Instead of suing cities for Christmas displays, atheists should do something useful

santa claus is the american name for dutch sinterklaas, id est saint nicholas. Santa is a mix of saint nick, father christmas from britain, and elves from germanic lands. the two latter pagan in origin, as is the christmas tree.

Jesus exact date of birth is as far as I know unknown, but christmas is actually about celebrating his birthday, even if the day was simply conviniently chosen by an emperor to match up with the sun's birthday (to gain pagan converts).

It is indeed. Religions do borrow at lot from each other. The jewish creation myth is borrowed from sumeria, and the basic story of some one as a son of a god (like jesus) was common throughout the middle east, examples being something with persian mithras and with egyptian horus; I don't really remember. Religions also adopt some things from the previous religino when they expand into new lands. This they do simply because it happen to be a good idea that sells well, or to make their religion more like the pagans religions so they'll convert easilier (like romans making the sun's birth day into jesus' birth day), or it's the pagans themselves who won't completely give up their pagan traditions and instead blend them into the new religion (like christmas trees)

 

I just explained to you, and gave you a link, that nations and countries are not the same thing. What else do you want me to do? You are like the american fundies in that you refuse to look at evidence even when it's clearly presented to you. And evidently, you are not as good at english as I am. That you are american (i presume) only makes it more embarassing for you.

Edit: and if you're soo good at english, then explain to me what 'nation' and 'country' is.

 

Or none of the above.

 

But it is predominantly christian.

 

In numbers yes, but never by design.

 

you can't really design a nation anyways.

 

"Anyways" is not a word.
I have to disagree with you on whether or not a country can be designed. In essence, that is what the continental congress was all about.

 

I'm taking the liberty to add an 's' to the officially correct word when I feel like it.

seriously, again? How many times do I have to do this? 'nation' and 'country' are not synonyms. http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqznationstate.htm

the percentage of people who are ignorant of this is staggering.

 

You do see that you are making my point for me don't you.

 

If you are so smart, why on (gods green) earth do you think
that I ever said anything about the definition of those words, or ever got them mixed up?

Why are so many of your words underlined in red? Love how you spelled "embarrassing". If you are so smart, go play Russian Roulette with your Lahti.

 

nope, I'm blind as ever.

 

The arbitrary addition of an "s" to a word sort of undermines your self-proclaimed brilliance, but I don't think too many people were buying it anyway.
The founders were attempting to do more than simply form a country. Their success is debatable, but their intent was clear.

 

If you're confused as to why I'm thinking that you're talking about the definitions of those words I suggest that you actually read my posts before you reply to them. Look through this little exchange of posts we have here and you might understand.

As if mispellings are a sign of lacking intelligence. More like lazyness, and an assumption that my readers are smart enough to understand it nontheless. You're trying to feel superior now aren't you, pointing out grammatical errors? Maybe it's just jealousy that I'm giving off a an aura of intelligence and reason that clearly far supersedes yours? What do I know? However, this isn't the place to discuss mine our your intelligence and lack thereof so let's keep to the topic.

 

That is obvious

 

When being surrounded by the dullest, it's not hard to be bright you know.

Regardless of that the fact that the american people have historically been and continues to be, in an overwhelming majority, christian and is thus a christian nation. Note that that doesn't mean that the country is christian, it's secular. It's fully possible for a christian nation to have a secular government, which is in fact what the founders intended. or atleast, a religious population; not specifically a christian one.

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Thank you. Now, are you going to continue to clarify what point of yours I'm not seeing or shall we leave it at this?

 

Christmas displays, yes. Making a point on a technicality is a loser's war. There's no harm there should be no foul.
Ten Commandments, no. Unless displayed with similar artifacts from other religions and since you don't offer that choice, no.

 

Ok, you confirm my point that Christmas is a mish-mash of various beliefs which Christians have falsely claimed as there own, therefore they (Christians) can have no argument against any other religion wishing to celebrate in the same way and despite the USA being mainly a Christian country it was not formed based upon Christian ideology, the constitution states that any person may be free to pursue what ever religion they want without fear of persecution therefore if the Islamic people of America wanted to celebrate a festival they should have the same right as Christians to decorate public buildings as they see fit, to deny them that right goes against the constitution and is persecution. I wonder what would happen if Pagans tried to claim Xmas back and celebrate it the way it was originally intended, they have as much right to do so as Christians, possibly more so as it is mainly a Pagan festival anyway.

The only real obvious answer is to allow all religions the same standing as Christianity or not to allow any at all .. anything else is unconstitutional

 

Putting the Ten Commandments, all by itself, on a courthouse lawn is not a cultural display, though. It's a promotion of Judeo-Christian law over all other (lack of) faiths'. Putting the nativity on a capitol lawn is not a cultural display. It's pretty explicitly a celebration of the birth of Jesus. There is no non-religious aspect to that. Religious themes aren't the issue. Explicit promotion of religion is the problem. You can't possibly tell me that the Christians putting the nativity up on public lands and excluding other religious displays are doing it as anything other than promotion for their religion.

 

Of course christianity, and other religions, is a mish mash of borrowed ideas. Even though many things are borrowed from other sources that doesn't mean that they could be christian. Just like hamburgers are american but are german in origin.

the country isn't funded on christian ideology, and if it is only very little, I agree with that. What I'm saying is that we should pretend that all religions are equal in the sense of having the same percentage of the population behind them and having a history in the US. All religions should be given the same chance, but regarding public use it should be decided by local councils voting and that will in many cases leave us with the vast majority being of christian nature. I don't see that as a problem however as that fits in with the US overall.

 

The rod of asklepios, a snake-entwined rod, is a symbol of medicine. It's also a clear reference to the greek god of health and healing. That it's used as a symbol for medicine in western societies is a reflection on our greek cultural heritage, which is especially strong incertain areas like medicine. In the same way one could say that the ten commandments are a symbol of courts and the legal system and is a reflection on christian influence in the history of our legal systems. In my view the ten commandments are just the same as the rod of asklepios with the only difference being that hellenistic religion isn't very popular today.

You can draw similar parallels here and there, and my point is that it isn't any promotion of religion going on but rather cultural things. Culture and religion are very intertwined so it's hardly suprising to get see things of religious nature.

 

That would be unconstitutional and could be seen as repressive.

 

Interesting that with all the dullards you describe being better than, your posts don't seem to stand out. All of the red above refer to grammatical mistakes.
You seem fairly average to me. If you read your first sentence you will realize that the entire sentence is a grammatical disaster and is an incomplete sentence.
As to what you were trying to say, you are simply stating that the founders had no intention of forming a Christian nation, and that we agree on.

 

I think that would depend on exactly what is being voted on. If a small community wants to organise christmas celebration on a public scale for some reason (as we do in sweden. The municipality pays for putting up a big christmas tree in the plaza) is that really unconstitutional?

 

how are the first two errors? I'm from sweden where we don't capitalise as you do so I think I'm forgiven for forgetting that sometimes. I'm also lazy, and I don't actually try to uphold all my posts to a high grammatical standard. I write as I wish, and that mostly don't include many capitalisations. As much as I like grammatics I don't think we should be discussing that here, nor wheter I'm smarter than others or not.

The founders didn't have any intention for forming a christian nation, that's correct, because you can't really form a nation anyways. Unless of course, you think that nation=country. As I've said the formed the constitution to make a secular government rule over a religious and moral people.

 

Doesn't fit in with the U.S. even a bit. We do not give "local councils" any authority to undermine the rights or equal standing of any citizen, and emphasizing the Christian faith over others puts the minority in the position of being the "other", the ones that don't fit in, when in fact the only "us" that the U.S. is in a position to define is the "us" of citizenship, and the local or state governments have no authority to undermine this.