CommentsDisplaying sickoftalking's 10 most recent comments.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 5:32pm

  In reply to lbk.

  @rationalman:

  What are you talking about? I’m just making a point. Jefferson and others like him rejected miracles that contradicted natural laws, and also believed that the morals in religion could also be discovered through reason. That’s what made them deists. Most deists were still pretty religious and talked in Christian language.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 2:33pm

  In reply to Individualism.

  @macpappy:

  I would disagree with you both to some degree. The whole concept of “natural law” used by Locke goes back to Hobbes which goes back to Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine; and is definitely, inherently influenced by a Christian view of the world. The ancient Greeks and Romans had no concept of natural law, Rome was based on a founding mythos about Romulus and Remus. But I would distinguish the “Christian world view / Christian natural philosophy / Christian ethics” from Christian doctrine and would not claim that Biblical law is encoded in the Constitution.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 2:16pm

  In reply to lbk.

  @rationalman:

  Putting aside the academic definitions you gave, the people who called themselves “deists” didn’t believe in miracles, and tried to refute the occurence of miracles, but they still believed in divine Providence and grace. At a time in which alchemy was losing favor to modern chemistry, they were likewise trying to “modernize” their religion and bring it in line with a modern view of the world, not abandon it.

  Atheists always misinterpret what deists were about, religious people shouldn’t make the same mistake.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 1:55pm

  In reply to lbk.

  @soybomb:

  Yea and actually when speaking in a religious context people would more often refer to “Christ”, not “Jesus.“ When Jefferson addresses him as ”Jesus of Nazareth” its a dead giveaway that he’s talking about the historical person rather than Jesus in a theological sense.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 1:15pm

  In reply to sickoftalking.

  @soybomb:

  Oh I think they definitely were Christians, looked at the world through a Christian perspective… the point I’m making is more that people should be careful about looking at the past through the eyes of the present… using a sculpture of Moses then wouldn’t be seen as making a highly religious statement. They wanted to put a figure of a wise “lawgiver” on the building and Moses represented to them a figure of lawgiver. And its as simple as that.

  Something like that more of a religious statement today just because religion is more controversial today and people who would use religious symbolism would try to make a point with it. Christian values, symbols, figures, were just uncontroversial at the time so people used them with less of a motive.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 12:55pm

  In reply to lbk.

  @cofemale:

  The quotes don’t contradict the idea they were deists. For Jefferson: a mistake atheists commonly make is to argue that deists weren’t Christians, but they were — they preferred Christian doctrine to other religions and attended church regularly, but interpreted it a little differently. For Franklin: his first quote is consistent with his belief in Providence, which he mentions in his second quote. Belief in providence and belief in miracles are two different things.

• ‘Moses Shaped America’: Despite the Naysayers…America Really Is a Judeo-Christian Nation

  May 20, 2012 at 12:16pm

  There’s a lot of “iffy” analysis here. There is a sculpture of Moses, but there were also sculptures and paintings of Greco-Roman mythological figures. “Lady Liberty” for example is based on the Roman goddess Libertas and “Lady Justice” based on Justitia. Art around that time was mainly allegorical and drew heavily from both pagan and Christian mythology, as well as history. While today there would be a lot of protest by the secular left around a sculpture of Moses on a building, around that time it wasn’t seen as any different than putting a pagan allegorical figure on a building.

  I agree with the abstract proposition that the Enlightenment and thus the American experiment was shaped by a Christian world view, but I think some people are simplifying it too much to imply something that wasn’t true and leaving out a lot of context.

• Are Atheists More Inclined to Help Their Fellow Man Than Religious People?

  May 1, 2012 at 6:26pm

  That’s not a bad thing. Christian philosophy was in part shaped by stoicism, which would argue that one shouldn’t be primarily guided by emotion. “Compassion” also doesn’t only refer to an emotion, but also an attitude, to act compassionate towards others doesn’t necessarily mean you feel compassion. Of course Christians aren’t expected to be bloodless, but that’s another issue.

  And why aren’t you using the results to challenge atheists, who often consider themselves more rational than religious people, and claim religious people are guided by all sorts of fears of punishment and by mental weakness?

• Gay Republican Presidential Candidate Fred Karger Accuses Pro-Marriage Activist of Being Secretly Divorced

  April 13, 2012 at 9:32pm

  In reply to YoshiFD3S.

  @Bruce:

  There are plenty of scientific studies that could be used to back up the idea that sexuality is not genetic. Animal test studies have shown, for instance, that same-sex intercourse versus male-female intercourse is much more frequent when there is overpopulation, or when the animals are removed from their natural environment.

  Ultimately its not an issue that can be proven by data-driven studies. Even if some study were to show biology influenced sexuality, the next question is, how? People’s personalities evolve over their lifetimes; sexuality is just merely one component to personality; people are not born with concepts of what gender is in their head, or what sexual organs are; so any biological influences must work by influencing a persons psychological makeup. If that’s how the biological influences work, they really aren’t really genetic. They act just like any other environmental influence.

  Its not clear that animals even have such a thing as “sexuality” as most people understand it, btw. Animals do sexual acts, but there isn’t a clear line between dominant-submissive social behavior and sexuality. There isn’t always in people either. That’s why sometimes, peoples sexuality changes.

  At any rate, I‘m not sure why you’re so interested in insisting that people who insist its not genetic are ignorant — despite scientific proof — if you really have a “live and let live” point of view. There are plenty of people who believe its not genetic bu

• Miley Cyrus Incites Rage After Tweeting About ‘Forget Jesus’ Photo

  March 8, 2012 at 10:21pm

  In reply to APD847.

  @DEAVONREYE:

  A cow **** on the ground to fertilize your food, and some of the atoms in your food came from ****, and now that **** is now a part of you. So you can say, a cow **** so you could live. And your hand is made of **** atoms. Its important to understand how the universe is all connected, but saying your atoms came from stars isn’t really any more poetic than your atoms came from ****… but its a staple of a kind of argument that deifies the cosmos, Carl Sagan