katie5000

...you wouldn't last a year in north Korea.

Neither would you.

From the first pilgrims to the framers of the constitution, they were all rooted in the Judeo-Christian way.

At the very least, because it was European custom. The framers were all primarily Deists, which =/= fundamentalists. The Pilgrims/Puritans were, granted, a bit more religious.

It pains me at the ignorance of citizens yearning for a secular state, assuming that the morality saught by people of faith might be faulty.

What's faulty is that you seem to think that non-religious people don't have some inherent sense of right and wrong. It pains ME every time I hear a fundie spout off on how they want to turn the US into what is basically a Christian theocracy, or on how they want to put the non-religious in camps and/or exterminate them. I mean, what the fuck is that about.

7/30/2009 12:18:36 AM

Swedish Pagan

So, the only two options are either theocracy or dictatorship by a mad man? Doesn't sound like that much a difference, really, when you think about it.

I kind of like the "history" of the US in Bowling for Columbine. Doesn't make me want to swap my rather secular state for your rather God-fearing, not in a million years.

Moral, meaning inner rules on how to live life, is not an exclusively religious thing. We all have some guidelines. Some of the ones mentioned in the Bible are kind of nice, like "love thy neighbor as yourself" and "treat others as you want to be treated". But lots and lots of religious people are guilty of their sin of pride; they think they are better than others, and treat others with contempt and imagined superiority.
Is that really how they want to be treated?

7/30/2009 1:04:11 AM

Anon-e-moose

"you wouldn't last a year in north Korea"

Why not go to Pyongyang, stand before the Tower of the Juche Idea, or better still, in front of the statue of Kim Il-sung at the Mansudae Hill Grand Monument, tear up pictures of the two Kims, all the while shouting 'There is a Great Leader and Dear Leader greater than yours! They are God and Jesus!'. I'm sure your 'faith' would ensure the officials/security/military of such a secular state would leave you alone whilst doing so. Go ahead. What's stopping you?

You wouldn't last five seconds in North Korea.

7/30/2009 6:32:37 AM

Quantum Mechanic

Never actually studied American History have you?

8/15/2011 7:19:17 AM

J. James

Revisionist history. How droll.

There is a reason the founders desperately wanted a secular state. They weren't evangelicals, and they knew how much of a FUCKING ANNOYANCE it was to live under a state church.

Don't you love how Dominionists try to paint the founders as hardcore conservative evangelical theocracists that wanted a mob rule instead of a secular republic?

And they don't own no slaves! No siree!

8/15/2011 7:25:08 AM

Anon2

assuming that the morality saught by people of faith might be faulty. Please read some historical books on how this country began [...] From the first pilgrims [...]

*Ahem* What was the reason the Pilgrim Fathers left Europe? Were they prosecuted by secular communist states? Or did they rather flee some ... other kind of prosecution?

Then look at secular communism states. Choose your way of life...you wouldn't last a year in north Korea.

You pathetic attempt of trying to associate "secular" with "communist" doesn't work. Nice try, but you failed.

Anyway, I live now for many, many years in a central european country which becomes more and more secular and where the churches are in constant decline, especially among the youth with now nearly 50% agnostic/atheistic. It is a very good life here.

8/15/2011 7:52:31 AM

rw23

Some people who were born and grew up during the worst of the Cold War, who swallowed all the propaganda about the "evils of communism" and the existentialist threat to the USA, just don't seem to realise that it was all over by 1991. They don't have to worry about it any more.

Of course it was only ten years before some of them latched on to another existentialist threat instead, one that just like their own espouses a certain morality amongst people of faith...

8/15/2011 10:03:26 AM