph. In order to make the claim that anti-abortionists are “winning,” the percentage of people who think it should be illegal in all cases needs to be going up, which it isn’t (not outside the margins of error anyway). This data really just shows that the majority of the population is still in favor of at least limited abortion rights. None of the categories have percentages that have changed significantly outside of the margin of error, except i the early 90’s.[/quote]

I think that abortions under no, or only under a FEW, circumstances is miles away from the current ‘right’ to elective abortion nearly on demand. That is, a far cry from the post conception contraception that it is now.
[/quote]

You can’t even get a tooth pulled on demand.

[therajraj]

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I’m still waiting for you to address this: If they were truly against slavery WHY did they own slaves themselves? Most of them did.[/quote]

For the economics of it.
[/quote]

Really? You’re defending why they PERSONALLY had slaves on the basis of it being economical?

Oh by the way I sleep with prostitutes because it’s cheaper than dating. Oh by the way I’m against prostitution.[/quote]

You asked why they had slaves…

Your zealotry is showing, again.
[/quote]

A little mistranslation here.

If they were truly against slavery, they would not have owned slaves personally in favor of personal economic gain.
[/quote]

Humanity is quite capable of not living up to it’s own ideals, living in tension with them, as they continue to practice…a practice.
[/quote]

I agree.

But We’re talking about a horrible atrocity, not something basic or trivial. [/quote]

I’m sorry, but didn’t you say that rights are dependent on the whim of a society? That society didn’t give slaves rights, so no atrocity could’ve been committed. It wasn’t until society changed it’s mind that slavery was an atrocity. And, it will only remain an atrocity today so long as it decides it should be.
[/quote]

???

Just because that specific society does not give certain people the right to freedom doesn’t make it any less an atrocity.

[/quote]

You’re falling off your earlier statement. You said slaves don’t have inalienable rights. So if they don’t have rights, no atrocity.
[/quote]

No.

Rights and Freedoms are granted by society but that doesn’t change whether something is moral or not.
[/quote]

So good and evil are timeless, and independent of human society…[/quote]

No. What’s moral can change - morality is derived from evidence and empathy by the application of reason.

We can look back and see that slavery is immoral based on the evidence and our ability to empathize.

[therajraj]

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

I never said the government is “founded on the Christian religion.” I said it’s founded on the concepts of God-given unalienable rights and natural law.
[/quote]

So did the black slave in the box also have god given inalienable rights?
[/quote]

What does that change?[/quote]

I’m just curious how that works. If all men have unalienable rights as written in the constitution, how does that work for the slave? [/quote]

They’re not rightfully recognized…[/quote]

I missed this.

Oh so we’re playing a semantics game.

Ok well society gives you rights to do everything, just some of them aren’t recognized…

[therajraj]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

Er…it already was a Christian nation. [/quote]

What are you basing this on?

[therajraj]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

In the context in which I used it, “literally all” means almost all. It’s a figure of speech.
[/quote]

And that’s what I’m trying to get at. The founding fathers weren’t all of one mind on this issue.

[therajraj]

[quote]Sloth wrote:
And if we recognize timeless and independent moral actions and thoughts in our interactions and relationships with others, we’re recognizing value inherent to them as others. Inalienable rights.[/quote]

Let me ask you something, what is preventing you from losing your rights right now? Is god going to step in prevent them from being taken away? What if the US fundamentally changes, what are you expecting from this transcendent being of yours??

I haven’t seen any of record of it to this point of god stepping in.

So what are you really clinging to when you are talking about god handing down inalienable rights? Rights are only effective as their willingness to be enforced and granted.

If something is recognized you don’t have it. The slave in the box does not have those rights until they are granted or he fights back for those rights.

[Sloth]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

No. What’s moral can change - morality is derived from evidence and empathy by the application of reason.

We can look back and see that slavery is immoral based on the evidence and our ability to empathize.
[/quote]

So what’s moral can change. So they did nothing immoral, since it wasn’t ‘immoral’ at the time. And will only stay immoral so long as we let it.

[therajraj]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
ANd also SM said only Jefferson and maybe Franklin were non-Christians, which is untrue.
[/quote]

No, I said they were the only deists of which I am aware.[/quote]

Ok.

Since you didn’t know that, you could look into reading Thomas Paine’s book Age of Reason. I haven’t read it myself just know of it.

"The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason[/quote]

Oh I missed this. Yes Tom Paine. The English radical and Socialist. I’ll give you the background. When Edmund Burke published his treatise in opposition to the French Revolution(Reflections on the French Revolution.) Tom Paine published a reply to Burke(Rights of Man) in which he called for worldwide revolution and socialism - yes, it’s all there: the government is an instrument to bring about radical social and political “change”, “free” education, graduated income tax etc

Paine emigrated to America on the eve of the revolution, made a name for himself with a rousing pamphlet(Commonsense) calling for a “fight to the finish” and then gained office in the first Congress for a short time before returning to England. He then fled to France to escape prosecution and became a member of the French Convention. He then lost favour with his patrons in France and fled to America to avoid the guillotine where he was despised for his anti-Christian diatribe. It is recorded that Paine was once “denied a place on the American stage-coach” for his published views. He died virtually an outcast. Well there you have it raj.[/quote]

So what?

My point is that the founding fathers weren’t all of one mind on this issue of a Christian nation.

the US is a nation full of Christians, this wouldn’t surprise me.

[orion]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
And if we recognize timeless and independent moral actions and thoughts in our interactions and relationships with others, we’re recognizing value inherent to them as others. Inalienable rights.[/quote]

Let me ask you something, what is preventing you from losing your rights right now? Is god going to step in prevent them from being taken away? What if the US fundamentally changes, what are you expecting from this transcendent being of yours??

I haven’t seen any of record of it to this point of god stepping in.

So what are you really clinging to when you are talking about god handing down inalienable rights? Rights are only effective as their willingness to be enforced and granted.

If something is recognized you don’t have it. The slave in the box does not have those rights until they are granted or he fights back for those rights.[/quote]

But how much more will he be willing to take up arms if he knows in his heart that the Lord wants him to be free?

And how much more effective will he be if the people he fights know that to be true too?

[therajraj]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]ZEB wrote:

Majority and history of majority.[/quote]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh so that’s how it works.

Well you’re a predominately white nation.

Wait a second you’re also 51% female.

So how about a white female christian nation? Does that sound good to you madam?

[quote]ZEB wrote:

Most were Christian…what are you looking for? Oh never mind I know you’d like to rewrite history in to your inane secular leftist view point.

Oh darn–YOU CAN’T DO IT.

[/quote]

My contention is that the US is not a Christian nation, instead a secular nation full of Christians.
[/quote]

I agree it’s not a ‘Christian nation’ in terms of being a theocracy and nor would I want it to be. Bad things happen when you mix church and state. A secular society where religious freedom is absolutely and fiercely protected is the only way to go. Religious freedom IS the foundation of this country. It’s why people came here in the first place.[/quote]

Good post.

Honestly, why would you even want the US to be a Christian nation?

I mean what if they don’t base their values on your personal brand of Christianity? What if they base it on Mormonism? Would you really want that?

Or what if the ban graven images since it’s still part of the 10 commandments in other sects ? Would you as a Catholic be happy about that?

[Sloth]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

Let me ask you something, what is preventing you from losing your rights right now? Is god going to step in prevent them from being taken away? What if the US fundamentally changes, what are you expecting from this transcendent being of yours??

I haven’t seen any of record of it to this point of god stepping in.[/quote]

I can’t lose my rights. Trespassers against them, if not punished in this life, will be punished in the next. My rights don’t depend on my ability to exercise them in the face of oppression and/or social whim.

So what are you really clinging to when you are talking about god handing down inalienable rights? Rights are only effective as their willingness to be enforced and granted.

So those didn’t have any rights. No tragedy happened.

If something is recognized you don’t have it. The slave in the box does not have those rights until they are granted or he fights back for those rights.

And so long as they aren’t granted, and he can’t, there is nothing immoral about keeping him the box.

[therajraj]

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

No. What’s moral can change - morality is derived from evidence and empathy by the application of reason.

We can look back and see that slavery is immoral based on the evidence and our ability to empathize.
[/quote]

So what’s moral can change. So they did nothing immoral, since it wasn’t ‘immoral’ at the time. And will only stay immoral so long as we let it.

[/quote]

No Sloth.

They simply didn’t realize it was immoral since they did not have the knowledge we have now. As well, the Bible advocates slavery and many of the founding fathers were Christian.

Based on the evidence, we can see that slavery is immoral.

[therajraj]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
So say Sloth a pro-lifer at your church gets his gf pregnant. He decides to get an abortion because he doesn’t feel he’s ready to raise a child.

Would you categorize him as a pro-lifer based on the fact that he says he is, or would you classify him as pro-choice based on his actions?[/quote]

He would be a lying pro-abortionist piece of shit and a hypocrite.
Nobody is ever ‘ready to raise a child’. Such a person doesn’t exist. A person who feels they are ready is living in a fantasy.

The person who ‘feels ready’ is just lying to themselves. They don’t know what the hell they are talking about. [/quote]

I agree with what you wrote here and it gets back to my point.

If you consider the self-professed pro-lifer that gets an abortion really pro-abortion, isn’t the self-professed abolitionist who owns slaves not actually against slavery?

[Sloth]

[quote]therajraj wrote:

They simply didn’t realize it was immoral since they did not have the knowledge we have now. As well, the Bible advocates slavery and many of the founding fathers were Christian.

Based on the evidence, we can see that slavery is immoral. [/quote]

I’m sorry, now you’re turning it into a timeless moral truth.