Do Athiests have morals?

[SkepticThinker]

I can agree in theory anyway. I would have to see the evidence in each case but this just proves my point. We are not in some brave new sanitized world where new laws have made this a new moral age. We are the same self interested, devious, and petty race we have always been and to those who wish to do evil a law is irrelevant.

The evidence is that all of the states on that list signed and/or ratified the Geneva Conventions.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The original issue was your saying religious people had not been the ones who did something or other I can't remember that had to do with the moral foundations of societies and laws. The dominant religion of the US was the issue that most pertained to the original issue.

That's a good question. I heard what they were but cannot remember. Let me see if I can find out in the meantime.

Of course not. I did not say the theists turned off the lights and went home. The secular revolution was a trend not an armed invasion. Christianity is still alive and strong but our court systems and politics were infected by secularism and the trend continues as does the decline over all.

snopes.com: Religious Symbols in the U.S. National Capital

 

[SkepticThinker]

I originally asked for a line in the sand on what level of evils may occur that do not prove God does not exist or did not act. The subject was the Jews but my question was in general. The point being where ever you draw this imaginary line is arbitrary, meaningless, and is a false optimality argument.

It was in response to a comment you had made that I thought was kind of odd where you said that you believe that god stopped Hitler. Besides the fact that to me it’s quite obvious that human beings actually finally stopped Hitler, I found your comment odd because it seems to me like a completely arbitrary and somewhat immoral time to stop him – after he had already murdered 6 million people, rather than earlier on in the war.


And if this same god supposedly wrote morality right into the human heart, as you have asserted, why does our version of morality differ so much from this god’s sense of morality?

How about he comes and physically stops anyone from killing a child in the womb?

Is that ok?

He could, if he cared about it as much as you seem to. But somewhere between 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage to begin with so, who knows what this god supposedly thinks about this great design he supposedly created.

How about homosexuality? they would save more than 600 million lives,

Well, I don’t know. If this god thinks that homosexuality is such a terrible abomination, why create it in the first place? Just to make life that much harder for homosexuals?

or is it only the acts of freewill that you object to personally that God is on the hook for stopping at the moment which you specify? I am not picking on you, I am showing you how arbitrary your criteria are.

Which is kind of funny because I originally was trying to point out how arbitrary your assertion was that god killed Hitler at the particular point in time that you think he did.

Evil has a roll in the world because we mandated it's necessity.

Speak for yourself. I didn’t mandate anything of the kind.

We don't learn until apparently until the price goes way beyond any acceptable level and many of us don't even learn then. If God sent the angel of death to stop us in our tracks when we do evil none of us would make it out of grammar school.

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t carrying out any acts of evil in grammar school.

This is another version of the problem of evil, unfortunately your burden would be to show God could freely bring more people into a saving relationship to him by allowing less evil and that just is not within human capability.

So we have to suffer horribly in order to find this god? I find that repugnant.

This reminds me of an argument Chesterton made one time. If you never read him he is like a theistic Mark Twain and IMO a better word smith. He said the accusations made against Christianity are so diverse and contradictory that the faith must be the most peculiar beast ever invented. He said he finally realized it was not that Christianity was that peculiar or that it had that many faults, it was that atheists peculiarly thought that any stick was good enough to beat it with. You must find a reason in the context God comes with that causes him to fail.

Yes, you’ve mentioned Chesterton to me many, many times. Did it ever occur to him that there are just a lot of different problems with Christian dogma?


Sorry, but I think if someone thinks that god killed Hitler at some arbitrary point in time, it’s on them to explain that line of thinking.

You can't invent how many of what race can die before God could not exist, act, or care. That only degrades the credibility of atheism.

What?

 

[1robin]

The original link is in post 1029.

Why could you have not done what Monk of Reason did? I will read it soon but would not have if HE had not posted the link again.

 

[1robin]

Here is the link he was talking about.
http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/MoralHeuristicsLaw06.pdf

Thanks, I have to wait until I get off this server and then I will print it and read it soon. It must be the holy grail for evolutionists the way people keep suggesting I read it.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Thanks, I have to wait until I get off this server and then I will print it and read it soon. It must be the holy grail for evolutionists the way people keep suggesting I read it.

I actually haven't read it. I just wanted to see where the argument goes from there. I'm thinking about reading it.

 

[SkepticThinker]

In that case this is easy. I never said that even in the US most of the people with aids are homosexual though it may be rue. My point was that homosexuals create a vastly higher percentage of aids cases per person than heterosexuality................................dang it I started to violate my own rule. I am not going to debate this topic if I can ever recognize it for what it is before I begin anyway.

So all these women in Africa are contracting HIV/AIDS from homosexuals?

 

[SkepticThinker]

For you to know what you claim to know you would have to talk to every single gay person who had changed their preference. Sorry but I am done with this issue for the time being. So I will not do anything but at most give a slight comment and will not respond on this issue in this thread after that.

I don’t think these people exist. Someone doesn’t “change preference” as a result of conversion therapy. They are merely taught to suppress their true sexual orientation, to the detriment of their mental, emotional, and sometimes physical well-being.

Because I have known people who work in ministries that deal with homosexuality. I have no hard numbers but it is an easily and conservative guess.

You should know that conversion therapy is bogus and scientifically unsupported. You and these ministries appear to operate under the false assumption that homosexuality is some kind of disorder that can be, or needs to be “cured.” Here’s what the APA has to say about it:

Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts

Some could have that label applied but the ones I mean were either attracted to one or the other, not both.

How do you know this?

However in this slippery slope the proceeds from opening Pandora's box you never know what the truth is and I doubt even the people themselves do.

I personally know who and what I am attracted to. I see no reason to assume other human beings do not know these things about themselves.

Have you heard of this new three person baby trend?

A little bit, but I don’t know all that much about it. What does it have to do with homosexuality?

I don't recall what your referring to.

I’m referring to what is commonly called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” which I think is what you’re talking about when you reference your dealings with ministries.

I have already dealt with this several times.

You kind of sidestepped it several times.

How can you think sexual orientation is a choice for those who are homosexual, if you, as a heterosexual, had no choice in the matter?

Those who in their own words liked one sex for a while and then another. I only know about ten gay people, and two have claimed this, and BTW 5 of them have died very young (for whatever that is worth).

I know a bunch of heterosexuals who have died young. So what?

Yes but I don't care about benign activities, only those that produce the massive amounts of harm and costs that society must bare (is it bear or bare?).

Why shouldn’t they get to experience the same loving an fulfilling type of relationship that anyone else is apparently entitled to simply because your religion disagrees with their sexual orientation?

And I think it’s bear.

The heck we don't. Two people just got sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole where I live for heterosexual acts. I will not give details.

I’m guessing these acts you are referring to were non-consensual in nature?

What if I slightly alter my question like this:

Sure, in public we do. Behind closed doors nobody seems to care what consenting heterosexuals do. It’s apparently only when consenting[/] homosexuals get together behind closed doors that everybody starts getting all worked up.

No what?

I thought I had already told you I was done with this subject. If I could have been sure I had I would not have responded to anything in this post. Now that I know for certain I have already said I was no longer going to discuss this, that will be actualized. I am simply worn out with this topic.

You’ve told many people this, many times. And yet here we are.

 

[1robin]

Maybe the war had been over in less than six months if he had fought a real OT war.

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

It would have been, when Jackson led an attack someone was going to get annihilated even if it was his own army. However the war would have been over in 1/8th of the time. Fortunately or unfortunately he was never the supreme commander. He always was a corps commander under Lee. One time he was fighting an entire Army with only his corps and outnumbered about 5 - 1. He actually won the battle, but Lee asked him afterwards "General where is your corps?" he replied "dead on the field". Anyway don't get me started on the civil war.

The point I was making is that sometimes total war is far more benevolent than the proxy and limited wars we fight now days that disrupt everyone's lives for a decade instead of 6 months. Many moral propositions are similarly counter intuitive.

 

[1robin]

But if we can get some of those people who wish to do evil to believe in a religion and a god commanding them to behave morally and they do less evil because of that it's good for society. Even though some might do evil in the name of their god.

I can agree to that but I don't know why you said it.

 

[1robin]

Faith and party platforms are not seperate. If they were we wouldn't have "re elect god" republican bumper stickers

Back up a sec. I specifically said that the democrats not the republicans took God out of their platform. Many of the republicans took God out of what they do but he is still in their creed.

Look at it from another perspective. Can we replace them with Muslim religious leaders in the same positions rather than Christians?

This nation was not founding by 95% Muslim's and 5% theists, but by 95% Christian's and 5% theists and it was founded with a Christian soul (for lack of a better word) not a Muslim soul. It's greatest leaders have been men of Christian faith not Muslim faith, and there has never been a Muslim Chaplains office in congress. However we are so far gone it would not make any difference what we did at this point, we are probably about ten years behind Europe in being run over by Muslim's anyway thanks to secular liberals.

Should we change it with five daily chants to Mecca and make it mandatory? Or should we have a moment of silence so all those who are religious or not can do whatever it is that they feel they should do during that time?

Why are you asking this? This nation was founded by Christian's and is the most Christian nation on earth, not founded by Muhammad or led by Hezbollah. This is not a everything or nothing situation. This nation was never intended to be insulated from it's Christian roots. Read Washington or Lincoln of the foundation of the nation.

This has been beaten to death so I don't think there is any more argument to be had.

Shall we abort it, then?

Technically teen pregancy is way way way way down. It was not that long ago that women were getting married and having their first children before 16 as a normal occurrence. Now that almost never happens.

Of course pregnancy within wedlock was not a factor in the data.

I agree with this one. But I don't agree it has anything to do with religion and has far more to do with the war no drugs.

I have heard that argument and it is so complex and I am so ignorant of it I won't try and contend with it but the data corresponds with secularism not with the war on drugs as a whole, there may have been a second and later spike with the war on drugs if your theory is correct.

I haven't seen any statistics to support this. Rape is actually gone down over the years by a LOT.

I did not mention rape though I can see why you thought I did. I meant violence as part of a sexual act. I actually might be mistaken on this one, this is actually a stat which has a higher rate in the homosexual community but since it also is a function of the secular movement I threw it in.

True. Has a lot to do with socioeconomic statistics and the availability of guns. I don't actually know the history of violence in schools compared to before thought if you are going purely off of 1950's standards far fewer kids were going to school back then than now.

You could by Corsair fighter for $500 dollars in 46, a military jeep for $50 in 46, and M1s for $5 in the early 50's. Actually there are school shootings all the way back to the twenties and quite a few but since the 50's they have grown worse and worse.

This and of itself isn't morally wrong. And studies how shown that violent video games for example actually tend to create less violent people. I don't know what the statistics are on television but I find it strange that despite this we have still fewer rapes, murders and crime overall nearly every decade for the past seven decades.

This is part of the problem. Secularism no longer judges countless things wrong that have traditionally been thought so for thousands of years. BTW I was not suggesting that the violence on TV made us more violent (but saying it makes us less so is silly), I was saying it reflects our tastes and our new found lack of censorship and decency.

Did you know that 70% of adults surveyed said the modern US is morally inferior to the more traditional US of even just 30 years ago. Some of the stats are worse by many times over, gambling debts, 1 parent or no parent homes, etc....... are vastly worse. I have posted hundreds of these in here somewhere if you wanted to search for them.

 

[1robin]

Sincere thanks for a great summary.

Very well, anytime. Your sure that was sincere?

 

[icehorse]

yup sincere - it's been a long thread and i'd lost track of exactly what positions you were arguing.

 

[1robin]

Just out of curiosity, what is immoral about live dissections?

Hello ST. I just saw 9 posts come in and you made 7 of them. Slow day at work or what?

That is actually a good question. Not that part about cutting open a living person but I actually don't know what would be immoral about say watching a live operation. I have a 9 year old relative who dreams of separating conjoined twins and watches nothing but surgical shows. Let me change that (despite your missing the "live" part of the dissection) to actual murder.

And I mentioned this before, but you didn't respond ... You seem to ignore shows like the Honeymooners, where you had a husband constantly threatening to punch his wife "to the moon" and "in the kisser." Is that what you consider good, wholesome programming? Not to mention that have always been plenty of violent movies. Scarface immediately comes to mind, and that made in 1932. I think that was considered pretty violent in its time. The Outlaw was made in 1943, prominently featuring Jane Russell's curvy figure. I'm sure that was pretty risqué for it's time too. And if you think porn didn't exist, well then I don't know what to tell you. There really are no "good old days" where everything was perfect, I don't think. At least not in the way you see it.

I don't remember seeing this before. Everyone who was sane and watched that show knew it was a comical threat and not a real one, but let's pretend it was real. I am not saying TV in the 50's lacked any immorality but if let's say we applied an immorality factor of 2 on a 1 - 10 scale to TV of that period todays would be a 9. I am not even saying there are not good wholesome shows on today. But in general the moral decline is obvious to anyone without preferential blinders in TV programming. I recently have been watching the boring but wholesome show Mayberry RFD and paying attention to the worst immoral acts in every episode. In one it was littering, another I had the closed captioning on and it said "hoofers" I chalked it up as them saying hookers and was shocked, turned out they did say hoofers (it meant dancer), in another goober told a white lie it took him a whole day to admit to. I change channels to a modern series and someone's head explodes, adultery is a joke, and promiscuity is a virtue.

 

[1robin]

I gave the link to counter the point you were trying to make that it's a cut throat world where nobody cares about doing the right thing. You posted a list of people who don't care about the rules of war. So I posted a list of those that do. Mine are states/countries. Yours are small groups of terrorists.

Oh I see, anyway signing a document is not an act of obedience to what it contains. Heck terrorist nations signed most of them. I only have military experience with what is probably one of the more obedient nations to those treatise. Would you like to know how many times I actually saw us break them and I was not even in ground combat? It was 20 years ago and so I don't think Obama will come get me if I give you a few examples.

 

[1robin]

snopes.com: Religious Symbols in the U.S. National Capital

My DOD won't open that site. What did it say?

 

[1robin]

It was in response to a comment you had made that I thought was kind of odd where you said that you believe that god stopped Hitler. Besides the fact that to me it’s quite obvious that human beings actually finally stopped Hitler, I found your comment odd because it seems to me like a completely arbitrary and somewhat immoral time to stop him – after he had already murdered 6 million people, rather than earlier on in the war.

The bible is full of God using human agency to accomplish a goal, nothing odd there. I know your problem about allowing 6 million to die but it is not actually an argument. It was not like Hitler snuck up on God and God said we better stop him and Hitler outsmarted him for 4 years. What God does and or allows is a complicated issue. Many times he lets it get bad enough to prove the moral instructions that would have prevented it. It is like letting your child fall and skin their knee so they would understand that they should run with care but this is on a whole other scale. Plus there are many ways this could occur. God could have acted directly like with the miraculous advances we made in nuclear weapons (look up the creation of Oak Ridge Tennessee, it is unbelievable what they did in the time they had), or by preserving this nation or even provoking it passively at pearl harbor, or it could have been indirectly in having Christian western nations who based on Christian principles "rose up in their righteous might" as I think Roosevelt put it. I cannot give the reasons for my opinion on this in three posts much less one paragraph and I really don't know anything for a fact in this case.

And if this same god supposedly wrote morality right into the human heart, as you have asserted, why does our version of morality differ so much from this god’s sense of morality?

This is complex as well. Mankind was originally in harmony with God, his moral conscience in tune with God. However with the fall mankind was separated from God and the power and maintenance of that conscience only received external support through laws and teaching until Christ came. For every verse about our having the truth within us you will find one that shows how in our rebellion we suppress that truth. Some a lot and some not so much. It paints an exact portrait of reality. It is sort of like raising a child with your moral guidance, freewill still causes conflict here and there but imagine through no fault of your own that child at 16 rebelled and left home. That moral conscience would remain but it would eventually be consumed in her rebellion and distorted into only a shadow of it's actual foundation. Not an exact analogy but you get the drift.

He could, if he cared about it as much as you seem to. But somewhere between 15-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage to begin with so, who knows what this god supposedly thinks about this great design he supposedly created.

There is a hierarchy in what God cares about or how he applies his care. He cares so much for us that he allows freewill even when we use it to directly or indirectly mess everything up. Now eventually I believe he will step in but his intention is not to fix this broken world, it is to save people out of it, destroy it and then restore it to it's intended perfection. God does not think like you, you can't judge him like you would me or a person. We ruined his design and the process of redoing it includes our sitting in the mess we made until we have learned hopefully enough to know God was right after all and we are not replacements for him.

Well, I don’t know. If this god thinks that homosexuality is such a terrible abomination, why create it in the first place? Just to make life that much harder for homosexuals?

I don't think he did (but I do allow nature gone terribly wrong after the fall possibly could have). God does not intend to fix this current mess. He said it will eventually implode and destroy it's self. He intends to save the ones who recognize the true author of the mess and it's solution out of it. This reminds me of a true story.

A pastor had his father die some horrible death, some atheist person thought he had the drop on him I guess. He asked him how does he believe in God when God let his father die. The pastor responded Moses died, Abraham died, even Jesus died a horrific death, why would I expect my father to be immortal? Where is the precedent. What your doing is not arguing, your complaining. Your not showing X is inconsistent with God, your showing X is inconsistent with the God you would have created. I sympathize with that because I have the same complaints at times but I know that no actual inconsistency exists and am only having an emotional reaction to something I don't like.

Which is kind of funny because I originally was trying to point out how arbitrary your assertion was that god killed Hitler at the particular point in time that you think he did.

I did not claim that. I said in my opinion God is the ultimate source of Hitler's downfall. I even thought of a third possible means by which that could be true. I don't know God's schedule or specific actions. I just see in general how he might have operated based on principles or the few specific actions he revealed in the bible.

Speak for yourself. I didn’t mandate anything of the kind.

You probably would not realize if you had. Merely disbelieve mandates evil.

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t carrying out any acts of evil in grammar school.

Oh come on, I disagreed with the perfect baby argument from a while back but at least understood it, the perfect child argument just has no justification, not even a bad one saint skeptical thinker.

So we have to suffer horribly in order to find this god? I find that repugnant.

Your judgment is irrelevant if that is the case. It is simply undeniable that in general a rebel will only learn if ever when his own rebellion fails him miserably. Look at what were called Lee's miserable. They were literally sitting in the apocalypse of their own making with nothing standing to even fight for but told their commanders they would rather die than admit the mistake. I am talking about the civil war south in 65. Longstreet (Lee's warhorse general) told Author Freemantle observing from England that the south and England had one thing in common, they would rather lose the war that admit they were wrong.

Yes, you’ve mentioned Chesterton to me many, many times. Did it ever occur to him that there are just a lot of different problems with Christian dogma?

Read his famous work Orthodoxy. It is an entire book destroying that idea in detail.

Sorry, but I think if someone thinks that god killed Hitler at some arbitrary point in time, it’s on them to explain that line of thinking.

I never said I wouldn't, I am saying it is impractical. However if you want the several volume work on what's behind that opinion I have nothing but time to kill tomorrow.

What?

If you don't get it, ten forget it.

 

[SkepticThinker]

My DOD won't open that site. What did it say?

National Capital


Claim: E-mail describes religious symbols and references in U.S. capital buildings and the words of America's founders.
Status: Multiple — see below.


Origins: Although the intent of this piece is to demonstrate a government endorsement of Judeo-Christian tradition through the symbols and words used in U.S. federal buildings and the writings of America's founding fathers, much of the information it presents is inaccurate.

As you walk up the steps to the Capitol Building which houses the Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world's law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view — it is Moses and the Ten Commandments!

• The United States Capitol does not house the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court has met in its own building since 1935.
  
  
• The representations of Moses described above both present him in a context in which he is depicted as one of several historical exemplars of lawgivers, not as a religious figure. (This is why, for example, the Supreme Court of the United States in 2003 rejected appeals to overturn a decision ordering the removal of a monument to the Ten Commandments from an Alabama courthouse: they ruled that the monument did not present the Ten Commandments in a context other than as quotations of Biblical verse and was therefore deemed an unconstitutional state endorsement of religion.)
  
  The depiction referred to here is a sculpture entitled "Justice the Guardian of Liberty" by Hermon A. McNeil, which appears on the eastern pediment of the Supreme Court building. (The eastern pediment is the back of the Supreme Court building, so this sculpture is not something one would see "walking up the steps to the building which houses the Supreme Court." The front entrance is on the western side.) The sculpture was intended to be a symbolic representation of three of the Eastern civilizations from which our laws were derived, personified by the figures of three great lawgivers: Moses, Confucius, and Solon (surrounded by several allegorical figures representing a variety of legal themes):
  
  
  McNeil described the symbolism of his work thusly:
  
  Law as an element of civilization was normally and naturally derived or inherited in this country from former civilizations. The "Eastern Pediment" of the Supreme Court Building suggests therefore the treatment of such fundamental laws and precepts as are derived from the East. Moses, Confucius and Solon are chosen as representing three great civilizations and form the central group of this Pediment.
  
  The two other lawgiver figures (Confucius and Solon) are not "facing [the] one in the middle" (i.e., Moses) as claimed above — all three of the lawgivers are depicted in full frontal views, facing forward. (The allegorical figures who flank the three lawgivers are indeed facing towards the middle, but they are looking in the direction of all three men, not just Moses.) The two tablets Moses holds in his arms are blank, without inscription.
  
  As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.
  

• The doors of the Supreme Court courtroom don't literally have the "Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion." The lower portions of the two doors are engraved with a symbolic depiction, two tablets bearing the Roman numerals I through V and VI through X. As discussed in the next item, these symbols can represent something other than the Ten Commandments.
  
  1
  
  As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall right above where the Supreme Court judges sit a display of the Ten Commandments!
  

• The wall "right above where the Supreme Court judges sit" is the east wall, on which is displayed a frieze designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman. The frieze features two male figures who represent the Majesty of Law and the Power of Government, flanked on the left side by a group of figures representing Wisdom, and on the right side by a group of figures representing Justice:
  
  
  In a letter on file in the archives of the Supreme Court, Adolph Weinman, the designer of this frieze, states that the tablet visible between the two central male figures, engraved with the Roman numerals I through X, represents not the Ten Commandments but the first "ten amendments to the Constitution known as the 'Bill of Rights.'"
  
  2
  
  
• The friezes which adorn the north and south walls of the courtroom in the Supreme Court building (also designed by Adolph Weinman) depict a procession of 18 great lawgivers: Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius and Octavian (south wall); Justinian, Mohammed, Charlemagne, King John, Louis IX, Hugo Grotius, Sir William Blackstone, John Marshall and Napoleon (north wall):
  
  
  
  According to the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court of the United States, these figures were selected as a representation of secular law:
  
  Weinman's training emphasized a correlation between the sculptural subject and the function of the building and, because of this, [architect Cass] Gilbert relied on him to choose the subjects and figures that best reflected the function of the Supreme Court building. Faithful to classical sources, Weinman designed for the Courtroom friezes a procession of "great lawgivers of history," from many civilizations, to portray the development of secular law.
  
  Moses is not given any special emphasis in this depiction: his figure is not larger than the others, nor does it appear in a dominant position. Also, the writing on the tablet carried by Moses in this frieze includes portions of commandments 6 through 10 (in Hebrew), specifically chosen because they are not inherently religious. (Commandments 6 through 10 proscribe murder, adultery, theft, perjury, and covetousness.)
  
  James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
  

• Actually, this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison and is completely contradictory to his character as a strong proponent of the separation of church and state.
  
  Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians ... not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
  

• Another spurious quotation. These words appear nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of Patrick Henry.
  
  They attached to Henry via an April 1956 article that appeared in The Virginian (reprinted in September 1956 in The American Mercury) in which a snippet from his will was followed by comments penned by the article's author. Those comments included the "founded by Christians" statement now mistakenly attributed to Henry.
  
  Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher ... whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.
  

• Congress has indeed retained paid (Christian) chaplains since 1789 (not 1777) to open sessions with prayer and to provide spiritual guidance to members and their staffs upon request. That practice was strongly opposed by James Madison:
  
  "The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion," Madison wrote. "The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation?"
  
  Continued Madison, "[If] it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents should discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expense."
  
  Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the established orthodox churches in the colonies.
  

• The diverse beliefs and religiosity of America's founding fathers is a complex subject, one which cannot be so neatly encapsulated by an (inadequately substantiated) statement such as the one quoted above. (See, for example, this critique of the above-quoted statement and similar material.)
  
  Thomas Jefferson worried about that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of interpreting the law would begin making law ... an oligarchy ... the rule of few over many ...
  

• Yes, Thomas Jefferson was concerned about courts overstepping their authority and making (rather than interpreting) law, as was James Madison, who said: "As the courts are generally the last in making the decision, it results to them, by refusing or not refusing to execute a law, to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper."
  
  However, this issue really has nothing to do with the subject at hand (the endorsement of Judeo-Christian tradition by the federal government), other than in the tangential sense that some people feel one of the areas in which U.S. courts have overstepped their bounds is the body of decisions prohibiting the use or display of religious symbols and references in state-operated institutions.
  
  The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said, "Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers."
  

• John Jay, one of the framers of the Constitution, was appointed by George Washington in 1789 to be the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (and later served two terms as governor of New York). He wrote, in a private letter (1816) to Pennsylvania House of Representatives member John Murray:
  
  It certainly is very desirable that a pacific disposition should prevail among all nations. The most effectual way of producing it is by extending the prevalence and influence of the gospel. Real Christians will abstain from violating the rights of others, and therefore will not provoke war.
  
  Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

snopes.com: Religious Symbols in the U.S. National Capital

It also includes some pictures of the parts of the building in question, but I can't seem to post those.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Oops, I forgot about this. The day I tried to look it up my DOD server's selective firewall barred any type of search. I will try again.

Hunted around, and can only find reference to the following;
Commandments 6-10 are shown on a carved tablet carried by Moses.
There are also carvings on the door of the Supreme Court showing a tablet with numbers I through X in Roman Numerals. Some see these as depicting the Commandments. However, this is repeated on a frieze within the court room, and the designer of that frieze (Adolph Weinman) claimed it represented NOT the commandments, but instead the Bill of Rights. So effectively, you're left with commandments 6-10 near as I can tell.
Various sources, but Snopes was pretty handy on this.

That is what I am saying. The secular revolution began in the late 50's. It of course did not begin strong and so theists did have some political successes early on but the balance of power has shifted these days. All kinds of laws restricting and preventing even the exercise of faith in setting it is appropriate to has taken place, morality has shifted in a horrific direction, and politics has all but given up on faith (Last election the democrats took God out of their platform all together).

Understand your opinion, simply don't agree with it. There have been 'secular revolutions' before. Indeed, it would be quite possible to view the Enlightenment itself as a secular revolution, and this greatly informed the very foundation of your nation. Secular doesn't equate to atheism.
As for God not being in politics...well, I suspect we'll run into the problem of 'No True Scotsman'. When an open atheist is elected, that may have some credence. When senior government officials of the country can say things like this;

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

...and barely even raise an eyebrow, or potentially even WIN votes, it has none.

I agree but don't see the relevance. Now we are becoming the Godless commies anyway.

I see little evidence of that.

Subtract from that the presence of faith in party platforms, the abolishment of congressional chaplains, the rules restricting even mentioning Christ in military prayers, the moments of silence instead of actual prayer in public settings, the rise of abortion, the rise of teen pregnancy, drug abuse, sexual violence, violence in schools, violence and sex on TV, etc.......

Too many issues to deal with there, so here's a quick pass comment on each. Happy to explore any in detail, but exploring all in detail would be derailing.

FAITH IN PARTY PLATFORMS - The 2012 Democrat one included the following;

"Faith has always been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history," it says. "We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. ...People of faith and religious organizations do amazing work in communities across this country and the world, and we believe in lifting up and valuing that good work, and finding ways to support it where possible."

CONGRESSIONAL CHAPLAINS
Sorry, I'm not across the details of this. To my knowledge, attempts to remove this as a violation of Church and State have been unsuccessfully going on since the 1850's. Despite that, Congress commences with a prayer. The Chaplain apparently doesn't have to be Christian (but invariably is) and when a guest chaplain spoke a Hindu prayer, they were howled down, not by secularists, not be atheists, but by Christians.

MENTION OF CHRIST IN MILITARY PRAYERS
The very concept of mandatory prayer in the military is not a great place to dig in your flag, so to speak. There are a thousand examples of mandatory prayer, no matter what the official rules say. You'd have to be more specific in terms of what you see as a problem here, honestly.

MOMENTS OF SILENCE
Question for you. Why does the Christian prayer need to be spoken out loud? What is it about speaking it aloud that you see as important? It's not to do with your relationship with God.

ABORTION - Meh, I'll leave this. It's not going to lead anywhere, simply do to our difference of opinion.

DRUG ABUSE - It's a major problem. It's a societal problem, but unless you can see a correlation between religiousness and drug use that I can't, I don't see the point you're making.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE - C'mon now. Are you really going to argue that sexual violence is worse now, and that this is linked to secularism? This may fly if you completely ignore the claimed religious affiliations of perpetrators, and exclude things like spousal rape.

VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS - School violence is a major issue. No doubt.

VIOLENCE AND SEX ON TV - Meh...I'm less worried by that than by linking it to any sort of impact, but I'll deal with that more in your point below;

If you want to see the greatest theological and moral barometer in history look at TV programming from the 50's compared with today. I don't think anything beyond XXX porn and live dissections is not allowed on today's TV programming. We went from leave it to beaver to sex and the city, from the Andy Griffith show to the Texas chain saw massacre, etc..... I need no argument beyond two TV guides.

Interesting. I don't see television as a particularly accurate representation of the world it lives in, honestly.
Do you think Leave it to Beaver accurately represented society? Compare Stanley Fafara's life to his character...

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Back up a sec. I specifically said that the democrats not the republicans took God out of their platform. Many of the republicans took God out of what they do but he is still in their creed.

Then I misread. My bad

This nation was not founding by 95% Muslim's and 5% theists, but by 95% Christian's and 5% theists and it was founded with a Christian soul (for lack of a better word) not a Muslim soul. It's greatest leaders have been men of Christian faith not Muslim faith, and there has never been a Muslim Chaplains office in congress. However we are so far gone it would not make any difference what we did at this point, we are probably about ten years behind Europe in being run over by Muslim's anyway thanks to secular liberals.

Why are you asking this? This nation was founded by Christian's and is the most Christian nation on earth, not founded by Muhammad or led by Hezbollah. This is not a everything or nothing situation. This nation was never intended to be insulated from it's Christian roots. Read Washington or Lincoln of the foundation of the nation.

It doesn't matter if we were founded by Christians or not. I was just showing you how it feels from my persepctive. Having an actively religious government and leaders acting for religion would be the same for Christianity or Islam for me. Just as you would not be okay with Islam I am not okay with Christianity having that kind of power over my government. And while we are on the topic of the founding fathers it is clear that they wanted a secular nation. Many were deists and several more to use the term "not terribly religious".

Of course pregnancy within wedlock was not a factor in the data.

Then it skews it. It seems that the higher rate of teen pregnancy is more to the fact that we are asking our youth to belay their bodily needs several years beyond the threshold that was kept in the past. Asking teenagers not to have sex is like asking a fish not to swim. The only thing that has any statistical data on how to reduce teen pregnancy is proper sexual education and access to birth control.

I did not mention rape though I can see why you thought I did. I meant violence as part of a sexual act. I actually might be mistaken on this one, this is actually a stat which has a higher rate in the homosexual community but since it also is a function of the secular movement I threw it in.

Sexual violence is not a function of the secular movement. You may associate it with the secular movement but that would only pull us back into the homosexual debate which I think we have agreed would be a pointless battle.

You could by Corsair fighter for $500 dollars in 46, a military jeep for $50 in 46, and M1s for $5 in the early 50's. Actually there are school shootings all the way back to the twenties and quite a few but since the 50's they have grown worse and worse.

I agree that this is a troubling problem. I just don't think that it has as much to do with secularization as you think.

This is part of the problem. Secularism no longer judges countless things wrong that have traditionally been thought so for thousands of years. BTW I was not suggesting that the violence on TV made us more violent (but saying it makes us less so is silly), I was saying it reflects our tastes and our new found lack of censorship and decency.

Did you know that 70% of adults surveyed said the modern US is morally inferior to the more traditional US of even just 30 years ago. Some of the stats are worse by many times over, gambling debts, 1 parent or no parent homes, etc....... are vastly worse. I have posted hundreds of these in here somewhere if you wanted to search for them.

I am familiar with the surveys. Surveys are not good in terms of judging the past and present. There are many psychological and sociological phenomenon that can shift the personal view. The first is that there has been massive changes over the years and anyone who was old enough to know of the morality 30 years ago would feel as thought it has changed to an unhealthy degree. However that doesn't make their perspective correct. It simply means that it is different than the way it was. It doesn't have to be worse and it could even be better but their own subjective experiences and selective memories would have shifted the favor in an almost unbeatable way to the past. So for the elder folk they are unreliable as a measuring stick of the change in morality.

The second is this idea that life was so much better before. The grass is greener on the other side effect. There is very little data to suggest that life was better or in any way more moral in days gone by compared to now.

What we do have an argument for is that there is a difference in "traditional" moral views and the more modern moral views. This will always be apparent but more so in times of drastic change. For example the 60's and early 70's changed far more than what has changed now. We have the Civil Rights movement, new drug experimentation, new clothing, rise of feminism, anti-war propaganda, anti-American propaganda for the first time, draft dodgers, introduction to life information from television and radio from far far away, and finally the subsequent backlashes against all of these movements. But I wouldn't say that the 70's were less moral than the 40's. What was considered moral changed but I wouldn't say it was worse.