If the rights of a nation come from the rule of the mob and not God....

[WCGreen]

then how can one be certain that the next mob will rob us of our rights...

Having God in the equation supersedes the notions of any one religion and so all are equal under God.

Paraphrasing a passage from a PBS docu about how the Freedom of Religion was shaped given the background of the 13 different colonies.

So what does that mean now?

Well, over the years, as more and more immigrants poured into the US, the country started to fill up with Catholics, Jews and later Muslims. All equal under God, as the Founders Believed.

Remember that every member of the Continental Congress believed in God or a supreme being or a Creator.

It's a great way to explain this to people who claim we are a Christian Nation.


On edit, I took out the NOT in the last sentence. I redid it right before I posted and this was my original intent.

[SidDithers]

1. ...

Sid

[WCGreen]

2. I took the Not out. That is what I meant.

[spanone]

3. bwahahahahaaaa

uncle leo

[upaloopa]

4. That is superstition. People invent god then say

rights come from their invention. That is the church making laws to constrain humans.
Our Constitution comes from the will of the governed not from god.

[WCGreen]

5. Well, think about it in 1775 terms and you will understand....

All I am saying is that the Founders came to the idea of Freedom of Religion.

First line of the Declaration of Independence contains this tid bit: the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...

and then this...

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...

Just wanted to point this out.

[upaloopa]

6. Many of the signers were agnostic or atheists.

Religion did not dominate their thinking as much as did the various philosophers they followed.

[WCGreen]

9. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise

thereof...

The first line in the Bill of Rights...

This was done to stop any movement to adopt a National Religion.

And yes, these men were almost all members of one or another Religion, even if they were not true believers. The reason they were willing to adopt this was because they did not want to replay the religious wars of Europe.

[upaloopa]

7. Creator is an indefinite concept like AA says higher power.

It doesn't stand for your concept of god that's in your head.

[WCGreen]

11. You suppose to much, upaloopa....

You see I am stating nothing about my religion, which is none, nor my belief in a Deity, which I do not.

I am simply pointing out why the first Amendment to the Constitution starts with this...

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

I was trying to make the point that they wanted no part of the rancorous religious arguments that had plagued Europe for more than a century.

[WCGreen]

12. Here is a list of Founding Fathers....

Lambert (2003) has examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders. Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and two were Roman Catholics (D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons). Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England (or Episcopalian, after the American Revolutionary War was won), eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists.

A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians, such as Thomas Jefferson[18][19][20] (who created the so-called "Jefferson Bible&quot and Benjamin Franklin.[21] Others (most notably Thomas Paine) were deists, or at least held beliefs very similar to those of deists.[22]

Historian Gregg L. Frazer argues that the leading Founders (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid "theistic rationalism".[23


http://www.ask.com/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States#Religion

[Downwinder]

8. The Bill of Rights is supposed to protect the minority.

[WCGreen]

10. Of course, and the most persecution came from one religion over another.

Remember, the worst part of the Reformation was in living memory.

They were more interested in developing a nation that was above the fray that the denominations of Europe still struggled with. And that is why they said the Rights of Man were from the Creator and not the pope or Calvin or, for that matter, the King of England who was also the head of the Anglican Church.

I am looking at this as a History exercise and not because I am enamored of religion. In fact I am a stated Atheist who had trouble in AA because 99% of the people believed in God. Sinners always turn to religion when the going gets tough.

I never viewed my Alcoholism as a sin but as a treatable condition.