Rebecca's Response

Someone emailed me today this EXCELLENT point to remember:

"...remember that the founders of this country came here seeking freedom of religion--the right to worship as they saw fit…and not be persecuted or judged. Yes, most of them were Christians, so it’s correct in saying we were founded on Christian principles. I think they were very careful NOT to write Christianity into the Constitution…and they believed that each person should have the freedom to worship according to their beliefs."

Now for my response - I know I've thrown a lot on here in 2 days. But that's blogging and I've been behind. Someone emailed me and said it sounds like I think Christianity is the only way, only Christians have morals. First, they weren't my responses. I was publishing responses to the Treaty of Tripoli info posted.

Whether Christianity is the only way, is something every person has to determine themselves. I certainly do not think only Christians have morals. All humans fall short in some matter and probably all humans lack morality in some aspect of their lives, regardless of how much they choose to excuse it away. So here are some thoughts I have on this nation and it's "Christianity".

I've noticed, as I'm sure many have, over the years a general movement away and a growing intolerance within our country of Christian principles or the freedom to simply express the belief in Christianity. To the point that some religious persecution is happening and I think coming in our future to this country. This is why it gets my interest to hear the president say we are not a christian nation any longer and I am concerned that he attempts to speak for this nation regarding that matter and as to what the future will hold for Christian views. It seems as human nature, our politics and stance on things is either WAY left or WAY right, not really meeting in the middle so tolerance for one view, means obliteration for the other.

Maybe the Treaty of Tripoli was signed as stated, in order to induce their nation in to peace and not continue to hurt US people, maybe OBama's words were meant as such as well. To induce peace with a nation, who's religion seeks to destroy those with opposing religions. As I type this, the thought occurs to me how interesting it is that OBama is in the middle of a world meeting, a political meeting and sees fit to discount our Christian principles as a nation, in order to bring peace and hopefully end further attacks on US citizens. It seems to boil around religious beliefs. Yet, we must discount ours to induce their favor. Seems a bit two sided and begs attention to what is being given away for the rights or consideration of another country. This is the US and I think we are giving away who we are in many areas, which in turn is giving power to other countries to dictate what and who we are.

Dori Monson recently talked about the fact that an American can't smile in a drivers license photo yet, Muslim women are able to sue and win in the states to keep their faces covererd in their photos. This had nothing to do with being Muslim or anything against any particular race of people. It was about the fact that the Drivers License and it's photo is something we do here in America for identification purposes. Should someone choose to live in this fine country, they should be ready to abide by our laws. Instead we seem to be expected to change the way we live in our own country to accommodate those from around the world that choose to come here. Many listeners called in who had lived abroad and talked about how proud citizens are in other countries, flags are flown, pride is lived and the country is not trumped within by outsiders. Yet, in a large move for tolerance and acceptance of everyone, America is losing who it is as a Nation. When the right to put up your American Flag is removed because the flag is offensive to another person, living on our soil, it's gone too far. When a government official shows up outside someone's personal residence and starts interrogating them about what they are doing in their own home, because it is of a Christian gathering where the words Amen, Hallelujah and praise songs are used - something has gone too far. We need to wake up in light of these small movements against tolerance for Christian principles AND who our nation is. Maybe we need to go back to the beginning and remember where we began. I think this interest in whether we began as a "Christian" nation or not is part of that fighting back and attempt to keep our country American and against the movement to uphold the rights of everything - but Christianity.

I heard this interesting song the other day - something about how things in life don't happen overnight. It happens slowly. A marriage doesn't end overnight, a father doesn't leave his children overnight, etc. Things happen over time to slowly erode something that was strong. I see that happening to our great nation and many things are happening across America we don't even realize. When someone can bring them all together in one place for the big picture, well "overnight" is happening and we need to pay attention.

And no I do not believe in any way only Christians have morals or values. But I do believe there is a need to stand up & pay attention to where this is headed and fight for our rights to live with those values. It chills my blood when I listen to the DVD "expelled" and hear a scientist say that what he hopes is people will rely on science more to achieve his goal, which is to ultimately push "religion" where it belongs, a nice thing for the weekend and at some point, humanity will no longer feel the need to rely on religion or God. For me it's not about doctrine, I believe God is too many times forced & pushed in to the same category as "religion" and they are two very different things. I know God exists by my own life experiences and believe there is a danger of forgetting who we are in this universe, what humanity means and the importance of human life.

Mr. Chadwell Part 1

As you might expect, I have lots to say about this. I'll start off, however, with the frank admission that I had never heard of the Treaty of Tripoli either. I now understand that Obama apparently invoked the treaty in his recent speech which probably explains why this issue came to our attention, ultimately. So, understandably, in reading the treaty I'm struck by the language used. I'd like to share some observations with you about this which will serve as a foundation of sorts… a backdrop, maybe.

And by the way, thank you for bringing my attention to it. Every time I encounter something like this, it drives me to learn more about it, and in that process I become better equipped to deal with it. I'd much rather hear this from you than, say, some secular type whom I'm trying to persuade as to the founding of this nation and be left flat-footed, caught be surprise. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

For one thing, and understand this is a minor consideration but a consideration nonetheless, but the article you cite is associated with Stephen Jay Gould. Gould died a while back, but I think it's at least minimally relevant to understand who Gould was. Gould was a rather well known atheist and evolutionary, uh… scientist. I was going to say "biologist" but some of those guys get picky about their precise title, so I'll use the broadest one I know. Gould was bothered by the fact that the fossil record provided precious little in the way of transitional forms and if Darwin had been correct, we should have an incredible wealth of transitional forms. So, he came up with the theory called "Punctuated Equilibrium" to explain away this lack of transitional forms.

What's my point? My point is that everyone has a bias. I most certainly have a bias, so do you, so did Stephen Jay Gould and those who share his world view. Hopefully you have seen by now enough evidence to persuade you that the popular evolution story which we were all fed is demonstrably false and literally impossible. And again, I don't disbelieve evolution if evolution simply means "change over time". I can agree to that and compromise NOTHING in the way of my Biblical world view. But if "evolution" means all living things descended accidentally from a single common ancestor, (this is the story we were fed in school) is laughably absurd and has, in fact, very little (if any) evidence to support it. Still getting to my point… The question is, if people like Gould can look at the plain evidence and simple problems associated with evolution and their naturalist world view and persist in interpreting that data to their favor, then they are obviously prone to twist anything else to their favor if it threatens their world view. These guys (as you've seen in the Expelled movie) will go to GREAT LENGTHS to defend their world view and deny God. Think of Michael Ruse in "Expelled" when he so confidently asserted the life arrived "on the backs of crystals" as if that explains anything. Think of Romans 1:22 which says "Professing to be wise, they became fools."

Now I understand that this alone does not disprove this whole assertion about the Treaty of Tripoli. But it demonstrates the lengths to which people of this world view will go in order to defend their view and to assail the truth. Therefore, their conclusions ought to be treated with careful scrutiny and suspicion, and if their conclusion turns out to be valid, so be it. But there's a good chance it won't.

New e-mail coming. You may post these as comments if you like… up to you. Right now I'm really just writing to you, personally, not so much "to your blog". I'll break this up into several e-mails, 'cuz this is going to get complicated.

I hope it's clear that, since this is the first time I've heard of this treaty, I'm actually reasoning this through to a large extent as I write whatever it is that I write. So while I most certainly do have a bias, I will try to set that aside and just focus on the question at hand and see what reasonable conclusions can be reached. It's a very interesting problem.

There are many passages in the Bible, for example, which skeptics love to point to as being contradictory and of course then they stomp all over the Bible and say that it's obviously not divinely inspired by some "perfect" God. But these always turn out not to be contradictions when the passages are examined more carefully. It always turns out that one part of the contradiction has simply been… often times it has to do with us imposing our way of doing things from our historical context and our culture onto their way of doing things in their historical context and their culture. When you get a little bit into their culture and historical context, the contradictions fade away and things start to make sense.

It's possible that something similar is happening here with this treaty, and that what the secularists are really doing is pulling this article out of its historical context in a way that is misleading. If that strikes you as a bit of a stretch, well, join the club. But we have to account for the thoughts expressed elsewhere by those same founders. If we just ignore all of that then most certainly we're missing something.

Make sense?