Dear God, save us from the people who believe in you.
Dr. Paul argues from the correct view of what the Constitution is, not from a moralistic view. Of course he is not in favor of prostitution and the use of drugs. What he is saying is that the Constitution does not give the federal government the authority to micro-manage our personal affairs. The Constitution is a document that gives the federal branches certain powers and that is it. All other powers to legislate belongs to the states or the people themselves.
This was the very seed of liberty in the Western world. Your friend who loves authoritarian government should read about the Reformation.
The seed of liberty of our Western World was the Age of Enlightenment.
François-Marie Arouet (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃.swa ma.ʁi aʁ.wɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire (pronounced: [vɔl.tɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade and separation of church and state. Some quotes:
Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
Superstition, born of paganism, and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil.
Letter to Boswell: You seem solicitous about that pretty thing called soul. I do protest I know nothing of it, nor where it is, nor what it is, nor what it shall be.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.
Most of the great men . . . live as if they were atheists.
The first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool.
Theology: A science profound, supernatural, and divine, which teaches us to reason on that which we don't understand and to get our ideas mixed up on that which we do.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
Here are some quotes from the Founding Fathers of America:
John Adams. American president (1735-1826):
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
Thomas Paine. English pamphleteer and deist (1737-1809):
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy. . . . I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Christian Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.
A book called the Bible has been voted by men, and decreed by human laws, to be the Word of God, and the disbelief of this is called blasphemy. But if the Bible be not the Word of God, it is the laws and the execution of them that is blasphemy.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon rather than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of Himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones.
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Ethan Allen. American Revolutionary hero (1737-1789):
In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.
Thomas Jefferson. American president (1743-1826):
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.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.
I find some passages of the Bible of correct morality, and others of so much ignorance, untruth, charlatanism, and imposture.
James Madison. American president (1751-1836):
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
Connect With Us