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Trump administration 2024-2028

Brad Sallows said:
The colonies were already in many respects evolved beyond their seventeenth century characters.

The US founders were deists of Christian (mostly Protestant) traditions but not particularly forceful Christians (some barely so, by the standards of some of the people today making claims on the founders' religiosity). The aim was a country of religious freedom, not a Christian country. People claiming that the US is or was meant to be a "Christian country" are wrong. The Declaration of Independence invokes deism, at most - not Christianity. That is not accidental. There is one reference to "God" as "Nature's God". There is one mention of "Creator". There are no mentions of Jesus.
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One only individual who signed the Dec of Indep was a non-Prod - 1 - 1 of 56.
 
And another view.

America's Mythical Religious Past

On the first day of the course I teach on "Religion in Colonial America" at the University of Chicago Divinity School, I often ask students to tell me what they already know about early American religious history. Since many of them are new to the field, they know relatively little about...
divinity.uchicago.edu divinity.uchicago.edu
. . . Influenced by the rhetoric of conservative religious activists and politicians, some describe America as a "Christian nation" where everyone shared a common set of values. Others claim that the colonies were a haven for religious liberty. Pointing to the stories of the Pilgrims and Puritans who fled to New England to escape religious persecution, they imagine a world where people of all faiths were allowed to worship freely.

Yet as students begin reading documents (whether church records, legal statutes, or personal religious narratives), they are surprised to discover that these two images of early America reflect popular national myth, not historical reality. These images say far more about our modern concerns than they do about the real people who lived and worshipped in the past.
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First, although it is certainly true that most early Americans were Christian (with the notable exception of large numbers of Indians and African-born slaves), they disagreed about what constituted "true" Christianity. In the South, for example, Anglicans and Baptists clashed over infant baptism, and in New England, Puritans accused Quakers of being heretics because of their belief in immediate inspiration. (While the Puritans insisted that the Bible was God's final revelation, the Quakers claimed that God continued to speak to humans through the "inner light.") In Maryland, originally founded by Roman Catholics, Protestants eventually seized power and forbade Catholics to vote, hold public office, or worship outside of private homes. Rather than describing themselves as part of a unified, Christian culture, early Americans emphasized the theological divisions that splintered them into competing denominations.
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Second, despite the popular image of America's deep commitment to religious liberty, few of the original thirteen colonies allowed people to worship freely. With the exception of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island, every colony had an "established" church that was closely linked to the government. For example, everyone who lived in seventeenth-century Virginia, no matter what their personal beliefs, were legally required to attend the Anglican Church and pay assessments for ministers' salaries. If people refused to pay their taxes, they were publicly whipped or imprisoned. As the colonies became more religiously plural in the eighteenth century, these harsh laws began to disappear, but it was not until 1791, with the passage of the Bill of Rights, that all Americans were guaranteed the right to worship (or not to worship) as they wished. . . .
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AKa said:
In all fairness, you can't compare the Pope to Trump wrt to crime. There are very few public figures better at crime than Trump in this age
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The Catholic Church had extortion and protection money down to a fine art, to the point that people did not realize they were doing so.
 
Blackadder1916 said:
And another view.

America's Mythical Religious Past

On the first day of the course I teach on "Religion in Colonial America" at the University of Chicago Divinity School, I often ask students to tell me what they already know about early American religious history. Since many of them are new to the field, they know relatively little about...
divinity.uchicago.edu divinity.uchicago.edu
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All correct - but the Colonies religious makeup pre-1776 did not reflect the religious makeup of the UK of that time. The majority of the Colonists were not Anglican, followed by Presbyterians, which the majority of the citizens of the UK were. The smaller, fringe religious groups found within the UK (Baptists, Quakers, Calvinists, Catholics), all were 'over-represented' (except for Catholics) throughout the Colonies, with some groups (Puritans) barely registering in the UK but who dominated in Massachusetts.
 
Colin Parkinson said:
I decline to be an atheist, as it requires far to much faith to say "There is no god". I prefer to say: "It's unlikely that a superior being cares, if you wear a particular hat, or how many times you pray a day and did not write your book." However that being if they exist, may have encoded our DNA to do certain things or seek out them.
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Most atheists don't profess "there is no god." We start from a neutral position and profess "you haven't convinced me that there is a god."

Nuanced distinction, but it matters. I'm fine with those who go all the way and claim positively "there is no God", but I find those atheists tend to be assholes about it.
 
Lumber said:
Most atheists don't profess "there is no god." We start from a neutral position and profess "you haven't convinced me that there is a god."

Nuanced distinction, but it matters. I'm fine with those who go all the way and claim positively "there is no God", but I find those atheists tend to be assholes about it.
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Anything like Vegans?
 
Lumber said:
Most atheists don't profess "there is no god." We start from a neutral position and profess "you haven't convinced me that there is a god."

Nuanced distinction, but it matters. I'm fine with those who go all the way and claim positively "there is no God", but I find those atheists tend to be assholes about it.
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The majority of atheists I meet are the latter and are insufferable superiority complex type individuals. Yet they wear their "knowledge" like a cloak and basically do everything required to be called a religious zealot.

Given that almost every group of humans have formed some sort of religious belief or substitute, I have to wonder if we are hard wired to do so. Now if some form of being, superior or otherwise had seeded us here or fiddled with our evolution. It is likley they would program us to eventually seek out the truth of that as we evolved. Given that other parts of the galaxy is about 3 million+ years older than we are, that gives another species the time to develop such technologies and interests.
 
Czech_pivo said:
One only individual who signed the Dec of Indep was a non-Prod - 1 - 1 of 56.
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Sure. But as I wrote: "not particularly forceful".

The religiosity of people like Jefferson, Adams (John), Franklin, Washington, etc has been studied. The findings don't fit the image modern evangelicals want to propagate. Hamilton and Jay were devout, as was Sam Adams (unlike his relative). Franklin and the first four presidents were not.
 
Lumber said:
Most atheists don't profess "there is no god." We start from a neutral position and profess "you haven't convinced me that there is a god."

Nuanced distinction, but it matters. I'm fine with those who go all the way and claim positively "there is no God", but I find those atheists tend to be assholes about it.
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That is being agnostic not atheistic. Atheists do not believe in a god, gods, higher power, etc. Agnostics are neither confirming or denying the existence of a god, gods, or higher power.
 
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