Arkansas Blog

Yeah, but how did he come down on the coal-fired electric plant at McNab? What would've he said about Britney? And Paris, and Jessie's slip about Obama?

"The first duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government."

-----Thomas Paine

- (not religious at all, in fact). -

Well, Max, Paine being a deist hardly makes him "not religious." Deists are not atheists, they are not agnostics. Their view of the Supreme Being is just not the Hebrew/Christian view. Deists don't believe God revealed himself only to a small group of people living on the Mediterranean Sea coast but rather has revealed himself to all men. They don't believe Jesus was the "only begotten son of God," but was a child of God as we all are. And.....hang on.....they believe churches get in the way of communication with this Supreme Being rather than being instruments to open up communication.

It's all baffling to most Christians, so they conveniently label them atheists and then they don't have to understand them. The religious right went after Jefferson in the 1800 election with smears of Jefferson being an alcoholic, fathering children with Sally Hemings, being a "howling" atheist, and a tool of Satan. Some things never change, especially in American politics.

...'tis sad that the Age of Reason has yet to arrive here in Arkansas.

I can't imagine what kind of horrid, historical fella our brainiac legislators would choose to memorialize...shudder. He'd be white, ignorant and advocating silly nonsense about a five-thousand-year-old earth or stupid crap about women submitting to their menfolk. Guess I don't have a high opinion of our typical legislator.

Yes, Cato, somethings NEVER change...hence President Shit for Brains.

An excellent example of the propaganda of the "American Taliban" may be found in the comments section of "The Economist". Kudos to "ViveLePen" for reminding us of Thomas Jefferson, who said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." Thomas Paine

"But Arkansas already honours a clutch of people with eyebrow-raising beliefs: Robert E. Lee, ... Jefferson Davis,..Thomas Jefferson, who slept with his slaves-and Abraham Lincoln..."

That was then and this is now. There's a whole new revival that's hit us. As culture shock sets in men do cleave unto their religions. Besides, when there's controversy men tend to look into other things too.
I'm thinking corportacracy.

it's like they always told me growing up:

there's lotsa "good" people in hell.

right, chasv?!

The words of the dead who came before us are often wise and helpful. But most of all we should listen to the living, cause those suckers can let you know what might be around the next corner.

To quote a not so great man:
"Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: "We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X" on some paper ballot."

These words spoken by the thug President of Zimbabwe might come back to haunt us in November. Do you really think Cheney wants to lose the country he's shaped in his image any less than this turd, Mugabe? To amass the almost absolute power in their hands today, the White House has stolen, invaded, tortured, and killed, including at least 4121 good Americans. Think they'll blink at killing thousands more?

So I think we got more to worry about than magazine covers or Jesse Jackson's neutering abilities. It's not Jimmy & Billy Carter in the White House. Our current criminals have far out-Nixon-ed Nixon. They're mad men who have not stopped at anything and won't be stopping in the future either. 1776, 1812, 1848, 1898, 1917, 1941, 1963, 1968, 2001........2008 will join the list of years when the shit hit the fan. I predict that President George W. Mugabe won't be going any place in January, 2009. Please Allah.....let me be wrong.

Anyone have a link to oath of office for AR legislators? AM wondering if the oath places church over State? Am wondering if defense of the dumbest churches of all is supposed to trump the State at all times?

WHy do I have a mental image of standing in front of every AR polling place with a water gun... stopping each voter long enough to symbolically shoot each of them in the foot, before voting? *with one and only one exception for those who are going to vote Green*

http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/ar-constitution/arcart19/arcart19-20.htm

Constitution Of The State Of Arkansas Of 1874.
Article 19. Miscellaneous Provisions.
§ 20. Oath of office.

Senators and Representatives, and all judicial and executive, State and county officers, and all other officers, both civil and military, before entering on the duties of their respective offices, shall take and subscribe to the following oath of affirmation:

"I, ________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of ________, upon which I am now about to enter."

"Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath." Solon

I can't speak for ALL deists, Cato, but Thomas Paine most certainly did NOT believe Jesus "was a child of God as we all are," as you put it.

"The Age of Reason" is a thorough deconstruction of ALL "revealed" religions, Christianity in particular, and is scathing in its depiction of the Christ myth. Thomas Paine didn't believe Jesus ever existed at all.

That's why religionists hate him. That's why "The Age of Reason" isn't taught in schools the way "Common Sense" is.

Norma, I have never read any of Paine's writings where he stated emphatically Jesus never existed. He, as all deists did, denied the divinity of Jesus. Paine and other deists believe we are all children of God, thus we are all brothers. The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man are two strong religious prinicples of deism. Paine believed that Jesus was a child of God as we all are but that Jesus was certainly not God in flesh form visiting this planet.

Deists do not except the divinity of Jesus, the Bible is literature, folklore, etc., but is not the "word" of God, that a man's relationship with God is personal and private and is of not of any interest or business to any third party, especially government and that churches do not open avenues to communicating with God but become barriers because they become regimentized, relying on ceremonies, rituals and the like.

I always liked this Paine saying:
"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to do"

Wonder how the Huckster would take this?

Thanks, Zatharus.. It's worse than I thought! Elected Arkansans are supposed to support the US constitution too!

Maybe we are gong about this all wrong.. instead of trying to get "christians" to read, much less support the constitution... we should just pass a law that places the constitution before the book of Genesis in every printed Bible.

Cato -

Technically, you're quite right. Paine never stated emphatically Jesus never existed. In fact, here is his opening paragraph of "The Age of Reason."

"NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any."

Nor did Paine state emphatically that Jesus DID exist.

Many historians and scholars have pointed out Paine's statements in the above paragraph (and a few other mentions) not only contradict Biblical statements attributed to Jesus but also Paine's own compelling logic throughout "The Age of Reason." "Virtuous?" "Amiable?" "Benevolent?" Hardly. One need but examine such statements of "Jesus" as Luke 14:26, Matthew 10:34, Matthew 10:21, Matthew 13:10-14, Matthew 19:29. Apologists defend such passages as being "taken out of context," which is what religious and political figures always say when caught.

Yet, as Paine repeatedly acknowledges, such statements are based on assumptions only, not facts, for there are none which point to the historical existence of Jesus.

So why does Paine begin "The Age of Reason" with that paragraph? The conclusions of many historians is that such mentions are merely a sop to the public of the day, since they completely contradict Paine's reasoning throughout. In other words, Paine "seems" to accept that there may have been an actual person on whom the myth of Jesus was constructed, BUT (Paine continues) . . .

"Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

"The 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.

"It is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is.

"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness.

"The Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

"It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene."

Paine implicitly acknowledges the possibility that a man MAY have existed upon whom these myths and fables were bestowed, yet he demonstrates again and again that there's not a shred of evidence for it. Jesus' existence may be taken on faith, but there is not one factual account to support it.

So it's "nice" of Paine to begin with, "NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind."

Paine SEEMS here to accept the real existence of such a person. Yet the paragraph contradicts all that follows. To hold onto Paine's first paragraph as "proof" that any such man ever existed is to ignore everything that follows.

Since Paine acknowledges there is not a shred of historical evidence for his existence, why would Paine state as fact ANYTHING about a character whose life is handed to us secondhand as hearsay?

The statement is in such obvious conflict with Paine's carefully crafted reasoning and logic throughout "The Age of Reason" that I must agree with the historians who consider such statements sops to the public of the time.

Of course you are free to conclude what you like.

"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

Yep...faith...