Christians don't fly planes into buildings or Strap bombs to their chests.

that's just because they're upset that they didn't think of it first. but hey, at least they can still claim the inquisition and usage of iron maidens as their own.

lol, let's not get uncivilized or stereotypical here.

not true. remember the boy in miami that took off with the plane and crashed it into the sky scraper?? i'm pretty sure he was christian :D

anyway, i'm not gonna judge christians upon the actions of the kid and i hope you dont do that to other religions either.

Search the Internet for abortion clinic bombings.

Apparently you haven't heard anything about why Ireland is being really fucked over right now. I concede, there are extremists, they're everywhere, not just in one particular religion, but in all of them. All the people that I have met that have been of non-Jewish Middle Eastern descent have been really cool, I'm not going to automatically brand every Arab that I see as a terrorist, it's not right. Back to the issue at hand however. Now if these tablets had just the Roman Numerals I-X on them, would you object as much? Or how about if it weren't so large? I don't know, you guys know that I don't have a problem with this that's my point of view. Now this is a question for 2wolves, I hope you were being facetious about that bulldozer track grease comment, because those people are using their Constitutional right to peacefully protest something that they don't like, much like the lunch counter sit ins back when segregation was still going on, much like Rosa Parks sitting at the front of the bus. Why is that extremism? It's not like these people are threatening to blow something up if they remove the monument, they're just sitting there and keeping a watch.

Archer don't be a fool! They are all obviously bible-bumping extremists...

The people I have heard claim that the content is much less important than the reasons the judge stated as his basis for erecting the monument: to indicate that the creator's law is above man's law.

That is a perfectly fine belief for one to personally possess. It does not, however, square with our country's essential belief that we ought to governed by laws and not men--including human interpretation of divinely bestowed knowledge.

In this country, at least, our law is supreme--we don't kowtow to any other source of regulation, not even international law if the two collide. This debate wouldn't even be occurring if he had stuck a big, brass cast of his head on a pedestal--yet, here we are arguing over whether a judge can erect monuments in public arenas, especially along with the explicitly stated intent to place the very purpose of the building in which it stands into a subordinate position (sorry, that turned into a convaluted sentence: the monument has been placed in a courthouse to proclaim its dominance over the very principles of the courthouse).

To me, that is very bizarre.

Well..... I wouldn't start a Crusade to run over X-tian fundamentalists, nor a Jihad to do the same to Islamic hyper-believers but in my personal experience and reflecting on some of history's dirtiest moments religion is a mental disorder. Jim Jones, the odd version of Buddhaism found in Nippon, Jehova's Witlesses, the current crop of x-tian "End Timers," killing most of the heathens in North - South - Central America, and so on and so on and so on and so on.

2Wolves

Religion Belongs in church. Not in Government building for all the people.

:lol: Right!

I'm itching myself right now. :D

Try Ireland......
and various other incidents of Christian sponsored massacres. The Inquisition comes to mind.... as do the crusades.....

Putting the technical legality of the presence of the monument aside for a moment, the judge's justification for its placement has little to do with historical accuracy. He claims the Constitution is based on Biblical beliefs and based on the Christain faith of the Founders. This is absolutely not the case. It's based on French and English philosophy, among other secular inspirations, with no references to religion to be found.

Now, placement of a Ten Commandments monument in a public building is tacit promotion of a specific religion, and at the very least, it's confusing. I would rather let it stay--in addition to Hammurabi's Code, and whatever the equivalents are in the Q'uran, Talmud, Book of the Dead, and I Ching.

I though we had fredom of religion not from religion. Also if you get put on the stand don't your still swear on a bible?

No, you don't still swear on a bible--at least, not in Oregon or California.

what about the oath?? "may god help me" or something like that?

If you were required to make a refference to god then it would clearly be promoting a specific religion, wouldn't it ?
"so help me God" and the like must be optional. Why should muslims or atheists have to take an oath to God. It wouldn't mean anything and would only offend.

Too much Law and Order ;).

It might differ by judge but in all the cases I've had to testify I only had to state "I affirm to tell the truth."

Besides atheists and other people, (Muslims believe in the same deity, BTW :) ), Jehovah's Witness and various other denominations believe swearing oaths are against the Bible (Matthew 5:33-37) and have successfully established a legal right for one to refuse to swear in. That is, one can choose to affirm rather than swear.

Wrong because America was founded as a Theist nation, not claiming feality(sp?) to any one particular God...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

the declaration of independence is not the constitution.

So? The constitution says you have freedom of religion not from it. And Besides the Declaration is at the very foundation of this country, it represents (or at least did at one point and time) everything this country stands for, and the principles it was founded on.

According to the first set of Swedish laws, you could kill buskers and people from the county of Dalarna without any penalty.

Wish we'd kept those.

Ok... I thing I see what you are trying to say, but frankly that is stupid. First you said the Declaration was not the constitution, I agree'd for the reasons posted above. Now you are saying Swedish law at one time allowed murder? How does that have anything to do with what we are talking about? The constitution isn't law, its rights guarenteed to American citizens, furthermore like stated several times in this post the constitution provides FREEDOM OF RELIGION, not from it.

I haven't mentioned the Declaration.

But I feel that if placing the commandments where Moore did is okay, and an expression of religious freedom, they should make place for more monuments, including shrines for the worship of Chinese saints and Shinto kami.

Or tear the commandments down.
All of this reminds me of Animal Farm, the pigs are more equal etc.

freedom of religion is the same as freedom from religion. in simplist terms, religion is a set of beliefs about the nature of the universe, etc. using that definition, to be an atheist is a form of religion of its own. by putting the monument up the judge is promoting one religion over, and his over others.

I hear what you guys are saying, and believe me I don't think it is all that unreasonable. But seroiusly whether or not you liberal types want to admit it there is a serious push in this country that is moving to discredit and remove religion. America started out as as a solely Christian country, that was a big part of our Identity. We flourished because we remembered that ,"except the lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it". Now adays we are pulling away from that identity, and again whether or not you want to realize it, that is a big problem. It was one of the things that made us great (not saying we weren't without flaws).

You're starting to sound like Osama bin Laden.

Excuse me??? How does anything I said even remotely come close to anything that has ever been utterted out of that piece of shits mouth?

well, you've got a pretty good start at revisionist history going on, which is often found in fundamentalism, which is osama up the wazoo.

SHow me where any of that is revisionist?

weren't for prayer? i hate to break it to you, but religion didn't really have anything to do with the forming of our country. we were not formed as a christian country (a pretty big reason for freedom of religion). if we had been, the founding fathers would have made us a christian country, and said "but you can follow whatever religion you want, but jesus makes our rules" or "only christianity here." they did neither. they set it up so that all religions were welcome (which in itself is pretty non-christian seeing as how they try to convert all non-x-tians.)

Your right about the government never endorsing Christianity, but it was still a big part of the national identity, so again what was revisionist about what I said? Also my whole prayer speal didn't relate at all so I removed it, i'll concede that (it has more to do with the drafting of the constitution).

that's pretty non-factual. if you go back to the original settlers from europe, then sorta. they didn't come here to "christianize" the place, they came to worship as they pleased freely without persecution. and while christianity (various forms, not one denomination) was the predominant religion, they weren't the only religion, and it wasn't founded as a christian nation. that's the revisionist part, saying that it was solely a christian country. and now i'm going to sleep.

I should field this since I stated it. For the record, revisionist history wasn't my point--so you don't need to argue that with me.

I'll start with the core belief and we'll work from there.

Islamic fundamentalists' central claim, similar to the one you just made, is that society must merge religion and politics to return it to an era where religious morals reigned over reason.

According to them, also similar to to what you just stated, their nation will be great again if, but only if, they return to the golden age (even if such a golden age is mythical) when religious ideology dominated society.

You even interspersed religious verse into your paragraph.

I wasn't intending to offend you--I doubt you even realized the similarities and therein lies the danger.

The Founders didn't make this a specifically Christian nation because of their personal experience with an oppressive government that makes you believe something that you don't want to believe. Just look at a great deal of ANY of the Founding Fathers and you will discover that a great majority of them were in fact, Christian people. And smooth, you can't equate people who use Bible verses in something that they say to Osama bin Laden, that's unfair. Bin Laden is a complete nut, I don't think that Mojo_PeiPei is a complete nut, though you may think he is. If you're going to equate people who quote verses from their holy scriptures to Osama bin Laden, let's include them all shall we? The Pope, George Washington, Noah Webster, Ben Franklin a few Atheists quoting the Humanist Manifesto, I could go on and on. Now do you want to equate these people to a nut who wants to kill all American Infidels? If anyone is taking a revisionist point of view on history, it's you guys not acknowledging what historical fact has clearly laid infront of you.

archer2371, if you think I stated that he was beginning to sound like Osama (I didn't equate him to Osama) because he used religious verse then you didn't understand my post.

I'm not going to engage your discussion regarding what is or is not revisionism--I stated clearly in my first sentence that I didn't make any claims about that subject.

I know you've read most of my posts so you likely already know that:

1) I don't believe Osama bin Laden is a nut. He is a political dissident fighting against the perceived secularization of his culture and the onslaught of global capitalism.

2) I don't know about Webster but I've already made analogies between our founding framers, revolutionaries, and terrorists--so yeah, I do include them in a similar category.

3) I don't believe that people are nuts, in general--regardless if it's you, Mojo, Osama, or anyone else you want to invoke from a few hundred years ago. Despite actions and claims that seem irrational to others, each of you believe them to be rational. We label people nuts when we can't understand their motives but that doesn't mean they don't understand themselves.

Again I would like to reiterate I don't advocate some Christian theocracy, just that people realize that ,"except the lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." I don't quote this in favor of Christianity, I quote it in favor of God The creator that created all men equal and whom endowed all with unalienable rights.

What about those of us who don't believe in God?

What about you? You are equally protected under the law, you have all the rights of the land just as the next person does. Your entitled to your beliefs just as I am entitled to mine.

So why should I realize: