Air Force Academy creates worship area for Pagans, Druids, and Wiccans

Well it appears that people like Palin, Huckabee, Dobson, Beck and Limbaugh would welcome a theocracy so thay could force their rightwing fascist christian values on the rest of us.

Beck is a Mormon, and I'm not even convinced Limbaugh is a Christian, but as far as any of them wanting a theocracy that's just being read into their upholding Christian principles as the best standards for the country. You argue for your own standards don't you? Why shouldn't they be allowed to?

Columbus's motives were entirely Christian, basically to convert the world to Christ wherever he found anyone in need of conversion. Yes he was looking for a route to India but he understood that God led him to the New World instead.

Yes, but in exalting virtue he is explicitly denying the right to exalt one's creed above others and requiring rendering honor to other creeds. This can only be done among followers of equal gods, but Christians do have the "arrogance" to believe we are following THE one and only God above them all, and we cannot say or do anything to imply otherwise. That always eventually puts us under persecution wherever the pagan gods are exalted.

I say it came through Locke and I know he was taught by John Owen and I know that John Owen had suffered as a Puritan the intolerance of his beliefs by the established English church, and he wrote prodigiously about the necessity of honoring freedom of conscience, which is the main basis for freedom of religion as it says belief cannot be compelled and must be kept free of coercion.

Nobody was fighting in Constitutional America. DeToqueville reported on a peaceful society saturated in a spirit of religion that the people held to be indistinguishable from their political life.

Well, but you do need the Christian version of religious freedom for the kind of religious freedom that we have. What they have is not the same freedom of religion, it's simply one pagan god honoring another, but not the true God. But the true God respects His human creation and their choices and honors them despite their religions.

Faith writes:Columbus's motives were entirely Christian, basically to convert the world to Christ wherever he found anyone in need of conversion. Yes he was looking for a route to India but he understood that God led him to the New World instead.

Christopher Columbus writes:As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts....their Highnesses may see that I shall give them as much gold as they need .... and slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped

'Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress: People's History of the United States' by Howard Zinn writes:In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length: "Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives.... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians..."Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings." Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help." He describes their work in the mines:"... mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside....After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write...."When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.

DevilsAdvocate writes:The bottom line is that it is unfair to all Americans to promote one religion in the schools, government, etc at the expense of those who practice other religions.

Well then, you are implying that the founders of the US of A republic and our Constitution were unfair, promoting the Christian religion and encouraging the usage of the New England Primer, the Bible and Watts Hymnal etc exclusively in the schools.

You keep on keeping on ignoring the valid point that in a republic the representatives of the republic determine to what extent anything should be promoted or excluded.

but as far as any of them wanting a theocracy that's just being read into their upholding Christian principles as the best standards for the country. You argue for your own standards don't you? Why shouldn't they be allowed to?

Well then, you are implying that the founders of the US of A republic and our Constitution were unfair, promoting the Christian religion and encouraging the usage of the New England Primer, the Bible and Watts Hymnal etc exclusively in the schools.

You keep on keeping on ignoring the valid point that in a republic the representatives of the republic determine to what extent anything should be promoted or excluded.

Taq writes:The founders did a lot of things incorrectly.

Taq writes:The powers given to Congress by the Constitution do not include stripping people of their constitutional rights. It sounds to me as if you don't want a constitutional republic. You want anarchy where might makes right.