Evil? Now, perhaps. Later? Not so much.

[Stubby]

The assertion digot made was that polygamy was a violation of christian doctrine. All I have done is to show it is not.
I did NOT say that polygamy IS a church doctrine or result of christian teaching.

[Diogenes]

The assertion digot made was that polygamy was a violation of christian doctrine. All I have done is to show it is not.

Don't think you did. I think you left it ambiguous. Now if you had a quote from the New Testament, I would say you may have proven your point.

I did NOT say that polygamy IS a church doctrine or result of christian teaching. /quote]


I'm not terribly interested in tracking down the point at which Monogamy became Christian doctrine. It is sufficient to my purpose that by the time of the nation's founding, it was.


Again, there is no secular argument for opposition to polygamy.

[Diogenes]

I have long argued that in the founding era, the relationship between religion and government was so close that it was un-notable. The line between legality and Christian doctrine was effectively blurred. The reason polygamy was illegal was because it was a violation of Christian doctrine. In a completely secular society, there is no reasonable argument for prohibiting it.

I see your point, especially when we keep in mind that life is always very different before and apart from the American experiment with separation between church and state. Certainly, many of the laws are based on common sense and faith informs that sense, as does all human tradition, etc. I think though, to say the only reason polygamy was illegal was that this was christian doctrine, is overstating the issue. There are lots of christian doctrines that never became law.

Well, in this country. We picked and chose what we wanted from British Common law. Among the things we dispensed with was the obligatory tithing to the church.

You'd be hard pressed to find but a couple puritanical societies that didn't allow their women to speak in public, or to cut their hair, or forced them to wear doilies on their heads and so far as I know, none of these standards were ever made into civil law. There are a multitude of christsian doctrines and dogmas that never became law. (BTW, none of these dogmas came directly from scripture. They were all inventions of the church.) The few exceptions are really just the big issues of the times--marriage and witchcraft are the only two I can think of, and obviously these are big issues.

I think the question revolves around the importance of the doctrine. Monogamy has social/evolutionary reasons for being beneficial. Were the benefits of a specific Christian doctrine inconsequential, it would be less likely to become law.

The fact people today tend to vilify Christians for their treatment of witches is pretty shocking. Yes obviously this was abused many times in many ways, but when you keep in mind that basically EVERYONE believed in witchcraft, the Devil, Satanic pacts and powers, and people who traded their souls for magical powers and fleshly delights, it would be hard to imagine a society not enforcing against such supposed witches. It is really a lack of imagination on the part of the modern man that vilifies the church for its efforts to stamp out witchcraft.

George Will wrote an excellent article arguing this very thing. He said that if you believed someone possessed supernatural powers and was allied with the Devil against you, it is perfectly reasonable to believe they should be executed.

The fault lie in their assumptions, not their reasoning.

Today we see the reverse. It is only because the majority do not believe in the Devil, that Satanism is a protected religion. If the vast majority today believed as Elizabethan man, that the Devil forms pacts with people, pressing them into service to injure society and gives to them magical powers to do so, then you can bet your sweet ass Satanism would not only not be protected as a religion in the US, but it would be forced back underground as it is still in most countries. Today in the US we have very public Satanist churches. You don't see that in most countries and this attests to the fact we do indeed have much more religious freedom than almost anywhere else in the world.

That is an artifact of the Roosevelt appointed courts. The US has historically persecuted these cults and made no apologies for doing so. I think we have had court ruling on blasphemy issues in the late 1800s. I'll have to look up some links.

Once monogamy became common there was a whole world of exprience that clearly shouted this is the way to go. Monogamy has a vast number of significant advantages over polygamy, and though polygamy has some advantages over monogamy, many of these were eliminated with the move to a sedentary society that could build walls and otherwise provide security that a tent could not. Fact is, polygamy only makes good sense under certain, specific conditons which the human race outgrew. Now, it appears we're outgrowing the institution of marriage altogether. Odd as it may be, those most capable of rearing children are having fewer all the time, and those least capable of rearing successful children are having as many as they like, most often outside wedlock. Different subject but perhaps a place to admit we're not on a sustainable path.

I think nature is going to reassert itself. Much of the craziness we are currently experiencing is the result of massive borrowing and spending going back to the 1960s. We have created unnatural and artificial environments in which some seriously dysfunctional families (and people) were created.

Once the money runs out, it's going to turn into a bloodbath. Survivors will reassert a lot of fundamental principles.

[Diogenes]

Actually, digot, this is exactly the wrong place. You could go to the original thread and continue there.

Around here, we are no respecters of thread topic. Thread drift is a given, and one thread is much the same as another.

[GIThruster]

The assertion digot made was that polygamy was a violation of christian doctrine. All I have done is to show it is not.
I did NOT say that polygamy IS a church doctrine or result of christian teaching.

Perhaps then what we need is to precise between what is expressly "Christain" based upon holy writ, and what is "Christian Era". I think we can all agree we live in a post Christian era and Europe is significantly further down the path to post-christian. They never had a "Great Awakening" that America did, save in small portions of Whales.

What we have is in fact dispute about whether or not to respect or disrespect the traditions of those who went before us. In religion, I see little reason to respect tradition. I think the traditions of religion are some of its worst parts, and arguably so did Jesus, and significant reformers like Luther, Calvin and John and Charles Wesley.

But what was the foundational point here? During the Elizabethan era, all the cultural norms were defined by the church, and that church had been saying for many centuries that polygamy was morally wrong and unacceptable. We could search through all the various statements of faith of the hundreds of different Christian congregations and I think what we would certainly find is Dio is right--polygamy was not acceptable practice inside the vast bulk of Christianity.

Where is the surprise?

Dio is just noting, that Christian theology and Western civil law have indeed coincided in largest part for most centuries. Not much a claim, especially given none of these societies had a deliberate division between church and state.

Even though our founding documents secure various faiths from persecution, they were never intended to support the modern day interpretation that atheism is the lowest common denominator. And is that what atheists want to be, the low bar; last before expulsion from the masses? That's a silly interpretation of history and atheistic need.

[Stubby]

The FF secured all faiths from persecution. Would you argue otherwise?

Not sure what you mean in the rest of that last paragraph. It seem to me that you ascribe more to atheism than what it is.

[ladajo]

Stubby,
As D has shown you, there is a lot about this topic you really just don't know. Your google-fu is failing you.

For example, the Founding Fathers and follow-on contemporaries were well aware of other religious beliefs, including Polytheisit ones. But they made no attempt to protect them. Christian based Mono-theism was a core function in how they saw things as well as wrote the rules. The extension to that was a fundamental tolerance of differing opinons. This was not some global do-gooder view of all of humanity, it was a reality of dealing with a population with diverse points of view on God and religious practices. For example, pick a faith of the time, and peal its onion. Put it in context compared to other faiths. Check out the Quakers for example. Be a Friend.

[Stubby]

Ladajo:

I said the FF protected their religious views from each others religious views. They prevented any one religious christian view or a coalition of religious christian views from dictating their religious christian views to the others. They created a separation of church and government.

In response to the failure to insert an acknowledgment of “Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” in to the 1779 Bill of Religious Freedom (State of Virginia)(passed 60-27).

...the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the
mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, the infidel of every denomination.”

A byproduct of that is protection for all religions. The FF had a choice to do 1 of 5 things with respect to religion.
1. Endorse all religions
2. Endorse some religions (in this case the various christians views of the FF)
3. Endorse one religion (the only group of the FF big enough was the episcopalians at 54%)
4. Endorse none
5. Deny religion

1, 3, and 5 are non starters
#1 is impossible due to mutually exclusive doctrines.
#3 some states would never have joined. Essentially thought control
#5 not gonna happen, nor should it. Essentially thought control too.

#2 Is a view that many religious people hold today (and at least one pro-theist agnostic) to be the intent of the FF. Where would the Baptists be today when none of them were signatories to the Declaration of Independence , the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution?

#4 is the only option that treat all religions in exactly the same way.


The FF were, to varying degrees, a religious group of men. One can find all sorts of quotes from most of them regarding christian faith and its importance to American life.
But they recognized that religion is a personal matter not a governmental one.

...the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only
as are injuries to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say There are twenty gods,
or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

[ladajo]

So you are changing your argument?

The Founding Fathers had choice in using the words they picked. They were very careful on what words were used and not. Using the words Lord and God was intentional.
Yes, they persisted in striving for tolerance of each other and 'the fellow man', in an attempt "to create a more perfect union". But there was no mistake the union represented Christian ideals. Why to this day is the bible used on official ceremonies/events as the accepted standard. It is only recently that not swearing on the bible has taken some root. But that said, it is still the default approach. This goes back to the Founding Father's days as well. It was started as a tradition by George Washington. Only two Presidents have not taken the oath this way (John Quincy Adams and Teddy Roosevelt).
The Constitution was an attempt to remove church and religion from legal governance. This was the point of the nation, and traces it roots to the religious freedom immigrants that crossed the pond. That said, these were monotheistic (God) adherants. They knew what they were doing. just like how each colony had its independant take on how to believe in god. The founding colonists brought that with them.
If the Constitution and other founding documents were menat to be completely unreligious, and government as well. They would have done many things different up front. But they knew they could not in some cases, and in others, did not want to. That is why we have what we have.
I really do not think you actually understand what the menaing of "separation of church and state" intends and means. It appears that you have a somewhat juvenile (not meant offensively) perpsective.
It is like when you keyed on the "many wives" Old Testament quote. It was a juvenile view of context and meaning. That quote could just as easily be seen to mean 'not more than one'. And the multiple re-writes throughout the ages have surely obsured the original verbage intent as well as it has with many other bible passages and other documents that have been translated a number of times. Juvenile interpretation tends to look for the literal meaning in something. This is how more often than not you present your case. It really does speak to you being young (no offense intended).

So what do you think of the Quakers anyway?

[GIThruster]

The FF secured all faiths from persecution. Would you argue otherwise?

Not sure whom you are addressing. For myself, I do indeed believe all faiths are to be protected, but this does not mean that we need to act any differently than the FF did. The modern argument that the state has an obligation to avoid all religious accomodation is silly. Pretending for example that those who wrote the law of the land were violating it by having public Christmas trees and only now we have come to realize they were all wrong. . .such a useless and pathetic argument.

Too I would say one is justified in defining very carefully what one means by "religion". IMHO, I don't think modern cults like Scientology nor even traditional groups like Satanists deserve the same recognition and protection as traditional religions. And there are the religions that are invented specifically to use the law to support various drug use, not just cannabis but peyote and other hallucinogens. Seems obvious to me there are limits. One could claim their religion requires almost anything in order to avoid prosecution for illegal behaviors.

The big picture however seems obvious to me. Atheists are pressing in the courts for a specific reading of the law of the land that has never existed, and complaining about all manner of religious symbols, etc., that have always been used. Crosses on gravestones, crucifixes on mountain sides, manger scenes, etc. All of these things have been fine and without compalint until the rabid atheists made an issue of them. I grew up with lots of Jewish freinds and they never complained about the Christmas trees or manger scenes. If they had wanted they could have pressed for a public minora and who knows, maybe they did? If Muslims want to press for a public display of their favored holiday, I say why not? It is however the atheists who are making all the fuss, as if they are left out because they have no religious symbols. I have tro ask, is that someone's fault, that you need to be a pain in everyone else's ass?

Really, what are atheists thinking when they're busy spoiling the holiday for any sort of believer, except that they want to be jerks? It's like asking for a "shoot an atheist prick in the balls" day of celebration. Can we have one of those?

[Diogenes]

Really, what are atheists thinking when they're busy spoiling the holiday for any sort of believer, except that they want to be jerks? It's like asking for a "shoot an atheist prick in the balls" day of celebration. Can we have one of those?

I would celebrate that! Not much worse than evangelical atheists. They have no belief and they want to force it on you.

[Diogenes]

Geico Joking about Bestiality in a commercial.



http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=173940




Incremental normalization.

[GIThruster]

Yeah, some conservative Christian group already picked up on it, and Huffington picked up on the Christian group. Since there is no penalty for bad taste in advertising, Geico gets bucket loads of free publicity and no negative consequences.

[GIThruster]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/ ... ick-mouse/

How long do you think until people try to make mythical beasts and monsters?

[Stubby]

They already did.
Just read the bible.