Ron Paul: A tribute.

[Spidey]

Dude, you need to stop using WikiStupiapedia, and Lincoln was not a founding father.

Reminds me of the time Mobius said “The slaves built the railroads”

[TechPro]

Dude, you need to stop using WikiStupiapedia, and Lincoln was not a founding father.

Reminds me of the time Mobius said “The slaves built the railroads”

Are you saying Mobius was wrong?
http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2 ... lroads.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp9905.htm
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/w ... 130740.asp

In truth... before the Civil War, slave labor was often used to help with building the railroads. Also, at the time of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, 'Chinese Labor' (euphemistic term for hired persons treated nearly as slaves) was used to build quite a few railroads.
http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/im ... nese3.html

There were a LOT of railroads built with slave labor and 'nearly slave labor'.

However, you do make a good point ... Lincoln was not a founding father, however his contribution to history is undeniable.

i never said this... did i? i don't think i said that. I was just giving an explanation to Spidey on WHY the founding fathers talked like they talked. I never said they were Atheists or Homosexuals or anything.

although...

Roid, that wiki info ... sure contains a lot of unprovable assumptions and suppositions (IMO). Not really reliable info, and since Lincoln was not a founding father (he was America's 16th President), doesn't prove anything for your point.

[Spidey]

Ok that’s a good point Tech…but I was pretty sure he was referring to “All” the railroads including the ones built by the early immigrates. I prolly should have made that clear. It was a long time ago.

[roid]

Hehe, I have no qualms with your identifying yourself as a human.

i never said this... did i? i don't think i said that. I was just giving an explanation to Spidey on WHY the founding fathers talked like they talked.

You've suggested that the founders' use of "our Creator", and "God given" was merely because the humanistic world-view you subscribe to didn't exist yet. What you're doing is dismissing Christianity from having played any vital role in our history, based on the assumptions of your humanistic world-view. You must assume that humanism could have played the role equally well, if not better?

The expression "God Given human rights" was used - because no other expression existed at the time.

The limits to our understanding at the time was that God gave us everything.

Thus language reflected that, simply because that was the common language of the time and there were no known alternatives.

Evolutionary Psychology was not known of back when the American Constitution was written. Thus "God" was the official explanation written into the document instead.

Someone stop me if I've misconstrued all of these.

Your assumptions place far too little importance on their belief in a creator as being what shaped their convictions. I may not be the best example, but you know (roughly) the degree to which it shapes mine (from some of the things I've read, I consider them to have been better men than I am). Do you assume that America would have simply been America minus "God" if their convictions concerning a creator had been otherwise?

i could concede that WW2 was integral to what makes Germany and Japan great today. They had to flex their muscles, get powerful, grow up, be smacked around, learn their cultural lessons.
Just as American has come a long way. Witches were burned, Interracial marriages were illegal, homosexuality was illegal period, all women and black ppl couldn't vote and had limited life conditions compared to now.

So i think Christianity was integral to America's history and where it finds itself now - because of the butterfly effect and evolution of culture.
I mention the butterfly effect because we'll never KNOW how America would be different. Germany is incredibly nervous about displays of "nationalism" now, because of lessons learned from it's past. But they may well be a shitty backwater nation if it wasn't for the Nazi time allowing their culture to be scrape it's knees and learn some lessons.

I see Christianity the same way. It was a tremendously powerful agressive expansionist force in it's day, and gave teh psychological push/justification that allowed the anglo-saxons to become the widespread force they became* - but that doesn't work anymore in the modern world. We're learning our lessons, predudice and fear don't work in our new global village.
I believe the USA consitution was a forward thinking work containing ideals that spell the end for religious power and/or predudices. It's forward thinking ideas went on to influence policy in the rest of the world too, i believe it was quite a paradigm changing work - perhaps moreso than the writers had ever considered. There were some interesting seeds of freedom and liberty sowed in the constitution - that are growing to their logical potential in the reduction of prejudices and discrimination.

IIRC the person who wrote the constitution owned slaves himself. If the slaves were freed in his lifetime (i dunno, my USA history is rusty) do you think he would have said "dammit, i didn't consider this when i wrote the constitution, i wish i changed that bit" or do you think he would have said "wow, i never thought about this when i wrote it, but it's logical - i like it lets do it."

but that's hindsight for ya. Seeds of Idealistic Ideas that probably wern't fully thought out to their logical conclusion when they were written down, but worked out quite well!


*ie: how would the incomming hoardes of Europeans justify their colonialism? on what basis would they tell themselves they were better than the cultures they displaced, decimated, converted, or stole into slavery? America wouldn't even be white if it wasn't for Christianity. You don't have to believe that Christianity was an ethically Good or Bad force what with it's colonisations and all, just that it was a force. And here we are today.

It's a matter of sociological history - not religious bias - that a lot of the world (incl usa) would be a totally different place if it wern't for Christianity.
For better or for worse that's our history, but here we are NOW.