Thanks ACLU: War Memorial To Be Torn Down

Had the Mt. Soledad cross been originally created as a war memorial your argument would have some merit (though a great many people would still find it offensive and inappropriate). It's intent was to honor Jesus, not veterans, and it was only turned into a memorial to try and skirt the law. I think it's disingenuous to try and claim that cross serves any purpose other than Christian evangelism.

The _original_ intent was very likely that. But the point was, original intent can and frequently becomes overriden with time when it comes to structures and their purpose. So the question is then, is it reasonable to ignore such new, established meaning just because someone (often long dead at this point) had different things on mind when they created object of dispute?

And i dunno about you, but while you're on about things offensive and inappropriate, perhaps you shouldn't really try to pass your own opinions as facts ("it was only done to skirt the law" when these opinions are based entirely on your own presumptions and possible bias. Unless you actually know personally people involved in that process, and spoken with them on what _was_ their intentions?

*shrugs* Maybe am just not that obsessed with religion in general and some particular branches of it, then. When i see a cross, my first thought is "someone has died here". So i in turn think it's silly to _only_ see a cross as 'display of Christian evangelism" no matter the surroundings. But i guess to each their own.

I don't think Christians should be allowed to ride roughshod over the law and then expect non-Christians to pay for it with their tax dollars, and I think such wrongs should be righted no matter how much time has passed. What do you think would happen if a giant monument to atheism was placed on public land and funded with tax dollars? I guarantee it would have been torn down fifty years ago and the city officials responsible would have been thrown out of office. We have laws for a reason.

Well we already know you were put on this world ti bitch about shit so really your outrage doesn't mean a whole lot to many here.

Wolf bites Woman. News at 11.

The cross will come down. It's foretold. It heralds the beginning of a new Dark Age of humanity.

The next sign will be the marking of symbols on your foreheads or hands to allow you to buy and sell.

The judgement is coming. Be ready. My wrath will soon be poured out on the Earth.

We obviously have very different definitions of "dark age."

When I take the believers, I will remove my Spirit from the Earth.

Then darkness and despair will reign supreme. THere will be bloodshed, war, violence, and hatred the likes of which you've never seen. What's going on now is nothing compared to what is to come.

/me wonders if someone meant to out his own alt?

*snickers*

Good catch.

Where is it foretold? I've searched every religious book I can find from ancient times and not a single one mentions California! I do love the silly paranoia about the "mark of the beast" though. In the 60's and 70's it was about bar-codes and Social Security Numbers. Remember poor Hal Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth?" He must have been really bummed when the Soviet Union disappeared and his whole interpretation of the Book of Revelations was shot to hell. Poor guy. Didn't stop him, though. Being completely wrong didn't bother him at all, he just edited that part out. LOL. Got to love the true believers. They're always good for a little laugh once in a while.

There's been hundreds of churches built by multiple governments of earlier times. Typically paid with whatever passed for the tax money at the time. Nowadays, few hundred or more years later, these buildings often serve all sort of purposes. Be it hospitals, places of care, museums or still churches (but often of different religion)

Do you really think you'd be "righting" any "wrongs" by turning these buildings into dust now, because since they were _originally_ made to worship some god, then their different utilization nowaday can clearly be nothing more but a ploy of nefarious worshippers who try to preserve their fallacy etc and so on?

After all the difference here is just amount of time passed. And you do state that amount of time doesn't matter any.

Heck, with this logic, let's start with Rome. It's full of stuff built to worship a bunch of gods, for tax money taken away from people who often had completely different beliefs, and frequently spent with complete disregard for laws.

Funny you should say that, because isn't government on all levels continually supporting with hard tax money plenty of science organizations and programs that effectively challenge concept of existence of god ... i.e. you have the government pretty much _helping_ to strengthen atheist point of view?

It's of course perfectly fine for the government to do because it's for the sake of science. But kind of makes you wonder... if all the atheists who are perfectly okay with the idea of billions of USD being spent on say, NASA, as long as the Hubble telescope supplies the evidence that hey, universe _is_ more than few thousand year old ... would still be okay with it if the results were to the contrary, and the pictures came instead of some old wrinkled guy with halo sitting in some distant star cloud ;>

Many faiths are accepted at military cemetaries. But Wiccans are still waiting for their symbols to be accepted at Arlington National Cemetary. Check Google. This has been in the news recently.

Not really. The wrong would only be righted if the religious group was forced to pay back the money they stole from the public coffers.



Rome didn't have a secular government at the time. The United States government was founded with secularism at its root.



When was the last time religion cured a disease, predicted a hurricane, created an invention that boosts productivity of crops, or anything else? In fact, name one thing that religion has accomplished for the greater good that couldn't have been done by a secular organization? When churches start advancing knowledge and medicine you might have an argument there.

Don't forget digital watches and pressurized writing pens.

I will be a bit contrary to your point just because I think it's fair to mention orphanages... and how local parishes acted as insurance agencies in a sense, before private business dominated that market. Possibly not great leaps forward for humanity in general but crucial to making sure that some people had the chance to continue participating.

--
Do you have life insurgence coverage?

Religious organisations have been a great source of altruism. No doubt about it. The point I was trying to make is that altruism is not exclusive to religion and would exist without it.



nope

If we put a cross everywere something tragic happened in the world, there would be no room for anything but crosses. I agree major things like 911 or a war memorial ect......but for everything tragic sheesh....i just plain sick of driving down highways and seeing them scatterd all over...

Hunter Legislation Protecting Mount Soledad Passes House

I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this already. Since I hadn't seen an update from anyone, I thought now would be a good time to post it.

So, the Senate must now approve the bill.

After that I assume there will be a US Supreme Court battle over the issue. Perhaps some people would like to share their thoughts on the potential constitutional battle in the US Supreme Court.

Excuse me, but why is it impractical to honor those who have given their lives for our country?

And some Hindu religions have been using the swastika as a symbol long before Hitler was born. And, yes, if a Hindu whose religious symbol was the swastika dies defending my country, he should have a swastika etched into his grave marker.

I don't care if the dead soldier's religion only had five adherents, it was his religion and he died for my country, so he gets the grave marker that reflects his spiritual beliefs.

However many more lives were saved by handwashing and bacteria free food (Pasteur) than by churches.

If you want to see what science has done for you, you need go no farther than your local grocery store. Refrigeration and pasteurization has ensured that you will not die shitting your guts out. And even if you manage to ingest one of those bad bugs cause you left the meat out on the counter for too long, anti-biotics will come to your rescue.

Children don't have to go to orphanages as much anymore thanks to these life extending breakthroughs. And more children live to see adulthood because of science.

I saw that. It'll be interesting to see if it makes it through the Senate.

I think it's completely absurd that the Republican dominated House is wasting time debating such earth shattering issues as flag burning (especially hilarious since it's the way you're supposed to dispose of them), protecting a tacky monument that has been in violation of the law for decades, trying to disallow the judiciary from hearing challenges to the pledge of allegience (which has been in violation of the Constitution since 1954), gay marriage (attempting to put bigotry back into the Constitution), giving themselves a pay raise, etc. etc, etc. Meanwhile millions of Americans can't afford to feed themselves and have no health insurance. It's disgraceful.