CoffeeSaint
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So's this:doughgirl said:James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution of the United States, had this to say: "We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."
Self explanitory..........
Amendment I
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Allah. Jehovah. Zeus. Odin. It could refer to any deity, or none. Actually, since he refers to "a Superintending providence," I'll go with that, and that refers to God, according to my dictionary. But you know what? I say the Pledge of Allegiance in my classroom every week. When someone sneezes, I often say "God bless you." When I eat dinner with a religious person, I say Grace; I have even said the Hebrew blessing, when I have eaten at Jews' houses. None of these things necessarily prove I have faith, nor that any of my decisions or policies are based on someone else's definitions of my faith.doughgirl said:And from what I have read over half the Declaration’s signers had some sort of divinity school training, and while John Adams was the most overtly pious, even the non-believers among the founders, such as Benjamin Franklin, turned to God. During the Constitutional Convention, it was Franklin who not only offered a prayer but who added:
"Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance."
Who does he mean by HIS?
Well, yes, because the Founding Fathers believed in this:doughgirl said:Patrick Henry, in 1776, stated, “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. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here.”
I realize he was not a signer but do you think he could have gotten away with saying something like this if the signers had not been Christian?
Would anyone have gotten away with it?
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
All right; since I am an atheist, I find it very hard to take arguments like this seriously, so please try to bear with me if my tone slips into nasty. I am not trying to dismiss you out of hand.doughgirl said:If our goal is to keep religion from dictating the moral principles and laws of our country, we are hundreds of years too late. Every significant document that defines the values of the United States-including the DEclaration, the Constitution and The Bill of Rights-leans heavily on a belief in God and the moral authority of the Bible. And the Bible recognizes a fetus as a creation of God. The Bible is against abortion and I am sure that the signers were against abortion as well. Let me elaborate further.........
CAring for human LIFE is why we have government in the first place. That is the first and only legitimate reason for our government. Our forefathers said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." They're saying this is a no-brainer, its self evident, but just so nobody misses it, we'll write it down......"we are endowed by our Creator"-not by the Bush Administration, not by the courts-but by our creator with inalienable right to life." The freedoms in the Bill of Rights are NOT given to us by the Founding Fathers or by the Consititution. they are given by God. And if you would notice..........which right is listed first? The right that makes all others possible. And CoffeeSaint...it isn't Liberty, its the "inalienable right to LIFE". As I have said before.........without this first right......the others do not matter.
To secure these rights, governments are instituted. To protect human life-to secure our inalienable right to life is why government exists. We who are pro-life hold that truth to be self-evident. The problem is....not everyone does.
I would agree that most of the Founding Fathers were Christians, and had Christian morals. I would agree that many of the beliefs they instilled into the founding documents of this country were Christian in origin. However, since there are innumerable different sects of Christianity, with innumerable different beliefs and different interpretations of Scritpture and Christian dogma, we can NOT assume that the Founding Fathers would have agreed with any particular tenet of any particular Christian faith. All we have to go by is what they wrote. If they had truly wanted this nation to follow the Ten Commandments, they would have written those laws specifically into the Constitution; they did not, hence they did not want that.
That being said, did the Founding Fathers agree that the Right to Life overrode all other rights? In fact, did they agree that our government should hold that the right to life was inalienable, and that it trumped all other rights, in all situations? They did not. becasue the Constitution, the single, overriding document, the Alpha and Omega of United States laws, does not mention that right. It does not grant the inalienable right to life. It does not say that that right is the only one that truly matters. and it does not say that fetuses are granted the status of personhood, and are thus protected by the laws of the Constitution.
It doesn't matter what beliefs or strongly-held doctrines we impute to the founding Fathers; the documents they left behind are the final answer, not their intentions. Their intentions aid us in interpreting those documents, and that is all; their intentions do not override the wording of the documents --- in other words, even if they did think abortion the greatest crime of all, they WROTE that the woman has the right to privacy, so that one wins. As I said before in this thread, while it IS reasonable to assume that the Founding Fathers would have seen a fetus as a person deserving of the Constitution's protections, it is also reasonable to assume that they did NOT see a fetus that way. Therefore, there is no clear answer to this question; it is one we must work out for ourselves.