"It's dangerous for children to know atheists exist"

[Misanthrope]

Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/08/ill-rep-monique-davi.html

 

Posted by Cory Doctorow, April 8, 2008 9:40 AM

Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) faced off against Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, who objected to the state of Illinois giving $1 million to the Pilgrim Baptist Church, excoriating him for not believing in God and for having the temerity to say that the Church and State should be separate. She told him that she believed it was dangerous for children to know that atheism exists. She ordered him to stop testifying and insisted that in the Land of Lincoln, "people believe in God!"

 

Don't miss the audio

 

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

 

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

 

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

 

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

 

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

 

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

 

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

 

What's really funny is...

 

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.

-- Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis in "Lincoln the Freethinker"

 

Crap, meant to put this in the News section

[Italian Jew]

Ahahahaha, Fail on her part

 

Where do these people come from? Honestly, horrible upbringing...ignorant people in this world...

[LitKey]

Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/08/ill-rep-monique-davi.html

 

Posted by Cory Doctorow, April 8, 2008 9:40 AM

 

 

What's really funny is...

 

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.

-- Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Joseph Lewis in "Lincoln the Freethinker"

 

Crap, meant to put this in the News section

 

What's really funny is if that quote is actually true (which I doubt as lots of evidence referenced here contradicts that), that would not make Abraham Lincoln atheist. He's always been documented as very spiritual by historians.

[Misanthrope]

He was a deist at best, quite a few early presidents were, especially those who signed the Constitution.

 

The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.

-- Abraham Lincoln, regarding the Churches, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, p. 143

 

"In religion, Mr. Lincoln was about of the same opinion as Bob Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out, he remained an unbeliever. Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book, in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ."

-- Judge James M Nelson, who had an intimate acquaintance with Lincoln in Washington, in the Louisville Times, in 1887, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beleifs of Our Presidents, p. 137

 

"The measure of his difference from most of the men who surrounded him is best gauged by his attitude toward the fundamentals of religion. For all his devotion to his cause he did not allow himself to believe that he knew the mind of God with regard to it. He was never so much the mystic as in his later days and never so far removed from the dogmatist. Here was the final flowering of that mood which appears to have lain at the back of his mind from the beginning -- his complete conviction of a reality of a supernatural world joined with a belief that it was too deep for man to fathom. His refusal to accept the 'complicated' statement of doctrines which he rejected, carried with it a refusal to predicate the purpose of the Almighty. Again, that singular characteristic, his power to devote himself wholly to a cause and yet to do so in such a detached, unviolent way that one is tempted to call it passionless. He retained nothing of the tribal forms of religion and was silent when they raged about him with a thousand tongues."

-- Encyclopædia Britannica, 14th ed., quoted in Franklin Steiner, The Religious Views of Our Presidents, p. 139-40

 

Though this isn't quite my point, it takes nothing away from the fact that Mr. Davis is ignorant, and quite frankly kind of stupid.

[LitKey]

your "quotes" from http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/lincoln.htm are fail

 

"My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die." - Lincoln quoted by Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers, 1868.

 

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." - Lincoln in a writing called "Meditation on the divine will", from the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

 

"In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it." - Lincoln, after former slaves from Maryland presented him with the gift of the Bible, quoted in The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, September 8, 1864; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), Roy P. Basler, editor. Volume, VII, page 542.

 

You do know the words "In God We Trust" were added to our currency when Lincoln was president, right? Or that during the Gettysburg Address, the following were Lincoln's words?

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

interesting so all these quotes from Lincoln's mouth himself seem to contradict the words of that post-mortem biographer

[Italian Jew]

i think the point is the woman is dumb...

 

who cares what Lincoln did on sundays?

[Steel]

i think the point is the woman is dumb...

 

who cares what Lincoln did on sundays?

 

she reminds me of those idiots from Scientology that we saw in the videos.

 

THIS ISNT ABOUT US, ITS ABOUT YOUR CRIMES!!!!

[Italian Jew]

lol

[phatman76]

I hate when people give me this "deist founders BS," a few were ministers and many were hardcore Christians. Btw, just because a president or founder says "I don't endorse God" doesn't mean he is an atheist, it means he is trying to keep his job and relationship with God relatively separate.

[LitKey]

i think the point is the woman is dumb...

 

who cares what Lincoln did on sundays?

 

First of all, religion is not something that only comes into your life on Sundays, you fool. Second, people care about Lincoln's beliefs because he was one of America's greatest presidents and they care about what influenced his decisions, including religion considering he mentioned it many times in speeches... duh. Third, yes she is dumb, but the reason I think so is because she supports one million dollars in taxpayer money going to this church.. unneeded spending, just like the bullshit government programs I'm sure you'd support.