"Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude." The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson

"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race." From The Meaning Of It All by Richard P. Feynman

Rambill wrote:
“The bible laws are understandable and logical, and they only take up a few chapters of the bible, yet they cover every possible thing that could happen and what the remedy is.”

Understandable?

That’s really funny Bill.

With over 2,500 different sects of Christianity which one should interpret the Biblical laws?

Amish
Anabaptism
Assemblies of God
Baptists
Calvinism
Christadelphians
Christian Identity
Church Universal and Triumphant
Church of Christ
Church of England
Congregationalism
Coptic Christianity
Eastern Orthodox
Episcopal Church
Ethiopian Christianity
IURD
Jehovah's Witnesses
Lutheran Church
Maronites
Mennonites
Methodism
Old Catholic Movement
Pentecostal Church
People's Temple
Pilgrims
Presbyterian Church
Protestant
Puritanism
Quakers
Roman Catholicism
Shakers
Spiritual Baptists
Thomas Christians
Unification Church
Unitarianism
United Church of Christ
Unitarian Universalist >Acoemetae
Adelophagi
Adventist Movement
amillennialism
Arminian Theology
Augustinians
Benedictines
Cahenslyism
Capuchins
Carmelites
dispensationalism
Dominicans
Evangelicalism
Franciscans
fundamentalism
Gnosticism
Huguenots
Hutterites
Liberation Theology
Mainline Protestant
Mendicant Orders
Neo-Orthodoxy
Pietism
postmillennialism
Primitivism
Quietism
Sabbatarianism
staret
premillennialism
Scholasticism
Thomism
Transcendentalism
Trinitarianism
Universalism >Adamites
adoptionism
Albigenses
antinomianism
Apollinarianism
Arianism
Cathars
Docetism
Donatism
Ebionites
Jansenism
Lapsed Christians
Lollards
Manicheism
monophysite
Montanism
Nestorianism
Pelagianism
Waldenses


This list doesn’t even include them all, and let’s not forget about the Gay Christians too!

You think the manmade laws that are currently on the books are complicated? What you’re proposing here is a nightmare that would make our currently legal system seem like child’s play.

I think what you fail to realize, is that in the end, religion IS man-made!

James:
You are making a mistake
u r mentioning roman catholicism, and then u r mentioning groups like carmelites and franciscan, they are not sects. All of those follow structly the catholic doctrine, they are not seperated at all from the catholic church.
My dear friend please revise your sources.

TLW

I understand your concerns Miguel, but I’m not concerned with details.

I was simply trying to make a point. There can be no doubt that there are many sects of Christianity, the technical details of precisely how many there are and precisely what believe is moot.

Even if all that exists is Roman Catholicism and protestants there are enough differences right there to start World War III.

You can’t seriously believe that if the Bible were used as the basis for law there wouldn’t be any arguments concerning what the laws should be?

Yet this seems to be what Bill is suggesting.

I think even in a society that is based on pure humanitarianism we're going to have laws against murder, rape, stealing, and things like that.

Any biblical-based laws are going to get into the nasty business concerned with male-chauvinism, the woman’s place as many silent obedient helpmate, and things like that. How and who should have sex, how they should do it and when they are allowed to do it. (what we would now consider to be invasion of privacy).

Otherwise, if we only go by the big stuff we already have laws for that.

To implement every tiny little Bible law would be to make laws about personal moral behaviors! We’d have to give up PRIVACY!

There are places in the Bible that some people claim it’s saying that a father should choose who his daughter marries, etc.

Do you really want to see those sort of things made in to LAW?

Trying to put the Bible into law would be a nightmare.

No wonder the world's a mess.

James evreything comes down to the interpretations

Abracadabra,

I feel that you took the discussion on a tangent. Rambill was talking about the Law. There isn't really any disagreement on the Law. The 10 commandments get broken down differently by Jews, protestants and catholics, but the meaning of most of the Laws are agreed upon by all Christians. Probably the only laws that are debated by Christians are a) Kosher b) Sabbath and c) Homosexuality. The majority of Christian churches agree on those laws and a few minor churches have their own views of those subjects.

While the variety of Christian churches is a valid topic of discussion, I don't believe that has anything to do with what Rambill posted.

Spider wrote:
“Rambill was talking about the Law. There isn't really any disagreement on the Law. The 10 commandments get broken down differently by Jews, protestants and catholics, but the meaning of most of the Laws are agreed upon by all Christians”

Ok, so we begin with the 10 Commandments that supposedly all Christians agree with.

Let’s start with the first one and see how things go,…

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me

Ok, that will be the first law of the land in the USA. No more freedom of religion. That’s a man-made law and must be discarded, we’re starting all over from scratch here and instilling Biblical law only.

Ok, so Voil, Red, Invisible, myself, Artgurl, Jenni, Sister Shaman, Jess, and a whole lot of others who are not Christians are all guilty of breaking this law and refuse to obey it.

What happens now?

What’s the punishment?

This is the very first law! Sounds pretty powerful? Do we get the death penalty? Life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole should we ever accept the Christian God?

Or are we just asked to leave the country (or in the case of those who are not Americans, they are simply not permitted to visit America because they would be breaking the law of the land if they did and therefore be considered to be criminals if they came here)

I already don’t like the new USA.

I don’t think it’s going to work very well.

Moreover, I’m totally convinced that after you get rid of all the non-Christians and all you have left are Christians, you’re still going to have a LOT of disagreements and arguments as you continue down the list of even the TEN commandments.

Who’s going to decide that the punishments will be fore breaking them??? The Bible doesn’t address that issue does it?

Finally, there is NOTHING in the Ten commandments that addresses homosexuality. So you’re necessarily going to need to go nit-pickings though the Bible if you want to put than into law. And that’s when all your troubles will begin, because once you start nitpicking through the Bible you’re going to run into a million differences interpretations.

So I have no clue what you are talking about with respect to the laws being simple or obvious.

But since I’ve already been cast out of the nation with the first law I guess my view doesn’t matter.

A nation of Christians based solely on Biblical law. I can see that as a theme for the most horrid horror movie ever produced.

Come on Abra get it right. You know how they come up with this style answer, put people in a room until they come up with the answer the dominant party desires and destroy all else - you've read history yes?

Of course, they do still have to figure out the total destruction part - hmmmmmm.

Wench,

May I borrow some of your lightning bolt?

I need to charge up my flux capacitor so I can move into the time where Jess lives.

She lives in another time than we do you know.

Maybe people are enlightened in that epoch?

I know Jess is enlightened.

Who else would volunteer to be the victim of an overzealous hair stylist!

I only need a few jigawatts of juice. Please?

Of course! Zap ahead on with your badself....

Abracadabra,

Now you are back on track, but you are talking to the wrong guy. You should be talking to Rambill, not me. I don't believe that the laws in the Bible should automatically be the laws of the nation, I was simply pointing out that you were on a tangent that had nothing to do with the point made by Rambill.

And just to clarify, I was pointing out that Christians agree almost completely on the 10 commandments (except for the Sabbath law) and have very few disagreements over the 605 other commandments in the Bible. I realize that Homosexuality isn't directly mentioned in the 10 commandments. Sorry that I wasn't more clear with my previous post.

Ram, Spider,DKW, Abra - all these issues were solved already.

Hell it took took a lot to do it too. Consider how long Constantine worked to bring together all those Bishops and other religious leaders and the vast diversity of written documents that had to be sifted through.

I honestly can't imagine what would have happened, what could have happened, if all those men had not been so devinely inspired to choose and write the correct verses for the correct morality. Why, the whole nation might have fallen apart without the kind of cohesion such divinity created.

By the way what ever happened to Constantines government????

Redykeulous,

I don't have a dog in this fight, I was just pointing out to Abra that he had run off down a rabbit trail.

If you are talking about the Council of Nicea, you can read the documents produced there, with the meeting minutes here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/nicea1.txt

You will find that most of what is common knowledge about the council is a lie and that Dan Brown was completely off with what he wrote. There was very little debate, it was conviened to address a particular issue...one person and his two bisops believe that Jesus was a divine created being and not truely one with God. There was no debate on if Jesus was divine, but it was believed by three out of 318 that Jesus was a created divine being, rather than an eternal divine being.

" If we do not hang together, we will all hang separately. We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. " Benjamin Franklin

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" Patrick Henry

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. Henry David Thoreau

Good quotes all, Hillfolk.

Spider, I was addressing the idea of a nation being governed by the laws of a religion. I was not addressing your argument with Abra.

The impossibility that any nation can be governed through the laws of a single religion was recognized with the long ago as the Roman Empire. It was their desire to govern and without allowing religions to override any state law, they could govern 'their own'as they saw fit. This how the 'state' got involved with the case of Jesus, for the state law prohibitied the Jewish hirearchy from committing murder, and that was the only end Jesus could meed in their eyes.

Even Constantine understood that a One religion rule would only created internal struggles that would detract from the ability of the Empire to grow. Therefor, consolidating the most widley known pagan rites within the structure of the still forming Christian religion, was deemed to be well worth the effort.

It's really too bad that it didn't work, because in the end all it succeded in doing was creating a 'new' religion whose tendrils are so extensive that even they can't agree on a dogma between them.

redykeulous,

"Even Constantine understood that a One religion rule would only created internal struggles that would detract from the ability of the Empire to grow. Therefor, consolidating the most widley known pagan rites within the structure of the still forming Christian religion, was deemed to be well worth the effort. "

While you have every right to your own opinion, that is not true. Constantine, by 325, was a devoted Christian who called together the Council of Nicea to confront the heresey of Arianism. The documents produced by the council are openly available, I have already linked to one copy in a previous post. Constantine waited until he was near death to be baptised, because of a tradition at the time. Baptism represents the death and resurrection, so he waited until he was near death to be baptised. Dan Brown's book was fiction, the truth is much less exciting.

Maybe this should go into the nice guy thread but a lot of people see Jesus as a nice guy. Heck, Jesus was a real rebel. Herod was afraid of him and had so many male babies put to death just with the fear of Jesus as a contender to the throne. Pontius Pilate said he washed his hands of him. He threw out out money changers. If you really read the scriptures he actually pissed off a lot of people. No wonder there is a separation of church and state. Power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely. Down with tyrants - Up with the will of the people.

Well, I've been looking for the worst case scenario, and that is what I came up with:

~Crime and Punishment~

~Puritan Justice~

The Puritans were truly devout Christians who set out to establish a colony

that would represent the true and proper manner in which Christianity should be

carried out. Puritans had some beliefs which had major affects on the basic

idea of a law. One belief was that each person was a war zone for God and the

devil, forever fighting between Gods will and the devils temptations. Another

belief is that people were born evil, and could only be forgiven through a

lifetime of proper Christianity. Puritan laws came into effect throughout New

England, since the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and

New Hampshire were founded by Puritans. Some examples of Puritan laws were...

The church believed it was illegal to enjoy any form of entertainment that

might distract ones thoughts from God, so most forms of entertainment were

prohibited. Also, was any form of idleness or laziness. Beach combing was

illegal. Also, duck hunting was usually illegal since if the hunter was a bad

shot, he would be wasting resources and time.

Puritan laws were often tied to the Bible in some way. Since long hair was

considered inappropriate by Biblical interpretation, you would need to make

frequent trips to the barber to stay out of trouble. Swearing, sleeping

during sermons, and skipping church were also punishable.

The Puritans believed that punishment should be humiliating. The most common

New England punishment were the stocks and pillory. Stocks were heavy wooden

frames with holes that held the guilty persons ankles and sometimes wrists.

The pillory was similar, but was designed so the person held in it would be

in a standing position with his or her head and wrists secured. Usually the

pillory was reserved for members of the community with high social standing,

as opposed to the stocks, which were used for lower class individuals.

Usually, the stocks were accompanied by verbal abuse and rotten foods being

thrown at you.

Another form of public humiliation would be to have the criminal wear a large

letter on their clothing. The letters would stand for the crime committed. A

person with a T was a thief, with a D was charged with public drunkenness,

and so on.

Another form of punishment was the ducking stool. Reserved for women who

gossiped or scolded their husbands, it was a teeter-totter like device, which

had a stool attached to it where the woman would be tied. The woman would

then be dunked in a lake or river, with the number of dunks depending on the

judges ruling.

Other, more brutal forms of punishment included whipping. Usually twenty to

forty lashes were common, with one case of 117 lashes in the record book.

The punishment did not stop with whipping. A hot awl was pierced through the

tongue for a person who spoke against the religion. Sometimes ears were cut

off. Occasionally, instead of just wearing a letter, the letter was branded

onto their forehead or other body parts.

Execution was also a form of punishment in the colonies. Hanging was the most

common form of execution, although burning at the stake was also used. One case in New

York caused for the men to be "drawn and quartered," meaning they were dismembered and

brutally mutilated as they were executed.


I've been sitting on this one for a couple of days already.
I found the perfect hide-away for myself and you, my friends, because I think when this happens, we are all doomed.
I have made a list of the provisions we will need, all you have to bring is yourself and the things that entertain you, like music instruments, needlework, books, you name it.
There is space for all of us.
And there is only one condition:
We all agree that each ones belief is the right one for him/herself.
We talk about beliefs to learn, not to preach. It's a learning process, we don't have to convert anyone, just live in peace with each other. You are all welcome to my new place.