What has America become?

Good Golly Moses! It is theoretically possible to simply bury your opponent with immense unanswerable posts. I'm not sure if I can dig out from under this or not. It is certainly piled mighty high and deep.

I'll be back later, if I don't reconsider. I may attempt brevity instead.

There is really far too much wrong with what has preceded to cover it all. There are value judgements (by folk who insist I can't make them) that are in error. There is historical miscontextualization. There is a remarkable misunderstanding of Christian theology.

I say rope, you say snake. I say Good & Evil, you say God & Devil. Christianity is not a religion of duality! There is not a yin and yang. Good is not God (though God is Good!). Evil is not Satan (though Satan is Evil).

Perhaps these aren't straw dogs. Maybe you genuinely don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know that I would care to match IQ scores with the folk around here. I see a lot of brilliant people. That is a part of what is so frustrating, because I know that my language skills have been adequate to convey my clear meaning. I see a lot of brilliantly mislead persons and I see a lot of logical error. I hope I am not seeing deliberate obtuseness, fillibuster, and ideological persecution.

I demonstrated that Christian influence shaped our foundational documents. I demonstrated that we have no state religion. You ignored that, pointed to a treaty that says our country is not founded on a religion, and write as you've proven something contrary to my point.

Are you being intentionally obtuse, juntel? The treaty you cited confirms PRECISELY what I said.

The language itself was plain in all citations. I reiterate my summation.

America does not permit any State Religion. We do not prohibit the People from the "free exercise" of whatever religion (or lack thereof) they may choose. We have Religious Liberty, not Secular Supremacy.

And it is not Despostism of any sort. You can try to explain away your inconsitencies and rationalize your prejudices, and you can do so at great length.

If I can't resolve all of these problems, I'm sorry. I'll try later. But you won't listen.


[c] ~~~[/c]


As I mentioned earlier, I'll have to come back to this. I thought that the "America" question was more pertinent to the thread topic, so I went there first. It is pretty d@mned arrogant for a foreigner to lecture American's about our nation's constitution, unless of course, he is right.

He isn't, and won't admit it despite being shown. I don't understand that, and I won't speculate about it.

Similarly, it might seem arrogant for me to insist that I know God personally, that most people even lacking that experience DO understand the reality of Good & Evil, and that America's doctrine of Church-State separation does NOT mean that a town can't have a Christmas tree. Unless I'm right.

I am, and because I am right, I won't recant.

I cannot demonstrate, with electrons across a cable and words on a screen, that God is what He is. He can arrange a convincing demonstration for you by Divine intervention (as he does for me). I can pray for that.

I can only offer that History itself demonstrates the reality of Good & Evil. I can't enter the entire record of humanity on this post. The reader is expected to understand this, especially now that I have said so twice. If one's own personal experiences in life do not testify to the same, I can't reach you. (And vice versa, I'm sure.)

I have demonstrated that this nation was founded upon religious principles. Juntel's citation confirms that we are not a Church-state. The cited treaty does not contradict the Declaration or the Bill of Rights.

Have I denied atrocities commited by politicians and aristocrats in the name of Christ? Have I said that Christians are perfect and have perfectly applied the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth? Have I claimed that America has none of the same sordid history as Europe?

Does any of this have anything to do with the Gospel? With the Sermon on the Mount? With the True Church, or for that matter, with the great moral teachings of other faiths?

No.

It has to do with people.

And if people will tyrannize and conquer and misrule in the name of the Nazarene carpenter's moral authority, how much more so under amoral authority?