wonky world views
My best blogging buddy, Insanitybytes, always manages to throw a post together to get me thinking. In her recent post, Under God, Own It, she tells us “that God wants America to remember who and what she is, one nation under God”. That got me thinking that Isis similarly believe that their god wants one nation under their god. She didn’t agree with the comparison.
But speaking of wonky and potentially frightening world views, a few of her readers gave some insightful comments into how a Christian American might view their country and their religion.
- The religion that led the way in women’s rights and the abolition of slavery, through the Republican party.
America is one of the few countries that was founded as a nation under God and which continues to provide freedom for people from all walks of life. It was founded under Christian values, and yet no one is or ever has been forced to become a Christian to immigrate or stay in America. Christians who founded the Republican party put an end to slavery, and then paved the way for a woman’s right to vote and work.
- A country with an invisible super-deity governing over all.
A Theocracy is built with God at the top of the Pyramid with the People at the Bottom. All other Socialist governing paradigms are built with The State resting at the Top of the Pyramid with the people at the bottom.
So… do you find it equally offensive when The State occupies the top of the Pyramid?
- A country created by the god God, not a country created by people who happened to believe in a god called God (subtle distinction, I know).
But for people to deny the hand of God in the creating of America, now that is ‘frightening.’ One only needs to see what is scribed in the halls of our great buildings and monuments.
Look at he who holds the tablets of stone in the great halls of courts. The law of Moses alone for goodness sake is the bedrock upon which all sane societies build a worthy governance..
They who disagree point to Allah, Mohammed or Vishnu, etc, claiming these gods are equal to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it is more of an excuse. Truth is difficult to stare in the eye.
As long as there are people in the U.S. who bless His name, support Israel, recognize how we have fallen, there is always hope.
So, let’s all close our eyes and imagine there’s a whole rest of the world out there. And in that whole rest of the world, lots of people believe in lots of invisible spirits and gods, lots have written down words they think were inspired by these many invisible entities. And chances are that NONE of them exist. Let’s forget why and how our political territories were founded by people living in times of superstitious ignorance, and focus on what we can practically do to improve human society – based on facts and evidence.
Fabulous. Obviously your friend doesn’t know enough history to realize that in the past republicans were progressive. It was only during the civil rights movement that roles were reversed, and that was connected to the traditions of the southern democrats (land and former slave owners). One can always count on under-educated idiots to say under-educatedly idiotic things.
And anyway, if god decided his son should be a middle-eastern jew, why in the world would he care about obese demi-german pale people in north america?
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Glad to see you’ve stopped calling people under-educated morons!
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you’re welcome 😛
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Errrrum, do these idiots even know “Under God” was only added in 1952… and it was to counter the dastardly USSR. The US motto was, in fact: E pluribus unum, out of many, one.
Mmm, I might pop over and let them know the error of their ways.
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Riiiiiiggggghhhhhtttttt. So what exactly is your plan? You can’t explain fractions before you explain division. In painting I can say that discussing brushstroke before we analyze pigments available at a particular time is ridiculous.
Arguing with that ‘brand’ of people is mostly wasteful. Unless you’re prepared to dedicate the rest of your existence to educating them- and you’ll have to start with the basics 😉
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See you popped over to share, that was kind. I swore to do my duty to God and the Queen when I was in the Brownies, doesn’t mean either of them exist. Brown owl wasn’t a bird, I wasn’t a Pixie, God isn’t a god and the Queen’s just an old women on a random birthline. We live and learn.
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There’s a whole lot of crazy going on… Colorstorm is my favourite, though 🙂 That type of stupid always makes me giggle.
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Hold the pack-horse Sancho! Charge! The originator of the post in question has suggested that a computer is a good example of a disembodied mind. Maybe she was joking, in which case she was dismissing the issue of substance dualism as settled in favor her viewpoint or as inconsequential. May I suggest a smile and a nod (as one who got sucked in). Pinkagendist is right.:)
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Did she? I missed that. My attention span isn’t great these days.
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Sigh, I thought you would at least have shared that with the good folks over on the post. Now I have to copy and paste and take all the credit! 😉
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Jefferson, who referred to “Nature’s God” in the Dec of Ind, was more deist than Christian: http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_1.html
The Christianity of ECUSA might be preferable. Teaching pigments would be education based on Marcus Borg, who argues that “respecting the Bible” makes you a liberal.
Facebook meme: “You take the Bible literally when it says the World was created in six days, but not when it says ‘Feed the Poor’?
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Nice meme, it could be applied to a lot more …
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This is why history is such an important issue. Because, if people do not know their history, they are subject to all sorts of revisionist claims and suggestion meant to excuse the most horrific acts, like segragation between people, or building theocracies instead of democracies.
Most early leaders of the US were deist. This lead them to form the very first secular country in the world. They were the educated people who had seen in recent history what unimaginably terrible havoc religious wars between Christians can cause. And now the modern airheads are claiming their country, was founded under a specific god of the Christians. Ignorance is not a virtue.
It is sadly typical, that people take the propaganda of the former generations as historical facts. Because there are so many people who have no skills to evaluate any claims, they end up just picking and choosing what resonates with their preset world views, instead of actually even being able to evaluate the truth value of any claims. That is why the scientific method is even more important. I have had some discussions with the sort of people you quote in your post, and the silly thing is, that none of them seem to have even grasped that history is researched by the scientific method, even though we can not do a lot of experiments to verify historical events.
One of the main problems of these people seems to me, is that they are unable to understand the difference between correlation and causation. It effectively sends people sailing on the “river de Nile”.
The US legal system is a very modern form of justice straight out from the 18th century. But it certainly is not the Mosaic law in just about any other respect, exept in the same sort of social moral judgement found in every legal system around the globe in every culture. Like that murder is illegal.
Is justice not described as the blind woman with scales, lady fortuna – Tykhe, in most American courts? Hardly a Christian symbol and even less of a Biblical symbol.
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Hey Violet
Just a heads up to you and yours.
Tkx for the attention.
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