Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The Bible doesn’t clearly support liberal or conservative ideology. It is written in different times by different authors, it contradicts itself, it doesn’t line up with any modern ideology, and doesn’t clearly give direction on most, if any, modern political issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUi1906TiAU
At the nation’s founding, the Bible was not the most quoted text. This claim comes from a study that includes a lot of sermons reprinted on pamphlets, so, every time a religious sermon was printed on a pamphlet, which happened a lot back then, that counted as quoting the Bible. Additionally, these weren’t founding fathers quoting the Bible, but preachers preaching.
The most cited authors at the time of the founding were: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and Locke.
The period when the US Constitution was drafted has the lowest church attendance in US history.
The Federalists did not cite the Bible at all around the founding. The Anti-Federalists cited the Bible as nine percent of their citations. The Federalists, those who wrote the Constitution, did not cite the Bible when arguing for the Constitution. They believed in separation of church and state.
Christianity is a deep part of American culture and history, but people falsely exaggerate its direct role in the founding of the country.
Many state governments violated the principles of separation of state and church, but when the founders, who were sent by the states, came together to make a Constitution, they left such violations out of the new federal government and forbade acts that would create an established religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REHGXNX6pGQ
Mamdani should know what’s wrong with globalizing the intifada. But he won’t disavow it or condemn it; he just says it’s not the language that he uses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnNJ9aT0Gp0
Utter nonsense. Requiring public schools to post the ten commandments in their classrooms is forcing a particular religion down the throat of every child, using taxpayer funds. It is advocating the value of the Bible over other religions or non-religion. If a Muslim majority school district required every classroom to post lines from the Quran, people would be outraged. Unless the class is literally studying religion or that area of history, posting religious texts is advocating that or those religions and is an act of establishing an official religion.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/texas-can-require-ten-commandments-in-classrooms-us-appeals-court-rules-231531502.html
If we take the literal purported lives of certain historical religious figures like Muhammad as a way to live our own lives, then that leads to immoral and barbarous behavior. It is better to see them as inspirations in some spiritual or mystical way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5slk97ss2Q
Islamic sacred writings were written hundreds of years after the life of Muhammad, and Muhammad claimed to have received revelations from God that conveniently allowed him to do things that were politically expedient for him, and would change as his political needs changed.
“Islam is a militaristic political system that preaches the subjugation of all of humanity and their submission to Allah who created all humans just so they worship him”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbWPfkTKzlQ
Christians have deemphasized Jesus’s focus on forgiveness. Instead, Christians emphasize atonement. Jesus’s immediate followers made this shift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqpVUmJpEf0
The Bible isn’t one book. It is a bunch of books put together. If we really want to understand it, we should try to understand what each author was saying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ojTGrL_94
Jesus was not mentioned by Greek or Roman sources in the first 100 years. And, his first Greco-Roman reference was a passing reference. Paul also tells us very little about what Jesus specifically said. Our earliest sources are the four gospels. They are not particularly reliable, but that doesn’t mean they are useless. The Gospels are not first-hand testimony, but people reporting hearsay. They couldn’t know Jesus’s exact words.
We can look at which testimony is earlier, whether one seems to be emphasizing a bias or a message rather than just telling us what happened, to what extent different sources agree with each other, and the extent that Jesus is saying something that seems like his followers would not want him to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDtefHPTEk
George Washington was private about his religious life, so even people in his day were not sure about his religious convictions. At times, he didn’t go to church often, but at other times, he went weekly. Washington did not often talk explicitly about Christianity in his writings, but did use generally religious language. Washington read the Bible and it inspired some of his rhetoric. When asked directly to confirm that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ, Washington dodged the question. After the Revolutionary War, Washington stopped taking Communion, although skipping Communion was common back then. Washington didn’t mention his religion on his deathbed. Washington did think religion was important for society’s morality. Because he was private about his religious beliefs, it’s hard to say what he actually believed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O1nvDfgRX0