
Posted: 5/20/2002 5:21:04 AM EST
First off, if you do not beleive the following....
1. That the Constitution is the controlling rule of law applying to Federal gov't and where allowed by the BofR to state and local gov'ts, and
2. That the Constitution is NOT a living breathing document, that it has a concrete, definitive meaning that we must seek out,
then don't even bother replying to this post. [}:D]
OK, now that we've weeded out the wackoes....
...more questions.
1. Do you beleive that there is A "god" (which one is unimportant)
2. Do you beleive that THAT "god" was active in helping the Founding Fathers craft an amazingly resilient document, perhaps the GREATEST human document of all time (i.e. the Constitution)?
and lastly....
3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution???
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Originally Posted By garandman:
First off, if you do not beleive the following....
1. That the Constitution is the controlling rule of law applying to Federal gov't and where allowed by the BofR to state and local gov'ts, and View Quote 2. That the Constitution is NOT a living breathing document, that it has a concrete, definitive meaning that we must seek out, View Quote 1. Do you beleive that there is A "god" (which one is unimportant) View Quote 2. Do you beleive that THAT "god" was active in helping the Founding Fathers craft an amazingly resilient document, perhaps the GREATEST human document of all time (i.e. the Constitution)? View Quote 3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution??? View Quote |
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Absoulutly yes to all three questions above. #3 is historical fact, and #2 was believed by many of the founders at the time.......
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1) Yes
2) Creator
3) When the mood strikes them
While in no way do I consider myself a constitutional scholar, I make no bones about my various positions from my readings. There is a repeated reference to "Creator". I believe they use Creator in lieu of God for a specific purpose.
[b]That said PLEASE note the following. The First ammendment is constantly regarded as "Freedom of Religion", I disagree with that interpertation. It is a Freedom from governmental establishment of a religion, IE: The Church of England.
One must understand the condition of religion in England at that time to give a little background to the Founders position of same.[/b]
Signed,
3/5ths of a person according to Article I Section 3, US Constitution. (Later repealed by the 14th ammendment, 1868 almost almost 100 years later, less than 100 years before my birth)
Edited to comply with liberty86 demand for highlight!
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Do Toyota R&D guys in Nagakute Japan buy your products?
All the government has to offer is what they take from you. NEVER underestimate the power of stupid. كافر |
1. YES
2. YES
3. YES
Shok
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Originally Posted By CavVet:
That said PLEASE note the following. The First ammendment is constantly regarded as "Freedom of Religion", I disagree with that interpertation. It is a Freedom from governmental [b]establishment[/b] of a religion, IE: The Church of England.
One must understand the condition of religion in England at that time to give a little background to the Founders position of same.
View Quote |
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I teach HS Government. You should come sit in my class for the first month! I go over the philosophy of our system in detail. The vast majority of the Founders were Christian, and those that weren't still had a Christian view of man and gov't. They recognized that man was inherently sinful, thus the need for gov't, yet he was also created in God's image and therefore had certain God-given unalienable rights. Gov't's job is to protect man's God-given rights from man's sin.
I require my students to memorize and quote in class EVERY DAY the following section from the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these Truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
This section explains most clearly the philosophy of the founders in their view of God, man, and government, including Thomas Jefferson, the author of the above phrase whom many claim to be un-Christian. The reason our system has worked is because its foundations are based on reality: a correct view of God, man, and the world. A system of government based on any other philosophical foundation is based on error, and therefore will ultimately fail, as will our current system if we as the American people replace our Biblical worldview with another, erroneous one.
To quote John Adams: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion (understood to be Christianity). Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious (Christian) people, it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other."
For more resources on this topic go to [url]www.wallbuilders.com[/url]
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Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
General education should not be mere training of the hands to work, but training of the mind to properly reason. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classed.php |
Originally Posted By garandman:
1. Do you beleive that there is A "god" (which one is unimportant)
View Quote
2. Do you beleive that THAT "god" was active in helping the Founding Fathers craft an amazingly resilient document, perhaps the GREATEST human document of all time (i.e. the Constitution)?
View Quote
3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution???
View Quote |
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The first part of your life, you worry about what people think about you;
The middle part of your life, you don't care what people think about you; The last part of your life, you realize they weren't even thinking about you at all. |
Originally Posted By RikWriter:
Originally Posted By garandman:
3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution???
View Quote View Quote |
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Originally Posted By liberty86:
The "Rational, reasoning critical thinking" of the late 18th century is what produced the French revolution, not the American revolution.... View Quote |
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1. Yes. His name is Bill.
2. No. He was on vacation in Bermuda.
3. Yes. The parts that suited their purposes.
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Originally Posted By the_reject:
Originally Posted By liberty86:
The "Rational, reasoning critical thinking" of the late 18th century is what produced the French revolution, not the American revolution.... View Quote View Quote |
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I believe in God.
I do not believe that God guided or inspired the founders to develop the government they created and write the Constitution they wrote.
One of the precepts of the Christian faith is that God created mankind and gifted it with free will. We are free to choose our own course, to obey or rebel as we see fit.
God granted us the wisdom and soul necessary to glimpse His designs and some glimmer of His nature and thus have some understanding of His desires for us and love of us. He also gave us teachers and prophets who's vision was especially clear. He gave us Christ who showed us a clear, if difficult Way. But never, at any of those times and through any of those persons did God dominate our free will or choose for us. We retained our free will to follow or diverge from God's will.
How arrogant to believe that God picked out Colonial America especially to create a utopian government by divine will or mandate. And how theologically short sighted.
No, what we got was a group of people with the moral, ethical and philosophical chops to craft a government based on sound principles both of faith and government.
There is AMPLE historical evidence that does, in fact, demonstrate that Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Mason, etc. were guided by European thought. This period in France was probably the last time in history that France could actually lay claim to some real exceptional political thinking, but as always they lacked the wherewithal to put it into effective action and lost all to despots with imperial notions.
The American Republic was founded on prnciples of government developed in Europe and evolved to suit the particular needs and character of America where vast open spaces and available resources, plus the distance from Europe to here, created a need for and a value in self-reliance and self-determination. Those characteristics above all else, is what defined the early American character. The remoteness of the colonies from Europe forced the colonials to take care of themselves and enabled even poor people to own land and be their own masters. Inevitably it became intolerable for these people who learned to do for themselves, to be politically dominated by a distant, uninterested government.
As far as the development of the Constitution, it was often a contentious process. While there was general agreement on principles, the details were often contentious. Hardly the characteristics of a divinely inspired document. I also doubt that a divinely inspired document pertaining to a government founded in liberty would tolerate legalized slavery.
Now if you asked if the founders found inspiration and guidance for their work in their faith in a Creator, I would say yes, absolutely. But, God did not actively Inspire them or Guide them. He allowed them to choose their own course after giving them the tools they needed to make good choices.
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Originally Posted By garandman:
1. That the Constitution is the controlling rule of law applying to Federal gov't and where allowed by the BofR to state and local gov'ts, and
View Quote
2. That the Constitution is NOT a living breathing document, that it has a concrete, definitive meaning that we must seek out,
View Quote
1. Do you beleive that there is A "god" (which one is unimportant)
View Quote
2. Do you beleive that THAT "god" was active in helping the Founding Fathers craft an amazingly resilient document, perhaps the GREATEST human document of all time (i.e. the Constitution)?
View Quote
3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution???
View Quote |
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Please consider the paper industry before not printing this message.
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Yes to all three.
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Originally Posted By garandman:
First off, if you do not beleive the following....
2. That the Constitution is NOT a living breathing document, that it has a concrete, definitive meaning that we must seek out,
View Quote |
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Originally Posted By liberty86:
The "Rational, reasoning critical thinking" of the late 18th century is what produced the French revolution, not the American revolution.... View Quote |
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The first part of your life, you worry about what people think about you;
The middle part of your life, you don't care what people think about you; The last part of your life, you realize they weren't even thinking about you at all. |
Originally Posted By RikWriter:
You're wrong, of course, and as usual. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were both very much devotees of the rational, reasoning critical thinking of the late 18th Century. View Quote |
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The Christian faith did indeed influence the constitution in general terms--for example, the belief in the equality of man, and the concept of faith and government being distinguishable. (Render unto Cesear and all that.)
The main founders were often Deists, people who thought God made the world then stepped out for a beer, taking no active role in human affairs after that. Jefferson fit into this mold. Madison was religious as a youth but after college fell increasingly away from it, and could probably be said to fall into the same camp. Adams was cranky and wrote a few near-blashphemous things in private correspondence.
The constitution was created at a near-perfect time and in a near-perfect place. The founders were heavily steeped in English common law, but were also radical Whigs (in terms of English politics) and had a good amount of French philosophe influence. When the French had their revolution a few years later they went radically off the rails and disaster resulted. Without the conservative influence of English common law they had far more ambitious aims, and thought they could remake man by changing his environment. Human nature proved less malleable than they thought.
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Again, it wasn't a matter of one particular philosophy that made the constitution a success. It was a synthesis of several strains. In fact, the dynamic involved was what made it work.
To wildly simplify: consider Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton. They represent more or less the range of opinion, from "left" to "right". Jefferson was a fine propagandist, but also heavily French influenced. America was fantastically lucky that he was out of the country when the constitution was written, because he would have tried to insert a number of hare-brained schemes, such as his idea that constitions and contracts had to be completely re-written every 25 years. But we might not have gotten to the constitional convention if he hadn't been around in the years prior to that, writting some stirring things in the Declaration of Independence.
Madison was less flashy than Jefferson but a far more canny student of human nature and government. He's the guy you'd want actually writing the constitution, which is pretty much what happened. He created a remarkable synthesis of 18th century rationalism, English common law and constitutionalism, and some new ideas such as Federalism or divided sovereignty and the expanded interests described in Federalist #10.
Hamilton was in contrast a rather narrow technocrat, and something of a closet Monarchist. You wouldn't want him writing any constituions, but his skill as a technocrat was undeniable.
The dynamic tension between these three, rather than the "victory" of any one of their philosophies, was what made the constitution a success.
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I believe if you look at the Constitution as it was meant, not as we perceive it today, then you will realize it was a great piece for the time, but archaic for today.
None of our founding fathers believed "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL", the believed all WHITE men were created equal.
None of our founding fathers thought anything of women's rights either.
I think the Constitution has been revised about as many times as it can, it is a dated document from an archaic time in human history and we need something new and current.
As for the questions:
1. No, I do not believe there is a god.
2,3. Yes, I believe their religious beliefs influenced the document.
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Originally Posted By schv:
I think the Constitution has been revised about as many times as it can, it is a dated document from an archaic time in human history and we need something new and current.
View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
I believe if you look at the Constitution as it was meant, not as we perceive it today, then you will realize it was a great piece for the time, but archaic for today. View Quote None of our founding fathers believed "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL", the believed all WHITE men were created equal. View Quote None of our founding fathers thought anything of women's rights either. View Quote I think the Constitution has been revised about as many times as it can, it is a dated document from an archaic time in human history and we need something new and current. View Quote As for the questions:
1. No, I do not believe there is a god. View Quote 2,3. Yes, I believe their religious beliefs influenced the document. View Quote |
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go redmanfms!!!!!
I chalk posts like that up to regurgitation of what severly left of center profs at most major universities have fed their students, and posters who regurgitate it to be recent college graduates.
A few years in the "real world" will hopefully straighten our interloper out.
[:D]
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Garandman, redmanfms,
I fully expected my post to be flamed.
I expected it because, you are still living in a world were men are superior to women, and races should be separated. You I'm sure are the King of your castle, where your wife and kids do EXACTLY what you say or they GET WHAT THEY DESERVE.
You blame everyone but you for your problems, the government, the democrats, your wife, etc.
You are a God Fearin' good old boy, that attends church every Sunday, and happily tithes your money to a cult, because if you don't, your god may not let you in heaven.
I am very happy for you, I hear ignorance is bliss.
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Originally Posted By garandman:
go redmanfms!!!!!
I chalk posts like that up to regurgitation of what severly left of center profs at most major universities have fed their students, and posters who regurgitate it to be recent college graduates.
A few years in the "real world" will hopefully straighten our interloper out.
[:D]
View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
Garandman, redmanfms,
I fully expected my post to be flamed. View Quote I expected it because, you are still living in a world were men are superior to women, and races should be separated. You I'm sure are the King of your castle, where your wife and kids do EXACTLY what you say or they GET WHAT THEY DESERVE. View Quote You blame everyone but you for your problems, the government, the democrats, your wife, etc. View Quote You are a God Fearin' good old boy, that attends church every Sunday, and happily tithes your money to a cult, because if you don't, your god may not let you in heaven. View Quote I am very happy for you, I hear ignorance is bliss. View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
Garandman, redmanfms,
I fully expected my post to be flamed.
I expected it because, you are still living in a world were men are superior to women, and races should be separated. You I'm sure are the King of your castle, where your wife and kids do EXACTLY what you say or they GET WHAT THEY DESERVE.
You blame everyone but you for your problems, the government, the democrats, your wife, etc.
You are a God Fearin' good old boy, that attends church every Sunday, and happily tithes your money to a cult, because if you don't, your god may not let you in heaven.
I am very happy for you, I hear ignorance is bliss.
View Quote |
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Please consider the paper industry before not printing this message.
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Originally Posted By garandman:
First off, if you do not beleive the following....
1. That the Constitution is the controlling rule of law applying to Federal gov't and where allowed by the BofR to state and local gov'ts, and
2. That the Constitution is NOT a living breathing document, that it has a concrete, definitive meaning that we must seek out,
then don't even bother replying to this post. [}:D]
OK, now that we've weeded out the wackoes....
...more questions.
1. Do you beleive that there is A "god" (which one is unimportant)
2. Do you beleive that THAT "god" was active in helping the Founding Fathers craft an amazingly resilient document, perhaps the GREATEST human document of all time (i.e. the Constitution)?
and lastly....
3. Do you belive the Constitution indicates a Scriptural influence, or that the Bible was utilized by the Founding Fathers to help craft the Constitution???
View Quote |
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Originally posted by redmanfms:
We need to follow the immoral path of the secular humanists who believe that any filthy disgusting act (like homosexuality and chiild molestation) that a modicum of people enjoy is a right. Right? View Quote View Quote |
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Originally posted by redmanfms:
A good friend of mine is a lip-stick lesbian who has worked and lived on her own since she was 17, yet she is still an uber-leftist; . View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
Originally posted by redmanfms:
A good friend of mine is a lip-stick lesbian who has worked and lived on her own since she was 17, yet she is still an uber-leftist; . View Quote View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
Garandman, redmanfms,
... you are still living in a world were men are superior to women, View Quote and races should be separated. View Quote You I'm sure are the King of your castle, where your wife and kids do EXACTLY what you say or they GET WHAT THEY DESERVE. View Quote You blame everyone but you for your problems, the government, the democrats, your wife, etc. View Quote You are a God Fearin' good old boy, that attends church every Sunday, and happily tithes your money to a cult, because if you don't, your god may not let you in heaven. View Quote I am very happy for you, I hear ignorance is bliss.
View Quote |
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schv -
You STILL haven't answered my question-
[b]"What's out there that is better than CONTUS?"[/b]
I want your SPECIFIC answer, as it will tell us MUCH about you."
If you have no specific answer, it'll tell us that yer little better than the Democrats who have LOTS to say to tear down and destroy, but little to say to build up and improve.
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Originally Posted By garandman:
schv -
You STILL haven't answered my question-
[b]"What's out there that is better than CONTUS?"[/b]
I want your SPECIFIC answer, as it will tell us MUCH about you."
If you have no specific answer, it'll tell us that yer little better than the Democrats who have LOTS to say to tear down and destroy, but little to say to build up and improve.
View Quote |
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Originally Posted By AlClenin:
Originally Posted By schv:
Originally posted by redmanfms:
A good friend of mine is a lip-stick lesbian who has worked and lived on her own since she was 17, yet she is still an uber-leftist; . View Quote View Quote View Quote We need to follow the immoral path of the secular humanists who believe that any filthy disgusting act (like homosexuality and chiild molestation) that a modicum of people enjoy is a right. Right? View Quote |
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Originally Posted By schv:
I'm impressed, you didn't let my TROLLING piss you off!!! BRAVO. View Quote However, I would like to see a new document created that would withstand another 200 years or more. View Quote The current document is too vague. Hence our current state of affairs. We need a document that is set in stone on certain points,
such as the 2nd Amendment. View Quote A document that gives the power back to Congress instead of the Federal Reserve System. View Quote A document that does not refer to Man, but instead refers to HUMANKIND. View Quote A document that does not refer to ANY religion or GOD, other than the freedoms to practice said religion. View Quote I would like to see a document that was unamendable on certain points.(Your basic freedoms). View Quote I don't claim to have all of the answers. I do know however, that our current Constitution is not adequate for the future. View Quote |
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Do Toyota R&D guys in Nagakute Japan buy your products?
All the government has to offer is what they take from you. NEVER underestimate the power of stupid. كافر |
1. yes
2. yes
1. yes
2. yes
3. yes
schv,
you know what is so wonderful about my faith in GOD? It is that HE loves you, and HE died for you, and you don't have to do one thing to receive eternal life, except receiving the free gift of salvation.
As to your belief that those dead white guys didn't write a document to last the ages, well that is your perogative, but I am proud to admit that I couldn't have done as well, and certainly not better.
dave
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Patriots are ordinary men who rise up to do extraordinary things in troubled times.
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1. Not any more.
2. No, since IMHO he/she/it doesn't exist, although belief that such a figure exists guided many of their decisions.
3. Yes.
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1. I am beginning to strongly believe that there is a supreme being and he must have it in for me. There is no other explanation as to why all of the bad shit that keeps happening to me.
2. I believe that the Founders understanding of human nature (power corrupts, etc.) played a very big role.
3. Possibly but IIRC several of the Founders were agnostics.
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I've forgotten what the question was, but I figure this is my only chance to post a reply before that Moderator/Nazi "raf" locks this thread too. [:P]
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