'Tis the Season...
... For Fundievangelical nonsense: The Birth Of Christ And America. I don't know who's worse: Chuck "TDS" Baldwin or Denis "University" Prager.
I love quoting John Quincy Adams (Yeah, I'm sure you do. Just because John Quincy Adams said it doesn't make it the least bit true. You are aware that Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy, aren't you?) at this time of the year. On July 4, 1837, he spoke these words:
Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Savior of the world Time Lord of the Age of Pisces, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? (Beats me, but I'm sure you'll tell us) . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior Time Lord of the Age of Pisces? (No) That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? (No) Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s Time Lord of the Age of Pisces' mission upon earth? (No) That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior Time Lord of the Age of Pisces and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before? (No)
None of this is true. Remember, Xianity had almost 2,000 years to produce government that respected individual rights and applied the law equally. It never happened, and we call the centuries when Christianity dominated all European monarchies the Dark Ages. The "first precepts of Christianity" for the "corner stone of human government" was divine right monarchy. This is what you saw across Europe, and into the first decades of the 20th century.
Adams was exactly right. The United States of America is the only nation in human history (The. Only. FUCKING nation in all of human FUCKING history, SRSLY Chuck, how about every other European nation?) established by mostly Christian people, founded upon 2,000 years of Christian thought and God’s Natural Laws of Creation. New Covenant preaching was proclaimed from colonial pulpits, and Biblical Natural Law principles were foremost in the minds of America’s founders. Ergo, our country was dedicated to the purpose of religious and personal liberty and equal justice under the law. This truth is easily observed within America’s earliest history.
Adams was FoS, and so are you. America was founded upon Enlightenment thought. America wouldn't've been possible until the Enlightenment defanged, declawed, and neutered political Christianity. "Religious and personal liberty" and "equal justice under the law" are to be found nowhere in the Bible. Religious liberty has always been anathema to the established churches. Indeed, religious liberty was on Pope Pius IX's CEO Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti's Syllabus of Errors. Once again, these are Enlightenment values.
From the beginning, the sentiments and statements of America’s founders make it clear that this country has enjoyed a love and appreciation for the rights and freedoms recognized in Natural Law and the Holy Scriptures™ that is unique in the annals of human history. No other nation has such a heritage.
Your HolyScriptures™ do not recognize "rights and freedoms". From beginning to end, Genesis through Revelation, front to back, HolyScriptures™ endorse slavery. For fuck's sake, even Christian slaves were admonished to faithfully serve their Christian owners. Indeed, slavery was one thing America took from the pages of HolyScripture™ and set off a war that claimed up to 750,000 lives to get rid of it. Oh, and let's not mention all the genocidal wars ordered up in the Old Testament. The Canaanites were genocided for WrongThink™. The Amakelites ordered genocided for an offense that occurred some 400 years prior that had Not. THING. ONE. to so with any Amakelites then alive.
The Declaration of Independence states, “[Men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It also states that these rights are “self-evident” and that they were formed by the “Laws of Nature” and “Nature’s God.”
(Emphasis mine)
When you see what's highlighted in red, you're looking at concepts from Deism. "Nature's God" isn't the God of HolyScriptures™: this is the impersonal God of Deism. That's what most of the Founding Fathers were: Deists. America wasn't founded on "Christianity" because there never was a "Christianity" here. What you had were a collection of heterodox, heretical, idiosyncratic, goofy cults like the Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists; the orthodox churches of Europe were content to drop kick their asses across the Pond to avoid the bother of dealing with them. Once they arrived in North America, they were at each other's throats. This history of infighting led the Founding Fathers to insist on freedom of religion to end the cat fights over which sect, cult or denomination would dominate the central gov't. In the end, America has a folk religion that uses the name "Christian", but it has spawned a whole bunch of uniquely American heresies: Mormons, Shakers, Fundievangelicals, Millerites, the list goes on and on.
"These principles are taken directly from the Scriptures™-and from Natural Law philosophers such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Samuel Von Pufendorf, Emer de Vattel and Charles Montesquieu". No they weren't. Those Enlightenment principles are nowhere in Scripture™
How does shit like this happen? Denis "University" Prager is every bit as bad as Baldwin. The only difference is that Prager claims that America was founded on Judaism since he's a Jew. Never mind that Christianity, in 2,000 years, never produced a republic. Never mind that in 3,000 years Judaism never produced a republic. Neither ever produced a document like the Bill of Rights. This is looking for external validation. Faith is a very fragile thing indeed. Handle with care before you break it.
Believers like Baldwin and Prager believe what they want to believe, and they see only what they want to see.
Click to viewChristians get their knickers all in a bunch when Marilyn Manson rips pages out of Bibles. The only difference between Manson and Prager and Baldwin is that, with the latter two, the pages never physically leave the binding. All those passages about who you can enslave, how to enslave them, how much you can beat your slaves, goes in one eye and right out the other. All the stories where Yahweh orders genocides, or sends bears to kill children for making fun of a bald prophet when said, thin-skinned, prophet cursed the kids for offending his vanity, all the errors, &c &c &c are simply not seen. Might as well take a page from Manson's book and rip them out.