Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder mrkthompson occasionally pops in here and posts variations of the stuff he's posting now. He's done it for years, and does it to get a rise out of people. In other words, he's trolling. His "arguments" would never work in a court of law, haven't worked in a court of law, and thankfully never will.
Originally Posted By ecdc The other question becomes...so what? Why the insecurity of those who claim to be firm in the faith? Do they question their own beliefs if the Founders are not in line with them? Does it become a tool of validation? The desperate attempts to make the U.S. a Christian nation reeks of insecurity and xenophobia, as if Christians are just too weak to handle the Founders not thinking like them.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Singlepark is right. I pop in and out. I wrote a 450 page book about this subject. In the process of publishing. You guys help me refine my arguments. Thanks guys!
Originally Posted By dshyates Mrkthompson, if your book is 450 pages of what is found in post 30, it sounds like a painful read. "done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,..." Let me help you out with the particulars of the English language. The important phrase here is, "done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present..." That is a complete statement that has nothing to do with the crap presented in post 30. Done could easily be replaced with accomplish or even ratified. "the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven..." This simply was the conventional way of writing the date in text during the time period. And says nothing about Jesus Christ our savior, or any of that other stuff you said. "and of the Independence of the United States" Yep, still nothing about Jesus.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Dshyates: The Constitution cannot render itself unconstitutional, but the "Attestation Clause" (the "Done" clause) does take precedence over everything else in the Constitution, including its amendments. The "Done" clause is the vehicle that carries the meat of the document into effectivity. Nothing can comprise the ability of the document to remain effective if we intend for it to remain effective. So, yes, if we deny all these things it asks us to recognize, the document can arguably fall out of effectivity and be reduced to nothing more than a pile of parchments. Of course we don't want that to happen, so we must continually affirm the attestation for the document to remain effective forever. So far, if you read the document carefully, nothing in the actual meat of the constitution and its amendments (esp. Amendment I) compromises the necessities of recognizing the terms of the Attestation "Done" clause, including all references to Christ and God. Ecdc, "in the Year of our Lord" 1787 defining the solitary moment in time for demarking the event of document baseline presumes that there was indeed an event of "our Lord" to attach the demarkation. It wasn't a superficial application of "what they did to date all documents at the time", because they demarked this date twice for extra level of risk-free redundancy ("and of the Independence... the Twelvth"). If Christ is not Lord, then who is? If someone or something else is, then when is 1787? if there is some other scale that includes another "1787", then what is the state of effectivity of the document? The document acknowledges the events of Jesus Christ as Lord, flat-simple. If this is "mental gymnastics", then the gymnastics that Justice Black performed to contrive a universal "Separation of religion and state" from Amendments I and XIV wins the gold medal and world record.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn I have completely diagrammed the sentence in the book and provided proper analysis for each components. Yes, "Done" can mean "accomplished", as a response to the mission set forth by the preamble. But does "the accomplishment" retain its truth by the modifiers that follow?
Originally Posted By dshyates Mrkthompson, the entire "Done" clause is just a dated signatory. Which, yes, does carry the document into effectiveness. But that is all it is. A dated signatory.
Originally Posted By ecdc There are lengthy books on Bigfoot, UFOs, and how Obama was born in Kenya. I think I'll pass. There are real historians who understand these things in context; they spend lifetimes mastering a narrow subject, instead of just having an agenda and thinking that qualifies them to author a book. Try Frank Lambert's work.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn You're right Dsh. In the end, the Supreme Court decisions win. To date, no one has ever contested the truth of "Done" in the "Done" clause, and then determining the effect if the its truth mode were deniable. But if one were to do that (show that its truth is deniable), they could force an attempt to invalidate the document... to demonstrate that the ratifying conventions did not ratify something that was able to be ratified. If that contest was presented, would the court system have jurisdiction over this clause? a clause that establishes their own existence? I think it is able to be contested given today's trend of "separation". I also believe the courts would have a bias to preserve their existence, so they would wipe away the contest for their own benefit, and not the country's. The clause therefore carries significant weight - a weight owned by the people and states, not the courts. In the end, you are left with the task of trying to ~remove~ God from the Constitution rather than prevent others from injecting Him into it.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn ecdc: especially when you use the specific text "in the Year of our Lord". By the text, you're just acknowledging a Lord. If you don't want to attach yourself to a Lord, use another dating system to demark events.
Originally Posted By ecdc BTW, as hard as one might try to make Washington or Madison Christian, this is impossible with Jefferson. This is the man that made his own Bible, removing references to Jesus' divinity. Year of our Lord was a common phrase. I still say "Oh my God, or other general references. Maybe two-hundred years from now I'll be morphed magically into a Christian too.
Originally Posted By dshyates There is little arguing tha "truth" of "done" unless you can prove that it wasn't unanimous or not signed on the date stated.
Originally Posted By dshyates The "done" clause simply means the document was ratified unanimously on the given date. What "truth" is there to prove?
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder It's like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, and then thinking you can definitively prove it.
Originally Posted By dshyates SPP, that one is an easy one. Dinos were laying eggs LONG before evolution invented the chicken.
