[zoe r]

Originally Posted by JerryLove

So the appointed judeges were always infallable in determining which law applied, to whom, and how? That's pretty neat.

The laws, and the punishments for violating them were instituted by God.
The Biblical judges were bound to carry them out, or they themselves would be subject to punishment. Our laws, and punishments, are instituted by a bunch of men who thought they had a good idea.

Originally Posted by JerryLove

The same parts of the Bible say that cursing is a capital crime,

"Cursing" is not a capital crime, or a sin at all - blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is. (Or are you talking about putting curses on someone?)

Originally Posted by JerryLove

working on Satuday is a capital crime,

Uh. No.

Originally Posted by JerryLove

displeasing your husband is a divorceable offence,

If "displeasing" = commiting adultery/physical abuse.

Originally Posted by JerryLove

and inability to *prove* you are a virgin on your wedding night is a capital crime

Deut. 22: 13
"If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, 'I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity. if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..

Haha. So it is. Yes, this does seem a little bit outrageous.

The chances of this actually happening (a man refusing his new wife sex, saying "I don't think she's a virgin", and instead bringing her before the courts, and the courts convicting her) are very, very, small. Many of the case laws in the OT are so specific and weird that they may very well never be actually put to use.

Originally Posted by JerryLove

and rape victims are required to marry their rapists.

What? Haha, please show me where this is.

01. Sex before marriage is not a capital offense (although Biblical law required fornicators to marry).

Deut. 22:28
If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

02. Rape is a capital crime, and being raped has absolutely no punishment at all.

Deuteronomy 22: 25
But if... a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.

Originally Posted by JerryLove

Because the Bible says "impose by force these laws on all people everywhere"? I must have missed that... I thought that the law was for the Jews.

01.
Ceremonial laws (sacrifice, etc.) were fulfilled by the death of Christ,
but the other (moral, civil) laws have no reason to not be withstanding today. The fact that they are not (in their entirety) doesn't mean that they shouldn't be. Even so, we are bound to our current government, and (as long as they do not conflict with Biblical morals; i.e., if murder was made lawful Christians are still not allowed to, or with abortion- that is legal but still sinful for Christians) we must obey their laws. If the law says homosexuals can marry, who are we to say they can't? We can say they shouldn't, but that doesn't hold much weight in the courts.

02.
Christians cannot go out and stone a prostitute, or shoot a homosexual, (even according to Biblical law) because that power is exclusively granted to the civil government.

03.
Christians who vote, or who are elected government officials, who support a Biblical standard are no more imposing their views than people who support their own "moral standards".

Originally Posted by JerryLove

"impose by force these laws on all people everywhere"

I'm singling out this statement --No it doesn't, and that's not what I'm saying should be done.The only way a Theocracy could be instated is if it was supported by the majority. Furthermore, violating another country's sovereignty preemptively is absolutely wrong and in no way justifiable.

[JerryLove]

The laws, and the punishments for violating them were instituted by God.

That is debateable, but I'll assume it for the argument.

The Biblical judges were bound to carry them out, or they themselves would be subject to punishment.

By whom? Only they were appointed to determine what standard had been met. The were police, judge, and jury... checks and balances are not simply about allowing law (if congress passes an ammendment, there is no recourse), it's about preventing one group from having complete control and power (such as the judges) when they are capable of error and corruption.

So let me ask you this... when those judges, bound to carry out the perfect law, decided Jesus was a Heritic, were they correct?

"Cursing" is not a capital crime, or a sin at all

Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9

Uh. No.

Exodus 31:14, 31:15, 35:2

If "displeasing" = commiting adultery/physical abuse.

Deut 24:1, 24:3

The chances of this actually happening (a man refusing his new wife sex, saying "I don't think she's a virgin", and instead bringing her before the courts, and the courts convicting her) are very, very, small.

Option 1: He hid the sheets (or had sex elsewhere)
Option 2: She didn't bleed (you know you can break a hymen (or never have one) without loosing your virginity?)

Heck, he may sincerely believe that she was not a virgin because she did not bleed... and she will certainly lack proof... but she still could be.

Many of the case laws in the OT are so specific and weird that they may very well never be actually put to use.

So God makes useless laws?

01. Sex before marriage is not a capital offense (although Biblical law required fornicators to marry).

Both your quotes are rape... that's what "seizes her" means.

Compare 25 to 23... In 23 she is not seized, and both are put to death... in 25 she is seized and only he is put to death. The NIV actually uses the word "rape" instead.

Premarital sex with an unbetrothed virgin carries no penalty that I am aware of. Sex (or rape) of an unmarried widow, similarly, carries no punishment. A married man having sex with an unbetrothed girl, servent, or widow carries no punishment.

You have an belief which is a pretty radical departure from what the text actually says.

[quote]Ceremonial laws (sacrifice, etc.) were fulfilled by the death of Christ,
but the other (moral, civil) laws have no reason to not be withstanding today.[/qoute] Who decides which are which? You?

Christians cannot go out and stone a prostitute, or shoot a homosexual, (even according to Biblical law) because that power is exclusively granted to the civil government.

A cite would be nice... why aren't Christians at least advocating changing the law so that stoning is the method of execution and so that we do stone blasphemers?

How come we seem so intent on punishing people who rape unbetrothed girls... I mean, unless you take their virginity (which is worth 50 shcekles to their father) then you've not committed a crime biblically... why would you want to make it a crime civally... surely God's law is perfect.

Christians who vote, or who are elected government officials, who support a Biblical standard are no more imposing their views than people who support their own "moral standards".

See above.

[quote]I'm singling out this statement --No it doesn't, and that's not what I'm saying should be done.[/qoute] Funny, cause I thought you said "Christians have the moral obligation to support Biblical standards when they vote" ... which is to say that Christian should try to pass laws which will "impose those laws on all people".

Furthermore, violating another country's sovereignty preemptively is absolutely wrong and in no way justifiable.

Panama? Grenada? Afghanistan (or would Germany be OK to invadeus if a terrorist was in the US?).

How about the Hittites? They were killed for having been in Isreal when God decided to give it to the jews. They lost and surrendered, but God ordered the women and children executed and only the virgin girls left alive.

Is that "absolutely wrong"?

[KtM1967]

There's only one God love. The almighty maker of heaven and earth.

[g-man777]

First of all our nation was founded by christian men who wanted to worship God in their own way. And if you notice most of the Rules and regulations have to do with the Ten commandments and other things God Declared wrong.

[JerryLove]

First of all our nation was founded by christian men who wanted to worship God in their own way.

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
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...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)


George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From:
George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)


John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"

It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
From:
The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.


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, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to J. Adams April 11,1823)

James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
From:
The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.

Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature."
From:
Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)



Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From:
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790.

And if you notice most of the Rules and regulations have to do with the Ten commandments and other things God Declared wrong.

1. You shall have no other gods before Me
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

OK, not one of these first 5 are represented in national law. In fact, ammendment 1 defies commandment, a flag we pledge allegience to defies 2 (interesting how Christian pledge alliegence without complaint). Freedom of speech (also ammendment 1) defies commandment 3. Commandment 4 is simply unrepresented, as is 5.

6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

6 is illegal. 7, however, is not federally prohibited at all. 8 is, 9 is as well, coveting is encouraged (welcome to capitalism).

God declared an awful lot wrong; not a great deal of it made it to law, and most of what did you will find was illegal in cultures unrelated to Judeo-Christianity (and so cannot be inferred to be Biblical in origin).

[fudrudler]

In answer to the origanl question, yes it was christian. Or aleast mostly christian.

[JerryLove]

Do you realize, especiallyin light of the rest of the thread, how useless that assertion is without support?

[fudrudler]

Sorry I only read the first post.

[spenwah]

I don't think the founding fathers cared much for Romans 13:1-2.

I recently bought a copy of "Jefferson's Bible," and I'm enjoying studying it immensely. Jefferson purchased a number of Holy Bibles, and set to work cutting out the portions of God's Word that could not occur in reality (i.e., every miracle).

Jefferson hated faith because it is the polar opposite of reason. This country was founded on reason, the only means of objective knowledge.

[+Donny]

This country was founded on reason, the only means of objective knowledge.

You probably should take that to the apologetics forum, unless you already have.

[Epaphras]

I always wondered where our supposed "God-given rights" are in the Bible. I mean, we really don't have any "rights", do we?

The reason He grants life in the morning to nonbelievers is so they may believe, and the reason He grants life in the morning to believers is so they may witness, and bring glory to Him. I think according to the Bible(help me with Scripture) life is not a "right", it is a gift. We have no "right" to property(read Job), and no "right" to a pursuit of hapiness(look where that has led: the legalization of porn, strip-clubs, possibly soon prostitution and marijuana as well, etc). Where in the Bible does it say we have the "God-given right" to life, property, and the pursuit of hapiness?

We have no "right" to freedom, either. You are either a slave to sin, or a servant of the Most High("...you are not your own, you were bought with a price..."). The physical political freedoms we enjoy today are not rights, they are privileges and gifts. Where in the Bible does it say we have the "God-given right" to be free?

We have no "right" to freedom of religion. God will not tolerate any religion. All He accepts is fellowship with Christ. Where in the Bible does it say we have a "God-given right" to practice our own religion?

So until I can find Scripture that agrees with our Constitution, I'm stating that our country was indeed not founded as a Christian nation.

[JakeW]

Originally Posted by spenwah

This country was founded on reason, the only means of objective knowledge.

You are presupposing that human minds are capable of understanding reality. If is an unprovable assertion. This is simply not a claim you can make without any backing.

Jake

[Jas de F]

Originally Posted by disciple_419

I always wondered where our supposed "God-given rights" are in the Bible. I mean, we really don't have any "rights", do we?

the three rights listed are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." the "pursuit of happiness" means "the pursuit of property" if you interpret the passage according to the meaning of the words in the 18th century.

where are these rights not protected by God? God gives us life from the beginning, and forbids others to take it and institutes the death penalty for those who do take it. God forbids man-stealing and establishes various principles which are opposed to slavery and the like. and God gives man private property and establishes penalties (such as restitution) for those who steal one's property. there you are. the three rights of the Declaration of Independence.

now, why you should believe our Constitution proves our nation to have not been founded as a Christian nation when the God-given rights aren't even listed in that document is beyond me.