What is the source from which we derive our rights as stated in the declaration of Independence? The government? Or God?

the people

Game, set, match.

thank you very much....***dont trip while rounding the bases, dont trip, dont trip, dont trip, dont trip***

As stated, "all men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Firstly, 'Creator' is very religion neutral, and can be ascribed to nearly any religion and not just Judeo-Christianity. Secondly, the theme of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' is not a big Bible theme. Thirdly, the Declaration of Independence is not a part of our system of government.

So, according to some though, Creator means 'the people.' Interesting. Man becomes god.

Declaration of Independence set forth the foundation of why we could create our own system of government. Your post makes it sound like a useless waste of time.

No, but it was written by that esteemed Christian activist Thomas Jefferson, who also once wrote:

"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter."

The last time I checked, God didn't write the Declaration of Independence, ratify the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights...

Dola --

No doubt the right to slave ownership was divinely inspired too...

Our governemtn derives its right from the people...when the government exceeds those rights than at that time we would have the right to change the government. Our government is there to "serve the people at the behest of the people." Dont try to put words in my mouth, Im as transparent as they are and Im not blurred by rhetoric or religion. I think for myself, thank you, and dont need you to think for me.

WAIT -Jefferson wrote things that bump Christiantiy. Bubba surely will say that that doesn't apply. At what point does someone so steeped and controlled by their faith, become enlightened enough to know that perhaps, perhaps, they might not be right and thus they should not try to force their beliefs on others.

Its overwhelming when there are so many different sources of information vs. one

As a foundatin for government, the DofI is a waste of time. But that isn't its purpose, it's purpose was to give a rationale for breaking political ties with England. But let's assume that our system of government comes from the Declaration of Independence. You still have the first two points to contend with: that the phrasing is religion neutral, and that those themes are not big in the Bible.

I'm sorry, but what gives the people the 'right' to do all that? Thought so.

This was covered long ago in another thread. Your in the slow class, a dollar short and a day late.

Well, you can make that argument concerning anything regarding God, and if He did do those things then you wouldn't need faith, now would you?

At some point this discussion just beomes like Clinton's famous phrase about "...depends what your definition of the word is, is." Just alot of hagling over definitions and such. I'm out, but continue to have fun here.

I have faith that you are a massive tool.

Thought that you liked 'tools." ;)

Locke?

"Belief is a virus and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are."

- PHYLLIS RAPPAPORT, an abrasive CNN reporter (a character in a new book by Philip Caputo: "Acts of Faith")

Yes, but you can say the same thing about anything, including democracy. Some folks believe that democracies are a failure and Monarchs or benign despots would be more 'efficient." Broad generalizations are as bad as quibbling about definitions.

Fixed that for you.

Rousseau?

I'm sorry, are you really bashing everyone with any sort of religious faith?

I can picture you sitting there, thin, wire-rimmed glasses, wispy thinning hair covering your receding hair-line, red-in-the-face with a tight grin tapping one-fingered on your laptop thinking that your are just the wittiest person on earth. Who knows, maybe you are. :rolleyes:

Damn, you couldn't have been more wrong. That's kind of typical for you though.

Big guy. No glasses. Got a haircut today (no shit) - it may be graying, but it's still very thick. I'm dark already, so I don't get red in the face. And I took typing in High School over 20 years ago and know how to use asdfjkl;. Or, if you prefer, "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".

You did get one thing right. I am the wittiest person on Earth. :)

Bubba, from one Christian to another:

SHUT THE HELL UP!

*sigh*

Gee, I wonder why people think Christians are blindfolded idiots that look down on others. :rolleyes: :( :rolleyes:

Camus can do, but Sartre is smarter.

Joey Bag-O-Donuts, huh?

No, that's not my intention.

I believe that most things that can be described can be done so along a scale. On the scale that describes religious faith, on one end you have those with absolutely no religious faith; on the other end you have those that are so consumed by their faith that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill other "heathens". Most people of religious faith fall well short of that extremism.

What that quote describes, in my reading of it, is what happens as you get close to the religious extremist end of that spectrum. From my observations of his posts, Bubba is consumed enough by his religious belief system that he is unwilling to accept evidence that contradicts his religious beliefs - he will go to great lengths to find ways to ignore or "disprove" these facts.

Now, before anyone misinterprets me, I'm not suggesting Bubba is so far on the spectrum that he'll kill for his religion, merely that his faith is far enough along that spectrum as to trump scientific evidence that contradicts his religious beliefs.

What's your problem? The principles discussed here you can either agree or disagree with, the rest are all personality issues. Those attacking all Christians because they don't like me are every bit as bigoted, closed-minded and hateful as they claim others to be. That's pretty evident. So relax, you don't have to answer for me or feel involved in how I put forth anything.

Religious faith can't be described by a scale. It's far more complex than that.

Not last time I checked. But I appreciate your concern and I'll keep you updated if I decide to let myself go.

Do you want to elaborate a bit on that point?

And remember that a scale doesn't have to be 2D or a straight line. What I think Dawg is trying to say is there are varying degrees of religious fervor - and Bubba's all-consumed with HIS interpretation of his (supposed) religion.

Of course it is. The scale I described is measuring intensity of one's religous beliefs. You could come up with an infinite number of scales to describe all the various components that go into religious faith (as with just about anything that isn't a simple binary situation).

flere diagram i suppose would work.

UIC post of the day. "We shouldn't be specific, and we shouldn't be general either!"

Bubba, God told me to tell you that you need to learn the difference between Deism and Judeo-Christianty, because he's getting irritated that you're blaming him for work he didn't approve.

I'm trying to elaborate it to myself ... it's not such an easy thing to put into words, even for me, for whom religious faith (my own and those of people both like and unlike me) is more or less my life's passion.

Give me a bit of time to think about it.

dola

My biggest problem with the concept is the idea that depth of religious faith equates with closed-mindedness. Often the people with the deepest, most settled religious faith are more open to new ideas than people who call themselves agnostics. Faith is not the same thing as knowledge (it is in some ways the opposite of knowledge - a sense of wonder, perhaps), and those who experience faith understand the difference.

It's very difficult to write about this without sounding stupid.

Interesting. You slam me for supposed contradictions in what I've said (without example), then you proceed to commit the same error yourself in the next sentence. Care to elaborate?

I thought you were done with this thread?

Today I started a unit on Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism with my 10th graders, public high school. They got into it, no fears of being converted, etc.. I came to the realization that Christianity today, this country, has moved from Buddhism to Confucianism. We've gone from infinite love and harmony to regulated faith, in other words Christianity has reverted back to the Pharisees. While Bubba is a small example, the preachers denying membership are far worse. Insisting on words, laws and doctrine as a measure of faith is just devotion to a false idol.

Sure. You're incapable of being educated. You're uninterested in challenging your beliefs (even to find further evidence for them), and so any discussion in which you are involved is pointless. Not to mention the fact that you're so woefully misinformed about your positions that most of our effort is spent trying to get you to recognize simple things, rather than moving on to more complicated issues. Elaborate enough?

Yeah, I should be. Things keep coming to mind, though. For instance, interesting that for all the closed-minded criticism I get, I am the only one who stated earlier that I am still learning. None of the experts have made that claim, some would probably even say they do already know it all.

You made a point earlier. New information contradicts Darwin's claim that genetic material must have been added previously (it wasn't) and you then slam me for seeing Darwin as still relevant to the discussion. But how do you reconcile Darwin's present irrelevance to the Scopes Trial? After all, it was his information that was presented in the Scopes Trial that opened the door for evolution to be taught in school in the first place. But you admit that information was erronious. So shouldn't we then have a new Scopes Trial with relevant new info?

I would just add that I do believe that God does want us to know the truth about evolution/creationism. But you have to present real information on both sides to get at it. For instance, in one case recently a public school system in Missouri (i think) just wanted to put a sticker stating Evolution is a Theory inside the cover of its science textbooks. Isn't it a theory? Federal court threw that action out with some convoluted reasoning that making that statement was somehow 'opening the door to religion in schools." Now how does that further discussion and knowledge about the subject?

So Christianity, which is based upon a faith in Christ, His life, His teachings and His principles along with those of the prophets and apostles doesn't fit your ideals of what Christianity should really be about? If you don't agree with Christ and His teachings, make up your own religion. Seems to be what your advocating.

In your opinion.

At the risk of tainting you with agreement considering how toxic I apparantly have become, that is an excellent observation. And I do not hold myself up as an example of that, but there are many good ones out there. Ignore them at your own (eternal) risk.

ID arguments in their present state are so bad that, quite frankly, it makes everyone dumber by teaching them. So why do it? I mean really, we don't teach that the Universe revolves around the Earth anymore. So we should not be teaching that the Earth is 10k to 100k years old. I would have no problem with ID if they taught theories that might actually be true, like that a higher power put the Big Bang into motion, or set the fundamental values of the Universe like the charge of the electron. But since there is no evidence for any of that, it really does not belong in a natural science class but rather in a philosophy class.

See, you can't do that. You already make baseless assumptions that are false about science/bible related things to begin with. And you don't even have to bring the Bible into it, just start with the common story of creationism and explain why you don't think that it can be literal. Contrast the two but don't gloss over the criticisms of evolution to suite your own agenda.

Catholic Church (and I love the Catholics, used to be one myself) taught the sun revolved around the earth not the Bible. And the Bible clearly states in Psalms that the earth is a 'SPHERE", so it was not supporting the flat-earth folks.

I can't do what? The story can not be literal because there are mountains and mountains of evidence to the contrary. And just because the story can not be taken literally does not invalidate the entire Bible. There are all number of things in the Bible that even fundamentalists don't follow (ban on makeup and shellfish, divorce, slavery, etc).

To address your edit:
It's dumb to contrast the two. One is backed up my mountains of scientific evidence, the other is backed up by arguments of ignorance ("I don't understand it, so it's impossible") and an old book. If you would like to share your misgivings about evolution, I would gladly talk about it.