Loading ...Moggie
I have to agree on children having at least some basic teaching in religion. If for anything false profits. However religion has harmed people through time as it has been its own politics in past times that can suppress human rights and freedoms of choice and start wars.
I’m actuality the framers slight to separate religion from government for those reasons.
It appears under the idea absolute power corrupts.
To teach children to respect the basic rights of others separate from their personal beliefs and what our constitution demands. Of all who choose to live here. To not just take what they say on blind faith but to question things. That if they try to suppress that it is a red flag.
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, religion, in philosophy, as a cause from withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry…”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Statute Of Virginia For Religious Freedom
“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
( They can use religion as a tool against those rebelling against wars, taxes, suppression, against others that did us no harm, injustice or inhumanity to those with differences in opinion or have something they want.)
“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.
The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.
{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}”
Taking things in literal form blindly ignoring logic.
Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion… shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth’s motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ.
…Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you… In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it… I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost…
[Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
One of the smartest man I never met.
Buygold,
Your comment on how we would feel if Russians started patrolling the borders of Mexico concerning Ukraine.
We are not annexing Mexico which I’ve been told they want their warm water ports.
In fact we should be sending troops there instead it is Mexico that is annexing us and they are using the weakness of the current government. Medicos president has the audacity to address out president complaint about how their handling his citizens crossing here illegally. Instead of putting him in his place and telling him we will handle anyone who crosses our borders illegally as we see fit although more humanely that he does our citizens in their jails. That in fact he is in encouraging this behavior and that the United States IS NOT the other Mexico.
That if he handled his economy better they would not be wanting to leave in the masses they are and risking their lives to do it. That he needs to handle his own affairs and failing economy before judging ours and he has no power or authority here, That if he needs any help with his economy in doing so let us know.
But what do we have but a wimp worse than there’s instead takes the path of least resistance and caves giving them amnesty and doing it illegally or just contempt for the American people.( Mexico just looking at his own elections looking good to his people and fan boss around ours.)
But then he wants to come in as a tough guy and annex borders of Ukraine while he can’t even secure the U.S. borders while putting these same citizens in harms way protecting those of another. And they wonder why he’s is seen as a push over to other powers.