Kid arrested for not standing for pledge...

[LastPoet]

I call for life in abortion cases? Oy, have you got the wrong number.

Oh, were you just been opinionated then? It is as they say, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. You clearly said on another thread, that women carrying child shouldn't be allowed to abort, I guess you don't remember.

Tell me more how should one bow down to authority, just because people like to play with flags, pledges and shit. Explain to me with your big mind how is that reasonable, beyond nationalistic crap, you know, the kind of shit that made an holocaust.

Tell me.

[Yonadav]

I call for life in abortion cases? Oy, have you got the wrong number.

  You clearly said on another thread, that women carrying child shouldn't be allowed to abort, I guess you don't remember.

 

OK, this is hilarious. I didn't say that. I have argued in favor of Roe over and over and over. You're a crazy person who doesn't know how to read.

[Brian37]

[ca. April 1770]

"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance. " - Jefferson

Extract from Thomas Jefferson’s Argument in the Case of Howell vs. Netherland

Seems like Jefferson did believe in free will and a creator...

I don't mind you quoting Jefferson one bit. But it may interest you to know that the late Christopher Hitchens a staunch atheist wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson called "Jefferson, Author Of America". Hitchens was a huge fan of Jefferson. 

Jefferson was not an atheist. But he wasn't a Falwell fundie either. Jefferson was a deist. Jefferson railed against pulpit politics more than any other founder of his time.

He also said this about the ability of an atheist to have morality,  QUOTE THOMAS JEFFERSON, "Whence arises the morality of the atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists."

He also said, "Question with boldness the existence of a God, for if there be one, surely he would pay more homage to reason, than to that of blindfolded fear."

Then there is his famous letter to the Baptists regarding his "wall" between church and state.

There is no way today's republican party would nominate him with all he said about being anti theocracy back then.

[tackattack]

I love Jefferson. I'm very aware of his stance on Church and state. You may ascribe to him deism, Unitarianism or rational religiosity. It's fairly apparent in all of his letters that he was railing against organized religion and for clear separation of church funded by the state. I think we can agree that Jefferson didn't want a theocracy, and didn't want blind loyalty. He even called himself Christian a time or two. He believes in a creator God and follows Jesus' moral teaching.

Often times though, tirades go askew to the point people assert that you can't be rational and a Christian and believe in Free will, so I was just setting that point up in conversation for future reference.</side-track>

Please continue with patriotism, free will, and religion in school discussion.

[EgoDeath]

So are we all going to continue to ignore the fact that, according to every report on this story, the child was arrested for threatening the teacher and being unruly AFTER the "incident" concerning the pledge?

[Yonadav]

So are we all going to continue to ignore the fact that, according to every report on this story, the child was arrested for threatening the teacher and being unruly AFTER the "incident" concerning the pledge?

Are you kidding? They've decided that kids are being forced to say the pledge, and that's that. Good day to you, sir. I said good day!

[Brian37]

I love Jefferson. I'm very aware of his stance on Church and state. You may ascribe to him deism, Unitarianism or rational religiosity. It's fairly apparent in all of his letters that he was railing against organized religion and for clear separation of church funded by the state. I think we can agree that Jefferson didn't want a theocracy, and didn't want blind loyalty. He even called himself Christian a time or two. He believes in a creator God and follows Jesus' moral teaching.

Often times though, tirades go askew to the point people assert that you can't be rational and a Christian and believe in Free will, so I was just setting that point up in conversation for future reference.</side-track>

Please continue with patriotism, free will, and religion in school discussion.

The difference between fundies and I, when speaking of Jefferson, fundies love to claim him.

But I have no doubt, if he were alive today, or I was alive back then, and we had met face to face, or Hitchens met him for that matter. 

It would not go like the fundies claim.

Hitchens, "Dude, Thomas, you don't need that mythological god to do anything."

Jefferson, wouldn't have screamed, " FUCK YOU ATHEIST" 

He would have responded, " How can you say that with all the wonder in the world?"

Jefferson liked the NT Jesus, but not as a magic man, but a mere mortal.

I would have argued with him, if alive back then, "Dude, love the anti theocracy stance, but why do you think human morality is handed to us from above?"

Jefferson loved the NT kindness motif of the NT, but hated the fantastic claims of the entire bible, and I'd agree with him on that.

He saw the Jesus character as real, but not a magic man. Thus Jefferson wrote his own bible stripping it of the superstition and fantastic claims.

He saw the Jesus character as a real person, but just a philosopher. 

My argument would have been, and Hitchens as well I'd argue, would be if someone is finite, and mortal, then why do their ideas have to still be attached to a super natural being? 

Why cant it be that nature is nature, and no super natural being is helping us? Why couldn't what Jefferson valued and I value, simply be a product of human nature?

Jefferson simply thought that a God existed, but stepped aside once he started everything. I still have  huge problem filling in the gap with a super cognition regardless.

I think our species ability to be cruel or compassionate are in our evolution, our genes as individual, and there is no super cognition causing or allowing human beings to do either.

[fredd bear]

Interesting post.

I agree ,except for including Chris Hitchens.

Didn't like the personality. Then I read "God Is Not Great". (it was a gift) A pretty nasty polemic, but the guy was no philosopher , imo.

[Brian37]

Interesting post.

I agree ,except for including Chris Hitchens.

Didn't like the personality.  Then I read "God Is Not Great". (it was a gift)  A pretty nasty polemic, but the guy  was no philosopher , imo.

Blunt yes, nasty no. Truthful by every stretch.

Maybe you missed the part of the book where he made it clear, if invited to holy places, and he accepted he'd follow the customs in person.

The entire book was not anti human rights, but saying that religion does cause more divisions in humanity than it claims to solve.

I look at Hitchens as merely a blunt version of Sagan.

[fredd bear]

Interesting post.

I agree ,except for including Chris Hitchens.

Didn't like the personality.  Then I read "God Is Not Great". (it was a gift)  A pretty nasty polemic, but the guy  was no philosopher , imo.

Blunt yes, nasty no. Truthful by every stretch.

Maybe you missed the part of the book where he made it clear, if invited to holy places, and he accepted he'd follow the customs in person.

The entire book was not anti human rights, but saying that religion does cause more divisions in humanity than it claims to solve.

I look at Hitchens as merely a blunt version of Sagan.

I said nasty and I meant nasty,

Imo Hitchens was a bigot. He made claims about an entire group of people. viz Muslims. I think that's the very definition of bigotry,. 

Obviously, his and my life experiences were different. I lived in a Muslim country,(Malaysia) with many Muslim friends.I never saw anything approaching the kind of  extreme behaviour he mentions. YES such behaviour could at times be seen in KL, which has religious police.AND a Muslim apostate will be put in prison for 2 years.  That does not represent ALL Malay Muslims, let alone all Muslims everywhere..

The people I knew were not even all that devout; no praying 5 times a day, not always even going to mosque on Friday ,,women did not wear head coverings.


 I think the linked article quoted below is worth reading-

While a scientist like Richard Dawkins might be forgiven for not having his philosophic/aesthetic house in order, no such tolerance should be allowed for his notorious comrade-in-arms Christopher Hitchens. In spite of the fact that Hitchens regularly invokes the authority of empiricism and reason—he condemns anything that “contradicts science or outrages reason,” and he concedes something that no poet would: that “proteins and acids ... constitute our nature”—he was not a scientist but a literary critic, a journalist, and a public intellectual. So, you would think that the perspective of the arts, literature, and philosophy would find a prominent place in his thought. But that is not the case. He proposes to clear away religion in the name of science and reason. Literature’s function in this brave new world is to depose the Bible and provide an opportunity to study the “eternal ethical questions.”

Hitchens’s "God Is Not Great" is an intellectually shameful book. To be intellectually shameful is to be dishonest, to tell less than you know, or ought to know, and to shape what you present in a way that misrepresents the real state of affairs. In this sense, and in Hitchens’s own term, his book lacks “decency.” (You may think that I lack decency for attacking a man so recently deceased, but I do no more than what Hitchens himself did. Speaking of Jerry Falwell, Hitchens pointedly refuses a “compassionate word” for this “departed fraud.”)


https://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/christo...no_favors/