Why not look at the Second and determine it is Individual because it is among the individual rights and the guys who wrote it said so.

Why not look at the 14th and see that the guys who wrote it expressly said that children of non US parents born here were not citizens?

But, Jefferson and the others were discussing government encroachment into religion, not the other way around.

A Cross in a cemetery is OK, the Menorah in a building is OK. Nor shall they prohibit the free expression (free means anywhere).

That means freedom OF religion not freedom from it.

As far as filtering words. The software filters out the things you say. The other word you mention is filtered as well. I have no problems with people saying what they want and the fact that you do not filter at your place is good for you and your right. At my place I am free to filter and since there are people who come here who do not like that kind of stuff then it is filtered. And I don’t want to end up in search results for filthy sites. I cannot (or do not know how to) change the filter to keep it from filtering words that are legitimate.

It is not curious behavior. Some words sneak in but even when I use my reference it is not done directly.

If we were talking somewhere we could say whatever. But we are not the only ones who read this and people of all ages and all beliefs read it and they do not need to see vulgarity.

I am sure you can express yourself without it.

DAR
Bigd, I am for freedom of speech. I am with George Carlin and think you should use whatever words you like. No exceptions. On our freethinker forum we don’t ban words.

It’ just curious that you find it important to set your filter to not let a person type the word “circumstance” without it being censored and yet you at the same time have no trouble posting the most harsh and demeaning word available to use toward women.

It’s just curious behavior.

I am not one who things inserting a few asterisks makes any difference.

Regarding your claim that there is “no Constitutional provision for separation of church and state.” Let’s ask James Madison his opinion. I’ll limit myself to three examples:

***
1) MARCH 2, 1819

“The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.

Source of Information:
Letter to Robert Walsh from James Madison. March 2, 1819 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, in Four Volumes, Published by Order of Congress. Vol. III, J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, (1865), pp 121-126. James Madison on Religious Liberty, Robert S.Alley, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y. (1985) pp 82-83)

2) JUNE 3, 1811

“To the Baptist Churches on Neal’s Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have other wise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself.”

Source of Information:
Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811. Letters And Other Writings of James Madison Fourth President Of The United States In Four Volumes Published By the Order Of Congress, Vol..II, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, (1865), pp 511-512.

3) 1817-1833

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and Gov’t in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents’ already furnished in their short history. . . .”

Source of Information:
Madison’s Detached Memoranda. This document was discovered in 1946 among the papers of William Cabell Rives, a biographer of Madison. Scholars date these observations in Madison’s hand sometime between 1817 and 1832. The entire document was published by Elizabeth Fleet in the William and Mary Quarterly of October 1946
***

DAR
They teach this stuff in elementary school I am sure, but apparently it cannot counteract an entire Christian Nation industry (David Barton etc.) that has devoted itself to spreading revisionist lies about basic American history.

I have many more examples of course. It’s a bit of a specialty.

What I always find incredible is that the loons who ought to be happy that the government doesn’t pick sides are the ones who insist that separation is a farce.

But the question of separation doesn’t even matter in this case. It’s really quite simple: The First Commandment says that you have no choice; there is one god and no other gods can be accepted before that one god. The First Amendment guarantees you from being penalized for not accepting what the First Commandment says. Thus, the First Commandment is NOT the basis for any U.S. law and is in fact contradictory to the Constitution.

The Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion NOT PROHIBIT THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF. In other words, people may worship as they see fit and the Congress may not make a law establishing s state religion (as the one they left; the Church of England).

Equal rights and opportunity.

DAR
This from a person who just the other day thought it wasn’t sexist to demean a woman by calling her the most vile and insulting name for her genitalia?

Sometimes the hypocrisy and inconsistency here takes the breath away.

Regarding “this is a Judeo Christian nation regardless.” I’ve already shown in binding law, a treaty, that the “United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

That seems pretty straight forward.

And you ducked my question:

If we are a “Judeo- Christian Nation” why did they completely forget to mention this in our *Godless* constitution?

Wouldn’t that have been a good thing to mention?

D.
—————–
“The obvious first step in seeking out our nation’s origins is to read its founding documents. In doing so, one is struck immediately by the total absence of any mention of Jesus, Christ or Christianity. There is also no reference to any Christian church-Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Calvinist-nothing. Not a word, nor a hint. If our Founding Fathers had intended to make this a Christian nation, they could not have hidden that intention more completely, or done a worse job of it.” –Judith Hayes

***
“Some Christian lawyers — some eminent and stupid judges — have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.

Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt — laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as old as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love….

If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: ‘Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.’

He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: ‘The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.’

He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: ‘Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence’….

All that we call progress — the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages — has been done in spite of the Old Testament.”

–(About the Holy Bible, 1894). [From Robert E. Nordlander, quoting Robert Ingersoll)

As my Bible scholar friend Ralph once put it:

“The Commandments in Exodus 20 are un-American, unconstitutional, immoral, and irrelevant. The first one, to worship only Jahweh, is a clear violation of the separation of church and state. So is the one about keeping the Sabbath (which lasts from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday).
The holding of slaves is contrary to the 14th Amendment. Punishing children for the sins of the parents unto the third and fourth generation is child abuse, and therefore immoral. But the Commandments are entirely irrelevant to non-Jews, because they are specifically addressed to the
Hebrews by their God Jahweh.”
–Ralph Nielsen

Snopes has a good debunk of a common letter that gets passed around about this. It’s worth checking out because it has pictures of these things too:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp