Lawsuit seeks to take 'God' out of inaugural

Lawsuit seeks to take 'so help me God' out of inaugural - CNN.com

"Some atheists want Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony to leave out references to God and religion. In a lawsuit, the plaintiffs demand the words "So help me God" not be added to the end of the oath of office. The plaintiffs say they are being forced to choose between not watching the inauguration or watching endorsements of "purely religious notions."

"President-elect Barack Obama will use the Bible Abraham Lincoln used for his inauguration."

Seriously??? Well I want all rap music to be banned because it degrades women, talks about exploiting others, killing others, doing or selling drugs..etc...etc...Because when I am driving in my car I have to listen to that crap and it offends me--so, do I then decide to drive and be subjected to that crap or stay home, not go to work and live off of unemployment and welfare???

I suppose my question is WHERE IS THE LINE??? Everyone talks about the Constitution and their Constitutional Rights when it suits them, but dismisses other parts if they do not like it.......WTH:cursing:

I'm with you. I think people need to worry about themselves and not what everyone else is doing. I am an athiest and could care less about the wording in a speech. I work for a police department, and you would not believe the petty crap people call in about.

I'm with you. I think people need to worry about themselves and not what everyone else is doing. I am an athiest and could care less about the wording in a speech. I work for a police department, and you would not believe the petty crap people call in about.

Oh trust me, I am an ex Sheriff's Deputy in Texas and am ALL too familiar with the petty complaints we had to take!

Seriously??? Well I want all rap music to be banned because it degrades women, talks about exploiting others, killing others, doing or selling drugs..etc...etc...Because when I am driving in my car I have to listen to that crap and it offends me--so, do I then decide to drive and be subjected to that crap or stay home, not go to work and live off of unemployment and welfare???

Racists BS. All rap music is NOT what your bigoted opinion wants to make it. ZZ Tops lyrics, "she like cocaine and flipping out with great danes", so does that mean all rock music promotes beastiality? Cause you realize that a lot of bigoted people believe it to be a white mans sickness. See, stereotypes cut both ways.

Some of us think that your God is make believe. Others believe in another god or multiple gods. Why should we have to see his name all over public property?

Most of us couldn't really care one way or the other. We understand how inconsiderate "some" Christians can be and have grown accustomed to it.

Some of us think that your God is make believe. Others believe in another god or multiple gods. Why should we have to see his name all over public property?

Most of us couldn't really care one way or the other. We understand how inconsiderate "some" Christians can be and have grown accustomed to it.

Why? Because the Nation you live in was founded on His principles. Because this is a Christian Nation. Because it is our History. That's why! If you don't like it, go live elsewhere. No one is telling you that you have to believe in God. You have the freedom here to worship whomever you choose or noone at all. But just don't try to take our God out of this country in any way.

Too bad this "Christian nation" was founded on stealing and genocide. People were stripped of their property, religous beliefs, and culture. Their children were torn away from their families and placed in Christian mission schools. All to make way for a nation founded by "his" principles. Do you mean "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal?"

Too bad this "Christian nation" was founded on stealing and genocide. People were stripped of their property, religous beliefs, and culture. Their children were torn away from their families and placed in Christian mission schools. All to make way for a nation founded by "his" principles. Do you mean "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal?"

What exactly was stolen or killed?

The first people on the continental US were Native Americans. Good white Christians stole their land and murdered them. Manifest Destiny makes it OK to steal and murder. Not exactly "his" principles right?

Native Americans

Manifest Destiny had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental expansion implicitly meant the occupation and annexation of Native American land. The United States continued the European practice of recognizing only limited land rights of indigenous peoples. In a policy formulated largely by Henry Knox, Secretary of War in the Washington Administration, the U.S. government sought to expand into the west through the legal purchase of Native American land in treaties. Indians were encouraged to sell their vast tribal lands and become "civilized", which meant (among other things) for Native American men to abandon hunting and become farmers, and for their society to reorganize around the family unit rather than the clan or tribe. The United States therefore acquired lands by treaty from Indian nations, usually under circumstances which suggest a lack of voluntary and knowing consent by the native signers.

Advocates of civilization programs believed that the process of settling native tribes would greatly reduce the amount of land needed by the Indians, making more land available for homesteading by white Americans. Thomas Jefferson believed that while American Indians were the intellectual equals of whites, they had to live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them.[citation needed], Jefferson's belief, rooted in Enlightenment thinking, that whites and Native Americans would merge to create a single nation did not last his lifetime, and he began to believe that the natives should emigrate across the Mississippi River and maintain a separate society, an idea made possible by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.[citation needed]

In the age of Manifest Destiny, this idea, which came to be known as "Indian Removal", gained ground. Although some humanitarian advocates of removal believed that American Indians would be better off moving away from whites, an increasing number of Americans regarded the natives as nothing more than savages who stood in the way of American expansion. As historian Reginald Horsman argued in his influential study Race and Manifest Destiny, racial rhetoric increased during the era of Manifest Destiny. Americans increasingly believed that Native Americans would fade away as the United States expanded. As an example, this idea was reflected in the work of one of America's first great historians, Francis Parkman, whose landmark book The Conspiracy of Pontiac was published in 1851. Parkman wrote that Indians were "destined to melt and vanish before the advancing waves of Anglo-American power, which now rolled westward unchecked and unopposed."[30]

Merely living on the land does not confirm ownership. Where do you get the idea that America belonged to the Indians? The white man's record is not clean, but the only land the indians owned is the land they cleared, lived on and cultivated. To suggest that they owned the whole country simply because they rode around it on horseback is pure poppycock. Most, if not all indian tribes did not believe in personal ownership of land. They did not consider a plot of ground theirs to be passed on to a son but ground that was owned by the tribe for the good of all. The same attitude was held toward food. If a brave took a bison or deer in a hunt, it did not belong to him but to the tribe. The shallow thinker says, "That's magnanimous and unselfish." but it is also socialism and could be one reason why the Indians were living substantially the same way when Columbus arrived as they had lived 500 years earlier.

Also, just because man is born unto sin, doesn't make the truth of America starting as a Christian Nation any less true.

Patty, do you think god condones what happened to the Native American people in the name of expanding our "christian" nation for economic gain? Do you think jesus would have sanctioned building wealth with the blood of Native and African Americans?

Patty, do you think god condones what happened to the Native American people in the name of expanding our "christian" nation for economic gain? Do you think jesus would have sanctioned building wealth with the blood of Native and African Americans?

Condones? No. God hates all kinds of offenses against his creation, mankind. He abhors murder. What the Europeans did to the indians when they arrived here was not in God's plan for America, but it was what mankind did nonetheless. Man chose to fight with the indians that were present here instead of living with them and getting along. It wasn't right, but neither were many things that people have done in the past, like enslaving black people. Even today we go on sinning.

BTW, What happened to the Native American's was not done "in the name of expanding our Christian nation". It was done in the name of sin. It was done, because that's what man does. We do wrong every day, all the time. Jesus would not have approved of any form of sin.

Why do you think God had to send Jesus to take our punishment for us? Because we are not able to live our lives righteously. It's not possible. Christian's, God's family, are not sinless, just forgiven.

We are all a product of our time and the circumstances prevalent at the time. If I had lived with the Europeans in America during the 19th century, would I have embraced what was going on then? If I had lived with the Germans in the 1930s and 40s, would I have embraced what was going on in Germany then? If I had lived in Scandinavia during medieval time witnessing the horrors of slavery and killings, would I have embraced what was going on then? (The Nordic countries practiced slavery - träldom - during the middle ages, a master could for any reason kill his slave. Abolished in 1335.)

These are hard questions for anyone to honestly answer. It is easy to toss around opinions now, at the end of the 20th century being conveniently removed from circumstances and conditions in a distant and foreign time. I would like to think that I would have been against all that if I lived in that time period, but I guess I will never know.

What I do know is that even though man sinned, God used the outcome to form a nation that was Christian and full of a majority of people who worship him and love him, even till this day.