The second part of my look at the recent decision that declared the federal law establishing the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Links: 1. Freedom from Religion Foundation, et al. v. Obama and Gibbs www.wiwd.uscourts.gov 2. Lemon v. Kurtzman scholar.google.com 3. Christian activist Tony Perkins talking about the National Day of Prayer (from JesusSavesAtCitibanks channel here on YouTube) www.youtube.com 4. Engel v. Vitale scholar.google.com 5. Marsh v. Chambers scholar.google.com 6. Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York scholar.google.com 7. Part 1 of this video www.youtube.com 8. For a classic example of the ignorance of constitutional law that “informs” opposition to this ruling, have a look at the following video by a YouTuber who calls himself TheMoralNation: www.youtube.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell and leading American atheist and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Dan Barker debate the topic, ‘Without God we are nothing’. The debate was a joint venture between two student groups, the recently-established Macquarie University Atheist League and the Catholic Society of Saint Dominic at the University. The debate took place in March 11, 2010
CCnTaylor
March 28, 2011 at 5:48 pm
What the heck is wrong with a religiously neutral government that represents all it’s citizens equally?
yourjunk420
March 28, 2011 at 6:36 pm
@ProfMTH Well, that’s the real reason. They want what they want, and that is to make make and solidiy this country as a christian nation. *sigh* Disgusting…
Godlesspanther
March 28, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Damn! I want my National Day of Blasphemy. 🙁
ProfMTH
March 28, 2011 at 7:15 pm
@Rapture092011Repent What?
Rapture092011Repent
March 28, 2011 at 7:43 pm
@profmth Should we start honoring the british monarchy since the declaration of independance mentions God?
ProfMTH
March 28, 2011 at 7:46 pm
@gunzrkewl I don’t know why some Christians find it so difficult to understand, but many of them continue to demand that the government be involved in their prayers and other religious activities.
gunzrkewl
March 28, 2011 at 8:29 pm
The government is not to prohibit prayer anywhere, and is to remain neutral in the presence or absence of religion! Why is this so hard to understand by everyone!
gunzrkewl
March 28, 2011 at 8:49 pm
The government is not to prohibit prayer.
VictorLepanto
March 28, 2011 at 8:57 pm
@ProfMTH: Certainly on the issue of the Federal gov’t attitude towards the religious sentiments of the people their is clear consensus of opinion & practice. The simple fact that all federal buildings were routinely opened to use for religious services makes this antireligious canard absolutely absurd. The Founders were not atheists, or agnostic, or (generally) deists. They were predominantly devout & conventional Protestant Christians. Anyone who spends any time looking into it can see it.
ProfMTH
March 28, 2011 at 9:10 pm
@VictorLepanto “They knew precisely what they meant & acted on it.”
Not always. This has already been covered. Moreover, it’s not a central issue here.
VictorLepanto
March 28, 2011 at 9:47 pm
@VictorLepanto …a reason FOR establishing public schools in the North West Territory. This was under the weaker Articles of Confederation & the new gov’t under the Constitution of the U.S. reratified the Norht West Ordinance which says that fostering religion is the REASON for having public schools. Progressive’s desire to import European style “post-christian” anticlericalism into American law under the pretext of constitutionalism is anachronistic orwellian nonsense.
VictorLepanto
March 28, 2011 at 10:08 pm
@ProfMTH: They knew precisely what they meant & acted on it. They also explained themselves quite clearly in the Fed. Papers & in other places. There is absolutely NO grounds for claiming lack of clarity on the issue of religion. They established chaplains for the military. They hired a chaplain for the congress. Religious services were conducted in federal building from the beginning. The seperate states continued to maintain state funded churchs. The fostering of religion was given as…
ProfMTH
March 28, 2011 at 10:28 pm
@VictorLepanto “The Founders are the only source for establishing what the Founders meant.”
And sometimes even they weren’t sure what they meant.
VictorLepanto
March 28, 2011 at 10:30 pm
@ProfMTH The Founders are the only source for establishing what the Founders meant. I never said anything about a unanymous opinion. There is a clear, obvious consensus in the actions of the 1st Congress. Go read Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address to see how to think PROPERLY about our Constitution & its Framers.
VictorLepanto
March 28, 2011 at 11:19 pm
@ProfMTH: If you talk about oposition to a national you are talking primarily about Jefferson. He hated the Constittution, played no role in framing it & spent the rest of his political career undermining it. Washington was the driving force behind callng the Convention. He presided over all of it, Hamiltion was his right hand man. The 1st Congress voted in the Nat. Bank, Washington signed it into law. One or two eccentric opionions don’t nullify the general concensus.
ProfMTH
March 28, 2011 at 11:49 pm
@LambLion777 Pray all you want. Pray with as many people as you like. You neither need nor are you entitled to have the government involved. Period. End of story.
ProfMTH
March 29, 2011 at 12:17 am
(con’t) @VictorLepanto You’re here to grind an ax, not deal with facts.
ProfMTH
March 29, 2011 at 12:47 am
@VictorLepanto “The Ignorant one is yourself. As if opinions about the national bank have any bearing on the proper disposition of Federal gov’t towards religion!”
Listen, you moron, you claimed that it was idiotic and unimagineable that the framers of the Constitution would not have known what it meant. I gave you an example where that was precisely the case. I could give you a number of others, but what has become clear is that you’re not worth the time it would take to type them out. …
VictorLepanto
March 29, 2011 at 1:02 am
@ProfMTH: The Ignorant one is yourself. As if opinions about the national bank have any bearing on the proper disposition of Federal gov’t towards religion! Even a menadicious anti-federalist like Jefferson gave broad latitude for the acknowlegement, encouragement, & tolerance of expressions of religion in public life. All federal building in Washington were used for religious services. Jefferson attended these meetings, he even had the Marine band perform hymns for the worshippers.
VictorLepanto
March 29, 2011 at 1:33 am
@ProfMTH: G. Washington was the chairman of the Constitutional Convention. He supervised the proceeding & all its deliberations. Hamilton was his closest confidant & advisor. Jefferson (& who else was opposing the Nat. Bank besides him?) was in Paris as ambasssador under the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson was hostile to the explicite intentions of the Constitution & hoped to undermine it. There is hierarchy of authority & reliability (& trusworthiness) in opinions.
ProfMTH
March 29, 2011 at 2:16 am
(con’t) …Acts in the early days of the republic.
ProfMTH
March 29, 2011 at 2:40 am
(con’t) @VictorLepanto And that’s just one example. In other words, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Moreover, it’s clear you didn’t understand my previous comment response to you, in which I said that “it became clear very quickly that the members of the founding / framing generation were not beyond violating the very governmental charter they drafted.” That doesn’t mean those violations were based on not understanding what the Constitution meant. See, e.g., the Alien & Sedition…
ProfMTH
March 29, 2011 at 3:38 am
@VictorLepanto “It is the most idiotic notion imaginable to suppose the Founders did know what they meant when they framed the Constitution.”
I take it you meant to write “did NOT know what they meant.” Again, your comment betrays your ignorance. See, e.g., the disagreement among members of the founding generation who were in George Washington’s administration vis-a-vis whether the federal government had the authority to establish a bank and what the Necessary & Proper Clause meant. …
VictorLepanto
March 29, 2011 at 3:41 am
@ProfMTH: It is the most idiotic notion imaginable to suppose the Founders did know what they meant when they framed the Constitution. We have nothing but context to understand any written document. What people do & the way they normally use words is the only way to understand any set of words. We know the common uses of the terms used @ the time of the Constitution. We know how the Founders lived after framing these words. Nonsense invented by 20th cent. jurist is useless.
LambLion777
March 29, 2011 at 3:58 am
When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, But when a wicked man rules, people groan. Proverb 29
gamingsoul11
March 29, 2011 at 4:22 am
With God, I am a thoughtless zombie going along with the crowd. Without God, I am a free thinker and life gains much more meaning when I realize it isn’t just a waiting room for the next existance.
DoctorOfDisbelief
March 29, 2011 at 4:23 am
Cardinal in response to other animals says that we have a gift of language. How embarrassing. Other species communicate, but because they don’t speak like us, he feels we are superior? No question that we have the highest intelligence in the animal kingdom, but that does not mean that other high-intellect species are not communicating. This level of ignorance must pass.
Snight101
March 29, 2011 at 4:31 am
A mighty wizard creating the world is the best hypothesis.
xFENRISx
March 29, 2011 at 5:16 am
@free2question
Dawkins’ scale tried to fuel a move away from a binary scale of assertion of existence or non-existence of God. The atheist position on this matter, by definition, is -not- an assertion that God does not exist, rather a non-belief in theism. I think any rational atheist would not stick their head in the sand should undeniable evidence emerge for God…which is more than can be said for many theists.
free2question
March 29, 2011 at 5:19 am
@onhermis Actually, I have yet to meet an atheist who does not think that God could exist. The atheistic position seems to almost always be that God’s existence is unlikely, yet possible.
Even the philosophical “brain in a vat” scenario provides a means for explaining how God could potentially exist.
Richard Dawkins himself explained that on a scale from 1 to 10 where a 1 is absolutely knowing God exists and a 10 is absolutely knowing that God does not exist – Dawkins rates himself as a 6.
MacquarieUniversity
March 29, 2011 at 6:10 am
@RottenRroses No dialogue was cut from the debate.
MacquarieUniversity
March 29, 2011 at 6:19 am
We welcome your comments and hope to keep this debate alive but please be respectful of others.
DraskyVanderhoff
March 29, 2011 at 7:09 am
I love Brocolli!!! 😀 , but i rather preffer to be an Octopus 😛
DraskyVanderhoff
March 29, 2011 at 7:16 am
“if monotheism was a great improvement , what is the next great improvement!” Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hsatt66
March 29, 2011 at 7:41 am
@CapitalC20 theres lots of things we cant measure but because we cant measure everything we cant as dan says fill in the gaps with a god who made those things. its an intelligent way to think about the world but most atheists see this thinking theists make and are skeptical about that as well. you guys buy this concept that these things honesty, goodness exist therefore an all knowing deity must exist that understands everything. its possible but we dont believe these things as fast
sulljoh1
March 29, 2011 at 7:49 am
Dan Barker is a godsend
anaminx
March 29, 2011 at 8:11 am
Barker ‘wins’ on clarity of logic and compelling argument. Pell tries to ‘reify’ concepts like truth, beauty and goodness; Barker doesn’t let him get away with this sophistry. Truth, Beauty and Goodness are NOT things in and of themselves – they are exhibited in thought and action. Capitalising such words is just a grammatical trick to elevate such concepts into the realsms ‘mystery’. In appealing to such ‘mysteries’ Pell betrays his underlying motivation – elitist self aggrandisement.
luked22225
March 29, 2011 at 8:59 am
@CapitalC20 i can test your honesty by putting you into a FMRI and asking you a series of questions.
SlayingMinion
March 29, 2011 at 9:47 am
Dan gave him a nice uppercut at the closing speech!!
CapitalC20
March 29, 2011 at 10:14 am
you want evidence and say Pell has none for God. but you Athiests believe in metaphysical things like “conscience”, “honesty”, “Goodness”…none of which can be placed in a test tube. nor can you “measure” either…when you can put “conscience” in a lab experiment then ur on to somethin…
Naked4Jesus
March 29, 2011 at 10:15 am
Cardinal George Pell got his ass handed to him in dozens of different ways… I almost feel sorry for the old guy; I’m sure he meant well.
thepigofhappiness
March 29, 2011 at 10:18 am
0:09:23 “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand”.
What a shocking display of agnotology by Pell, I sit here stunned as he lists information which is obviously false and gives no evidence for his statements.
thepigofhappiness
March 29, 2011 at 11:16 am
0:09:23 “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand”.
What a shocking display of agnotology by Pell, I sit here stunnded as he lists information which is obviously false and gives no evidence for his statements.
villeppi
March 29, 2011 at 11:20 am
Dan: “Why doesn’t god need another god to exist?”
Pell: “MAGIC!”
villeppi
March 29, 2011 at 11:43 am
Dan Barker is my new favorite atheist speaker. Sorry Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris.
muhammadfuckedAkid
March 29, 2011 at 12:27 pm
@jackfrombaltimore Sam Harris is pretty damn good also.
giggletronics
March 29, 2011 at 1:06 pm
I’ve never seen Dan this nervous before, but he’s still possesses a much greater knowledge of the world in which we live. Pell’s responses and arguments were either inadequate or entirely unrelated.
Why do theists get stuck on this question of the origins of love, honor, and other products of the mind? My grandfather’s mind is crippled with Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t love his own daughter anymore because he can’t remember who she is. Is that god’s beauty? It god did exist, it would be pure evil.
15Thetiger
March 29, 2011 at 1:39 pm
i was a catholic ….. i want to change teams …..
15Thetiger
March 29, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Poor george….might have to join the dole que …..:)
CheekyVimto08
March 29, 2011 at 2:43 pm
using flew? please