*snorts* Founded by Christians?
Yes, Christians.
Hardly. People been wandering around on NA for at least 20,000 years.
They were not wandering around NA, they inhabited the Turtles back. North America is what the Europeans called the new world. What we have and live in today, is due in large part to their presence.
Everything's perfect alright. roflmaoWell, I beg to differ.
It may not be perfect, but you certainly don't have to worry about my clan coming to wipe out yours, so we can have more hunting grounds to survive the winter.
I suspect Mr. Bear was speaking of Canada's European founders. Aboriginal Canadians really did not have much say in it as most of them were dead and the remainder disenfranchised.
You would be correct.
Free and open are also very relative terms, but I think the key point in that context is that the people who founded Canada and the United States (I don't know enough about Mexican history to offer an opinion) may indeed have been Christian, at least nominally, but Christianity wasn't what motivated them and they gave Christianity no real secular authority.
True, but to be honest, given the various discussions on their motives, I would say that any statement to that effect would be open to lengthy debate. But I would still feel it safe to say, that they were Christian, and they yearned for freedom. Which included the separation of Church and State.
Islam is incompatible with that value.
Moreover, if you read the works of some of America's founding fathers (Paine, Jefferson, Franklin...) you could make a pretty strong case that America's foundations are atheist, or at most vaguely deist, but certainly not Christian.
This is a discussion that many scholars have had, and as learned as I know you to be, many smarter men then you or I, have discussed this to death, with no written in stone resolution.
I will concede that the founding fathers of the US placed a wall between Church and state, with good reason, and in so doing became secularists. And will readdress this in a moment. Islam on the other hand, does not separate Church and state. Hence my position.
Now, back to the Founding of the US. Have you read the Declaration of Independence? The Constitution made the Republic, well, a Republic, the Declaration was mans declaration as a "God" given right to be free from tyranny.
Even though the founding fathers, in all wisdom, placed that wall between the Church and the State. They very well were Christians, and they very well did found the nation under the guiding principals of their religion, a more balanced and far more fair interpretation thereof.
They new that surely a Crown brings tyranny, they were also well aware that the Cloth does to. And I agree.
America's founders well understood that vesting religious and secular authority in the same people and institutions is a prescription for tyranny, hence the Establishment Clause, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Exactly. Mean while, God permeated much of the founding American subconscious.
Canada's founding documents give religion no authority at all except the right to set up separate school systems. Canada and the United States are not Christian nations and were not created on Christian principles.
Come on Dex, that's an unrealistic claim. A new Nation, founded by a predominantly Christian people, was not influenced by Christianity?
The very fact that the majority were raised as Christians defeats that claim. If they were raised Hindu or Buddhist, you would see that influence in the foundations of our respective nations.
Separation of Church and State, does not mean free from influence. Just because the founding fathers were secular, does not mean that they were not influenced by the religion in which they grew up in.
I'm neither a Christian, nor am I European, and yet I can see the very tangible contributions of both, to the creation of North America.
They are secular states based largely on the values of the European Enlightenment, a key feature of which is that religion officially has no place in the councils of the nation.
Again, I agree and yet it permeates both governments.
Actually I think America's founders were secularists and Canada's founders were inebriated Scotsmen making a business deal. :smile:
Now that's funny, if not a tad true.
