Monday, November 5, 2012

"Judeo-Christian values"

In a conference call with evangelical voters (sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition-- see this post for more about them), Paul Ryan said yesterday that re-electing Obama would put us on "a dangerous path...a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty, and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us such a great an (sic) exceptional nation in the first place."

It's no surprise that Paul Ryan, and the evangelical voters he was appealing to, believe this country is all about "Judeo-Christian values." Presumably those of us who hold other values need to sit down and shut up, or possibly leave the country entirely. I doubt those Deist Enlightenment thinkers would have been welcome, either.

He also said, "...that's how the Lord sustains me...It's the prayer from my pastor, my family, with my family, and also it's the prayers that are offered to me from perfect strangers that I know are out there praying, for Mitt and myself, and our families, and our families are doing great." I guess no one was praying for the Northeast when Sandy hit, or presumably they'd all be "doing great" too. Or is it only politicians God looks after?

2 comments:

  1. Actually if you do research on the beginnings of America you will discover that the pilgrams did have Christian values. They built their lives around the Bible, and used it to create the bases and ideas of that country. On a side note the book that children learned to read from was the Bible. It was important to them all. Out of the Pilgrams came the founding Fathers. Who, based their beliefs from the Bible into the papers that we know today as the constitution, etc.
    Do the people who believe in the Judeo-Christian beginnings think you need to sit down and shut up? No, they simply want people to look, study the history. Dig further then what everyone else says and look for yourself. If they wanted you to just shut up they would try to close down the internet and anything else so that you have no voice. Yet, here you are able to disagree and that is okay. You have your right to disagree and point out what you think, and so do they. It is called putting Freedom of Speech into practice.
    Also, people were praying about the Northeast. Why then did a massive storm like this happen? Bad things happen to even good people because this world is a world that is falling apart. God does allow bad things to happen for different reasons. There is really only one way to explain it, even though it may not make sense to people. This world was perfect, but then sin entered the world causing it to become corrupt. God could have stopped all that way back then, but He allows the freedom to choose the way we want to go. The world has become corrupt by sin, and storms happen, bad things happen. But was God there in the Northeast? Yes. So why did He not stop the storm or cause it to diminish if He is so great? One thing, He is God He can do whatever He wants. Two, He could have allowed more people to die. He could have allowed all of the Bounty's crew to be lost at sea, yet fourteen of them were saved in the most amazing way. Third, God allows the sun to rise on the good and the evil. He causes the rain to fall on the good and the evil. I'm sure that there were good people, even Christians that were killed in Super Storm Sandy. Why? Because sin has corrupted this world, and so bad things happen. Could bad things happen to Ryan or Mitt? Yes, they live in this dieing world with the rest of us. But at that moment in time--at the conference--Ryan stated that they were doing great. Another thing to note, when he says the Lod sustains him it means that God is helping him through life, "bearing up". He could have been going through a rough time, but God had not left. He was still there and helping him, Ryan, through life. Truth be told, we all have something that we belive in that "sustains" us through life.

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  2. "Actually if you do research on the beginnings of America you will discover that the pilgrams did have Christian values. They built their lives around the Bible, and used it to create the bases and ideas of that country... Out of the Pilgrams came the founding Fathers. Who, based their beliefs from the Bible into the papers that we know today as the constitution, etc. "

    Being from Virginia (and having majored in history in college, by the way), I get a little tetchy when people speak as if the Pilgrims were the only colonists. They weren't. Religious beliefs ran the gamut in the American colonies, from highly religious to almost no religion at all (Deism), which is why the Founding Fathers sensibly decided to leave religion out of the government-- because otherwise no one was going to agree. Hence the lack of "Judeo-Christian values" in the Constitution.

    Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration of Independence, George Mason is called "The Father of the US Bill of Rights," and James Madison is called "The Father of the Constitution." All three of these Founding Fathers were Virginians, which means they were not greatly influenced by any sort of Pilgrim thought. Rather, they were thinkers of the Enlightenment.

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