Atheist Public Monument

[McCulloch]

On June 29, the group American Atheists will unveil a 1,500-pound granite bench engraved with secular-themed quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and its founder, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, among others, in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Starke, Fla.

The New-Jersey-based group, which has a membership of about 4,000 atheists, humanists, and other non-believers, won the right to erect the monument in a settlement reached in March over a six-ton granite display of the Ten Commandments on the same property.

[...]
Guidelines for privately funded, public monuments on the Bradford County Courthouse lawn require that the monuments commemorate “people, events, and ideas which played a significant role in the development, origins or foundations of United States of America or Florida law, or Bradford County.� Both the Ten Commandments and the atheist monument meet those requirements, Sexton [Will Sexton, an attorney for Bradford County] said.

The atheist monument — which looks like a backwards, lower-case letter “h� — is engraved with the words of several Founding Fathers, as well as a quotation from the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams in 1797. It reads, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.�

American Atheists president David Silverman will attend the June 29 unveiling. The monument, he said, is his group’s attempt to assert its equality.

“This is not an attack on religion, but rather religion’s monopoly,� he said. “The words on our monument do not deride or mock, but rather they clarify and correct assertions that Christianity has some kind of special place in America over other religious positions. It does not.�

Is this an attack on religion?
Does anyone have an objection to the appropriateness any of the specific quotes:

• “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.â€� -- John Adams
• “An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.â€� – Madalyn Murray O’Hair
• “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.â€� - Thomas Jefferson
• “It will never be pretended that any person employed in that service [writing the Constitution], had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.â€� - John Adams
• “Where a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.â€� - Benjamin Franklin

[East of Eden]

It was a little tongue in cheek, Keith.

My apologies. I wish someone would invent a smiley for irony - just think of all the misplaced vitriol it would save.

Can't the [irony]tag be enabled[/irony]?

How about this?

[kayky]

The monument of the Ten Commandments should never have been allowed on public property. The atheist group has a valid point. But at the end of the day, all we end up with is a cluttered lawn.

[East of Eden]

The monument of the Ten Commandments should never have been allowed on public property. The atheist group has a valid point. But at the end of the day, all we end up with is a cluttered lawn.

What church or ever religion does posting the Ten Commandments establish? The Supreme Court building has six depictions of the Ten Commandments and Moses the Lawgiver.

[Darias]

[Replying to post 13 by East of Eden]

Christianity, because people of the Jewish faith tend to believe in more than 10. It's a mistake to think the Constitution was only forbidding the establishment of certain denominations, rather than any and all religions as a whole.

[East of Eden]

[Replying to post 13 by East of Eden]

Christianity, because people of the Jewish faith tend to believe in more than 10. It's a mistake to think the Constitution was only forbidding the establishment of certain denominations, rather than any and all religions as a whole.

Nonsense, the commandments establish no church. We have separation of church and state, not faith and state. You are pushing revisionist history if you think the Founders would agree with you. The very Congress that wrote the 1A the next day called for a nationald day of prayer.

This is from Joseph Story, SCOTUS justice appointed by James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution':

§ 1868. Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

§ 1871. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.

[Darias]

[Replying to post 15 by East of Eden]

The 10 Commandments promote the worship of Yahweh and the values of Christian dogma on my dollar when they are given permanent homes on public property.

Saying the 10 commandments does not establish any particular Christian sect is the same as saying that quotes from the Qur'an does not establish any particular school of Islamic thought -- both statements are true but irrelevant to the issue at hand.

There is fundamentally no difference between using the state as a tool to impose religious dogma onto everyone and using the state to force people to pay tithe to one national official church.

At the end of the day, I'm being stolen from to provide a home to promote your religion, and this is immoral. If you want to promote religion, do it on your dime and no one else's without their consent. Don't expect me to be happy with it just because one of the founding father's liked the idea. They owned slaves too, but you can't justify slavery just because they thought it was fine.

[East of Eden]

[Replying to post 15 by East of Eden]

The 10 Commandments promote the worship of Yahweh and the values of Christian dogma on my dollar when they are given permanent homes on public property.

If so, I have already demonstrated the Founders would have had no problem with it. They don't establish a church. What is the harm in telling people not to steal, lie, and murder?

Saying the 10 commandments does not establish any particular Christian sect is the same as saying that quotes from the Qur'an does not establish any particular school of Islamic thought -- both statements are true but irrelevant to the issue at hand.

If we were in a majority Muslm nation I would kind of expect that.

There is fundamentally no difference between using the state as a tool to impose religious dogma onto everyone and using the state to force people to pay tithe to one national official church.

Complete nonsense. All citizens have the government spend some of their tax money on things they don't agree with.

At the end of the day, I'm being stolen from to provide a home to promote your religion,

See above.

and this is immoral. If you want to promote religion, do it on your dime and no one else's without their consent. Don't expect me to be happy with it just because one of the founding father's liked the idea. They owned slaves too, but you can't justify slavery just because they thought it was fine.

I'm not sure what the name for that logical fallacy is, but there has to be a name for it.

[Darias]

The 10 Commandments promote the worship of Yahweh and the values of Christian dogma on my dollar when they are given permanent homes on public property.

If so, I have already demonstrated the Founders would have had no problem with it. They don't establish a church. What is the harm in telling people not to steal, lie, and murder?

1.) It matters not whether or not a majority of the founders shared Jefferson's and Adam's thinking on this issue or if they shared Madison's view. Appealing to the opinions of one or more founding fathers for the sake of their authority instead of the soundness of their logic is a fallacy. The founders saw no harm in leaving slavery for later generations to deal with, but no one cites their tolerance of slavery as if their opinions on the subject mattered simply because they were the founders.

2.) Just because there is no state pope doesn't mean religion isn't being established.

3.) The 10 commandments involve much more than a few commonsensical ethics. Those things are ranked last compared to all the others that forbid the worship of other gods and demand Sunday observance. Besides, don't kill, steal, and lie because god says so is not exactly the best idea either because it appeals to authority rather than providing a logical justification for those things.

But even if the 10 commandments only had nothing but good, sound suggestions, the fact that they're part of a religious tradition, and that they enjoy a permanent home funded and provided by people of different faiths and none is what's immoral. I don't get to put atheist bumper stickers on your vehicle and you don't get to put crosses in my yard, so why do you have the arrogance and audacity to claim the right to use the government to steal from me to promote your disgusting religion? How is that any different from the state ordering me to pay taxes to Christian churches?

• It isn't.

Saying the 10 commandments does not establish any particular Christian sect is the same as saying that quotes from the Qur'an does not establish any particular school of Islamic thought -- both statements are true but irrelevant to the issue at hand.

If we were in a majority Muslm nation I would kind of expect that.

But there is no point to a constitution if the only purpose of the state is to serve the whim of the majority and promote their ideals at the minority's expense. That's mob rule, direct democracy. Europe had Catholic majority countries and Protestant majority countries, and depending on who was in charge, their faith was promoted at the expense of the others. This resulted in state subsidized bloodshed and religious tyranny, which is what the founders were trying to avoid creating here in America.

There is fundamentally no difference between using the state as a tool to impose religious dogma onto everyone and using the state to force people to pay tithe to one national official church.

At the end of the day, I'm being stolen from to provide a home to promote your religion...

Complete nonsense. All citizens have the government spend some of their tax money on things they don't agree with.

1.) The founders gave Congress the authority to tax. Paying taxes is mandatory state theft; it is the law. The Constitution explicitly states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. So when the state robs me to provide a permanent home for the cherished religious edicts and symbolism of your religion, the state is in violation of the constitution that supposedly restrains it.

It is not simply one example of people being robbed upon penalty of death and imprisonment to promote something they don't like. It is in direct violation of the Constitution you claim to care about.

2.) Aside from that, mandatory taxation is immoral. It robs people to benefit big government, steals from them in the name of charity in the name of funding other people's well intended disasters like the Iraq War and Obamacare.

3.) Yet what is your response? I know it sucks but we all have to do it? No, you see, you're forgetting that while everyone is forced to support things they oppose on a moral basis, only one group gets the satisfaction of knowing their commandments and prayers have a permanent home at courthouses, Congress, and school grounds. While everyone has to pay to support horrible things and while most people mooch off stolen money -- only Christians get to enjoy a monopoly on public land and the reality of taxpayer funded proselytization.

And despite the fact that the state can steal from people to do things people find objectionable, it cannot steal from others to benefit religion -- if the constitution means anything to you at all. Yet that doesn't stop the reality that most Christians enjoy the fact that a majority of public places provided by taxpayers are permanent homes for Christian monuments... it's as if everyone had to pay to provide a forum (a church) for a religious group.

And when another group dares to partake in the same unconstitutional BS, Christians lose their minds -- how dare another group celebrate violating the Constitution just like we've done for so long?! This is 'Murikah, n' uh'Murikuh's a Christshin Nashun!.

• I don't think it's possible to top that sort of hypocrisy.

and this is immoral. If you want to promote religion, do it on your dime and no one else's without their consent. Don't expect me to be happy with it just because one of the founding father's liked the idea. They owned slaves too, but you can't justify slavery just because they thought it was fine.

I'm not sure what the name for that logical fallacy is, but there has to be a name for it.

Your fallacies appeal to authority and to tradition. They're otherwise known as argumentum ad verecundiam and argumentum ad antiquitatem, respectively.

[East of Eden]

The 10 Commandments promote the worship of Yahweh and the values of Christian dogma on my dollar when they are given permanent homes on public property.

If so, I have already demonstrated the Founders would have had no problem with it. They don't establish a church. What is the harm in telling people not to steal, lie, and murder?

1.) It matters not whether or not a majority of the founders shared Jefferson's and Adam's thinking on this issue or if they shared Madison's view.

You mean the Jefferson who authorized the Bible as a public school textbook, and who spent federal money to fund Christian missionaries to Indians in the Northwest Territories?

Appealing to the opinions of one or more founding fathers for the sake of their authority instead of the soundness of their logic is a fallacy. The founders saw no harm in leaving slavery for later generations to deal with, but no one cites their tolerance of slavery as if their opinions on the subject mattered simply because they were the founders.

The Constitution was later amended to stop slavery, there was no such later action to make law the fiction that a mention of God is some kind of establishment.

2.) Just because there is no state pope doesn't mean religion isn't being established.

Only in your head, as I have demonstrated, the Founders saw establishment as meaning a state church as in England. Gee, how do the atheists over there suffer the oppression?

3.) The 10 commandments involve much more than a few commonsensical ethics. Those things are ranked last compared to all the others that forbid the worship of other gods and demand Sunday observance. Besides, don't kill, steal, and lie because god says so is not exactly the best idea either because it appeals to authority rather than providing a logical justification for those things.

But even if the 10 commandments only had nothing but good, sound suggestions, the fact that they're part of a religious tradition, and that they enjoy a permanent home funded and provided by people of different faiths and none is what's immoral. I don't get to put atheist bumper stickers on your vehicle and you don't get to put crosses in my yard,

Non sequitor.

so why do you have the arrogance and audacity to claim the right to use the government to steal from me to promote your disgusting religion? How is that any different from the state ordering me to pay taxes to Christian churches?

• It isn't.

That is so ridiculous it isn't even answerable. You're right, let's just tax to support churches OK? By that reasoning I'm being robbed to support Obama as president.

But there is no point to a constitution if the only purpose of the state is to serve the whim of the majority and promote their ideals at the minority's expense. That's mob rule, direct democracy. Europe had Catholic majority countries and Protestant majority countries, and depending on who was in charge, their faith was promoted at the expense of the others. This resulted in state subsidized bloodshed and religious tyranny, which is what the founders were trying to avoid creating here in America.

And it is what we don't have, which makes me wonder what your bellyaching is about.

1.) The founders gave Congress the authority to tax. Paying taxes is mandatory state theft; it is the law. The Constitution explicitly states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. So when the state robs me to provide a permanent home for the cherished religious edicts and symbolism of your religion, the state is in violation of the constitution that supposedly restrains it.

It is not simply one example of people being robbed upon penalty of death and imprisonment to promote something they don't like. It is in direct violation of the Constitution you claim to care about.

So why did the Founders who wrote the 1A the next day establish a day of prayer? You're taking the illogical position that the Founders violated their own constitution. It is much more likely that latter day militant secularits have is grossly wrong.

2.) Aside from that, mandatory taxation is immoral. It robs people to benefit big government, steals from them in the name of charity in the name of funding other people's well intended disasters like the Iraq War and Obamacare.

You're switching gears, it you want to argue the income tax is unconstitutional and immoral, I'm with you.

3.) Yet what is your response? I know it sucks but we all have to do it? No, you see, you're forgetting that while everyone is forced to support things they oppose on a moral basis, only one group gets the satisfaction of knowing their commandments and prayers have a permanent home at courthouses, Congress, and school grounds. While everyone has to pay to support horrible things and while most people mooch off stolen money -- only Christians get to enjoy a monopoly on public land and the reality of taxpayer funded proselytization.

I'd say the secular humanists have a pretty good monopoly on the teaching of naturalistic evolution in public schools, against the wishes of many taxpayers.

And despite the fact that the state can steal from people to do things people find objectionable, it cannot steal from others to benefit religion -- if the constitution means anything to you at all. Yet that doesn't stop the reality that most Christians enjoy the fact that a majority of public places provided by taxpayers are permanent homes for Christian monuments... it's as if everyone had to pay to provide a forum (a church) for a religious group.

And when another group dares to partake in the same unconstitutional BS, Christians lose their minds -- how dare another group celebrate violating the Constitution just like we've done for so long?! This is 'Murikah, n' uh'Murikuh's a Christshin Nashun!.

• I don't think it's possible to top that sort of hypocrisy.

I have no objection to the atheist group putting up a monument with quotes from the Founders, I do object to including the crank O'Hair among them.

Your fallacies appeal to authority and to tradition. They're otherwise known as argumentum ad verecundiam and argumentum ad antiquitatem, respectively.

Better an old true idea than an ignorant new one.

[Darias]

[Replying to post 19 by East of Eden]

You're missing my point entirely. The state steals from us to pay the president's salary whoever he is, and the state steals from us to monopolize compulsory public education. Those immoral things are legal by the standards of the state (The Constitution).

When it comes to those things, we're no better off. We're in no sense of the word "even" when not only am I robbed to support the government and its indoctrination centers, but I'm also robbed to proselytize for your religion. Who is better off in this scenario?

The state is not only immoral for forcing me to pay for its activities, it's breaking the law of its own standards by financing your religion on my dime -- not only in Congress and courthouses, but in public schools as well.

You telling me to suck it up because you have to live with Obama neglects the fact that SO DO I! It's not a compromise on your part in the least. We're all getting shafted by the government but at least you're getting some benefit. If there were atheist monuments everywhere, you might have a point -- but there aren't and you don't.

And if the new norm is to have 10 commandments and atheist ones side by side, then the public should have a say in what's among them. You can remove O'Hair, and a few others, and I'll take out commandments 1-5, 7, and 10. If we can't decide, then we can agree to leave the monuments blank.