Alabama in the News

[Tyrrell]

[quote]Originally posted by tandkvd:
[b]It is truly getting to be a sad country when we are fighting over 10 statements taken from a book that stand for virtous qualitys we all should strive for in our lives. [/b][/quote]

"I am the Lord your god have no other gods before me."
"Don't take the Lord's name in vain."
"Don't make graven images of God."
"Keep the Sabbath holy."

That's four out of ten that aren't general moral guidelines but specific religious guidelines. The Ten Commandments aren't good moral guidelines for everyone they're a set of religious edicts that has no place in a courthouse that purports to be neutral regarding religion.


[quote]Originally posted by tandkvd:
[b]And the separation of church and state was to keep the state out of the church, not the church out of the state.
[/b][/quote]

I won't claim to be able to channel the spirits of the authors of the bill of rights but I do find that theory hard to reconcile with the writings of the founding fathers. Here are some quotes from Madison and Jefferson.

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." - Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." - Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." - Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823


But on a wine related note I understand that Maderia was the wine of choice in the young USA. Are there any that you'd point me towards?