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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
This is a country where you get fired from a job as a teacher for having in the past posed for soft-core pornography, but current repeat offenses of physically attacking children just get you pulled to clerical work. Think of the children!
Senator, have you considered a career in terrorism?
People are confusing their right to believe in a god with their desire to play god.
I like that saying "Think of the Children." My vote for the all-time most said phrase by us Sloggers.
Submission to Governing Authorities
13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is Godâs servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are Godâs servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer
To fully elaborate: if you (the government/civil society) in any way impede my ability to impose my beliefs on others, which my theology requires me to do, then you've infringed on my freedom of religion and conscience, and my 1st Amendment freedom of conscious trumps your freedom to not be imposed upon; this is doubly true for atheists who believe in nothing at all, and are therefore free game.
Only those with religious theology which requires them to object to the imposition of my beliefs may have an exemption, and only then if they can prove it's a substantial burden they are being forced to endure.
I don't think that's quite right. I'm pretty sure Sasse was specifically referring to followers of Yahweh, not Allah, and even then, there's probably some sort of prohibition in-place for Papists, Lutherans, Methodists, Unitarians, Episcopalians - that is, any non-fundamentalist, non-Baptist denomination.
Oof, that's from Zeph; which I'm afraid is Old Testament, Mr. Hammer. You're sentence is not likely to be light.
And then these same guys said you can't build a 'mosque' (that's not a mosque) a half mile from the WTC site. Because religious freedom is absolute.
Applying the same reasoning to criminal court proceedings is simply insane. Unless we just take every defendant's word about what their religious beliefs are. The courts would be asked to determine if someone is a sufficiently devout believer in a religion to allow the religion's tenets to apply. Whether the religion is sufficiently mainstream to be recognized. What the religion's tenets are. And how those tenets should affect secular criminal law.
It actually reminds me of the can of worms military judges have to sort through to determine if someone is truly a conscientious objector.
(1 for murder, sexual assault etc..where records are kept for life on Police systems, to 5 for non violent crimes, kept on Police records for 10 years, more if you re-offend).
Put together with this guys previous charges,(the assault with a deadly weapon and taking property)that's a life long record with the Police, he would automatically loose his job if convicted, and wouldn't have passed the background check that all teachers here have to pass if he wanted to return to his school, or he applied for a new position. So no job with children in the UK ever again.
As for the 'God' defence, he could be assessed for mental health problems whilst in Police custody if he really pressed the point. Our courts would give him a fine or a custodial term God or no God.
In the 15 years I worked for the Police here, I heard religion used as a defence in two cases I dealt with, neither defendant won their cases, how could they? Their 'witness' couldn't take the stand...
Jews are problematic in that those who live in Israel seem to get special dispensations from Christian Fundamentalists because they have to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem in order for all the fundies to get raptured.
Or something like that. Admittedly, it's all pretty confusing.
And the kids were causing "absolute chaos and mayhem"? Wow. That's alot [sic]. Not the lesser crime of relative chaos and mayhem that much more well-behaved boys cause.
All organized religions are political in nature and left unchecked in the balance of power would be tempted to displace, usurp and overthrow our government of, by and for the people.
Having been minority religions in lands governed by state religions, protestants once upon a time understood the need to maintain checks and balances so that no one church or theology would exert its authority beyond its right of self-governance.
Unfortunately, people who imagine a god are forever tempted to play the role of god.
As churches have converted over the last half-century from associations to corporations and as corporations have increased in power by supplanting democracy with capitalism and creating a governing class of banks and investors, churches as corporations have been unable to resist the temptation to supplant the democratic republic that has so long protected them with a theocratic government whose god favors (or simply is) capital and whose laws are selective passages from the holy books of their previous incarnation that have been twisted into the service of capitalism and the power it imparts to them.
Capital is the god in which Americans trust. Step outside its church (banks) and congregation (corporations) for a moment and the beast becomes apparent.
Protestants who seek to overthrow the secular government and join with banks and corporations to displace a government of, by and for all of the people that has so long served and protected them will soon find themselves in the same position as small-to-medium local and family businesses who allowed and even supported the capitalist system that yielded the governing class of corporations that now rule what remains of them.
Every ruling class needs a self-serving theology. How long before this emerging theology of capitalism has supplanted all others? How long before their god and its true church replace all others? Not long now.
A word of warning to Christians:
You cannot defeat the enemy you become.
Your pursuit of power through your belief in capitalism has betrayed your lack of faith and belief in the G_d you once professed to serve.
No god can endure who is reduced to his followers by their attempts to become him. Playing god reveals you and your deity.
...oh, and just in case we've been unclear capitalism is the state religion, and you helped bring it to power.
True, but we're talking about a group of people who cannot (or will not) grasp basic scientific concepts of measuring time such as Carbon Dating, Doppler Shifting, The Hubble Constant, or Geological Layering. So far as they're concerned 1830 might as well have been right after Moses accidentally swallowed some magic mushrooms while wandering around the slopes of Mt. Sinai.