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United States24788 Posts
On October 21 2012 07:10 shizaep wrote:
The majority of US is still Christian, like almost 75%. Thus it would make sense that they can preserve their religions traditions. That's democracy. Democracy is not about removing every single religions affiliation to make sure that no minority is offended. When Christianity makes up less than 50% of the US population is when it will be time to remove the "God reference".
Just because it's there, it doesn't mean it has to have any meaning to you. IMHO, trying to change this is a really unworthy pursuit, especially when it is so miniscule.
The percentage of Christians in the USA is not relevant.
Democracy means the law can be changed to make "under god" or "in god we trust" completely permissible. I don't agree with such a change and would hope it doesn't happen, however. In the meantime I want the law to be followed as is (there are many other laws which are not enforced and should be changed to be more efficient, as well).
I'm not proposing a change because I think it's the moral thing to do, or because of what meaning this has to me. I'm trying to show that the way we are doing it contrasts our own rules right now, and asking people to provide court cases or other counter evidence that is relevant, if they wish.
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On October 21 2012 07:10 shizaep wrote:
The majority of US is still Christian, like almost 75%. Thus it would make sense that they can preserve their religions traditions. That's democracy. Democracy is not about removing every single religions affiliation to make sure that no minority is offended. When Christianity makes up less than 50% of the US population is when it will be time to remove the "God reference".
Just because it's there, it doesn't mean it has to have any meaning to you. IMHO, trying to change this is a really unworthy pursuit, especially when it is so miniscule.
Liberal democracies like the United States and Canada have laws that try to prevent the majority from oppressing the minorities. In this case the word "oppression" is a bit strong, I'll admit, but the spirit is there and the fact that a majority of people don't consider this to be important doesn't mean that it isn't a problem, at the very least symbolically. There is a very real and important explanation for why modern and progressive countries try to be secular - it's because, like I said, we strive to put everyone on equal standing. The US has a long christian tradition, and that belongs in the culture of Christians, and in history books, and really anywhere that's not public. However the State, or the Federal government, represents ALL of the US's citizen, presumably in equal measure. In theory, it doesn't represent the majority, it represents everyone. Atheists and polytheists are not fractions of men, at least I don't think so.
I understand that you might say it's not a big deal, those are just words, but I think that's disrespectful to many people who don't don't fit in the prejudiced description of what an American should be according to the the US of A.
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On October 21 2012 07:10 shizaep wrote:
The majority of US is still Christian, like almost 75%. Thus it would make sense that they can preserve their religions traditions. That's democracy. Democracy is not about removing every single religions affiliation to make sure that no minority is offended. When Christianity makes up less than 50% of the US population is when it will be time to remove the "God reference".
Just because it's there, it doesn't mean it has to have any meaning to you. IMHO, trying to change this is a really unworthy pursuit, especially when it is so miniscule.
You don't understand American Government. We have a constitution that prevents two wolves from deciding to eat a sheep, so to speak. Our "democracy" (republic) has rules and regulations that are very hard to change. The inclusion of "God' in the government does/might violate some of the rules of the Constitution.
I think you are again missing the crux of micro's argument by saying it doesn't affect him. By telling children in public schools to recite the pledge, some would say that a religion is being established, Sure, you don't have to say it, but if the authority figures and other kids are saying it, a small child will as well, which could lead to indoctrination. I would like the pledge and currency to be changed as well but I don't care enough to do anything about it.
Oops didn't see the other replies 
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Man there are so many other things wrong with this game country. The tech tree structure tax structure clearly favors certain races races and playstyles classes, but Blizzard Micronesia decides to focus on patching queen range the word God in US code?
Just wait until the Patchzergsatheists get here!
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Well, when the Greeks first invented democracy they decided that things should be done as the majority wills. The whole point is that there is no absolute fairness, there is only the most fair way of doing something. If most people want this to stay/don't care then leaving the religious words is the most fair way of going about. Yes, it isn't absolutely fair, but it is the most fair way of going about it I think.
I just don't agree that so all the laws in the West revolve around "protecting" various minorities, sometimes at the expense of the majority.
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On October 21 2012 09:27 shizaep wrote:
Well, when the Greeks first invented democracy they decided that things should be done as the majority wills. The whole point is that there is no absolute fairness, there is only the most fair way of doing something. If most people want this to stay/don't care then leaving the religious words is the most fair way of going about. Yes, it isn't absolutely fair, but it is the most fair way of going about it I think.
I just don't agree that so all the laws in the West revolve around "protecting" various minorities, sometimes at the expense of the majority.
Nobody said that "all" the laws in the West "revolve around protecting various minorities". That's a ridiculous thing to say in fact. It doesn't come close to what I said in the slightest, which makes it hard for me to argue with you since now I know that you can't read. You don't understand what I said, at all! So I don't know why I bother. But here we go, pay close attention.
I said that SOME laws exist for the protection of the minorities. Political "no-no's" that try to prevent the majority from trampling over the minorities. This is simply true. I'm not saying that those laws always succeed, obviously it is not the case, but some laws are still in place.
The Athenian "democracy" that lasted 50 years like 2500 years ago is irrelevant to this conversation. For one, women couldn't vote, for two, it most people who lived in Athens were not citizen and thus were ineligible to vote ("outsiders" who lived in Athens, and a fuckload of slaves). Also, it was a direct democracy wherein representatives weren't elected - all citizen could go and vote for or against laws in big meetings. They didn't operate under a constitution that had a notion of human rights and equality for all. They had SLAVES.
You may be inclined to say that in a pure democracy, the majority could be able to do anything it wants to the minorities - but luckily we don't live in such societies. Our constitutions promote compromises.
So please, go back to the drawing board.
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On October 21 2012 03:25 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2012 03:22 Enearde wrote:
"God", "oh my god", "Gosh"... are all so entrenched in the English language, in particular the American deviation of the language that it means nothing more than "the superior authority in which we trust" IMO. It can be the government or any God from any religion as far as i'm concern. Even tho i understand your point completely and tend to agree with it, i think it'll never make a big case because, correct me if i'm wrong, people just use the word "God" thousand times a day without even believing in any kind of religion. Yeah, and this contributes towards why I wouldn't even bother to mention it if it weren't for the child indoctrination component. Blue laws on the other hand...
I really hate blue laws. I'm not a big drinker, but when I actually do feel like drinking and I get everything I need to do out of the way, I want to go to the liquor store, but oh wait, it's closed on sunday. Stupid christian blue laws mandating what other people can and can't do on a sabbath day they don't acknowledge(for pretty much any religion besides christianity).
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Well, perhaps "all" wasn't the right word. I was speaking conceptually about what I believe are the core values of democracy should be. My opinion on the "in god we trust" debate still stands but I won't argue with you here.
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On October 21 2012 10:04 shizaep wrote:
Well, perhaps "all" wasn't the right word. I was speaking conceptually about what I believe are the core values of democracy should be. My opinion on the "in god we trust" debate still stands but I won't argue with you here.
Well we're talking about real life here, I don't know why you somehow merged your ideals into reality and pretended like there weren't any laws protecting minorities.
But more importantly I don't know why anyone would ever argue with a pure democracy, or an unrestricted democracy where the majority is always right. We know for a fact that the majority ISN'T always right. You're Canadian, you're on the front lines to see why it's a good thing to promote equality rather than giving a dictatorship to the majority.
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That's mostly historical, our nation's forefathers were big on religion
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On October 21 2012 07:03 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2012 06:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:
I disagree with your interpretation of the First Amendment (as have the courts). There is no justification under the Constitution to push religion and government so far apart as to make it impossible for them to interact at all in the public sphere. The First Amendment says that the government cannot create an official state religion or give one (or more) religions favor, directly or indirectly, over others. It doesn't say anything about the government not being able to acknowledge religion or even not being able to promote it indirectly (as can be seen from the close relationship religious institutions have with government on many issues where their functions overlap, charity, welfare, social work, etc.). Can you specify which federal court case illustrates this? The supreme court has justified the use of phrases like "In God We Trust" as a national motto under the concept of ceremonial deism. The idea is that these practices are not religious at all, but rather are mere ritual. As you will see from the wiki page, the concept has come up in several supreme court cases.
Personally, I think the concept of ceremonial deism is BS. And so is the concept that the US was founded on Christian principles. It makes much more sense to say that the US was founded on enlightenment principles. While it is true that the founders were working in a Christian context, they they represented a number of different sects, and personally held a wide variety of religious views. (Jefferson, for example, may have called himself a Christian, but he totally rejected the divinity of Jesus.) To create a political system that would work for all these religious groups, the founders did not look to biblical principles, but rather to the at-the-time modern political ideas stemming from society's new appreciation of Roman and Greek culture.
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On October 21 2012 11:35 iaminvisibIe wrote:
That's mostly historical, our nation's forefathers were big on religion
That's nice and inspiring... They were also rich white slave owners who wrote the constitution originally including that slave owners should pay 3/5 of a free person's taxes for every slave owned.
So as they say, you take some and you leave some, unless of course you feel that those people who lived over 200 years ago are demi-gods of some kind and transcend everything modern men can come up with.
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United States24788 Posts
On October 21 2012 11:58 munchmunch wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2012 07:03 micronesia wrote:On October 21 2012 06:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:
I disagree with your interpretation of the First Amendment (as have the courts). There is no justification under the Constitution to push religion and government so far apart as to make it impossible for them to interact at all in the public sphere. The First Amendment says that the government cannot create an official state religion or give one (or more) religions favor, directly or indirectly, over others. It doesn't say anything about the government not being able to acknowledge religion or even not being able to promote it indirectly (as can be seen from the close relationship religious institutions have with government on many issues where their functions overlap, charity, welfare, social work, etc.). Can you specify which federal court case illustrates this? The supreme court has justified the use of phrases like "In God We Trust" as a national motto under the concept of ceremonial deism. The idea is that these practices are not religious at all, but rather are mere ritual. As you will see from the wiki page, the concept has come up in several supreme court cases.
Thank you for sharing this. The money part of this is much less significant than the other two things, to me.
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We have been having a lot of religion vs. government discussion in my contemporary law and justice class in high school these past few weeks. I pretty much agree with what you said for the pledge. God should probably be written out as it is a purely religious idea that should be separate from the school learning environment. Schools have to be completely neutral to religion - they can't actively support it or act against it.
Granted, I don't recall anything about the feelings of atheists/non-religious people being taken into account with this religious neutrality. Idk, it's all a very touchy subject. Because the majority of people here are Christian, they would not want to have the pledge changed. One of the funny problems that I kind of just realized though was that the Christian god's name...is God. If he were to have any other name like Allah or Jeffrey, they probably wouldn't allow that in the pledge as it's too specific and caters to only a single religion. But because it's God, that term can be applied to multiple religions and just changed to suit whoever one believes is in charge up there.
Someone tried challenging the case in Newdow vs US (I think). Newdow basically said that the words "under God" in the pledge was "an unconstitutional endorsement of monotheism". Unfortunately the court didn't rule on this issue because he wasn't the custodial parent. Argh, we would have been so close.
Also, I think someone earlier was asking about the requirements for students during the pledge. From the case West Virginia vs. Barnette, you do not have to salute the flag or recite it. Most schools just require that you stand for the pledge as a minimum, just to prevent students from sleeping through it.
Currency would be more difficult to change. Idk if you could reword new currency to exclude God, and still have old currency in circulation. Heck, most people don't even look at what they are handling anyways. They really don't care what's written on it. Also, with the use of electronic funds transfer, hard currency is seeing less and less use. As an atheist, currency is one of the least concerning things to change in regards to religious neutrality for me.
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On October 21 2012 12:38 Epishade wrote:
Currency would be more difficult to change. Idk if you could reword new currency to exclude God, and still have old currency in circulation. Heck, most people don't even look at what they are handling anyways. They really don't care what's written on it. Also, with the use of electronic funds transfer, hard currency is seeing less and less use. As an atheist, currency is one of the least concerning things to change in regards to religious neutrality for me.
Well it wouldn't be a new currency, it would only be new physical money. Paper bills are only in circulation for a few years before being burned and replaced with fresh ones, so they could easily be progressively replaced with bills that have a new design. Coins are tougher, but it could just be a cycle that would take place over many decades.
It's not a main concern though, like you said. There are easier things to change, but those things really should be changed.
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Forcing, or at the very least devoting, 2 minutes every morning in schools to cite the pledge is wrong to begin with. To swear allegiance to you nation, for better or worse, is ridiculous. It even goes against the founding father's warning to only serve the new government until it becomes tyrannical (or does not serve its people).
So basically, I propose a superior patch: fuck the warhound pledge
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I 5 star'd this blog because once upon a time, during a 4 am grocery run (24 groceries ftw! I don't have to deal with lines or children!) I happened upon a lone bottle of Tecate, the beer of choice among Mexican King of Fighters players. I'll finally try it! If it's any good, I'll bring a case to the next KoF tournament for kicks. Upon trying to check out I find out that it is illegal for them to sell me even a single beer from the hours of 2 am to 6 am. And before 11:30 am on Sundays.
To hell with the south.
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On October 21 2012 13:50 Trumpet wrote:
I 5 star'd this blog because once upon a time, during a 4 am grocery run (24 groceries ftw! I don't have to deal with lines or children!) I happened upon a lone bottle of Tecate, the beer of choice among Mexican King of Fighters players. I'll finally try it! If it's any good, I'll bring a case to the next KoF tournament for kicks. Upon trying to check out I find out that it is illegal for them to sell me even a single beer from the hours of 2 am to 6 am. And before 11:30 am on Sundays.
To hell with the south.
This is going to be out of touch with the thread's topic but vaguely relevant to what you just said. And who knows, someone may get a kick out of it.
In Canada you have to be 18 to buy alcohol. At the time I was 20 or so, and my cousin, a minor. He wanted a present for his mother for the holidays and she's kind of a Port wine enthusiast. We went over the the SAQ, which is a government monopoly for alcohol sales in QC, and we selected a $45 bottle, knowing that when she wanted to get fancy, she'd get herself a $20 bottle. We got to the cashier with the bottle and the lady asks for OUR ID's. So I show mine, and when my cousin says he's not 18, she rudely yanks the bottle and puts it behind her, as if we were criminals or something. Luckily the SAQ outlets are not exactly rare, roughly a 3 minutes drive and he waited in the car while I went in and bought the same bottle by myself.
Rigid laws can be absurdly stupid. Why would there be laws that strictly prohibit the sale of alcohol to and adult with minors? In that case it serves no purpose because it's too easy to avoid. I mean, MAYBE if I was trying to buy that vodka that comes in plastic bottles (lol) and I was with some stupid looking kids. But we were 2 serious-looking guys - no "hoodies" or backward caps or anything, not that it should matter. People are ridiculous. I mean what's the logic? "These 2 intend to get drunk off of a $45 porto"? The saddest part is that people who work at the SAQ are government employees, their cashiers make $24* an hour. Generally speaking, $24 an hour jobs are ones where the person has to at least do SOME thinking. But they're cashiers with a strict protocol. The girl who yanked the bottle from me, she was rude and probably a moron, but she worked a linear job with strict rules that cannot be trespassed, even in clear cut cases like this.
So yeah the old way isn't always the good way... That was my "cool story bro" material.
*: $24 an hour cashier, way to burn our tax money.
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The constitution is there but American government will do as they please.
If the constitution says A and the American government wants C, and C doesn't abide by A, then C will happen.
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This kind of thing depresses me. Nobody remembers that the Pledge of Allegiance was only made official in 1942 (during WWII), and it didn't even have the words "Under God" originally. That was added in 1954.
This has nothing to do with the founders. And most of them weren't christian anyway! They went to church as a social function, as was the custom during that time.
- George Washington was a deist.
- Thomas Jefferson was a deist who published his own version of the bible with all the 'magic' (miracles) taken out.
- Benjamin Franklin was a deist who appreciated Jesus as a teacher of morals, but also belonged to several pagan secret societies (most famously the Hellfire Club in England).
- Thomas Paine was famous for his deist book The Age of Reason, in which he argued, among other things, that christianity was nothing more than traditional pagan sun worship made over with christian teachings.
- John Adams was a theistic rationalist, more of a humanist. In response to Thomas Paine's criticism of christianity, he asserted that christianity was, compared to other belief systems, the religion of "wisdom, virtue, and humanity", and thus holds validity in terms of social moralism. However he was not a 'christian' as most modern evangelicals would define it (stressing the whole personal relationship with jesus deal).
'God' as it is termed in political documents is nothing more than a representation of the collective recognition of a higher power. Unfortunately partially informed religious types want to co-opt that term in order to push a view of the US as a 'christian nation'. Religion shouldn't matter, that's why it's supposed to be separated from every consideration of the state. Each citizen is free to believe as they will, and the only religious consideration appropriated at the founding of our nation was protection from state-sponsored persecution. Many groups had fled here because of persecution due to the Reformation (Puritans, Hutterites, Minnonites, Calvinists, etc) but they all disagreed with each other about what christianity even was.
This idea of a 'christian nation' presents history that has been perverted from a time when church was a gathering place for the town, a place where you heard the news and talked with your neighbors about what was happening in your neck of the woods. We forget that, nowadays having the internet, cable news, daily newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. In 18th century colonial society, the practice of attending church had less to do with personal religious views and more to do with community coherence and social involvement.
That said, I don't see how anyone can support the notion that we are a "christian nation". We are a nation of people, a majority of whom comport to the tradition christian value/belief system. A majority went to a christian-style church occasionally or frequently during their childhood, which will always maintain some impact on their identity. When polled these people will respond that they are basically christian, and will check that box instead of the one marked 'muslim', 'buddhist', or 'other'.
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