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God is good.

mark14

Council Member
I believe God, or as our nations founders qualified in the Declaration of Independence, "Nature's God", is what is good for nature and man. We, along with all the rest in existence, are products of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and that Enlightenment notion is what our nation is based on. You can argue if your God exists in fact but the idea of God exists as surely as the idea of hope. While we can argue if the hope or God that you hold is real of not the existence of the concepts seems plain enough. You can also argue your God intercedes directly in the affairs of people or through the choices we make and the laws of nature but the direct interventionalist have a hard case to prove and besides where is your personal responsibility? I think our founders accepted the idea of a God with a place in peoples lives and hoped for it to be something good that free people can do what they want but felt most religious differences were mainly trappings which made them wary enough to give religions no place in our government.
 

Jen

Senator
If we lose "hope" we lose everything.
And the founding fathers were wise to see that God is in our government, but religions are not. Modern generations (since the 1960's if not before) have confused what the founding fathers were doing / thinking. Modernists seek to take God out of our government along with religions. To do that will be to ruin everything that this country has been and could be. ... not because God will punish us, but because the God-given feeling of compassion and love for others, our honorable choices, and the morality of our hearts will be gone.
 

gigi

Mayor
This morning I was reading an article by Kristen Walker. The part of it below seems to speak to this discussion.

Would be curious what you all think.

From the article:


"Let’s do some Criminal Justice 101, shall we? There are two types of laws: malum in se and malum prohibitum. Malum in se is a Latin phrase meaning “wrong in itself.” Most of us feel that murder is wrong, therefore there is a law against it. Malum prohibitum means something is wrong because it is prohibited. For example: in the United States we have to drive on the right side of the road, not because driving on the left is inherently evil (I’m lookin’ at you, England!) but because good order meant we had to pick one side. Because we’ve picked right, if you drive on the left, you’re gonna get stopped. Try it, you’ll see.**

Malum in se laws are based on morality. Our laws here in the U.S. grew out of English Common Law, which in turn was based on Judeo-Christian morality. Now, old-timey English lawmakers did not sit around and go, “Hmmm, what should we base our laws on?” And then come up with the Bible because it had an attractive leather cover. Judeo-Christian morality was a part of the culture since the 7th century, and has in fact formed Western culture, culminating most recently in our humble little former colony, the United States.

Detractors will say English Common Law formed in the 5th century, before Christianity took hold in Britain. But the law as we know it didn’t stop forming then. Christian men such as Henry de Bracton in the 13th century in England and Sir William Blackstone in the 18th century in the United States have had a tremendous impact on creating the laws we know today.

Whether you like it or not, the culture that created you is a Judeo-Christian culture. All the things you think are right and wrong were formed by Judeo-Christian principles. Why do you think it’s wrong to have slaves? Western culture is just like most other civilizations in that it engaged in slavery, but unique in that it is solely responsible for ridding the world of it. What about having a harem of concubines? That was common in pre-Christian cultures, not so much in the West today. Sacrificing virgins? No big deal to the pagans, but frowned upon in our time.

The idea of loving people more than ourselves, sacrificing for the poor, turning the other cheek… these ideas were so revolutionary to the Roman world in which Christianity was born that they were scandalous. The tenets of Christianity made Christians so different they were almost universally hated. They were persecuted and killed all over the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Constantine had a vision. But I digress.

So those who cry that morals have no place in public policy are a little too late. Judeo-Christian morals created our public policy, created our culture, were the basis for our founding documents, guided the formation of our nation through the beliefs of our founders, and make up the fabric of our society.

Recently, a postmodern deconstructionist tendency to wipe American law clean of “traditional” morality has created not a sparkling tabula rasa, but a libertine morass. You don’t have to be a Jew or Christian to recognize there is such a thing as right and wrong. Lately, it seems like the only evil people will recognize is believing in evil."
 

fairsheet

Senator
This morning I was reading an article by Kristen Walker. The part of it below seems to speak to this discussion.

Would be curious what you all think.

From the article:



"Let’s do some Criminal Justice 101, shall we? There are two types of laws: malum in se and malum prohibitum. Malum in se is a Latin phrase meaning “wrong in itself.” Most of us feel that murder is wrong, therefore there is a law against it. Malum prohibitum means something is wrong because it is prohibited. For example: in the United States we have to drive on the right side of the road, not because driving on the left is inherently evil (I’m lookin’ at you, England!) but because good order meant we had to pick one side. Because we’ve picked right, if you drive on the left, you’re gonna get stopped. Try it, you’ll see.**

Malum in se laws are based on morality. Our laws here in the U.S. grew out of English Common Law, which in turn was based on Judeo-Christian morality. Now, old-timey English lawmakers did not sit around and go, “Hmmm, what should we base our laws on?” And then come up with the Bible because it had an attractive leather cover. Judeo-Christian morality was a part of the culture since the 7th century, and has in fact formed Western culture, culminating most recently in our humble little former colony, the United States.

Detractors will say English Common Law formed in the 5th century, before Christianity took hold in Britain. But the law as we know it didn’t stop forming then. Christian men such as Henry de Bracton in the 13th century in England and Sir William Blackstone in the 18th century in the United States have had a tremendous impact on creating the laws we know today.

Whether you like it or not, the culture that created you is a Judeo-Christian culture. All the things you think are right and wrong were formed by Judeo-Christian principles. Why do you think it’s wrong to have slaves? Western culture is just like most other civilizations in that it engaged in slavery, but unique in that it is solely responsible for ridding the world of it. What about having a harem of concubines? That was common in pre-Christian cultures, not so much in the West today. Sacrificing virgins? No big deal to the pagans, but frowned upon in our time.

The idea of loving people more than ourselves, sacrificing for the poor, turning the other cheek… these ideas were so revolutionary to the Roman world in which Christianity was born that they were scandalous. The tenets of Christianity made Christians so different they were almost universally hated. They were persecuted and killed all over the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Constantine had a vision. But I digress.

So those who cry that morals have no place in public policy are a little too late. Judeo-Christian morals created our public policy, created our culture, were the basis for our founding documents, guided the formation of our nation through the beliefs of our founders, and make up the fabric of our society.

Recently, a postmodern deconstructionist tendency to wipe American law clean of “traditional” morality has created not a sparkling tabula rasa, but a libertine morass. You don’t have to be a Jew or Christian to recognize there is such a thing as right and wrong. Lately, it seems like the only evil people will recognize is believing in evil."
Gigi...you make a rather massive leap, whithout making any effort to justify it. You suggest a distinction between those things that we ALL know to be wrong (murder) and those things that we've traditionally acknowledged to be wrong (driving on the wrong side of the road)...both of which are all well and good. This absolutely DOES explain and drive the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our western culture.

But then...you don't close the loop..and instead, in the several blank spaces between one paragraph and the next, you seem to suggest that the side of the road we drive on, is the sort of thing that we ALL know to be wrong?
 

mark14

Council Member
gigi,

I think you are making the common assumption that things are true because they are in the Bible instead of that they are in the Bible because they are true.
 

mark14

Council Member
If we lose "hope" we lose everything.
And the founding fathers were wise to see that God is in our government, but religions are not. Modern generations (since the 1960's if not before) have confused what the founding fathers were doing / thinking. Modernists seek to take God out of our government along with religions. To do that will be to ruin everything that this country has been and could be. ... not because God will punish us, but because the God-given feeling of compassion and love for others, our honorable choices, and the morality of our hearts will be gone.
Good thoughts. Some try to take the God out while others try to put the religion in.

Amen sister.

PS, forgive me my occasional negativity toward you.
 

GordonGecko

President
mark, before you completely agree with Jen's point...can you answer my question?


What is the "law of the land" in this country?.....and how many mentions of "God" are there in it?
 

gigi

Mayor
fairsheet, I didn't write the article. I read it, then came over here a bit later, and one seemed to speak to the other....at least in my mind. So I wanted to know what you all think and how and if it fits in.

To me it does. But I was really more looking for opinions.
 

mark14

Council Member
mark, before you completely agree with Jen's point...can you answer my question?


What is the "law of the land" in this country?.....and how many mentions of "God" are there in it?
I'm not sure I understand your point. What Jen wrote was reasonable but I wanted to clarify that I think she might have overemphasize that "Modernists seek to take God out of our government along with religions" without noting that fundamentalist and pseudo-orignalist want even more to put organized religion into our government which is at least as much of threat.

A nation must have some kind of religion to bind it together and it doesn't have to be a monolithic one although I usually say mine is the civil religion of the United States of America as expressed in its sacred documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. Jens might be different but I'm happy to share what common values I hold with everyone.

I consider the Declaration of Independence to be the very first law of our land and believe it was an act of absolute genius (or divine inspiration if you prefer) to clarify for all time that whenever the term God were to come up in regards to future government language, as they knew it inevitably would, that they unequivocally thought in terms of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" not organized religion. I have no trouble with using the word God, just the narrow definitions associated too often with it. Certainly even an atheist can believe in Nature, perhaps even more than most do.
 

RedCloud

Mayor
I'm not sure I understand your point. What Jen wrote was reasonable but I wanted to clarify that I think she might have overemphasize that "Modernists seek to take God out of our government along with religions" without noting that fundamentalist and pseudo-orignalist want even more to put organized religion into our government which is at least as much of threat.

A nation must have some kind of religion to bind it together and it doesn't have to be a monolithic one although I usually say mine is the civil religion of the United States of America as expressed in its sacred documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. Jens might be different but I'm happy to share what common values I hold with everyone.

I consider the Declaration of Independence to be the very first law of our land and believe it was an act of absolute genius (or divine inspiration if you prefer) to clarify for all time that whenever the term God were to come up in regards to future government language, as they knew it inevitably would, that they unequivocally thought in terms of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" not organized religion. I have no trouble with using the word God, just the narrow definitions associated too often with it. Certainly even an atheist can believe in Nature, perhaps even more than most do.
Mark, as an Atheist I certainly believe in Nature. I just don't believe there is a supernatural hand, finger, fist guiding it.
 

fairsheet

Senator
fairsheet, I didn't write the article. I read it, then came over here a bit later, and one seemed to speak to the other....at least in my mind. So I wanted to know what you all think and how and if it fits in.

To me it does. But I was really more looking for opinions.
Gigi - I liked the piece and believe it or not, I wasn't trying to "gotcha" you. I was really counting on you to actually close the loop I alluded to!
 
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