After a short conversation I had with Spuriosmonkey (spelling) I thought I would make a full thread about this. The way we go into this discussion was when SM mentioned that a Christian nation invaded a Muslim country. I then countered with the following quotes: I added a couple more for effect. Now these days America has that wheel-tapper they call president in control and he makes a statement like: In Africa we have our problems, luckily its corruption and crime and not sick religious freaks like this in control Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Trolling aside... From what I understand America is comprised of settlers who wanted to move away from religion?
Dubya likes to bandy about the phrase "one nation under god". Where did that phrase come from? Who weaseled it onto the US dollar? From those quotes it seems that the origins of the United States included a movement away from monolith religions. Which makes sense since before independence they were under the heavily religious state of England. It is ironic that England has rejected religion as a form of governance before the US when looking at it from this perspective.
Hi w1z4rd, It is a concept called tolerance, religious or otherwise. In that sense it is more liberal than SciForums.
NO! that's not entirely correct, the settlers who migrated here, did so to practice their religion in peace. Thus they were getting away from religious prosecutions.
I hardly equate practicing religion in peace to placing a restrictive label in a metropolitan country like the US.
I understand it was in McCarthy era who was hunting anyone who was a commie sympathizer,when the cold war was on between Russia and US so they put this phrase 'under god' on money to make US look more holly or righteous, I guess
I suppose we don't! but as we understand the US' constitution we should! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
NO... THE USA WAS BUILT APON THE IDEALS OF CALVINISM.... a branch of christianity. calvinist... believed that their reward in heaven was in direct proporation to their wealth.... but not as horded gold... but as real working producing industries... the more employees a man had... the more his worth. it was the idea... of RE-INVESTING YOUR WEALTH. INSTEAD OF HORDING IT. THIS RE-INVESTMENT OF WEALTH... is the basis of capitalism... capital investments. -MT
from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams He says question everything, as a true descendant of the Enlightenment would. He's not directly denying anything about Christianity anywhere. Refers to the use of force for Christianity, nothing else. Read the full quote, especially the last line. I'm not saying I disagree with you just yet, but if you're going to do this, at least do it properly.
the mood of the early american settlers was moving away from the institutionalizing of religion - perhaps similar to the protestants in some ways basically it boils down to not the removal of institution from religion (which is inescapable for any religion, even for the most anti-institutional strains of zen buddhism ..... in fact for any field of knowledge) but a different mode of application advocated as the means to attain perfection - something like going back to grass roots as for the current state of theistic affairs in contemporary america, certainly going back to the grass roots of their theistic culture would be an advancement (there is a whole attitude to christianity that was prevalent at the turn of the 19th century which is not even conceivable by the general public at the current time). In the vedas a paradigm is given for the inseparable interaction between society and religiosity - first are religious principles, next comes economic development (since following things like 'thou shall not kill/steal/etc' enables the necessary social stability for economic development) next comes sense gratification (what else are they going to do with all that money) and then comes liberation - these ar e the four materialistic goals of religion which become visible when the fifth (pure love of god untouched by material desire) gets waylaid - perhaps you could say that the hippy movement of america in the sixties was an attempt for the society to be socialized around the principle of liberation, but since the hippies were socialized around things bereft of religious integrity (namely drug use and extremely loose sexual connections) rather than religiousity, they all either died or came back down to the level of sense gratification (ie yuppies)
