PBS Telling Teachers to Violate First Amendment, Group Says

Question: is the latter [positive legal theory] a synonym for common law?

Actually, I think the common law -- the "law of the commons," or the public sphere -- is the civil outgrowth of the natural law. At least this seems to be the case in the English-speaking world, where frequently the common law has been hostile to legal notions such as, for instance, "the divine right of kings."

The Framers did not believe that kings have any divine rights. And there was to be no king in America: SOVEREIGNTY VESTS DIRECTLY IN THE PEOPLE UNDER GOD. Ours was to be a system of rule of law (natural law as the Constitution distills it), not a rule of men. It seems legal positivists tend to reject this notion, although they frequently pay it lip service. Roe v. Wade is a prime example of this hypocrisy.

And so what has the Supreme Court wrought in Roe? The Roe holding seems designed to make us forget that the entire natural purpose of sex is procreation, not recreation. An unplanned child is seen as an inconvenient by-product of what the parties intended to be a purely recreational act. An inconvenienced mother-to-be can just rid herself of the inconvenience, and so quickly make herself available for further recreation.

I wonder how Darwinists manage to square such social facts with their evolutionary theory. People who don't or won't procreate contribute zilch to the gene pool and, thus, to natural selection and the fitness of the species.... And yet Darwinists such as Dawkins and Pinker evidently think that "free love" -- Love Means You Never Have To Say You're Sorry (For Anything) -- is just dandy. Just one more piece of evidence that these people really are deeply crazed.... The "pelvic revolution" seems to have trumped, not only life, but reason itself.

Well, just my two cents' worth, Lexinom. FWIW. Thank you so much for your beautifully reasoned essay posts!

Franklin attended the sermons of George Whitefield, a Methodist evangelist whenever he found opportunity.

The “deism” practiced in Revolution era America was a “Judeo-Christian deism” as evidenced by Jefferson’s own translation of the bible.

In short, the deity in question was the Judeo-Christian Deity. It was not Molech of the MidEast, the Sun God of the Aztecs, or the sprites in trees of the animists.

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see....

Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. :^) Can we now just admit that Franklin was of profoundly Christian persuasion and sensibility? Or are there still people out there who are prepared to argue the negative?

Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent research into these issues!

It is evident that the PBS materials are religious teaching. I had one poster telling me last week that since there was at least one denomination that accepts both evolution and God that that means there is no contradiction. The logic of extrapolating the one to the many is an interesting exercise that could take us many unusual places. It is certainly the logic of the “me” generation.

It is all about “me”....the one.

In the realm of aborting life, selfishness (”me”ism) is the major culprit.

Interestingly, there is a path from “me”ism to the very idea of monarchy. With fallen humans that eventually becomes a deadly thing....as God through Samuel so clearly warned the people.

Yet, how we long for the perfect Monarch; the One about whom all does revolve, and to whom all Glory does belong.

It must be the season: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

On Deism; the etymology and the history:

Once again you confirm that if the right button can be found (as true of our friend boop as it is of you), the results will be rather spectacular. Likewise, you convincingly illustrate that seeking definition and meaning will bring clarity to a conversation. I had hoped for a similar result from others on this sidebar, but it seems no curiosity was aroused, no desire to learn stimulated. But, of course, for either of those two things to have occurred, that had to have been their motivation in the first place.

Your remarks lead me to search out my own copy of the July ’75 edition of The National Geographic, and it seems that it was the very year of his death (1790) that Franklin wrote to Ezra Stiles expressing “some doubts” as to the divinity of Christ, but adding that he did not “dogmatize upon” it, expecting it to be a question soon answered. It is in this same letter that Franklin declares his belief in one God,” Creator of the Universe,” and it is at this point where etymology and definition, once again, become “our friends.” The word ‘Creator’ with a capital ‘C’ did not become common until the appearance of the King James Bible (1611) and it has, ever since that time, come to specifically mean the biblical Judeo-Christian ‘God’ (see the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, The Origins of American English Words – see also In The Beginning The story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, by Alister McGrath).

Perhaps it is that letter to which js1138 refers in his abortive effort to undermine boop’s quote of Franklin’s June 28th convention speech by falsely alleging a fabrication of one of the best known speeches arising from that period in America’s history.

I never tried to say Franklin was not influenced by Christianity, in fact I said that saying Franklin or our founders were not influenced by Christianity would be an obviously false and ridiculous argument.

What I said was that in his Autobiography, his message that he wanted people to know about his own life, said he was a thorough Deist. Here we see a quote where he openly admitted he doubted the divinity of Christ. He is hardly an example of the founding of our nation being ‘Christian to its core’ which is what the initial poster alleged. I pointed out that there was also a very strong Deist influence and Franklin might not be the best evidence of the argument that it was entirely Christian thoroughly and to its core. It was heavily influenced by the ideas of Deism and the natural rights of man and the ideas of freedom of religion inherent in the idea of freedom of conscience.

In natural law, respecting the question of abortion, there are only two questions that need to be answered: Is the foetus human? Is it alive? All you need is two "yes" responses to make clear that a preborn alive human has an unalienable right to life and so is deserving of the protection of a just government. This conclusion is lawful according to the dictates of natural law theory, which is derived from JudeoChristian ethics. What the nine black-robed justices did was to turn something "unlawful" -- the termination of a live human -- into something "legal."

And for the first time in our history those black-robed justices narrowed the meaning of what it is to be a ‘person’ and who it is that is entitled to God-given dignity rather than broadened it.”

But God is not mocked.”

However you wish to express it, there has been Hell-to-pay ever since.

While there is no doubt that Thomas Jefferson believed in Jesus Christ as a human being and a philosopher, but he did not believe in his divinity, his virgin birth, or his miracles. Christianity without Spirituality is not Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson would think that the divinity of Christ was as mythical of Moloch or Quetzalcoatl or Dryads. As much as he admired the ‘philosophy’ of Christ, he was not a Christian save for by his OWN definition. I guess I should take him at his word that he is a Christian but one must also accept his other words, such as...

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other” Thomas Jefferson in the intro to the Jefferson Bible.

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter” Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams.

This is an excellent example of the "tension" between natural law (the theory of law of the DoI and the Constitution) and positive legal theory. The nine black-robed justices of that time were mainly legal positivists. As mentioned earlier, the emphasis of natural law theory is always the human individual; positive law tends to focus on group "equities." (In Roe v. Wade, the contending "groups" involved are mothers as a class, and their unborn children as a class. What doesn't logically add up is the Court asserted the right to privacy as justification for its holding -- but privacy is something applicable only to individuals, not groups; and then it had to be found in a constitutional "penumbra." Needless to say, the entire Roe v. Wade decision is systematically illogical.)

Excellent analysis. Thank you, dearest sister in Christ!

Thank you for all your encouragements!

Can we now just admit that Franklin was of profoundly Christian persuasion and sensibility? Or are there still people out there who are prepared to argue the negative?

I suspect there will be some correspondents who'll continue to insist that a person is not of "profoundly Christian persuasion and sensibility" if he denies the deity of Christ.

But if they didn't have that point to raise, they'd find something else, e.g. a creed, Scriptures, religious authority. "If a person is not [label], he's not Christian. If he is [label], he's not Christian." - on and on...

Faith and reason are tortured by men seeking to justify their desires.

Maranatha, Jesus!!!

Aha, thank you oh so very much for all the additional insights, dear YHAOS! How fortunate for us that you had the July '75 edition of National Geographic handy!

Your point about the word Creator is very, very well made. There can be no doubt he was speaking of God in the Judeo/Christian sense of the word, i.e. God the Creator.

I had hoped for a similar result from others on this sidebar, but it seems no curiosity was aroused, no desire to learn stimulated. But, of course, for either of those two things to have occurred, that had to have been their motivation in the first place.

Indeed.

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