• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Do you think a religeous revolution is coming in this country?

Do you think a religeous revolution is coming in this country?


  • Total voters
    62
The decline has somewhat been countered by the large increase in numbers of catholics in Southwestern states through immigration.

That is true; however, it is not the only source of the leveling out.

TABLE03.png


"No religion" grew by 15 million in the first 11 years, and only 5 million in the next 7 years. That's in total number, not percentage (percentage wise, the difference is much greater), so immigration does not play into it.

There are also some other Christian sects that either grew between 2001-2008, or shrunk less rapidly than between 1990-2001. Very few sects declined as rapidly or more rapidly in the latter 7 years than in the fist 11.


I do not know why, but from the looks of it the 1990s in general was just a bad decade for Christianity in the U.S. Unless we have another decade like it soon, though, it seems like the percent of the country that is Christian will level out at about 75%.
 
Jesus said very little about what the government should do. While Judaism and Islam are in many ways civic religions, going to great lengths to describe what the government should do and how it should act, Christianity is in many ways a more personal religion, giving rules on what individuals should do, but precious few on what a society should do. But if we assume the government should do something about abortion or homosexuality or marriage, then there's no reason to suppose that we shouldn't do something about poverty. There's also no indication that Jesus intended things limited to private charity.

What I have been coming to realize lately is that gay marriage and abortion are not matters of government vs. no government, but of semantics. Pro-lifers think that the fetus is by definition a person, and therefore abortion fits into murder laws; they sometimes justify this position using religion, but it is not the government involvement they justify using religion, it is the definition of life. Similarly, "gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms to many conservatives, because to them, marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. Again, they often justify this using religion; it is the term they are justifying, not anything to do with the government.

And the last sentence of the quote is irrelevant, because every single time Jesus talked about helping the poor, he was talking about private charity; we can only speculate on what his views on government-mandated wealth redistribution would be, and it would be useless to even do that since there's nothing to go on.
 
I love seeing liberals underestimating the power of the Religious Right in America. It is actually pretty hilarious. The Left can continue their marginalization of the Right, and when the revolution hits them, their heads will spin faster than Barack's when he is informed about the intricacies of US foreign policy. ;)

Too bad that you seem to ignore that those at the lead of the so called "marginalized religious right" do nothing but reap the financial rewards of being on top.

In many ways, they are in the same position as the cartoonists who lampooned Bush. When Bush left, their gravy train went with him. If there is a revolution against the alleged immorality of the times (Which many of their leaders partake in willingly and with great enthusiasm) then their gravy train is gone as well.
 
Yeah that kinda took all the fun out of it:mrgreen:

BTW it was Lawrence vs Texas 2003.


Something tells me Lawrence and his man love went anal.....

*shudder*
 
Go ahead and keep clinging to the deist notion, it serves the Christian-haters well.
I don't care if the founders were Christians/deists/whatever. But they definitely were not fundie extremists if that's what you think. Even the architecture of DC (which is based on ancient Greek/Roman style) provides evidence of that - in the more religious areas of Europe of the time, it would've been unheard of to construct a government building in a "non-Christian" style of architecture. The founders were fairly free-thinking for their day believe it or not.
 
Last edited:
In many of his personal correspondence with his son, it seems that Jefferson may have been more atheist than deist. Though back in those days you couldn't claim atheism without major repercussions. I guess the more things change, the more things stay the same.

If Thomas Jefferson was an atheist he wouldn't have mentioned God in the Declaration of Independence. Though I suppose his views could have changed sometime after that; there were about 25 years between when he wrote the DoI and when he became President.
 
If Thomas Jefferson was an atheist he wouldn't have mentioned God in the Declaration of Independence. Though I suppose his views could have changed sometime after that; there were about 25 years between when he wrote the DoI and when he became President.
He wasn't an atheist, but he didn't acknowledge Christ's divinity (he believed the vigin birth never happened and wrote his own version of the Bible without any supernatural references). The majority of people (even today) believe in a god, but that doesn't make them fundamentalist Christians. The founders certainly weren't.
 
I actually wish I could agree with you. I originally jumped in this thread to mess with the holy rollers.
This is true of religious fundamentalists everywhere, even in Saudi Arabia and Iran. In those countries the men in power will hang women for "conduct incompatible with chastity" and then go back inside to have sex with their harems of teenage prostitutes. That they are rank hypocrites doesn't keep them from being oppressive and destructive. You will not find any religious regime, on matter how "extreme," which is not riddled with corruption and hypocrisy.
I wish I could agree with you, and you may be right that forms of fundamentalism are dying, but what about the essence that gave rise to those forms? Organized religion developed out of authoritarian tendencies and structures that, to a good extent, already had to be there as a foundation. If fundies are so universally mocked, it is curious that McCain/Palin got a majority of the white vote. If Palin couldn't turn most white voters off then who will? Even if most people do not attend church regularly, most people are not adept at critical thinking or immune from authoritarian appeals that play on moral panic either. Most of those patriotards you see at tea party parades probably couldn't name all the books in the Bible, but they're still assholes.
I don't consider Palin a "true blue fundie". I'm refering to someone like Rev. Fred Phelps ("Thank God for dead soldiers"), and even 99% of evangelical Christians hate him. If Fred Phelps became ruler, I think he would literally try to turn the US into a Muslim-style theocracy. Palin? No way in hell. She may say some crazy stuff, but she's nowhere near the level of a true blue fundie who'd actually be willing to murder people in the name of god.
 
Legally, in most states sodomy includes oral sex... as well as other things.
In most Southern states at least, the legal definition of "sodomy" includes everything but missionary style penile/vaginal intercourse.
It's a catch-all phrase meaning "deviant sex".

You heard right: blowjobs are against the law.
Or were, at least in my state; I think that may have finally been overturned in 2001.
In Flordia up until recently, it was only illegal to have sex with a porcupine (recently they changed the law to make sex with all animals illegal).
 
I don't consider Palin a "true blue fundie". I'm refering to someone like Rev. Fred Phelps ("Thank God for dead soldiers"), and even 99% of evangelical Christians hate him. If Fred Phelps became ruler, I think he would literally try to turn the US into a Muslim-style theocracy. Palin? No way in hell. She may say some crazy stuff, but she's nowhere near the level of a true blue fundie who'd actually be willing to murder people in the name of god.

Phelps and most of his family are crooked lawyers. He doesn't count as a real fundamentalist wacko because it's all a scam. the Westboro Bapitist Church is about as genuine as the Landover Baptist Church. Except one is in it for money and one is in it for satire.
 
If Thomas Jefferson was an atheist he wouldn't have mentioned God in the Declaration of Independence. Though I suppose his views could have changed sometime after that; there were about 25 years between when he wrote the DoI and when he became President.

God. God. God. See, atheists can write down the word. There is a good portion of the DoI which is propaganda and which played to the common held beliefs of others, even if Jefferson himself didn't believe in the god. He was a follower of the natural rights philosophy of course, but there is some indication that he didn't actually believe in any gods.
 
God. God. God. See, atheists can write down the word. There is a good portion of the DoI which is propaganda and which played to the common held beliefs of others, even if Jefferson himself didn't believe in the god. He was a follower of the natural rights philosophy of course, but there is some indication that he didn't actually believe in any gods.

There wasn't any need to put it in there though, especially using it as part of an important argument.

Jefferson might have been an agnostic at most, but not an atheist.
 
There wasn't any need to put it in there though, especially using it as part of an important argument.

Jefferson might have been an agnostic at most, but not an atheist.

There is reason because they are trying to provide justification for the revolt. And what better justification than evoking god? Especially when it's a dynamic widely believed by the People. The DoI wasn't just to justify to the King of England why we were telling him to piss off; but also to convince the colonialists that they have the right and duty to do so. There's plenty of practical reasons to evoke gods. In his personal correspondence to his sons, there are lines in which he warns against belief in gods and how those beliefs can lead one astray. But he could never come out and publicly say it. That's why I said there is indication, but not proof. You seem to be talking in the absolute terms, I was not.
 
Last edited:
ITT: People claim to see into the mind of someone who's been dead over 200 years who's writings and ideology are still topics of hot debate to this day.
 
I know we will not have a religeous revolution because there are WAY to many religeions for people to agree with to make this possible.


PS: Most of the founding fathers were Deists.
 
ITT: People claim to see into the mind of someone who's been dead over 200 years who's writings and ideology are still topics of hot debate to this day.

Jefferson's only been dead for 183 years....
 
If Thomas Jefferson was an atheist he wouldn't have mentioned God in the Declaration of Independence. Though I suppose his views could have changed sometime after that; there were about 25 years between when he wrote the DoI and when he became President.

He mentioned God in a generic sense, not a Yahweh sense.
 
He mentioned God in a generic sense, not a Yahweh sense.

If anything, Jefferson was a deist, he was certainly not a Christian and he spoke very harshly about both Christianity in general and the church. Unfortunately, you get a lot of people who leap to the conclusion that anyone who uses the word "God" must be talking about a specific Christian version thereof. I guess that's what happens when you just capitalize a generic word and claim it as your own.
 
If anything, Jefferson was a deist


In fact, the growing percentage of Americans who claim to be Christians, but who do not believe in a personal God, thus defining themselves as Deists, puts them right in line with the beliefs of one of the major drafters of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence --- Thomas Jefferson.

History fail.

PS: Most of the founding fathers were Deists.

de⋅ism  /ˈdiɪzəm/ [dee-iz-uhm] Use deism in a Sentence
–noun

1. belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation (distinguished from theism ).
2. belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it.


The Declaration of Independence on July 4 said:
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

That doesn't sound like something a Deist would have checked off on.????
 
Not until they learn how to spell "religious". :( I have a feeling they'd be too busy drinking bud light and wanking to Rev. Ted Haggart webcam videos to trouble themselves with a revolution even if they had that level of intelligence.

BTW, the majority of Americans aren't extremely religious in practice. I do think though that an anti-fundie religious revolution has already started.



I have a flash for you my left wing friend.....Polls show that about 85% of this country believe in God............
 
I have a flash for you my left wing friend.....Polls show that about 85% of this country believe in God............

Not all of that 85% are crazy though.
 
What I have been coming to realize lately is that gay marriage and abortion are not matters of government vs. no government, but of semantics. Pro-lifers think that the fetus is by definition a person, and therefore abortion fits into murder laws; they sometimes justify this position using religion, but it is not the government involvement they justify using religion, it is the definition of life. Similarly, "gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms to many conservatives, because to them, marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. Again, they often justify this using religion; it is the term they are justifying, not anything to do with the government.

And the last sentence of the quote is irrelevant, because every single time Jesus talked about helping the poor, he was talking about private charity; we can only speculate on what his views on government-mandated wealth redistribution would be, and it would be useless to even do that since there's nothing to go on.

That's because he was preaching to people, and not the government. What do you think was more important to Christ: that people got help, or that people helped the poor on an individual level? I'd say that it was more important that the poor got helped than it was done specifically privately.


Also, the government is nothing but the collective will of the people in a democratic or republican form of government, so it's us individuals collectively helping the poor.
 
ITT: People claim to see into the mind of someone who's been dead over 200 years who's writings and ideology are still topics of hot debate to this day.

Well, it was easy to figure out that Jefferson was a deist, but he kept it private for several rather obvious reasons. Claiming he was an atheist is silly, and was more of a reflection of political attacks thrown at him over the years by his colleagues.
 
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
-Thomas Paine
 
Back
Top Bottom