scott ritsema wrote:...So our rights are given to us? Interesting.
...

Dr. Geek wrote:We should strip atheists of all their rights!

As George Bush said, " . . . I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

Mark Hansen wrote:

Dr. Geek wrote:We should strip atheists of all their rights!

As George Bush said, " . . . I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

Bush didn't really say that, did he?

Rick Reuben wrote:

scott ritsema wrote:By now, it is widely known that the Supreme Court has weighed in on the debate over the rights of the prisoners at Gitmo. The court has stated that the detainees’ habeas corpus rights (the protection against an indefinite detention without charges and a trial) ought to be respected.

Referring to the human beings who are still being detained at Guantanamo Bay, John McCain stated, “These are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens in this country have” .

So our rights are given to us? Interesting.

Where exactly in the text of the Constitution does the Constitution give this right of habeas corpus?

You won’t find it. The Constitution only puts limits on the removal of habeas corpus, which implies that human beings possess this right naturally, and that habeas corpus is not some peculiar civil privilege, such as welfare, or some right that only citizens have, such as voting in our elections.

A reminder to the atheists on this forum: If you completely reject God as a possibility, then you completely reject the possibility that a God gave you rights that your government cannot take away from you. Remember that the founders of your country used God to define the rights that you were born with- not as an American, but as a human being.

Makes you wonder what the real motives are for eliminating a citizen's claim to hold 'God-given rights', doesn't it?

The Declaration of Independence declares the self-evident truth that God gave us our rights and that we are “endowed by our creator” with “unalienable rights,” such as, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Unalienable. Can’t be taken away. God-given natural rights.

Might be sound policy for the atheists to accept God as a possibility, because if you throw away God, then there's nothing at all standing between you and your government- especially if you throw away your right to bear arms and your right to free assembly and your right to privacy at the same time that you throw away your 'God-given' rights.

Mark Hansen wrote:Rick, just because someone is an atheist doesn't mean that they don't believe in inalienable rights for all mankind. And anyway, I don't see any definition of what they meant by god in the constitution. The way I interpret it, it is more of an idea than an entity. Of course, I am speaking for myself, not the founding fathers. I can't, and won't, make assumptions about what they meant by god, and I suspect it differed depending on which one you spoke to, if you were able to speak to them.

Michael E. Buckner wrote:The United States Constitution is, of course, literally a "godless" document: the word "God" (like the words "Jesus," "Christ," "Christianity," or "Bible") simply doesn't appear anywhere in our country's fundamental legal document. If the Founders of the United States meant to establish this as a "Christian Nation" in any constitutional, legal, or political sense, they neglected to mention it in the document from which our federal government derives its authority.

Often, though, supporters of the "Christian Nation" ideology claim that the Declaration of Independence is the document that establishes this country as distinctively Christian. Leaving aside the fact that the Declaration, however important it may be in our history, technically has no legal standing in our government, this is at least superficially a more convincing claim. After all, the Declaration does at least use the word "God," and uses synonyms thereof three more times later in the Declaration. To be sure, none of these words or phrases ("Nature's God," "Creator," "Supreme Judge of the World," "Divine Providence") is specifically Christian -- there are no references to Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity -- but none of them is necessarily incompatible with Christianity either.

It should be pointed out that Thomas Jefferson, the principal drafter of the Declaration, although he often referred to himself as a "true Christian," did not accept the doctrines of the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, or any miraculous powers ascribed to Jesus, nor did he believe in original sin or justification by faith. Given Jefferson's religious beliefs and the lack of any distinctively Christian language in the Declaration, many have argued that the theism of the Declaration is the religion of Deism and not the religion of Christianity. (Deism was a rationalist, monotheistic faith associated with the 18th Century Enlightenment in Europe; Deism had no creeds or dogmas, but in general Deists, while believing in God as Creator of the Universe and even as author of moral laws, rejected belief in miracles and considered reason and experience rather than revelation and faith to be the proper sources of religious truth. The modern Unitarians are probably the closest heirs to the Deists of Jefferson's day.) It's also true that the Declaration contains no scriptural citations or even any obvious allusions to the Christian Bible, which is certainly peculiar for an ostensibly Christian document.