Agree or Disagree?

[hortysir]

As is usuallly the case in such shallow questions, we really don't know what we are agreeing or disagreeing with.

What does it mean to be "founded upon" ?

Does it mean that the FF intended that the principles and tenents of the "Christian Religion" be incorporated into and enforced in the Constitution ?

Or does it mean that the Christian religion was considered, front and center, as the Constitution was written ?

What I am very sure of is that:

The founders had a great desire not to see a national religion forced upon the American people and thus made sure that it was quite clear that the federal government was to make no laws regarding the establishment of religion. That was the federal government. Jefferson, in his oft-quoted letter (which many mistakenly believe is the langugue of the Constition) describes a wall of separation. Clearly, the FF did not want any religion to have the power to enforce moral codes or policy preferences through elected officials and enforce them through the legal system.

At the same time, it is quite clear that most of the founders had a strong faith in God and in man and believed that cooperative living would only be had by people living their conciences.

As I read the "intellectual" in-breds who squawk about how the Founders were not Christians...I have to laugh. It is quite clear they were. And the very things they cherrished in their religion, tolerance, acceptance, forgivness, patience, etc. etc. are written in to a document they felt would allow the athiest and Christian alike to co-existe....from any compulsion by the government to belong to or support something they did not believe.

That did not stop the states from behaving differently. And, in fact, several states did engage in some form of support for either a particular religion or the Christian religion in general. This was never challenged (to the best of my knowledge) but disappeared on it's own.

Recent challenges by local entities to do things like display the ten commandments have been struck down under the perversion we call "incorporation", a doctrine the SCOTUS pulleld out of it's ass via the ambiguously written 14th amendment.

Back to my point.

The United States of America does was not created to enforce, nor was it contemplated it would ever enforce a state sponsored a religion. In that sense, the U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation.

BTW: It should be noted that John Adams comments are meaningless on this point. It is a delcaration. It does not bind the U.S. to anything. We can be as Christian as we chose to be.

At that same time, it is also clear that the U.S. was founded upon personal principles that are center to the teaching of Christ. To the exent that the two are linked, the U.S. could very easinly be considered to be founded upon the Christian Religion.

I voted for "other" simply because the question is not clear enough as to what it is asking.

I'm sorry.....What were you saying??

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Constantine is the actual founder of America. Without him, there would be no America. But it gets pretty complicated. And most aren't interested in learning. So it's time to bail on this thread. See ya.

Carry on Freebird.

Did someone say freebird? This happen to be the song I walked down the isle to for my high school graduation back in 1980

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_Q9m4VKY8&feature=fvst]FREE BIRD live,,LYRICS,LYNYRD SKYNYRD/TODD ELLIOT..WIZARDOFBAUM, , RONNIE VAN ZANT.MOV - YouTube[/ame]

 

[BDBoop]

Constantine is the actual founder of America. Without him, there would be no America. But it gets pretty complicated. And most aren't interested in learning. So it's time to bail on this thread. See ya.

Carry on Freebird.

Did someone say freebird? This happen to be the song I walked down the isle to for my high school graduation back in 1980

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_Q9m4VKY8&feature=fvst]FREE BIRD live,,LYRICS,LYNYRD SKYNYRD/TODD ELLIOT..WIZARDOFBAUM, , RONNIE VAN ZANT.MOV - YouTube[/ame]

Dude, you are OLD!! Like my age, old.

Ignore that bit. You graduated in 1980? You were a freshman when I graduated. Baby.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Carry on Freebird.

Did someone say freebird? This happen to be the song I walked down the isle to for my high school graduation back in 1980

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_Q9m4VKY8&feature=fvst]FREE BIRD live,,LYRICS,LYNYRD SKYNYRD/TODD ELLIOT..WIZARDOFBAUM, , RONNIE VAN ZANT.MOV - YouTube[/ame]

Dude, you are OLD!! Like my age, old.

Ignore that bit. You graduated in 1980? You were a freshman when I graduated. Baby.

Old lady

 

[BDBoop]

Did someone say freebird? This happen to be the song I walked down the isle to for my high school graduation back in 1980

FREE BIRD live,,LYRICS,LYNYRD SKYNYRD/TODD ELLIOT..WIZARDOFBAUM, , RONNIE VAN ZANT.MOV - YouTube

Dude, you are OLD!! Like my age, old.

Ignore that bit. You graduated in 1980? You were a freshman when I graduated. Baby.

Old lady

Don't make me beatcha with my cane, ya piker!!

 

[bigrebnc1775]

I have this urge to turn the lights out extend a lighter in the air and CRANK THE MUSIC UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[BDBoop]

I have this urge to turn the lights out extend a lighter in the air and CRANK THE MUSIC UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do it!!! Do it for me, who is trapped at work, with no music!!!

 

[bigrebnc1775]

I have this urge to turn the lights out extend a lighter in the air and CRANK THE MUSIC UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do it!!! Do it for me, who is trapped at work, with no music!!!

I know have this rush and the uncontrollable urge for munchies

 

[bigrebnc1775]

IS CHEETOS SPELLED WITH TWO EE?

 

[BDBoop]

IS CHEETOS SPELLED WITH TWO EE?

Dude, you don't know how lucky you are that I am not on a call right now. What with me being hysterical n'all.

Yes. Two e's.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

IS CHEETOS SPELLED WITH TWO EE?

Dude, you don't know how lucky you are that I am not on a call right now. What with me being hysterical n'all.

Yes. Two e's.

Look at all the pretty colors.

Cheetos do you have some?

 

[BDBoop]

IS CHEETOS SPELLED WITH TWO EE?

Dude, you don't know how lucky you are that I am not on a call right now. What with me being hysterical n'all.

Yes. Two e's.

Look at all the pretty colors.

Cheetos do you have some?

I do! Just put a bowl under your speaker, and I'll pour them in mine.

 

[uscitizen]

Then the pronouncement as written in the Declaration, and then later codified in the Constitution means squat...

Keep digging BD Barf.

So you kinow more than ione of the founding fathers knew about our early government?
I mock your supposed intellect.


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7wc55oXWf8]Crazy monks - YouTube[/ame]

 

[percysunshine]

Oops....context alert!

 

[uscitizen]

Which cons text?

 

[percysunshine]

Most of the ones in prison.

 

[Peach]

Benjamin Franklin:
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Poor Richard's Almanack,

Thomas Paine:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

James Madison:

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." -letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774

John Adams :

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!"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson:

"And 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. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." -- Jefferson's letter to John Adams, April 11 1823

Not many Christians among the Founders, Jay was an exception. Most were Deists.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

The first settlers escaped Religious persecution...

They're rolling over in thier graves now as it's happening again in the land they came to to escape it.

~Go figure

And they didn't want to make that mistake twice.

All are welcome here. No religion gets to determine how we live. And that means our laws are not based on the bible.

Actually, our Laws are based on the Bible. I know you hate to hear that, but it is the truth.

Ignorant nonsense.

The American legal system remains firmly within the common law tradition brought to the North American colonies from England. Yet traces of the civil law tradition and its importance in the hemisphere maybe found within state legal traditions across the United States. Most prominent is the example of Louisiana, where state law is based on civil law as a result of Louisiana’s history as a French and Spanish territory prior to its purchase from France in 1803. Many of the southwestern states reflect traces of civil law influence in their state constitutions and codes from their early legal heritage as territories of colonial Spain and Mexico. California, for instance, has a state civil code organized into sections that echo traditional Roman civil law categories pertaining to persons, things, and actions; yet the law contained within California’s code is mostly common law.

And while Blackstone prevails as the principal source for pre-American precedent in the law, it is interesting to note that there is still room for the influence of Roman civil law in American legal tradition. The founding fathers and their contemporaries educated in the law knew not only the work of English jurists such as Blackstone, but also the work of the great civil law jurists and theorists. Thomas Jefferson, for example, owned several editions of Justinian’s Institutes, and praised the first American translated edition from 1812, with its notes and annotations on the parallels with English law, for its usefulness to American lawyers. Indeed, a famous example of its use is the 1805 case of Pierson v. Post, in which a New York judge, deciding on a case that involved a property dispute between two hunters over a fox, cited a Roman law principle on the nature and possession of wild animals from the Institutes as the precedent for his decision. Today Pierson v. Post is often one of the first property law cases taught to American law students. United States v. Robbins, a 1925 California case that went to the Supreme Court and paved the way for the state’s modern community property laws, was based upon a concept of community property that California inherited not from English common law but from legal customs of Visigothic Spain that dated to the fifth century CE. Cases such as these illuminate the rich history that unites and divides the civil and common law traditions and are a fascinating reminder of the ancient origins of modern law.

The Common Law and Civil Law Traditions

Yes, we've gone backwards in this Country. We're now living under the same conditions our Founders escaped in England. A massive all-powerful Government stepping on the throats of the People. King George would be so proud of what we've become.

Telling the hypocrisy of the right: they bemoan the ‘massive all-powerful Government stepping on the throats of the People,’ yet invite the tyranny of a theocracy.

 

[Artevelde]

All the Founders were christians and maybe a jew or Two.

religion was an important part of life for damn near everyone back then.

So yeah, the Constitution is based heavily on faith, tempered by the needs of society and freedom.

As Paul said earlier, you may need to do some reading. I wouldn't suggest history books, they were damn near sainted in there. Do some real reading.

If you read some real history books you will find that virtually all of the founders were indeed Christians of one sort or another and did see a major place for religion in public life. That doesn't mean that they intended the US to be founded on religion or as a theocracy. They - quite sensibly - wanted the state to leave religion free from government interference and they didn't want the state to impose a religion on the citizens. But to somehow suggest that they weren't religious or didn't see a big role for religion in public (as opposed to political) life is simply factually inaccurate.

 

[BDBoop]

Benjamin Franklin:
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Poor Richard's Almanack,

Thomas Paine:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

James Madison:

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." -letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774

John Adams :

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!"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson:

"And 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. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." -- Jefferson's letter to John Adams, April 11 1823

Not many Christians among the Founders, Jay was an exception. Most were Deists.

The actual words of the founders carry more weight with me than any history book would or could.