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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>While a great many people believe in the Bible as
the inerrant word of God, I have NEVER before met anyone
who believed the U.S. Constitution was somehow some sort of later
revelation. Certainly the Constitution promotes the ideas of
equality, unalienable rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom
from an unfair trial far beyond any hint of those freedoms that might be found
in the Bible. That's probably because they aren't found there.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Few women will tell you the Bible embraces
equality between male and female. The Constitution as a living document
may reach that point someday. The framers of the Constitution blew it
at the outset when they invited John Adams and neglected to
invite Abagail. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And those "fat, balding men" were often found
to be hiding from each other--Adams and Jefferson did a bit of that; but not one
of them was hiding from British authorities--when they started
writing the Constitution the war was long since over and the United States of
America was an entity under its own rule. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have long believed, and I think this belief is
fairly common: separate the Constitution from Christianity, and you still have a
Constitution, capable of being upheld and believed in by any
citizen--Christian, agnostic, or athiest. Their religious ties may be
entirely separate from their belief in the legitimacy of the
Constitution. Neither does the Constitution depend for its legitimacy on
the idea it is tied to religious faith. </FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And Donovan's argument otherwise "is a message
of sound and fury signifying nothing."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sue </FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com
href="mailto:donovanjarnold2005@yahoo.com">Donovan Arnold</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=nickgier@adelphia.net
href="mailto:nickgier@adelphia.net">nickgier@adelphia.net</A> ; <A
title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:53
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] and speaking of
religion in public places</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Nick Gier and his cronies just don't understand what Sali is saying.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The principles of our Constitution are etched from the rock of
Christianity. You cannot remove the rock without removing its authority.
The Constitution is meaningless if it doesn't have Christianity as a bases of
its authority, derived only because of Christianity.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Who says all men are equal? Who says you have unalienable rights? Who
says you have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom
from unfair trial?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Those rights are not granted to men by men, they are granted to men by
God, the Christian God. And that is what gives the US Constitution its
authority, its greatness, and truthfulness. Otherwise, the Constitution was
written, and the rights granted us within, are not real rights, or moral
principles of God's justice, but in fact, just something a bunch fat balding
rich guys wearing white wigs came up with on a hot sweaty day in July at
the turn of the 18th century hiding from the British authorities. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I believe certain rights are given to us by God, and that many of those
rights are engraved into the Constitution. If you don't believe this too, then
the only thing giving the Constitution, and your rights are men, men who
decide arbitrarily what rights you have and don't have at any time or place.
It makes the Constitution a document that is enforceable only by
the threat of a gun and the will of the powerful men that yield it.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Best,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Donovan</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><B><I>nickgier@adelphia.net</I></B> wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">Good
Morning Visionaries:<BR><BR>Bill Sali just doesn't learn. He doesn't care
about accuracy, because he's still spouting the nonsense about abortion and
breast cancer.<BR><BR>Here is my response to Sali's rant in the Lewiston
paper this morning. I'll post it on his DC website and mark once again
"please answer," but I don't expect one because he has yet to answer a
previous one about Muslim democracies.<BR><BR>I would like to join Sean in
denouncing the quotation from Washington as false and referring readers to
my published essay "Religious Liberalism and the Founding Fathers" at
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/<BR>foundfathers.htm.<BR><BR>I would also like
for Sali to explain to us how basic Christian principles differ in any
substantial way from Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu principles. He
should be warned that pronouncements from the extremists of these faiths
will be not be recognized by their coreligionists.<BR><BR>When John Adams
spoke of the principles of Christianity, he, just as did many of his
contemporaries, meant basic moral principles. In a letter to Jefferson in
1813, he states: "Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians,
in my sense of the word." Both he and Jefferson rejected religious
conservatives such as Sali and denied the Trinity and the deity of
Christ.<BR><BR>Sali is also doing a selective reading of Ben Franklin. He
also rejected the deity of Christ and the Trinity and stopped going to
church because of Sali-type preachers. <BR><BR>In debates about the
Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, Franklin objected to the specific
biblical references in the following statement: office holders were required
to "acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by
divine inspiration." Franklin failed to convince delegates that this would
exclude Jews and Muslims. <BR><BR>Please read my essay "Tolerance for Islam
in the Early American Republic" at
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/<BR>AmericaIslam.htm for some striking
proclamations about the acceptance of Muslims in America, even as the Muslim
Barbary pirates=terrorists were capturing our citizens.<BR><BR>These early
Americans would be shocked at Sali's ignorance and intolerance.<BR><BR>Nick
Gier<BR><BR>=======================================================<BR>List
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of the Palouse since 1994. <BR>http://www.fsr.net
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