Since history has relevance in this discussion I will continue....
What do you mean "learn new words"? I've known what a deist is for quite some time...why are you dodging my points?
Religious people should certainly take part in the government, but when their religion starts to creep into everyone else's lives, then its our problem.
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Oh yeah, the MAJOR founding fathers, the men who built this country and came up for what it stood for were VERY DEVOUT CHRISTIANS! :24:
Here is some reading I want you to do:
The Christian Nation Myth
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]http://freethought.homestead.com/America.html[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]America is Not a Christian Nation - Robert Paul Reyes - MensNewsDaily.com™[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Is America a Christian Nation?[/FONT]
Look friend, the sources you're pointing to are exactly, .... Exactly what I was talking about several posts ago when I said you couldn't rely on one click Google searches to back or base your opinions. Don't you think that in 5 seconds I could post up 100 different links to opinions that were opposite those that you just laid out? My view is not popular opinion magically.
I could make the statement that Hitler wasn't all that bad a guy, just mis-understood, and link 50 sites in about a minute. I could say that Aliens planted human life on Earth, and post believable clickies. No problem.
I'm looking at the list of quotes you've pasted, and let me just point out my first observations.... Almost all of these are from the "Deists" that you're so fond of. Even many of those however are either taken out of context, or simply require a deeper understanding of the religion (and language of the day) to understand. If you go to any good church for about a month, you have a 99% chance of hearing the preacher say religion is a bad thing. Religion is actually what you hate so much too. It is a bondage. A set of rules, regulations, and paths that are choses by others for you. In the Christian faith, Jesus Christ actually fought the establishment of "religion." The Bible doesn't say "Go to church 3 times a week, and sing this many hymns, and give x % to the preacher. The Bible teaches love and respect. The word "religion" has two different meanings. One is a description of a faith, the other is the bad one that religious and non-religious people dislike so much.
I could write you a short book on this, or you can just take my word for it. The best thing would be for you to look into it yourself, or even challenge a local preacher with it. See if I'm making it up.
I was being genuine when I offered you the advice I did. You're too smart a guy to let a simple bad habit wreck your credibility.
You have your beliefs, and that's cool. You can look back in time, and find items that 'validate' those beliefs, and that's simply human nature. But spouting those beliefs as 'historic fact' that can be 'taken to the bank' will only work with people who don't have a deeper understanding of the material at hand, and make you look silly to somebody who has spent years studying the subject. There are subtle quirks in history you cannot pick up from a brief search, but missing these things in your post make it painfully obvious to your reader how you're working.
You and I haven't talked for very long, but if you stick around long enough,
you'll hear me warn a lot of people about getting information out of opinion papers. It's something we're all guilty of sometimes, but you really have to watch out. It can be intoxicating to read people who agree with you. I assume at 19 you're a Freshman or Sophomore in your History major, but I promise you that what I'm telling you, your professors will re-enforce multiple times over the next couple of years.
To study a subject from only one point of view is not study.
What points of yours was I dodging? I'm trying to be thorough, but you guys post a million times a minute more than I do, and it's tough to keep up. ha-ha.
PS: What is your specific area of study? I'm a huge history nut too, but wasn't brave enough to take it in school. What career paths are you looking at?
