Public money to defend private donations?

[patric]

Broken Arrow Representative Mike Ritze wants a Ten Commandments monument at the capitol, and tax dollars used to fight the court battles when it's legality is challenged.

The AP story says Ritze wants there to be a reminder of where the state gets its laws and of the philosophy the nation's founders had.

Wouldnt white bedsheets have been cheaper?

[cannon_fodder]

I love the "founders wanted this to be a Christian nation" or variants of that argument (based on Christianity, based on the 10 Commandment, etc.).  Another great reason why we need to keep religion out of schools.  Not only do they mess up science, they mess up history.

Nearly all the "high profile" founding fathers would be considered Unitarians today (as a fall-back domination of quasi-Christians).  None would be voted FOR by the religious right.  You simply couldn't say these things and get elected.

More telling, there were many minsters and men of faith in the constitutional convention.  The religious saw the merits of keeping things separated as much as the non-religious.  The desire to intermix and/or assign aspects of religion to our nation is a relatively new phenomenon that perks it's head after each crisis (Civil War = in God We Trust, Communist Scare = "One Nation Under God").

Anyway... some quotes from good Christian Founding Fathers:

quote:Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

quote:I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

quote:History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

quote:Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society. [George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 726]

quote:Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than thsoe which spring from any other cause. [George Washington, letter to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792]

quote:There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. [George Washington, address to Congress, 8 January, 1790]

quote:As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in His government of the world with any particular marks of His displeasure.

- Benjamin Franklin

quote:Lighthouses are far more useful than Churches.

- B. Franklin

quote:I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.

[Benjamin Franklin, in _Toward The Mystery_]

quote:"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."

[Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728]

quote:Nothwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together; [James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822, The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt]

quote:That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some; and to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of impas for such business..." [James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr., Jauary 1774]

quote:Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?

- President Madison, Sunday Address

quote:I would not dare to dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book [the Bible].
- Thomas Paine

quote: I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine

quote:Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religions.
President George Washington

quote:There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
George Washington, address to Congress, 8 January, 1790

quote:Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
From:
Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie

quote:That Jesus was no God is inspired by his own lips.  Let me be denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.

- Ethan Allen

quote:The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

- Treaty of Tripoli.  US Senate 1797

Voted on by members of all 4 political parties (NOT 2!)

[RecycleMichael]

They put their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution...not the other way around.

[sgrizzle]

I'm a fan of the 15.. err. 10 commandments, but this is nothing but a political thing. If someone had built and donated a statue featuring the ten commandments and he was asking to get it put on state grounds, that is one thing. Starting a fight over the issue before there is even a physical object means you just want to have the fight.

[cannon_fodder]

I can't help it, ran across one more good one:

quote:"Say nothing of my religion," Jefferson once said. "It is known to myself and my God alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."

The man took a scissors, cut apart the bible, threw away the parts he didn't like, and made a new version.  Which Congress had printed and distributed in 1909.  Irony, I understand well.