Posted on 08/27/2006 7:01:21 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."
The Florida Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.
Harris made the comments - which she clarified Saturday - in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.
Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."
"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.
Her comments drew criticism, including some from fellow Republicans who called them offensive and not representative of the party.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who is Jewish, told the Orlando Sentinel that she was "disgusted" by the comments.
Harris' campaign released a statement Saturday saying she had been "speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government."
The comments reflected "her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values," the statement said, adding that Harris had previously supported pro-Israel legislation and legislation recognizing the Holocaust.
Harris' opponents in the GOP primary also gave interviews to the Florida Baptist Witness but made more general statements on their faith.
Harris, 49, faced widespread criticism for her role overseeing the 2000 presidential recount as Florida's secretary of state.
State GOP leaders - including Gov. Jeb Bush - don't think she can win against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November. Fundraising has lagged, frustrated campaign workers have defected in droves and the issues have been overshadowed by news of her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who gave her $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions.
Resident atheists? You mean, of course, atheist American citizens.
Problem solved. Just wanted to make sure you weren't using a religious test to confer constitutional rights.
Good night.
"Equally mean is to ask self-avowed materialist what matter is"
Well, that's not difficult -- matter is anything that exists in spacetime. The set of material objects includes everything from Mars to the humblest photon.
The challenge for the materialist is to reduce entities that are not in spacetime to those that are. For example, beliefs, sensations, numbers, inferences and so forth are not logically or causally reducible to observable behavior and material objects in any obvious way. Dualism may be the solution to the mind-body "problem," which means we don't have a problem at all.
"It's interesting that Kant and his writings were coeval with the Founders. I'm wondering if the solution to the posit of FreedomFighter78 about the Founders being able to defend the Rights without the Creator lies here.
Hard to say how long it took to digest and interpolate the main writings of Kant. I'll have to look into the matter."
I wasn't really thinking of Kant - he didn't really gain much of a following until the mid-late 1780s (I believe his 'Critique of Pure Reason' was published in 1780 or 1781) - but he certainly provides another basis for natural rights that is not dependent on a Creator.
I was thinking of Hobbes, Locke, and (to a lesser extent) Rousseau - the social contract thinkers.
Yes, atheist American citizens. You caught me cheating on the side of the posit "what if atheists formed their own country in the late 1700s". I admit to the slyness. :-)
Apparently not to you.
Your arrogant, superior tone simply cements my point.
All State sponsored religions disappeared from the country in the Founder's time.
Amazingly enough, that concept began to die with the borth of the United States.
As far as an atheist's unalienable rights, they are based on the fact that no one has a right to take their life or their liberty under any circumstance, regardless of religious belief.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
If such attitudes persisted so long after the Enlightenment, I wonder how the argument of non-religious Rights would have been received by the majority in those times. It's a moot point in this Age.
FreedomFighter78 already pointed this out. The current discussion revolves around an atheist's Natural Rights, and how he would have asserted them at the time of the Founding.
Well, you say where matter exists. I asked what matter is.
In April 2005, in Windsor Castle, prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles. We have the time and space location. Is their marriage made of matter?
Not true. The Congregationalist Church remained the state church of Massachusetts well into XIX century.
This is a nice tricky "reasoning" worthy for a good lawyer. Unfortunately it does not hold water.
It is a inherent part of being alligator to eat other living beings which are passing by. And since it is absurd to deny the right to be alligator for a alligator it follows that the alligator in zoo has the right to eat the human visitors instead of being fed with some dog food.
But what a right is? This context defines a right to be derived from natural tendency and not as a moral or legal category. We can agree that humans want some things because they are human. It does not mean that it gives them any rights. This that your desire or need is natural does not mean that you are untitled to follow it.
And yet... that's what the founding fathers created.
Amateurs...
This loonie-toonie mouth-running gives ammunition to the "Bush Stole The Election" crowd -- now they can say that Harris rigged it because she thinks God told her to.
Religious rights are protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
HAHAHAHA!! Yeah, like the abolute monarch Louis XVI "raised his hand" against those radicals who were trying to establish a republic in rebellion against his brother Christian king.
Nonsense. Tycho Brahe's observational tables of planetary positions were crafted under the premise that the planets moved in circular cycles and epicycles around the Earth. By your "reasoning", that renders them valueless.
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