Student Religious Group That Discriminates Should Not Get Public Funding

I did not mean that to be directed at you specifically, it was a general statement. Mostly to quantify my earlier post.
You may want to take that pill yourself.

[OnyxCougar]

Posted in a quote by rkzenrage

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" John Adams

The second President (or tenth if you consider John Hanson the first) wrote to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813:

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were. . . . the general principles of Christianity. . . . I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature.

However, Adams is often quoted as saying, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" However, here's the complete quote in an April 19, 1817, letter to Thomas Jefferson:

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion at all!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.

[OnyxCougar]

Quoted by rzkenrage:

In Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, an agreement signed between the United States and the Muslim region of North Africa in 1797 after negotiations concluded by George Washington (the document, which was approved by the Senate in accordance with Constitutional law, and then signed by John Adams), it states flatly, "The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." signed by John Adams

During Adam's administration the Senate ratified the 1797 Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." Some view this as "a smoking gun" that America was not founded as a Christian nation, while others argue that it was simply a concession to the Muslim nation (when the treaty was renegotiated eight years later, Article XI was dropped).

[xoxoxoBruce]

One person making a statement, even if it Washington, Adams or Jefferson may express their intentions or not, but that doesn't make it reality. Even if the entire continental congress wanted something to happen, if we the people had a different vision of what the new nation should be, that's what it would be.

Remember the main difficulty of designing a new nation was to present something the people would accept with enough fervor to tell the Brits to take a hike. It was a time when the government feared the people and what grew out of the revolution was what the people wanted to make it.

That's why Delaware passed all those laws saying you couldn't hold office unless you were a good Christian and a hundred others like it. Each part of the new nation grew under laws and customs that reflected their faith and ideals. Anyone that disagreed was arrested or driven out, except in the largest cities. But even there, dissenters might have to change neighborhoods.

Not exactly the picture you got in American history class in High School, but that's the way it really was. The Civil War is pictured as the Federal government vs the Confederacy, but in truth it was the northern states vs the southern states. The states controlled the money and the militias.

It wasn't until the 20th century that the Feds figured out how to extract enough money from the states(people) to gain power by threatening to cut off funding(reimbursements) to the states. What a slippery slope that was.

[OnyxCougar]

I agree.

The point of those last two posts was more of a redirection of rzkenrage's quotes.

As with most things, (evolution, abortion, politics) every point has a counter point, and for every quote about one thing, another can be found by the same person with the other viewpoint. It's the distortion that bothers me most. Like when people pull one verse out about "A thousand years is as a day" to God, they jump up and down and scream "see? see?" but that isn't what that verse was talking about.

Same thing here.

One cannot say that you must be literal about one section of the Bible but not another... either it is to be taken literally or not.
Hypocrisy is an illness & usually a lot more than what they play it off as, a tactic.
Separation of church and state is an absolute and should not be compromised on under any circumstances.