All theocrats should be banished to a different religion’s theocracy, that would be entertaining
If I were a betting cyborg I would bet that they would thrive by converting to the other religion at near light speed.
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arguing that the founding fathers wanted faith to be a “big part” of government
No they didn’t. They came from a nation where the King was head of State and Church. That was literally one of the things they absolutely DID NOT want in the next form of government.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
— Thomas Jefferson (1802)
There needs to be an understanding that many founding fathers of this nation wanted religion to be between themselves and their chosen god. Because there isn’t a “establish religion within Government” that’s what foolish people think it always ends as “Government establishing religion”.
Like we could have Members of Congress that establish laws and participate within the marketplace they have created, come win or lose. However, we know that instead Members of Congress manipulate the market solely for wins at the loss to others.
If Congress cannot help themselves to be greedy when given a free market, what makes anyone think that they won’t outright dictate religion if given the chance? And the answer is, they wouldn’t. That’s why there is a separation. Given the chance, if enough Baptist got into power, they would absolutely outlaw Catholics.
The Founding Fathers weren’t idiots. They absolutely held tight to the “power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Any time a government is handed the power to mix religion and law, that law turns into dictating religion. That’s why there is a separation. So we don’t have to go Salem Witch hunting folks based on which definition of the Trinity they hold to.
They all think this moment of peace between the various Christianities will just last until forever, not realizing that the reason there is this peace is because all of the various flavors get treated equally. Change that equation and we’re right back to the 1600s where we’ve got one cult trying to murder and outlaw the others.
These idiots have zero idea what they are clamoring for. They think their team, should the equality barrier get taken away, will be the one that wins out. And it’s likely that enough zealots exist that Speaker Johnson would be burned at the stake for some odd reason his version of God isn’t the correct one. Or even worse, Speaker Johnson’s version get outlawed so it’ll be legal and cool to burn him at the stake.
Like how bad does one have to fail at history to not understand this point?
Mikey doesn’t care about history as long as his White Christian Theocracy comes to fruition, no matter the cost.
That cost is always paid in blood
“But it won’t be my blood”-every power grabber ever
It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make.
And he doesn’t care one iota.
Like how bad does one have to fail at history to not understand this point?
You’re talking about someone who thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old.
Failing at constitutional history is the least of his historical problems.
Like how bad does one have to fail at history to not understand this point?
They don’t care.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thomas-jefferson-religious-institutions/
Thomas Jefferson never said that.
Cherry-pickingBible 🤝Constitution
Whichever church the listener that might vote for her is part of.
There’s no honesty or intent here. Just malicious orchestration of dumb people.
Boy do I love living surrounded by these loving christians.
Born too late to explore the earth, borth too early to explore the stars, born just in time to have my rights taken away by belivers in a bronze age supernatural death cult.
Fucking amazing.
I was corrected on this recently. The Hebrew Bible was written by Iron Age folks. As was the Gospels.
FYI
The old testament is just a riff on old Sumarian myths, so… still pretty much bronze age.
Half of Noah’s ark is in Gilgamesh. He meets a man that the gods are punishing for doing the whole Noah thing with immortality after he crosses that underworld ocean with that giant stack of paddle sticks. Flood , dove with olive branch and all. I think he was trying to help his buddy Enkidu if I remember correctly. Poor Enkidu :( he should have stayed a beast and lived his life with the deer.
That’s a very positive outlook that humanity will survive to explore the stars without being killed by religious fascists.
You live in amazing times where we are inventing and learning new shit all the time. If you’re not exploring now when that exploring is relatively very safe, you wouldn’t be the one sailing off to the new world hundreds of years ago. People can be miserable or content in their own time, no matter what that time is.
It was a reference to a meme, but go off I guess.
So I responded to what you said and not some meme I don’t know…and you’re trying to shift the blame onto me. Lol
Correct, you’re to blame. Glad we agree.
Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
—Thomas Jefferson
When a religion is good, conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, apprehend, of its being a bad one.
—Benjamin Franklin
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thomas-jefferson-religious-institutions/
I agree with your sentiment, but please don’t spread misinformation regardless of intent.
Proper quote:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
(From your snopes link)
Didn’t this religious asshole take an oath to uphold the constitution that literally decrees separation of church and state‽ Grounds for a firing.
Constitution only says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Jefferson coined the term in a letter regarding the 1A.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but in any case “separation of church and state” is how we have always interpreted it.
religious whackjobs in the government attempt to rebrand ‘religion’ to ‘faith’ in an attempt to claim all americans should suffer from it.
it will only cause me to hate 2 words instead of the one.
You should already hate faith. Faith is what the religious use to justify doing nothing themselves.
Hell, faith is the reason half of them are sitting around hoping for Armageddon…
faith is what i have in my wifes love for me. i dont want to hate faith, just its abuse.
I view it as confidence.
@originalucifer faith is conviction in the absence of knowledge and that is down right scary.
til, thanks!
Well said
I desperately hope there is sound, logical evidence for your wife’s love.
There is nothing but sophistry and basic philosophy to back religious faith. Religious faith ultimately only comes from peoples’ need for meaning. A basic desire can pull people in all sorts of silly directions if all they do is try and sate it.
Capital-F Faith is directly contrary to science and reason. It’s believing things to be true without question or proof.
You can be spiritual and also be a logical person who listens to reason and science. But when you devote your entire worldview to Faith, then you should absolutely NOT be in a position to make decisions that affect other people’s lives.
Capital-F Faith is directly contrary to science and reason. It’s believing things to be true without question or proof.
It’s worse than that. It’s believing things despite contrary evidence. It’s why you can never win any “debate” with believers. They literally believe that you telling them they’re wrong proves that they are right.
My faith is in the fact that the world is created anew with the appearance of age every Thursday. We don’t notice because we are created with memories of an entire history. But we are fooled, and each week the world gets stranger and stranger.
If I were to govern under this faith, I wouldn’t bother planning anything longer than a week. I’m sure they wouldn’t respect my freedom of religion, then.
Yeah I’m religious (syncretic neopaganism), but seeing as I live in the real fucking world where there’s plenty I don’t know I have to assume that part of what I don’t know is the nature of divinity. And I’m certainly not so damn confident in my religion to force people to it. I’m only that confident in the scientific method as a means of seeking truth.
In evidence we trust.
The Bible itself defines faith as: “Faith is the assured expectation of what is hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities that are not seen.”
And “demonstration” can also be translated as “convincing evidence”.
So faith would be something like having a friend who is a good mechanic that likes helping people, and him telling you that if you ever need help on your car he’s offering to help.
You have faith that he is able to see his offer through and fix your car, even though you’ve never seen him work on any car before.
I think most people today would call that trust, and the word faith has become synonymous with “blind faith”, which is what you described with
It’s believing things to be true without question or proof.
I’m not trying to say you’re wrong or anything, as languages do change over time. But I think it’s fair to recognize those differences in definitions.
Faith is just trust. To do anything at all involves some element of faith. To have no faith would turn a person into a deranged control freak. The problem is not faith but religious organizations who try to warp “have faith” into “don’t ever use your own intelligence to second guess what we say.”
No, faith is more than trust. Faith is trust that you do not verify. Why? Because every time people say they “have faith”, it is distinctly about something they cannot or will not verify. 99.99% of the time, it’s “will not”.
We really need to get these republicans out of office.
Kind of like “well regulated militia”, right Mr. Speaker? 🙄
That’s a Taliban thing to say.
Are you trying to equate the Catholic, Baptist, protestant, etc. church dictating governance as being no better than the concept of Sharia law?
That’s how I’m interpreting your statement, and in that specific context, I fully agree…
Sharia isn’t specific to Taliban, but whatever, I think I’m on the same page still :)
When they were in charge they weren’t much better than the Taliban
They are indeed tryIng to enforce the same principles: no rights for women, no rights for non-straight people, etc… why do you think sharia is worse than what’s happening in the US today?
American churches and religious organizations have secured themselves so much public funding and political campaign power this past couple decades he kind of isn’t wrong: the separation detailed as important by many of the founders has been dumped.
Tax the FUCK Out of them if they think they have a say on govt
Nah, I think we should just ‘manifest destiny’ their properties.
Of course a guy who can’t separate fapping from family also can’t separate politics from religion.
Set aside for the moment that the Founding Fathers absolutely wanted there to be a separation between church and state because they had just come from a land (England) where the ruler (the King) was the leader of the church (Church of England) and where they saw the abuses this caused.
Would Johnson and all the other “no separation” folks really be fine with the government meddling with their faith? After all, if there’s no separation between church and state then not only can the church influence the state, but the state can influence the church. Get rid of the separation and the federal government could decide which holidays you observe and in which ways. It could proclaim what the contents of the prayer books are and when/how you pray.
Would they be fine with all this?
Of course, they assume that they will be writing the rules, but would they accept it if someone else was? Perhaps I, a Jew, would declare that they can’t eat pig products. (In reality, I’d never impose my religious beliefs on others, but let’s say I did hypothetically speaking.) Perhaps a Muslim Government Religious Committee Member would add a few rules. As would a Buddhist. Heck, let’s get atheists and satanists involved as well. I’m sure they would love to write some “religious rules” that the Christians nationalists would need to follow. Would Johnson and company happily go along with this because “no separation between church and state?”
Would they be fine with all this?
And in today’s lesson, we will learn the term “double standards”: yes they would be fine with this because they think they are the state, also they think they are basically god’s will and anything contradicting that will be fought tooth and nail. IF they should ever see another religion even approach their level of power, then they will attempt everything in their power to restrict that religion’s advances because they were always proponents of a separation of ( at least that other) religion and the state. Any inconsistencies in that worldview are not, as it may seem at first glance (or second [or third and all thereafter]) pure hypocrisy because it’s obviously an ENTIRELY different situation when they are affected. As soon as their power is then consolidated again, separation of church and state shouldn’t be taken THAT seriously anymore - it’s not that important as long as the RIGHT religion is the state…
So…main character syndrome. Isn’t that a prerequisite to register Republican?
As always, they are the one’s in power, and therefore assume they’ll be the only one’s writing the rules.
Without separation, the government could impose and anti hypocrisy clause when people claim religious freedom – if the person claiming it has demonstrably and willfully gone against their religion’s rules, they can’t claim religious freedom for a different rule.
A better example than pork products might be abortion.
There are literally no Jewish groups that are anywhere near as hard-line on abortion as Christians are. And the pro-life crowd would be quite upset if the laws on abortion were written by either reform or conservative rabbis.
The problem with Mike Johnson’s position is that once you get past the basics like “don’t murder”, religions disagree significantly on the specifics. For example, according to Orthodox Judaism, you must abort a fetus that’s threatening the mothers life, while some Christians would call that murder.
There’s no such thing as generic “faith based principles” to base a government on; at some point you simply have to pick which religions’ principles you’ll enshrine.
The reason for the abortion policy in Judaism is that Judaism sees the fetus as merely “potential life” and part of the woman’s body until it is born. There are Jewish groups fighting against the Republicans’ restrictive abortion bans because they are based on Christianity’s views of the life of the fetus and infringe on Jewish views.
you must abort a fetus that’s threatening the mothers life, while some Christians would call that murder.
If the mother dies and the baby hasn’t been born yet, then two people have died. Aborting a life threatening fetus is the only sane course of action, as you are not ending one life, you’re saving those who can still be saved.
There’s a bunch of different kinds of ethics. That’s a very consequentialist, pragmatic take. I mean, I agree that it’s the moral action here, but your argument for it is very consequentialist.
Some religions take a more deontological view of ethics, where actions are right or wrong based on the action itself, rather than on the consequence it has.
For example, in Judaism, if a group of Nazis says “give us one of you to shoot or we’ll shoot you all”, then you’re supposed to let your entire group get shot because killing an innocent to save your own life is wrong (though killing the nazis would be acceptable because they’re aggressors in this situation). It sounds like you would call that insane, because the whole group dies instead of just one member.
I would love to see what the rules are after all the major religions cooperate and build a new world order. I’d imagine it’d be something like “everyone is vegan now. Be nice to everyone. Except the Roma”.
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I think it’s more of a case of the dog chasing the car but having no clue what to do when it catches the car.
For example, Dobbs repealing Roe vs Wade. The right won. Abortion could be banned. The dog has the car’s bumper firmly in its mouth. Now what?
Some Republicans said it should be left up to the states. Some said that they wanted a national law. Some said ban abortion at 15 weeks. Some said 6 weeks. Some said, don’t charge the women. Some said arrest any woman whose pregnancy doesn’t end with a baby and try her for murder unless she can prove it wasn’t her doing.
The dog caught the car but suddenly had no clue what to do.
If the Republicans catch the “Christian nation car,” they’ll likely be similarly splintered. Some might want to respect our religions even though Christianity would be favored. Others would want to force everyone to convert or else. The former might wind up being just a codification of current society (which absolutely prioritizes Christianity over all others) into law, but the latter would be horrific for anyone not in the favored religious group. I’m not sure where that “dog catches car” would end up, but I don’t want to find out.
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The problem with fascism is that it always needs an enemy, and if allowed to continue long enough, will cannibalize itself in search of one.
They would just change the argument again to “the founding fathers were Christian they had every intention of allowing Christian religion to inform government decisions. The founding fathers never were Muslim or Jewish nor did they enact any policy that originated from their respective religious books. So based on that history we only allow Christian laws to be made, anything else is unconstitutional.”
/Vomit
They were deists though…
Y’know, since the other theocracies around the world are so chill.
“Thomas Jefferson was wrong.”
The separation of church and state doesn’t require a separation of faith and state. Separation of faith and state wasn’t Jeffersons point…
The house comes to consensus on all sorts of shit, often based on faith, while being composed of members of a variety of churches. Been that way for centuries, and can continue to be that way. The first amendment doesn’t prohibit government from making laws based on faith or faith based values. It prohibits government from making laws respective to a church.
Which is all to say that Johnson bringing a bible to the dais is questionable, and boeberts assertion that the church should direct the state is flat out wrong.
Government can have faith and religion. It’s always had faith and religion. Jefferson didn’t advocate that congress be staffed by atheists, he advocated that it be staffed by people of any faith or religion, because the first amendment says exactly that. That was his point…
