The Huckabee Horror
Category: Politics
Posted on: December 12, 2007 2:06 PM, by PZ Myers

In a field of nightmares, it takes a special person to elevate themselves to the position of the worst of the worst…and Huckabee is that special person.

Here's his special take on the purpose of his presidency…

I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives…I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.

And here is his special rationalization for denying gays equal rights…

I don't think the issue's about being against gay marriage. It's about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that's important. You have to have a basic family structure. There's never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived.

Actually, he's right. Every civilization redefines its social fabric over time, and no civilization has lasted forever...

HERE: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12...abee_horror.php

Just what we need ... Another this is/should be a Christian nation. He and his ilk would do well to read an American History book--101 level. Let the government run the country and the Church save the souls--and never the twain shall meet!

Respectfully,

Sean

I think what your missing is that the leaders of the founding nation thought as Huckabee does. They didn't envision a government void of religion...they envisioned a government void of 'religious dictates'. King George pretty much said you either accept Christ or off with your bloody head. That is what the founders didn't want. What Huckabee is saying is that it is high time the government was allowed to have faith. Not to Enforce that Faith on the populace...but to allow Faith to be Free. If you can't have a cross or star of David or any other religious symbol in government...then religion is being 'banned' from government...how free is that? Let all religion be in government just as it is in the People...who after all are supposed to BE the government.

I know there are many good people who are good Christians but I really don't want America to become a Christian country because it will be real trouble for the rest of the world.

It always HAS been a Christian country....predominantly because the majority of AMericans are Christian...but America is a country that welcomes all faiths and believes and protects them via the constitution.

I know it is becoming more of a Christian because it is the dominant faith over the there but I don't think it was intended to be a Christian nation. I like many Christians and many are my friends but I don't like the religion itself and feel it would be a big problem if left unchecked and allowed to do as it pleases.

Any religion left unchecked is dangerous. Any ideology left unchecked is dangerous.

Do you want to walk into a courtroom as a Jew and see a crucifix in the courtroom? Or as a christian and see a minorah in the courtroom?

How about seeing them all...side by side...representative of every faith...not excluding every faith as it is now.

ALL? So, a Zoroastrian symbol, a pagan symbol, a static symbol, a jewis, christian, catholic, protestant, episcopalian, evangelical, muslim (both shia and sunni) buddhist, taoist, naturalist, native american, hindu, etc. etc.

How about just none, so that everyone who walks into a gov't office or courtroom knows that they will receive treatment based SOLELY on the law without any influence of religion?

That is quit scary. You want religion and goverment to intermingle with no limit to the extent. If you really want that then you better welcome back King Geaorge and the off with your head mentality. Religion has no place in politics, nor schools,nor work places. Religion is a personal matter no matter what color you want to paint it. It's no wonder you admire Bush so much, he's exactly what you have stated above and look what he has done for your once wonderful nation. Now don't come back at me and ask for examples as I will not make this into a Bash the U.S. thread. Huckabee would have been loved 300 years ago, why ? because if you didn't he would have your head. Nice real nice.

Moving to a more appropriate category.

Absalutly right !! very well said

Please know that I have the upmost respect for your beliefs, J. This nation is not a Christian nation--and never has been. Again, this is a myth (read article below). It is a wonderful nation of various faiths and beliefs. The men who lead the United States in its revolution against England, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and put together the Constitution, were not orthodox Christians. Our first six presidents--our great founding fathers--were Deists, Unitarians et al. The Encyclopedia Britannica (1968, p. 420) states:

"One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."

They went to great pains to make sure that our constitution reflected commonsense principles. They were well aware the pain religion had caused in Europe--Inquisition, Crusades, Dark Ages et al--and fought hard to protect this great nation from religious persecution of any kind, repeating the same mistakes.

-------------------

Some politically conservative Christians say that America is "a Christian nation," and at this time of year, with the country saturated with Christmas imagery, it can seem that they are right. Are they? Is America a "Christian nation"? Should it be?

The following is taken from the book Toward The Mystery by Rev. William Edelen. He is an active ordained Presbyterian and Congregational minister for 30 years. Adjunct professor of Religious Studies and Anthropology, University of Puget Sound Tacoma, Washington.

******
[b]Founding Fathers Would Howl If Called Christian

In few other areas of American history is there such a distortion of facts as there is regarding the religious orientation of our Founding Fathers.

A recent Guest Opinion columnist wrote in The Idaho Statesman that: "200 years ago, having religion meant one's life had been drastically altered by the saving lordship of Jesus Christ. Our country was founded by 'born again' men of heart and mind." Those statements are absurd.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin (and even Abraham Lincoln, another of our most admired Presidents) must be turning over in their graves and weeping at such a perversion of their beliefs.

Our most distinguished Founding Fathers did not believe in a "personal" God ... they did not believe that the Bible was anything other than literature ... and they had an almost contempt for the Christian clergy and Christiandoctrine. "God" was to them "nature's god"; an impersonal form, or "providence." Thomas Paine said it for all of them in these words:

"Men and books lie. Only nature does not lie."

... Perhaps the point is made for those who would care to pursue it further prior to making statements that will cause the enlightened to blush with embarrassment.

A show of hands on how many would like our Founding Fathers' religious orientation to have been different is not going to change the facts. In the interest of integrity, let us not be celebrating what never was, for there is much we can celebrate that was. The wells of significant, profound and enriching "religion" ran far deeper in most of these men than in a great many orthodox Christians ... of both yesterday and today.

Too many of us are like the priests in Galileo's day who refused to look through the telescope for fear of what they might see. And too many of us are like the lady who, when first told about evolution, responded with, "Well, let us pray to God that it is not true, but IF IT IS TRUE, then let us pray to God nobody ever hears about it..."

... Below are a few quotes by our founding fathers regarding religion--the first, a treaty with Tripoli, being the most poignant. George Washington was president when the treaty was signed at Tripoli (1797), but by the time it reached the Senate for ratification John Adams was president:

"As the government of the United States of America is NOT IN ANY SENSE FOUNDED ON THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION,--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquillity of Musselmen,--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohammedan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever interrupt the harmony existing between the two countries."

... The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence. The [Constitutional] Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once, His direction, or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God." (Address by Yale Seminary President Timothy Dwight, July 23, 1812)

-------------------------
*Letter to the Los Angeles Times from Pastor R. T. Zuelch:

As Pastor Richard T. Zuelch pointed out in his letter to the Los Angeles Times on August 14, 1995: "Gordon S. Wood, in his 1992 book, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," states that, by the 1790's only about 10% of the American population regularly attended religious services - to quote just one statistic. Not exactly an indication of a wholehearted national commitment to Christianity!

It is a matter of simple historical fact that the United States was not founded as, nor was it ever intended to be, a Christian nation. That there were strong, long-lasting Christian influences involved in the nation's earliest history, due to the Puritan settlements and those of other religious persons escaping European persecution, cannot be denied. But that is a long way from saying that colonial leaders, by the time of the outbreak of the Revolution, were intending to form a nation founded on specifically Christian principles and doctrine.

We Christians do ourselves no favor by bending history to suit our prejudices or to accommodate wishful thinking. Rather than continue to cling to a "Moral Majority"-style fantasy that says America is a Christian nation that needs to be "taken back" from secular unbelief (we can't "take back" what we never had), it would be much healthier for us Christians to face reality, holding to what Jesus himself said in the Gospels: that Christians should never be surprised at the hostility with which the gospel would be greeted by the world, because most people would fail to believe in him, thereby strongly implying that, in every age and country, Christianity would always be a minority faith.” (Rev. Richard T. Zuelch, Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, August 1995)

America's Real Religion
http://www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/

Side note: The words, "under God," did not appear in the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954, when Congress, under McCarthyism, inserted them. Likewise, "In God We Trust" was absent from paper currency before 1956. It appeared on some coins earlier, as did other sundry phrases, such as "Mind Your Business." The original U.S. motto, chosen by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, is E Pluribus Unum ("Of Many, One"), celebrating plurality, not theocracy.

America: A Christian Nation
http://www.brucegourley.com/christiannation/

Little-Known U.S. Document Signed by President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html

Primary Source Material in Religion and Politics (Baylor University)
http://www.baylor.edu/church_state/index.p...36168#twentieth

Biblical Discernment Ministries - 6/98
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psycho.../amerc.htm#Note

"The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion." -- James Madison (Detached Memoranda, ca. 1817)

Books:

The Establishment Clause by Leonard W. Levy

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different by Gordon Wood

The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes

The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State by Isaac Kramnick, R. Laurence Moore

The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders by Forrest Church (Editor)

[b]The Myth of Christian America: What You Need to Know About the Separation of Church and State by Mark Weldon Whitten

Respectfully,

Sean

I think you also have to consider the "divine right of kings."

This was the idea that a king ruled because God wanted him to rule. To rebell against the king was to rebell against the wishes of God, who put the king on the throne. In 1776, ordinary people still bought into this.

So God had to be peppered through the language of the declaration of independence, and much of the rest of the colonial propoganda, to instill in the population of ordinary people that God was with THEM, and not with King George, as Divine Right of Kings would have them believe.

We the people; endowed by our creator....that really meant something once..still does to me..

To me too.

But note it does not say "we the people, endowed by our creator, the God of the Israelites who brought the Jews out of Egypt, who sent the world his only son Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, and was burried for our sins. On the third day he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom will live in Glory."


It just says "creator."

Regardless, even if the founding fathers DID mean for religion to be a part of the state (I don't think they did....but...) the constitution and our government is designed to be adaptable and a living entity that reflects the times it exists in. The right to bear arms was absolute when we had muskets. But it's not now that we have machine guns and shoulder fired rockets.

When the population wants a more complete seperation of church and state, they shall have it. And, as scary as it sounds, if the population want an official religion, they will have that too. The rules were written by man, they can be changed by man, AMENDED, if you will.


but I have a suspicion that the pendulum is about to start swinging back my way pretty soon.

Religion is politics, it always has been. The governmental workings were yanked from the former and called politics, however, there is not a government or a nation whose ruling party does not govern according to their religious beliefs.

It is clear in American politics that agnostics, aetheists and members of certain religions will not in this day and age lead the government. This makes it clear that there is no real seperation of church and state, evident by the current and past conflicts concerning; race; colour; slavery; rights of inheritance; women as chattels; marriage; divorce; abortion, and the arguments which ensued.

That book of scripture is the crux of all things governmental, from the oath of office to the oath of speaking the truth in a court of law, and the public expects them to live up to the requirements stated within that book.

Good post[s] guys!

We don't swear on a bible here in NY in court.

[Lost track of who's quoting whom... now fixed, apologies for any confusion.]

Unlimited's comment edits together two documents.

The Preamble of the Constitution of the United States begins "We, the People of the United States..." and never gets any closer to God than " ... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

The Declaration of Independence, begins its second paragraph with "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

I don't know what to make of that. The meaning changes in the editing. "We... endowed by our creator" is a different thought from "all men ... endowed by their Creator."

In any case, the "creator-free" Constitution has legal force, and established a government. The "creator-full" Declaration does not have legal force, and did not establish a government.

I think we should be come a Pagan nation. Nude beaches for all!!

Congratulations you have now converted me from Atheism to paganism.

Our rights come from the creator. Our persuit of happiness comes from the creator. You might not WANT a Christian nation, but your in one. You have rights because you are in one. Take away the creator, and take away their rights. That's the goal of communism. The seperation of Church and State meant no heavenly ordained leadership. The Church used to serve as the courthouse. Our laws come from the Bible. Our punishments came from the Bible until secular/liberal leadership decided it was cruel to kill a murderer.
If someone killed your mom or your daughter, would you say, "Oh, no, please don't hurt him. That would be mean. He only raped and killed my 12 year old daughter." People would be wise to open their eyes. It does not matter if you believe in God. He is still going to judge you. You do not have a choice. Wake up.
Weather you like it or not your islamic enemy thinks your a christian and want's to kill you. He will cut your head off for dressing the way you dress, talking the way you talk, and kissing your girlfriend in public. Christians are protecting you as we speak. George Bush is making sure this enemy does not get to you. Am I getting through to you at all?!

Good post up to this part...george bush creates more terrorists...God protects us not gw bush...

True. The bible says power is given and taken by God. Good point.

No No No. Many of the founding fathers were deists ..................

ie "enlightened"

and many were devout christians.....george washington was a preacher as a hobby..

It's about religion not being able to use government authority to impose itself on people who don't want it, or to use government taxing authority to benefit the church, particuarly an all-too-easily-corrupted priesthood (include preachers here).

Remember that it only took 70 years for Christians to go from persecuted minority to burning pagans at the stake. It's people like Huckabee that make some of us fear a repeat of history.

Maybe you should read "Faith of the Fathers." It's about the religious faith of the founding fathers. Some were religious, but most mistrusted religion when it had governmental power. Jefferson, in particular, did not trust religion: he called the Bible "a dunghill."
Doug

I would oppose a pagan government for the same reason I would oppose a Christian one: governmental authority is too easily abused in the name of religion.

That being said, prohibitions against nudity are based on church law and really shouldn't have government sanction.
Doug

If that were only true. Doug

let's just hope this is still true !