If "Our Creator" endowed us with rights...

This really isn't a debate on whether christianity or any belief system is good or bad. The op brought up the question of whether we are born with certain rights inherit within us.

My point was that biblical Christians do believe that we are endowed with certain rights at birth and the concept of free will....the right to choose your faith or choose no faith at all is a God given right. A person must choose freely in order to be a christian.

Other belief systems have other values and thus may not view freedom with the same importance as we do in US.

 

The principals which our nation was founded on were Enlightenment principals: religious tolerance, rule by consent of the people, economic liberty, equality among men and protection of man's natural rights. So your premise is wrong.

Our values are disintegrating? Conservatives never like social change. They say the past was better, no matter the age they lived in. And you seem to think Christian values uphold free speech. Maybe you're forgetting blasphemy laws and rules against speaking out against the church.

 

I think you are talking about basic human rights and people of the godly bent like to call them "god given".

 

There is Freedom OF Religion, NOT Freedom FROM Religion. The government can't touch me??? How come our church cannot open its doors without registering with the government in order to get a bank account to pay the bills?

 

They had limited powers until the illegal ratification of the 14th Amendment

 

Paul was just a man, not Jesus incarnate. "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." II Timothy 2: 15

 

Give the top 10.
You didn't supply 1.

 

Every right you have is granted by the gov't.

 

Where?

 

How many rights do we have in the USA vs the rights of people in many mid east countries or NK or China?

The gov't, is granting us any rights we have. And we the people elect those people to make sure they let us have those rights.
But we have lost some privacy rights over the years. Ex, Patriot Act. And others like it.

 

Show me where they are granted.
So far you have only pointed out where they have been taken.

 

If you have rights that means they are granted.
Ask those in NK how many rights the gov't granted.

 

I really doubt that.

The Bible is not about rights. It is about duties.

It says NOTHING about freedom of religion. It does say a lot about the duties of Christians, including toward others.

Our Declaration of Independence is a political document, NOT a religious document, and it refers to rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It uses a reference to "creator" to indicate that these rights are innate - that the human state can't tollerate being without these rights.

The Bible does not say you have a right to life or liberty or pursuit of happiness.

It doesn't say you get to have religious freedom, either. Religious freedom is a SECULAR right. We have religious freedom, because of its necessity in a melting pot like the USA.

 

All entities that collect money and pay bills have to do that.

I'm free FROM your religion. And, I'm free FROM any religion that our government representatives might want to impose.

What government does has to have a better foundation than that. If all you can say is it is your religion or the majority religion or whatever, that isn't good enough. And, the courts agree that is what our Constitution says.

 

Those are good examples. Also slavery, nationalization of private property and resource aka wealth redistribution, prohibition, just off the top of my head.

 

Therein lies the problem. If ten were listed, I would have to spend my ever waking moment defending each of them from the Bible. If the founding of America could be reduced to one word it would be Liberty.

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." II Corinthians 3: 17

 

The Constitution does not claim what you say. Let me tell you what is embarrassing for you. It was not until 1947 when a drunkard, Justice Hugo Black, wrote that: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state." (See Everson v. Board of Education)

Allow me to tell you the first two things wrong with that ruling:

1) In any other case you can name, the words of Thomas Jefferson don't mean spit to liberals nor to the United States Supreme Court. It isn't even persuasive authority. Be glad to give you specific examples

2) When that sentence was written in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, it meant 180 degrees opposite of what nonbelievers argue. Education was not a function of the federal government and the churches took on the responsibility of teaching children in most instances. Furthermore, the most widely used text by which to teach children was the New England Primer, and it used the Bible as a teaching tool.

Religion is not just any other entity. You like that separation until religion does not have to answer to Uncle Scam.

 

Show where they are granted.
"Must be" does not cut it.

 

Look at the results in your supreme court and your present president who is in effect killing your system by reversing the policies, an mass, of the previous legally elected president.

Further, a democracy is supposed to be ruled by those who win the popular vote, and your present president did not win the popular vote.

Your legal system is also politicises instead of deciding things with just legal considerations and has been made to lean toward one wing while fighting the other.

Just a few points of the many deficiencies I see, as your systems maintain it's almost genocidal tactics against your citizens of color.

Regards
DL

 

You are wrong. From Genesis's Adam and Eve and on through the New Testament, Bible is steeped in the concept of free will. There is a reason the Bible was kept secret and accessible only to the priests in the old world when humans worked to subjugate men. To produce a Bible for the masses was punishable by death in England when Freedom for the masses was not a keen idea for the elite in power.

The Bible is considered dangerous within totaltarian countries including China and North Korea and the former USSR.

It was Bible believers who came to the US to escape persecution for their Bible believing beliefs.

All through the Bible free will exists. ...how many did times did the Jewish nation turn from God? Too many to count.

The patriarchs of the Bible freely sinned as we do...free will at its worst in many cases...but turned back to a forgiving God.

To be a true Christian comes from a personal heart and by choice. We are created for a relationship with God but we decide whether we want to pursue what God has planned.

I get the feeling that you believe that religion or a lack of religion has no impact on a societies values...but the evidence from the real world today, and from civilizations of past show that the majority religion within a society has huge impact on laws and government systems.

 

Let me add to my last.

The same majority that is not presently ruling?

Regards
DL

 

I am a Canadian and am sure you know your system bettet than I, but consider the notion that none of us live in anything other than oligarchies.

Money has ruled most nations for many years now.

Note how a few billionaires even tried to buy their way into office in the last few elections and how your medea is always talking about how much people spend on advertising.

Regards
DL

 

The bible belies this.

Did Pharaoh have a free will when Yahweh hardened his soft heart that was going to let the Jews go, and changed it to where he denied the Jews freedom?

No way in hell.

Further. Yahweh denies us all free will. That is scripture.

Are non-believers doomed by Divine Design?

Scriptures say that God decides if a person will be a believer or non-believer. Those scriptures are shown in this link.



Those quotes seems to really screw up the free will notion that Christians say God gives us.

The free will that God offers is kind of a joke anyway given the number of people whose free will to live is ignored in the billions of adults, children and babies that God is shown to torture and murder in scriptures.

If the bible and Yahweh are to be believed, and as a non-believer, I, of course, cannot believe it, thanks to God, by God’s design and will against me, then why did God deny me belief or faith?

Even more important to believers, might be to answer the question of; did God make you a believer in things that you can only hope exists and can never confirm?

Are you happy with God ignoring or negating your free will to think as you please?

I have assumed that God’s work of creating both believers and non-believers is working. If that is so, and you believers must think it so, just as I as a non-believer cannot think it is working, --- and Jesus said that those with faith could do all he did and more, --- then there is not even one believer or person of faith that has ever existed.

Either the bible and Christianity is all a lie, or there must be some who can do what Jesus did.

What is your choice of those two options?

Is the bible and Christianity a lie, or is God just not creating any people with faith, --- which would make all Christians who say they have faith, --- liars.

I mean no insult here but someone is definitely lying, if we read what is written and look at reality and listen to Christians.

What do you think is the truth?

Is it just for God to create people doomed to hell even if they wanted to believe?

---------------

I gave you this before, you pathetic liar and you just keep on lying.

Satan has you firmly by the balls.

Regards
DL

 

I think they are more than just philosophical. At least in part those things we accept as fundamental human rights (as opposed to civil rights) are evolutionary (biological) characteristics of Homo Sapiens - the sapient animal. They emerged as our social interactions and dependencies grew and human culture and society evolved.