God Bless

..alas..i, and thousands of my fellows, recently drove by some people in refrigerator boxes in the shadows of one the most enormous church steeples within 50 miles..

...i certainly do hope that, should gruntman and his ‘christians’ gain office, they can agree with me that the ‘tax $ystem’ ought NOT favor their church organization$/businesse$/etc. as it most CLEARLY does now…

..methinks there might be much fewer ooga booga church steeples, etceterot ad nauseam!.. and hopefully fewer occupants of refrigerator boxes too!..

It’s not “ideas” of small government, civil liberties and lower taxes that should get our vote. That will still lead us to the fallible and corrupt rule of man. It is adherance to the Constitution—the law of the land—Rule of Law, get it?

Bob Barr never has and still doesn’t.

This is the reason that so many libertarian types don’t get it. They are trying to remake the Constitution and our system of goverment to fit in with their modern, humanist world view. A Constitutional Republic, founded on the rule of law must have a foundation for those laws and that foundation has always been the Bible. Don’t steal, don’t kill…etc.

It’s hard to get mad at them though, because they have been so brainwashed by 20th century separation of church and state garbage. Not to mention the hypocrisy and apostacy of the Religious Right. They fear anyone who is vocally Christian and wants to return to the principles understood by our Founding Fathers because they believe those candidates would FORCE religion upon them.

The plain language of the First Amendment says pretty clearly that its intent is to prevent the government from establishing a specific religion and forcing people to worship a certain way. It also forbids the government from preventing the free excercise of religion.

This is a Christian concept of freedom of conscience. This does not mean that our philosophy of government in America is secular. Many forget that the authority that our Founders pointed to in justifying their independence from Great Britain was the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s GOD. It’s pretty clear that they recognized our Creator as the authority and our nation’s jurisprudence is based on the Bible.

Don’t confuse that with Relgious men who do not respect the rule of law and would use their interpretation of the Bible to justify not following the law (Bush, Keyes…etc.)

The Constitution is the law of the land. Federal leaders swear an oath to support and defend it. But it is viewed in our modern times as some sort of formality. Chuck Baldwin would follow it—just like Ron Paul did. You won’t find much difference between the two.

Response : 1) The fool has said in his heart that there is no God. 2) For the enemies of God the timeless saying always applies – Better to be a king in hell than a Servant in Heaven. 3) Reason. What a laugh.

Response : The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic. It is NOT a ” democracy.”

And yes, I am most certainly a Christian before I am an American or anything else, husband, father, son, etc. This is as it should unequivocally be for everyone who claims to be a Christian. This is one reason why Christianity is so subversive, when practiced correctly, to the modern state. And don’t think the modern state doesn’t know this. So if that is treason, then so be it. Why don’t you bring out the lions there Caesar?

...i’ve never heard any christian mythologist honestly challenge or even honestly address paine’s ideas about ‘religion’..

http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/thomaspai_bjh.html

IF we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means of accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the word of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in any written or human language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language, which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of God. The word of God exists in something else.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematised each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing; another, that it meant directly the contrary; and a third, that it meant neither the one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible.

I, therefore, pass on to an examination of the Books called the Old and the New Testament. The case historically appears to be as follows.

WHEN the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament are in the same state in which these collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes they voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since, calling themselves Christians, had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this we know nothing of; save that they called themselves by the general name of the Church.

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France; by the English government in the East Indies; or by any other assassin in modern times. Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done ? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by His authority ? To read the Bible without horror we must undo everything that is tender, sympathising and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.

BUT it can be shown by internal evidence that the Bible is not entitled to credit as the word of God. It can readily be proved that the first five books of the Bible, attributed to Moses, were not written by him nor in his time, but several hundred years afterwards. Moses could not have described his own death, nor mentioned that he was buried in a valley in the land of Moab. Similarly, the book of Joshua was not written by Joshua; it is manifest that Joshua could not write that Israel served the Lord not only in his days, but in the days of the elders that over-lived him. The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it. The books of Samuel were not written by Samuel, for they relate many things that did not happen till after his death.

The history in the two books of Kings, which is little more than a history of assassinations, treachery and war, sometimes contradicts itself; and several of the most extraordinary matters related in Kings are not mentioned in the companion books of Chronicles. The book of Job has no internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; it appears to have been translated from another language.

I now go on to the book called the New Testament. Had it been the object of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, He would undoubtedly have written the system Himself, or procured it to be written in His lifetime. But there is no publication extant authenticated with His name. All the books called the New Testament were written after His death. He was a Jew by birth and profession, and He was the son of God in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is the Father of all.

The first four books—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—are altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place; and in several instances they relate the same event differently. Revelation, therefore, is out of the question with respect to these books. The presumption, moreover, is that they were written by other persons than those whose names they bear.

The book of Acts of the Apostles belongs also to the anecdotal part. All the rest of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas called the Revelation, is a collection of letters under the name of epistles, and the forgery of letters under the name of epistles. One thing, however, is certain, which is that out of the matters contained in these books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the Church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the Person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and reverence in pretended imitation of a Person whose life was humility and poverty….

(it seems the intelligent christian mythologist must resign..checkmated by reason)