Only what you choose to read into it.

You conveniently ignore the questions you can't answer.

Happy suffering. Hope you don't find out what persecution is all about for real.

I can't believe it took me so long to see the problem in this thread. Here's what I think I know:

1) Judeo-Christian values have been at the core of this country since before it was born.

2) Some people, because of specific issues (which may include their own belief systems or lifestyles) find this fact to be so threatening that they deny its truth.

3) When I write of our current social fragmentation, I'm not referencing belief systems or lifestyles that have little or no impact on social cohesion. Maybe others are - not me. I'm referring to those (growing) segments of society that take and not give. I'm referring to those segments of society that, while demanding recognition and acceptance for themselves, would deny it of Christians and others.

4) Any unit (political, social, organic, mechanical) can only stand so much disruption/dilution/drag. How many people can actually ride IN the wagon before the pushers can no longer move it? How many languages can live under one flag and still expect that flag to mean anything? Name a few countries that have had long-term success with multiculturalism.

I recognize the Hispanic community as part of our great country. I think of the illegal alien community as a problem. I understand that many Muslims in the U.S. are every bit as American as I am. I'm also not blind to the fact that there are Muslims here who would do us harm. We also have an entitlement class here that is growing, voting and contributing nothing. Basically, those who built, and continue to build, the nation are sick of seeing it torn apart by various protected classes of non-contributors.

No, it's just the same old circular arguments regarding religion … but I agree with a lot of what you posted here, but not all of it.

But what are thes "values" exactly?

I hear this arguement used to justify capital punishment, wars, requiring women to bear children, jailing doctors who perform abortions, requiring children to bear children, refusal by pharmacists to provide legal and essential medications, denying teaching of sciences such as geology and evolutionary theories, practice of science, (stem cell) jailing women and doctors who believe in reproductive freedom, assigning the role of women, religious holidays, war, capital punishment, etc. Even gun control.

None of this stuff is a traditional value, and none of it is agreed on by a a majority of the Judeo Christians.

So when someone starts with "we are based on Judeo Christian....", I get skeptical. There's always more coming....It's not just love one another...
It's let's make a law and punish some folks who disagree with what ever the current speaker really wants.

See, that's where you cross the line.

There's a fundamental difference between punishing someone who does something that the law has declared illegal, and punishing someone for not doing something that the law allows.

You have no right to mandate that someone do something that is against their religious teachings or moral precepts, and the government has no right to do it in your name.

This goes well and beyond the simple question of whether abortion should be legal. The question is whether you have sufficient tolerance to live in a society in which people do not share your values.

When you say that the government should force pharmacists to dispense medications that they have moral objections to, you are saying that you do not.

Everyone can do as they believe. But if you accept government reimbursement, like Medical Assistance, or work at a public hospital that accepts goivernment assistance, you don't have the right to discriminate among the recipients of the government assistance based on your personal beliefs.

A pharmacist who is subsidized has to "have sufficient tolerance" to serve persons who may or may not share the values of the pharmacist.

You stated it nicely. Does the pharmacist who accepts reimbursement from a government program have suffient tolerence to work under such a program, or not have the tolerence to participate in a government program that serves everyone?

Believe as you wish, just don't discrimminate against others who may have other beliefs, and expect public reimbursement for it. Calling this a " basic Christian value upon which this country was founded" does not legalize discrimination.

That's very much open to debate.


The only thing I find threatening is that people use their view of "Judeo-Christian morals" to discriminate against people for what they have no choice being, and to impose their moral values on others who do not share them and yet are harming nobody.


Christians deserve recognition and acceptance to the exact extent they grant it to others who do not share their religion.

As for taking and not giving, I agree with you - but that's not a failure of Christian morality, but rather a failure of the Golden Rule.


...and yet the biggest group of people who cling to a different language are some of the most devout Christians out there.


I don't disagree with a word of this. The only thing I disagree with is your implication that those who are non-contributors are that way because they do not follow Judeo-Christian morals. The two issues are entirely unrelated.

Sorry, but no.

The Bush administration pushed through a last-minute rule change that forbade federal funding to health care organizations that mandated that their employees performed abortions. The Obama administration is talking about reversing that. It should.

For a pharmacist to refuse to disburse something that his employer has decided to sell is an matter concerning the pharmacist and the employer. The pharmacist has no right to employment, and the employer is free to make disbursing such medications a condition of employment. For a doctor, a nurse, an anesthetist, to refuse to participate in an abortion when it is the policy of their employer to offer abortions is the same. They have no right to employment.

But what you're arguing for is just as bad, in the opposite direction.

I actually find many athiests try to force the believers into following their rules instead of just going with the flow. What does it affect you if Christians have the 10 commandments or the manger scene in public? Why do athiests fight so hard to get those taken away?

Does "In God We Trust" on money force you to believe in God? Why not just ignore it?

I once saw a TV ad run by a religious group that made the statement, "Freedom of Religion doesn't mean Freedom from Religion".

I disagree, if by "freedom from religion" means you have the freedom from practicing a religion.

But if by "freedom from religion" you mean freedom from ever having to encounter other people who are exercising their religions, I couldn't disagree more strongly.

The 1st amendment has two clauses concerning religion. One forbids the government from making an establishment of religion. The other forbids the government from interfering in individuals' free exercise of religion.

They are of equal importance.

You have no right to be free from interacting with people who choose to practice their own religions.

Many? Sure there's the Madalyn Murray O'Hair types... well actually I don't know of anybody currently alive who's as strident as she was, but anyway: I think the vast majority of us are more live-and-let-live by nature. I certainly don't assume that I can learn what many of my Christian friends believe by watching Jimmy Swaggart or Jeremiah Wright.

Personally I don't feel antagonized by the mere existence of the Christian culture that surround me. "In public" I have no problem with. In the courthouse or schoolroom is different -- I do have, off the top of my head, at least two problems with religious content in government-supported institutions: One, I'd rather not pay for it, I need that money for ammo and beer, and two, the degree to which of Americans are identified as Christians is the degree to which the enemies of Christianity consider themselves my enemy too. I prefer make my own enemies based on on my own disreputable character, I don't need any help.

I do ignore it, as does everybody most of the time. And really, maybe from the point of view of a believer, that's a reason to reserve it for a house of worship instead of having it on every raggedy Federal Reserve note a guy buys his hemorrhoid cream with.

I'll briefly take this discussion off-topic, then I'll let you guys resume.

I AM GLAD I LIVE IN AMERICA...

...where we can have this spirited discussion!

Carry on.

Well, I'm not an atheist, and I don't mind at all folks expressing their religious views in public, but it seems to me that the state doesn't have any business at all promoting, or suppressing, religious expression, or choosing one over another. Long as the town square is open to a Bacchanal, and the public pools to your garden variety aqua-Satanic incantations, I don't see any problem with the occasional manger there, too.

Joel, you have said what I have been searching for 5 pages for the right words to convey. We can only have these conversations while there is freedom.