The U.S. Constitution is not divinely inspired, even incompatible with Christianity (1 Viewer)

[SystemShock]

Who has not seen the picture of the Founding Fathers surrounding Jesus, who's holding a freshly written U.S. Constitution? Because, you know, the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on Christian values. But not only would you be hard pressed to find any "value" in the U.S. Constitution not found outside Christianity (you can't), the U.S. Constitution, much like science, is incompatible with Christianity.

And you don't have to go any further than the 1st Amendment and the 1st and 2nd Commandments.

Most people will point out that the 1st Amendment gives us freedom of religion, which is usually interpreted (at least for what I see in my personal experience) as being able to practice Christianity without persecution (as if). That is true. However, if you read the 1st Amendment carefully, you will notice that the very first freedom it gives you is freedom from religion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,...

Further, the second sentence, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, gives us freedom to exercise any religion, not just Christianity.

In contrast, the 1st and 2nd Commandments say:

I am the Lord thy God
Thou shalt have no other gods before me

Without heeding those commands, which under the U.S. Constitution you don't have to heed, you are not going to get to the kingdom of the Christian God. I am not aware of any Christian document, divinely inspired or otherwise, that does not command you to have no other god in front of Yahweh, or that offers salvation when you exercise freedom of religion.

 

[Yggdrasill]

However, if you read the 1st Amendment carefully, you will notice that the very first freedom it gives you is freedom from religion.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

More accurately, freedom from an official state religion.

 

[Roofgardener]

Interest... CONGRESS shall make no law....

So, hypothetically speaking, the State of California could establish - say - Pastafarianism as a State Religion, and compel everyone to convert to it ?

 

[SystemShock]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

More accurately, freedom from an official state religion.

The distinction is not relevant. The point is, no writing allegedly inspired by the Christian god would allow not believing in the Christian god or believing in other gods.

 

[RobF]

Interest... CONGRESS shall make no law....

So, hypothetically speaking, the State of California could establish - say - Pastafarianism as a State Religion, and compel everyone to convert to it ?

They could not, now at least. Through the fourteenth amendment those clauses from the 1st amendment are held to be binding upon states as well. See Everson v. Board of Education and Cantwell v. Connecticut.

 

[Roofgardener]

They could not, now at least. Through the fourteenth amendment those clauses from the 1st amendment are held to be binding upon states as well. See Everson v. Board of Education and Cantwell v. Connecticut.

Ooooh right ... thanks for clarifying that

 

[Saintman2884]

Who has not seen the picture of the Founding Fathers surrounding Jesus, who's holding a freshly written U.S. Constitution? Because, you know, the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on Christian values. But not only would you be hard pressed to find any "value" in the U.S. Constitution not found outside Christianity (you can't), the U.S. Constitution, much like science, is incompatible with Christianity.

And you don't have to go any further than the 1st Amendment and the 1st and 2nd Commandments.

Most people will point out that the 1st Amendment gives us freedom of religion, which is usually interpreted (at least for what I see in my personal experience) as being able to practice Christianity without persecution (as if). That is true. However, if you read the 1st Amendment carefully, you will notice that the very first freedom it gives you is freedom from religion.



Further, the second sentence, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, gives us freedom to exercise any religion, not just Christianity.

In contrast, the 1st and 2nd Commandments say:


Without heeding those commands, which under the U.S. Constitution you don't have to heed, you are not going to get to the kingdom of the Christian God. I am not aware of any Christian document, divinely inspired or otherwise, that does not command you to have no other god in front of Yahweh, or that offers salvation when you exercise freedom of religion.

But you see the Old Testament was and is based around documents or divinely-inspired books meant to a different culture, somewhat different religion, mostly semi-nomadic tribal culture about 3,000 years ago and it itself wasnt really codified and made into a proper anthology until the 7th century BCE, during the Babylonian exile period Jews now call, the "Babylonian Exile". The Talmud, as well as the Books of Daniel, Ezra, Jeremiah, Ezekiel come from this era, and some theologians argue Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden stories are sort of one-upmanship claiming their Yahweh is more powerful and had an actual, legitimate reason for bringing a worldwide deluge to kill off world's population due to their wickedness, not because the Sumerian gods, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, were petty, silly, childish deities who acted like children and decided to destroy the world because he couldn't sleep due to their loud, collective snoring. But those quotes from the 10 Commandments were meant to a different audience where ancient Jewish ancestors and their descendants followed them because they were the laws, all 450 of them, their laws had an ethnic-religious nature to them more because it had a Promised Land (Israel or Canaan), a promised chosen people whom the Messiah would come from to die for humanity's sins (Jesus Christ). Therefore, when ancient Greco-Roman Hellenism came along with different, contrasting views and philosophies towards life, mortality, how the portray the human body, ethics, politics of the polis, or Republican Roman Senate views were going to run into trouble eventually because those cultures didn't base their laws, customs, philosophies around their volk, their ethnic founding religion, like the Jews did with the Torah or as strongly. Many ancient civilizations, from ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans found Jews to be strange, backward, somewhat intolerant people who worshipped one God instead of an pantheon.
But Christianity, at least Pauline Christianity version seperate from early Jewish off-shoot branch, said that you didn't have to be circumcised, or even Jewish, you could be a Greek like Luke, Roman, Egyptian, you could be proud of your ethic, cultural backgrounds and be a proud Christian. Bible also commands believers in both the Old and New Testaments to obey the laws of their lands they live in.

Plus, if we're being honest, how in the hell are forced conversions really sincere ones? Their not meant to be and have no legitimate nature ,plus the Founders were aware of European countries that had official laws in place well until the late the 19th century that make Anglicanism in UK, or Catholicism in France the official religion of their empires of states. Even up until 1917, Russian Orthodox Church was the official state-endorsed religion of Czarist Russia, which is why so many progressives and European/US politicians and leaders thought they were so backward and had this 17th century view of the world. Democracy is the will of the majority of the people and while the USA isn't a democracy in more the sense of France or Holland, some historians have argued or noticed that because most Founders had strong Christian leanings, they sort of wrote, interpreted them or cleverly inserted them in notions based around secular laws and notions, borrowed from Enlightenment thinkers/philosophers. I mean honestly, System, would you rather have our Constitution be based around Machiavellian amoral realpolitik ideals instead of Hobbes, Descartes or Jean-Jacques Rousseau? Machiavelli openly despised Christianity and his political philosophies are centered around rulers manipulating, scheming other rulers, making temporary deals and alliances for short-or-long-term gains until their no longer feasible. Not popular consent, or advocating representative form of governments. Freedom from religion, wasn't meant to be a rallying cry for future militant atheists' to pass laws or create culture of intimidation, ridicule, harassment, verbal or physical attacks, or synagogues, mosques, or churches being confiscated, destroyed, or repurposed by the League of Militant Athiests in Lenin's Soviet Union or that any government should promote state atheism like the USSR did, essentially did for most of its existence as well as Maoist China, Warsaw-Bloc Eastern European socialist regimes particularly East Germany and its Stasi, who took domestic and even foreign espionage, spying, infiltration on alleged enemies, dissidents, using informants like family members, or co-workers to meticulously spy on their daily activities.

I think whatever religion, or none thereof most take, in a modern sense, its a personal decision, not one related to politics or should be analyzed and put under a microscope to examine whether or not the U.S. Constitution is compatible with Biblical teachings or Old Testament laws. Modern Christianity, in my view, has moved on, at least from a European context, away from a strict fundamentalist perspective unlike large areas of Muslim Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Ethiopia, or countries in the ME with large, overwhelmingly majority Muslim populations where the secular regimes give them exclusive rights or concessions to placate them, like Algeria's Family Court. In many respects, the separation between church and state isn't always so clear or well-defined on some issues in ME predominate-Muslim populations like Egypt or Lebanon.

I'm a firm believer in scientific method as well as all of the hard sciences, I find physics to be fascinating but largely mind-bogging. It's such an experimental, inexact science that it's comparable to taking your geometry, biology books and throwing them away. I've always believed that if Galileo's theories or discoveries on helocentricism or his findings that disproved that our Earth was the center of the universe, and one of many countless universes, if he'd had let's say Isaac Newton or Johannes Kepler's theories of gravitation motion backing him up, he would've been instantly verified, because what great, powerful, massive force allows for planets, stars, and universe to move or gravitate in different motions or why does it take 365 days for the Earth to rotate on its axis in one calendar year as opposed to how many more years for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, or Neptune to do the same? Gravity and Proximity, or Distance.

 

[Saintman2884]

Sorry for the very long, at times perhaps ranting nature of my reply above. It's a much more complicated set of philosophical issues that have to be properly viewed from different angles and lenses to get a fair, more appreciative, understandable answers.

 

[Saintman2884]

The distinction is not relevant. The point is, no writing allegedly inspired by the Christian god would allow not believing in the Christian god or believing in other gods.

Again, those quotes are based mostly from the Old Testament and compiled from a much older, vastly different Bronze Age tribal cultures where a people, or a nation, or kingdom laws or philosophies were more closely intertwined with their distinct religious beliefs, which made the Ancient Phoenicians, Israelites, Hittites, Egyptians by contrast, different.

It's the same way in some respects where you're originally from, System? In pre-Columbian Meso-American civilizations, the Aztecs and Mayans were both known and are still analyzed as empires where the laws and customs surrounding most of their subjects were dictated by their religious cosmologies, why did the Aztecs and Mayans sometimes have these festivals that could last up to a couple of weeks where hundreds, if not thousands, of captured soldiers, slaves, or indigenous peasants nearby where sacrificed with their hearts ripped out by high priests and then their dead corpses kicked down the long, steps of the pyramids like meaningless trash? Archeologists in Mexico recently around 20 years excavated to found evidence of a mass Aztec religious festival that supposedly place in 1497 where thousands of people were sacrificed in a blind orgy of violence in a span of 3-4 days. Just because their gods demanded human blood as the necessary price to be paid to make the world continue, or ensure good crops, or security from foreign invaders, or that they wouldn't do the unthinkable and abandon them like so many other civilizations that preceded them and collapsed and crumbled, they felt, as a result.

 

[Rawlings]

Who has not seen the picture of the Founding Fathers surrounding Jesus, who's holding a freshly written U.S. Constitution? Because, you know, the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on Christian values. But not only would you be hard pressed to find any "value" in the U.S. Constitution not found outside Christianity (you can't), the U.S. Constitution, much like science, is incompatible with Christianity.

And you don't have to go any further than the 1st Amendment and the 1st and 2nd Commandments.

Most people will point out that the 1st Amendment gives us freedom of religion, which is usually interpreted (at least for what I see in my personal experience) as being able to practice Christianity without persecution (as if). That is true. However, if you read the 1st Amendment carefully, you will notice that the very first freedom it gives you is freedom from religion.



Further, the second sentence, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, gives us freedom to exercise any religion, not just Christianity.

In contrast, the 1st and 2nd Commandments say:


Without heeding those commands, which under the U.S. Constitution you don't have to heed, you are not going to get to the kingdom of the Christian God. I am not aware of any Christian document, divinely inspired or otherwise, that does not command you to have no other god in front of Yahweh, or that offers salvation when you exercise freedom of religion.

Actually, the sociopolitical theory on which America was founded—the classical liberalism of natural law—was extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Christianity's unique promulgation of the Golden Rule: Love God above all other things, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Hence, God, not the state, is the Source and Guarantor of human rights. These rights are inalienable. They cannot be given, taken or transferred. They can only be violated. Everyone knows that to violate the life, liberty or property of another is evil, as everyone knows they would not wish that their life, liberty or property be violated by another. Even the apathetic ghouls of sociopathy know that a desperate state of fight or flee ensues on the heels of an injustice.

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. —Declaration of Independence​

The foundation of America's rule of law is the promulgation of God's sociopolitical will on Earth. God's theological will is that all men freely come to the foot of the cross, as it were, repent and trust in Christ.

 

[Xeno]

Actually, the sociopolitical theory on which America was founded—the classical liberalism of natural law—was extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Christianity's unique promulgation of the Golden Rule: Love God above all other things, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Hence, God, not the state, is the Source and Guarantor of human rights. These rights are inalienable. They cannot be given, taken or transferred. They can only be violated. Everyone knows that to violate the life, liberty or property of another is evil, as everyone knows they would not wish that their life, liberty or property be violated by another. Even the apathetic ghouls of sociopathy know that a desperate state of fight or flee ensues on the heels of an injustice.

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. —Declaration of Independence​

The foundation of America's rule of law is the promulgation of God's sociopolitical will on Earth. God's theological will is that all men freely come to the foot of the cross, as it were, repent and trust in Christ.

The Golden Rule predates Christianity by hundreds if not thousands of years.

 

[Rawlings]

The Golden Rule predates Christianity by hundreds if not thousands of years.

Actually, that's because the Golden Rule has been universally understood and violated by mankind from the jump, and what I said is the sociopolitical ramifications of Christianity's unique promulgation of the Golden Rule, which, in fact, is a summarization of Mosaic Law.

 

[Xeno]

Actually, that's because the Golden Rule has been universally understood and violated by mankind from the jump, and what I said is the sociopolitical ramifications of Christianity's unique promulgation of the Golden Rule, which, in fact, is a summarization of Mosaic Law.

I see your "unique promulgation" and raise you a Crusades, indulgences, anti-homosexual rhetoric and conversion therapy among many other examples of Christianity ignoring this particular rule in the past and present.

 

[Saintman2884]

I see your "unique promulgation" and raise you a Crusades, indulgences, anti-homosexual rhetoric and conversion therapy among many other examples of Christianity ignoring this particular rule in the past and present.

And I’ll also counter-raise you with the Renaissance which gradually developed over centuries of interaction, new trade routes established with Middle East and the Asian Silk Road, due to the Crusades occurring and most historians will tell you the different European Crusading factions were just as interested in land-grabbing, i.e. a crude, early version of later European imperialism as they were based around sincere,zealous religious convictions.

Indulgences were a major, primary reason for the Protestant Reformation breaking out in German states, plus regional German nationalism and the printing press creating a demand for ordinary Germans to read the Bible in their own language.

Recently, more Christian denominations are becoming more tolerant if not accepting of LBGT community, at least not as overly condemning of gays and lesbians. It’s a nice, good start in the right direction. Certainly, far more willing to show more tolerance and acceptance than Wahhabism Islam and/or Iranian religious theocracy and where one of their ex-leaders said, “Homosexuals don’t exist in Iran, anymore”. Or in Lebanon or Hamas-controlled Palestinian West Bank who have this medieval Shariah law interpretation or view of homosexuality.

 

[SystemShock]

Actually, the sociopolitical theory on which America was founded—the classical liberalism of natural law—was extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Christianity's unique promulgation of the Golden Rule: Love God above all other things,

... and that's where you need to stop.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says you need to love any god above other things; on the contrary, as I stated in the original post, the U.S. Constitution, specifically the 1st Amendment, first and foremost gives you freedom from religion, and as far as I know, no religious text based on any of the Abrahamic religions gives you that option.

Then you have the 2nd Amendment, which is hardly a euphemism for the golden rule.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says anything resembling the golden rule. And "loving God above all things" has nothing to do with the golden rule.

​

 

[Rawlings]

I see your "unique promulgation" and raise you a Crusades, indulgences, anti-homosexual rhetoric and conversion therapy among many other examples of Christianity ignoring this particular rule in the past and present.

Your post is a mess of ontologically undefined generalizations. It's essentially meaningless drivel.

 

[Rawlings]

... and that's where you need to stop.

[1] There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says you need to love any god above other things; on the contrary, as I stated in the original post, the U.S. Constitution, specifically the 1st Amendment, first and foremost [2] gives you freedom from religion, and [3] as far as I know, no religious text based on any of the Abrahamic religions gives you that option.

[4] Then you have the 2nd Amendment, which is hardly a euphemism for the golden rule.

[5] There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says anything resembling the golden rule. [6] And "loving God above all things" has nothing to do with the golden rule.

​

1. I didn't say there was.

2. The Second Amendment asserts the imperative of natural law regarding the freedom of religion, not the freedom from religion.

3. Well, see, that's the problem. You don't grasp the biblical construct of free will relative to its attending theological and sociopolitical ramifications in the real world.

4. Nonsense. The Second Amendment goes to the natural right of self-defense against tyranny and criminality.

5. I didn't say it did. The sociopolitical extrapolation of the historical, Augustinian-to-Lockean development of natural law promulgated in the Declaration of Independence is predicated on Christian ethics.

6. The historically unique promulgation of the Christian Golden Rule incontrovertibly commands mankind to love God above all other things, and the sociopolitical ramification thereof incontrovertibly entails the imperative that God, not the State, is the Source and Guarantor of human rights.

 

[SystemShock]

The Second Amendment asserts the imperative of natural law regarding the freedom of religion, not the freedom from religion.

The 1st, you mean. I don't know how you can read the first sentence of the 1st and not conclude it states "freedom from religion".

Well, see, that's the problem. You don't grasp the biblical construct of free will relative to its attending theological and sociopolitical ramifications in the real world.

Of course I don't.
You can't point me in the direction of a Christian religious text that says you have the freedom of having gods other than one, or no god at all. Go ahead.
I'll wait.

In Christian context, "free will" is not the same thing as "freedom from religion" or "freedom of religion"; there is a substantial penalty for not believing in God or believing in other gods.

Nonsense. The Second Amendment goes to the natural right of self-defense against tyranny and criminality.

There are no "natural rights", and there is no "natural law" either. Further, the 2nd Amendment just states " being necessary to the security of a free State". That's it. It doesn't specify anything remotely resembling any golden rule. And Native Americans will tell you, they didn't feel the neighbor's love.

I didn't say it did. The sociopolitical extrapolation of the historical, Augustinian-to-Lockean development of natural law promulgated in the Declaration of Independence is predicated on Christian ethics.

There is nothing in the Bible that had not been established as ethical centuries before its books/letters were written.

The historically unique promulgation of the Christian Golden Rule incontrovertibly commands mankind to love God above all other things, and the sociopolitical ramification thereof incontrovertibly entails the imperative that God, not the State, is the Source and Guarantor of human rights.

There is nothing historically unique about the "Christian Golden Rule" other than it mentions yet another god.

The concept of human rights is a secular concept, a man-made concept. If you read the Bible, you'll notice there are a lot of people who didn't have and don't have any rights.