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Originally posted by Kucinich
I was hoping you'd be mature. Look at it this way - there's a LOT of them, and not many of us. Moreover, given our beliefs, we should at least be tempted to look down on those who continue in their misguided faith in some Supreme Being - and that requires that we actually act with superior maturity. Why not just... let alone. It's easier. The pledge isn't really hurting us in any material way. While we certainly have the right to complain, it's somewhat foolish to try and exercise it in this instance, given the size of the effort involved and the lack thereof of the potential reward.
I was hoping you'd be mature. Look at it this way - there's a LOT of them, and not many of us. Moreover, given our beliefs, we should at least be tempted to look down on those who continue in their misguided faith in some Supreme Being - and that requires that we actually act with superior maturity. Why not just... let alone. It's easier. The pledge isn't really hurting us in any material way. While we certainly have the right to complain, it's somewhat foolish to try and exercise it in this instance, given the size of the effort involved and the lack thereof of the potential reward.
When you can perhaps point out what is immature with defending one's freedom of conscience in the face of a concerted effort to impose or maintain a dogma or faith that one does not subscribe to, then your misguided use of mature/immature might have a very small degree of merit.
By your way of thinking, the Quakers should never have founded Pennsylvania, should never have persisted in their faith, should have joined the army and killed for America.
Ben Kenobi should disavow his particular brand of Christianity and do likewise.
You have a very innacurate understanding of what constitutes my belief- unlike many of those with religious beliefs posting in this thread, I hold that my atheism (which is only after all one strand of my beliefs and values) is not superior to their belief in a supernatural deity.
They may derive comfort from a belief in a supernatural deity, they may believe that their faith better explains the world to them, all I can hope to do is say that for me that is not the case, and I do not wish to have their beliefs imposed upon me, nor mine on them.
I do however hold that my belief is entitled to equal consideration under the law, and that if for instance, an instrument of government such as the Constution of the United States explicitly sets out that there is to be no favouritism or state promotion of any religion or any one religion, then no matter how many howls of outrage erupt from those with belief in a deity, the law remains the law- whether they believe in Kali, Amon Ra, or Christian Science.
Of course in some parts of the United States people are already attempting to legislate or mandate what is and what is not, a 'true' religion:
'Texas Inquisition: Unitarians Fail Comptroller's Test
Unitarian Universalists have participated in American religious life for over 200 years. The denomination has produced U.S. presidents and many prominent religious, social and literary figures. But now they no longer officially count as a religion for tax purposes in the state of Texas. State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn decided that the Red River UU Church fails to compel its membership to have "a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power" and thus is not a religion, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Strayhorn also denied tax-exempt status to the North Texas Church of Freethought.
This bout of denials follows the 1997 decision of then-Comptroller John Sharp to deny tax-exempt status to the Ethical Culture Fellowship of Austin. Asserting that Sharp overstepped his authority, the Ethical Culture Fellowship sued, along with allied groups including Baptists, Lutherans and Mennonites. Both the lower court and the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Sharp, but Strayhorn vows to continue the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Without her there to make the rules, "any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption," she said in an April 23 news release.
The comptroller's top lawyer, Jesse Ancira, justifies this stand on principle. "The issue as a whole is, do you want to open up a system where there can be abuse or fraud, or where any group can proclaim itself to be a religious organization and take advantage of the exception?" he said. It is suprising that an organization as old and as well-established as the Unitarian Universalists would be called fraudulent. Never before has any government agency -- state or federal -- denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group's theology.
While this recent spate of decisions has only applied to a single UU church, a Freethought group and a Humanist group, others have cause for concern. There are 40 UU congregations in Texas, and the comptroller's definition of religion also threatens to disqualify Buddhist groups because they also do not mandate belief in a supreme being.
Sam Felder '
When the religionistas fall out....
"Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed governmental proclamations for days of prayer and fasting. As president, Jefferson flatly refused to issue them. Madison issued such proclamations under pressure from Congress during the War of 1812 but later said he wished he hadn’t. Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, also refused to issue religious proclamations.
Here is what Jefferson, Madison and Jackson had to say on the subject:
Thomas Jefferson:
On Jan. 23, 1808, Jefferson replied to a minister named Samuel Miller who had asked him to issue a religious proclamation. Denying the request, Jefferson wrote,
“I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.…. I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it….[E]very one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the US. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”
James Madison:
In an undated essay historians believe was written between 1817 and 1832, Madison listed five reasons why presidents should not issue prayer proclamations.
“The members of a Govt as such can in no sense, be regarded as possessing an advisory trust from their Constituents in their religious capacities,”
Madison wrote.
“They cannot form an ecclesiastical Assembly, Convocation, Council or Synod, and as such issue decrees or injunctions addressed to the faith or the Consciences of the people.” Madison also criticizes prayer proclamations because they
“imply certainly the erroneous idea of a national religion.”
Andrew Jackson:
Jackson considered religious proclamations a violation of the First Amendment. Asked to approve a proclamation setting aside an official day of fasting and prayer in response to a cholera epidemic, he refused and in 1832 wrote,
“I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”
When an objection cannot be made formidable,
there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument, and good order.
Thomas Paine
Now who is it who has been describing whom as 'iceholes' 'cockroaches' and 'weinerheads'?
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