John Adam's quote

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

Our found "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] 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 Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788

so, while my .sig was slightly out of context, i was not using it incorrectly. i appended the .sig during a rather foolish discussion on another group & did not mean to bring here, as i don't wish to offend those here. lee

Reply to
enigma
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I rather favour the maxim

'Faith is a gift of your God. Religion is the gift of the Devil.'

Somehow it puts all such arguments into perspective.......

Reply to
The Wanderer

The Wanderer wrote in news:1ayfogpdhxgso.1dpja024wcojr$. snipped-for-privacy@40tude.net:

ah, i like that! thank you :) lee

Reply to
enigma

A great strength of our country is that we have freedom to believe or not believe in whatever religion or faith. We are unlike all those countries currently involved in strife, with Taliban, Islam, Orthodox Jewry, Roman Catholicism, Communism, or other "official" leadership which allows for no deviation from the government-imposed belief system. The founders of the country were aware of the wide differences in the population, and the history of government imposition of belief systems that had ravaged Europe, and did not want it duplicated in our new country.

Personal belief is just that: personal. Not a matter for government intervention on any level.

Reply to
Pogonip

And nor was it a distortion. Adams was an intelligent, well read and thinking man who lived in the Age of the Enlightenment. Chuck Norris is none of those things but is obviously into revisionist history.

Reply to
FarmI

"FarmI" wrote in news:46f75f3d$0$4584$ snipped-for-privacy@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net. au:

there is a lot of revisionist history in the US. i suppose it's a world wide problem as well, but being here & having been through the public schools myself, i can see there are very interesting differences in the history taught now & what i learned 40+ years ago. ah well, at least they can't muck up math very much... ;) lee

Reply to
enigma

You don't have to apologize to anyone for your sig line. That any US citizen could purport that US government represents any one religion exclusively seems to reflect poorly on either the integrity of the gene pool or the failure of the public schools. Or maybe it's too much fluoride in the water ;) You've rebutted that nonsense well, thank you. Our ancestors did not die fighting for religious freedom only to be dishonored by some 21st century flibbertigibbet revisionists.

Reply to
Phaedrine

I realize that some people take it out of context, but I think a lot of modernists have being trying hard to warp "freedom of religion" into "freedom FROM religion."

These days, instead of people being respectful of other people's religious practices that they don't agree with, they tend to be angered and offended by them, and I honestly think that divides people more than it unites them.

Reply to
Melinda Meahan - take out TRAS

Yes and no. ;-) We have freedom of religion and freedom from our government imposing any religion. We are free to believe or disbelieve according to our own lights. I do not believe in gods, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, guardian angels (unless they wear a red beret), djinns, demons, angels, cherubim, or any other supernatural entity. However, you have the right to believe anything you wish, and I have no right whatsoever to insist that you agree with me, nor vice versa, and the government must stay out of the entire matter.

We are free. I may not agree, but I will defend your right to your own freedom of religion.

Reply to
Pogonip

And right now we also have the government insisting in a number of cases that any evidence of religion be hidden. That is not exactly freedom of religion.

There are also city zoning boards that discriminate against religious groups for building permits, even on land that they already own. In the San Fran Bay Area, one Christian school run by a big church has tried to apply for years to upgrade their facilities and the city will not give them permission. And when our church wanted to build on a piece of land that was basically not buildable, the city drug us out for NINE YEARS with any kind of crazy excuse they could come up with from "Once you do AAA, then we will give you your permit. Oh, now you did AAA? Good. Now once you do BBB, then we will give you your permit," about between

6-12 times. Then they claimed that they had lost our paperwork, and despite that fact that we had done every last thing they asked and done it all properly and legally and had copies of all the paperwork, they declared that it didn't matter -- they didn't have the paperwork, and we would have to start all over again from scratch (including redoing everything to reflect new building codes). They basically frustrated/strangled the building program out of existence and lost the chance to have a nice building on a gateway to the city on a very unbuildable lot rather than just a vacant lot than was owned by a utility who was not going to do anything to develop it.
Reply to
Melinda Meahan - take out TRAS

That sounds complicated. If the land was "unbuildable" why would a permit be issued in the first place? We have enough buildings built where there should be no buildings: in flood zones, on slopes that can't maintain the weight, on tidal flats, on old landfills. But if the problem was simply difficulty in designing a building for a peculiarly shaped lot, then what you describe is ridiculous. Once the safety concerns and the zoning concerns are met, there should be no further impediment to building on privately owned property.

There have been some problems here with over-sized crosses, and spires brightly lit 24-hours a day. There is a church near me, the International Community of Christ established by explorer Gene Savoy who just died, that used to play their bells constantly. That got to be very annoying. I like bells as well as the next person, but not hour after hour after hour!!! Before they got their buildings, they gathered in the park across from me to greet the rising sun, which is their symbol of God. They were no problem at all, even in the pubic park. Of course, not many people use the park at that hour. ;-)

I will object to religious symbols on publicly owned buildings. It isn't feasible to represent all belief systems, so don't include any! We recently had a big to-do because the VA didn't have a particular symbol for soldiers killed in Iraq, and this man's memorial went with a bare spot for over a year, while all the others in the same installation had appropriate symbols. It caused a lot of bad feelings, unnecessarily.

If the government will butt out of religious matters, I won't sign any treaties with other countries. How's that? ;-)

Reply to
Pogonip

It was a lot that had power lines going overhead and a very narrow area available for building that we could fit a church on that would eventually seat 150 -- big enough for us -- and we could put the ample parking that our city requires for any building underneath the power lines.

What they asked for was absolutely ridiculous. We shelled out $300K for improvements they asked for before they would even talk about giving us a permit to build.

*chuckle*
Reply to
Melinda Meahan - take out TRAS

:-)) I'd noticed. We have both seen a lot of it in that other ng we read.

i suppose

Yeah, but I think you still have a bit of an edge on us ;-))

but being here & having

Yes, it's quite appalling and gets right up my left nostril so I must be getting old. It seems to be a continuous dumbing down to the lowest common denominator where intellectual rigour has become intellectual rigor mortis.

:-)) Wait and watch.

Reply to
FarmI

That is a challenge. I gather that the wires in question are those big ones that carry major power, and may or may not set up an electrical field. It does sound like you need a creative architect. Underground parking? Tell the city you're orthodox Jews and can't drive on the Sabbath? ;-) Nah, I guess that wouldn't fly....

Good luck with getting your building. I've had some interesting times with the city here -- getting a second driveway on the property, which to meet code would have to be 5' from the property line and 28' from the existing driveway, which would leave us 2' to build the driveway. I explained to them that this would require a whole new set of driving skills if we had to turn the driveway on its side. After a few months, we got our permit.

Reply to
Pogonip

As an atheist (or agnostic to put the very best complexion on it) I certainly have sympathy with those who would like to choose "freedom from religion", although I'd be quite happy if my society could truly just have a respect and understanding of what it means to have real "freedom of religion".

Religious people these days too frequently try to push religion and make it ubiquitous and the more fundamentalist they are in their outlook the more they seem to cling to a belief that there is some God given duty to impose it on others. I don't push my atheism at them. I don't go out doorknocking them and nor do I corner them and preach atheism at them. It irritates me that they seem to believe that they have a right and perhaps even a duty to make choices for me and to freely push their creed at me.

I find that offensive. Even one of my Roman Catholic friends has recently started to try to convert me and that is beginning to get right up my nose. I could cope with the odder cults, but a good Mick turning into a zealot fundie!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Freedom of worship or not is anyone's right in a free society. I consider those who try to hunt me with a religious missionary zeal to be making an attack on my rights. I just want them to respect my privacy and my choice to have a religion or to have none. I keep hoping for a return to a more thinking and respectful world but I can't see it happening anytime soon given our tilt to a more fundamentalist stance right across the globe.

Yep. It angers and offends me that fundies and religious nutters don't respect my life choices. I'd love to keep the religious zealots from beating a path to my door or cornering me at social functions but they just don't seem to truly believe or understand the meaning of the term "freedom of religion".

Reply to
FarmI

As I said in another thread, I favour the maxim

'Faith is a gift of your God, Religion is the gift of the Devil'.

Reply to
The Wanderer

Warping modernists aside ;), how exactly do you define "freedom from religion"? If it means that public places in general should be totally absent of any religious symbols, images, discussions, etc, then I agree with you completely that is ridiculous. However, I have to admit that I've never, ever heard a single person promote such an argument (though I'm sure there must be at least one).

If, OTOH, you refer to those, in keeping with the US Constitution, who would keep religion and its attendant paraphernalia out of publicly

*funded* places, materials and activities, then I'd have to disagree with you most strenuously. Keeping religion out of government and publicly funded activities is precisely the intent of the Establishment clause. Our *tax* money should not be spent on clearly significant religious endeavors such as monuments, buildings, displays, religious instruction, prayer rooms dedicated to a particular religion, etc.

I have observed that those who seem to advocate most loudly for religious paraphernalia in public places generally mean those of their own religion. It's really a simple distinction but so often deliberately conflated by those with a dominionist agenda. Spending other people's hard-earned money to advance the objectives of one's own particular religion is not "free exercise". It is a clear abuse of democracy.

Sensible people are not usually angered or offended by religious activities that don't affect them personally. Leastways, I have not observed that (though religious extremism does seem to be on the rise). I'd liken it to the pre-9-11 Moonies-at-the-airports who were not content to simply hand out flyers or talk to those who expressed an interest. Instead, you'd be slogging up some ramp with a couple bags, late for your plane, and these morons would literally step right in front of you and attempt to stop you. Or they'd get right in your face. That is not "free exercise"; it's obnoxious. Even more obnoxious and dangerous are the so-called churches, that have federal tax exemptions, which spend mega-bucks on political activities. They can have one or the other but not legally both. If your church wants to engage in politics, fine. But don't expect the rest of us to take on a higher tax burden so you can do that. That is also not "free exercise".

Reply to
Phaedrine

Perhaps you can cite the particular cases you're talking about--- both with regard to this and the alleged zoning discrimination you discuss below. Since I know of no case that fits your "any evidence of religion" description above and since I am reasonably acquainted with the relevant case law, I think you're either misunderstanding or ill-informed. There is simply no such legal standard or test ("any evidence of religion") involving Establishment cases.

Reply to
Phaedrine

There you go :) Sounds like a good idea to me.

Reply to
Phaedrine

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