Lies they teach you in HIstory class

[Nuke_em_05]

Regardless of to whom it is held, it does not say "no God in government", it says "Government will not establish or control a church".

Right--and part of not establishing or controlling a church is keeping God out of government to the extent that allowing God in government establishes or controls a church.

That's true.

My point in this is that people have the misconception that it means that there should be no "God" whatsoever in government. The fact of the matter is; "In God We Trust" on currency, the ten commandments in courthouses, "Under God" in the pledge, prayer in government meetings, etc, do not establish or control a church. They do not require citizens to be Christian. They do not dictate what any church should believe. They do not entitle any government office to religious office.

 

[fluffybunny937]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16101_5-most-ridiculous-lies-you-were-taught-in-history-class.html

 

[Nuke_em_05]

This may have come up before but people didn't believe the world was flat, but they believed it to be round. Many a philosopher before Columbus talked about the Earth being round, as if you traced the horizon, it slightly curves. Columbus actually wanted to prove that the Earth was pear-shaped.

Agreed that the idea of a round earth is much older than Columbus.

All Columbus wanted to prove is that there was a faster way to get to India, for trade and commerce. He accidentally hit the carribean (-ish) and proved that he really sucks at math. Saying that the distance was so small is how he got his funding. Of course, Columbus didn't take into account that the scandinavians had already found lots of land to the West (on the Northern end anyway), and could have probably figured the distance would be much greater anyway. His crew almost mutinied a few times, not because they were afraid of falling of the edge of the world, but because they were running out of food. "Discovering" the Americas saved his ass, because they could replenish food. He saw native americans and called them "indians" because that's where he thought he was. He got back and told the court of Madrid that he had found an island off the coast of china. He went back for gold and slaves. Only later did someone figure out that Columbus wasn't actually going to an island off of China or Inda, but a whole new continent.

Just because a fool accidentally does something great doesn't make them any less of a fool.

 

[geekme]

Everybody was straight, or at least there were no gay people to be found. I also enjoy how the lie by omission of the stonewall riots, which sparked the gay rights movement, is in virtually every textbook.

I like that one!

 

[Nuke_em_05]

Regardless of to whom it is held, it does not say "no God in government", it says "Government will not establish or control a church".

Right--and part of not establishing or controlling a church is keeping God out of government to the extent that allowing God in government establishes or controls a church.

That's true.

My point in this is that people have the misconception that it means that there should be no "God" whatsoever in government. The fact of the matter is; "In God We Trust" on currency, the ten commandments in courthouses, "Under God" in the pledge, prayer in government meetings, etc, do not establish or control a church. They do not require citizens to be Christian. They do not dictate what any church should believe. They do not entitle any government office to religious office.

But in at least two of those cases--the Pledge and the Ten Commandments--it establishes a church. An Abrahamic one in the case of the Pledge, and either a Protestant or a Catholic one in the case of the Ten Commandments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Christianity

Saying that putting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse isn't a violation of the 1st Amendment because it doesn't establish or control a church is like saying that the government banning a book is not a violation of the 1st Amendment because it's not speech, it's text.

Bold doesn't make a better argument. I wonder how you make that correlation. The complete line is "freedom of speech, or the press." So yes, the second argument is invalid as you suggest. Please explain your correlation.

The pledge and ten commandements do not establish a chruch.

You are not required to say the pledge, or every line of it. Nor are you required to believe it. It simply acknowldges that the United States was founded under the principles of God. The Declaration of Independence is a good example here. The grievences against the King of Great Britain were issued as violations of the responsibilty of the governement to protect certain rights, which are granted by the Creator. They wouldn't have put it in and signed it if they didn't believe it.

Displaying the Ten Commandments in a courthouse do not require anyone to believe or follow them. You could say that it is simply historical pretext, "here's some ancient law". You could also say, more accurately, "these are the laws that we based our laws around".

Again, it is about requiring religious belief. Neither of these require you to believe them.

 

[lostclause]

Okay, first off, I want to say I'm, sorry if I have offended you in any way, it was never my intention. The left-right- political field you presented is just rather narrow minded, and it is often favored by people who read only their basic history textbooks and start shouting about how the nazis are a right wing party every time someone says something different. Luckily, you seem not to fall into either of these groups, since you were able to reply in a very civilized manner AND you knew of the warsaw uprising, which is often not mentioned.

Then, about the poles and uncle Joe. The point was to present that the people suffer somewhat equally in all extreme forms of goverment. The soviets committed a "social and economical genocide" in the eastern europe, they didn'y outright kill quite as many people as the SS, but made life a lot worse for literally everyone. Plus, even if "socialism" guarantees jobs, it won't guarantee a steady, reasonable standard of living. (National socialism guaranteed jobs as well)
About Stalin and some propaganda for the soviet people about a new era for communism, it's an elaborate disguise for the KGB to work underground. People were no longer sent to siberia in masses for no reason, but if somebody opened their mouths- "Welcome to siberia!". Plus, open violence was still enforced if someone dared to demand some rights. (Prague, 1968?) Soviet style communism was extra super bad when uncle Joe was on the throne and just regularly terrible when someone else was pulling the strings.

Yes, from this thread I'm beginning to see that people have some interesting ways of classification, most of which seem to be better than my own. I think I've come round to this '4 point' classification system.
Back to the poles, I disagree because in the Soviet union there was, officially, no such thing as unemployment (something which contributed to their economic problems). One could not be laid off. This meant that no matter what you were guaranteed your rations. Now it's unfair to point to immediately after the war because the harsh winter of 46 meant that europe suffered from a massive crop failure, something the Germans didn't have to deal with. Since, what was to be, the warsaw pact didn't participate in the Marshall Aid Plan, which was effectively economic warfare, it caused a lot of problems. These times did indeed improve and improved more when Krushchev denounced Stalin.
Also your comment that national socialism guaranteed jobs, wasn't that just the slogan they used during the depression? Did that even extend to conquered Europe? I could be wrong about this but the only time I've seen that was during their election campaign.
Also you bring up Prague. It was really necessary for them to do that, after all any freedoms would break the iron curtain. Also in Prague there was no armed struggle, unlike Hungary, and Dubcek (sp?) survived the whole thing, which as the USSR goes is pretty lenient. I mean you can see that these freedoms would have disolved the warsaw pact, as did indeed happen under Gorbachov. I'm not condoning it, but realistically they had no choice but to crush freedoms if they wanted to keep the warsaw pact together, which was certain as long as NATO existed (but granted also pretty certain even if it didn't they would act the same).

 

[Kinguendo]

Saying that putting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse isn't a violation of the 1st Amendment because it doesn't establish or control a church is like saying that the government banning a book is not a violation of the 1st Amendment because it's not speech, it's text.

Bold doesn't make a better argument.

Never claimed it did--it does, however, emphasize one part of my argument.

I wonder how you make that correlation. The complete line is "freedom of speech, or the press." So yes, the second argument is invalid as you suggest. Please explain your correlation.

How is a book of fiction "the press"?

The pledge and ten commandements do not establish a chruch.

You are not required to say the pledge, or every line of it. Nor are you required to believe it. It simply acknowldges that the United States was founded under the principles of God.

No they don't--that's called Ceremonial Deism. What you're talking about is favoring one religion over another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_deism


Displaying the Ten Commandments in a courthouse do not require anyone to believe or follow them. You could say that it is simply historical pretext, "here's some ancient law".

But religious content is NOT prohibited when displayed as such--Moses is on the Supreme Court:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court_Building#Sculptural_program

You could also say, more accurately, "these are the laws that we based our laws around".

No, you couldn't--why do you say that? Our laws come from England, which go back things like Norman and Roman and Anglo-Saxon and Frankish law.

Again, it is about requiring religious belief.

No it isn't, it is about states rights--including the right to require religious belief--as originally written.

Okay, now this seems to have been going on for a long time and I dont have the time to read all of your comments so if I could just ask a single question.

Which of you is on the side saying America was not founded as a Christian nation/or that the majority of the founding fathers were not Christian? :0

 

[Alex_P]

"America was founded as a Christian nation" and "the founding fathers were Christians" are two completely different things.

Given the religious demographics of the US, it's safe to be that most bookstores are founded by Christians. The vast majority of those bookstores are, however, not Christian bookstores.

-- Alex

 

[Shoqiyqa]

No one who lives in Vietnam now will say they won with millions of unexploded munitions & devestatingly high cancer rates from the tonnes of pesticides & defoliants the Americans dropped. If you caused so much damage to a countries infrastructure it took them 30 years to get back on top I would call that a loss.

Have you been over there and checked with them whether they think they won?

Phenomenally long link follows:

http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=f;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti=1973$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=23;dataMax=86$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=i35_r,,,,,,;i121_r,,,,,,;i223_r,,,,,,;i249_r,,,,,,;i238_r,,,,,,;i239_r,,,,,,;i76_r,,,,,,;i82_r,,,,,,

That should work, but I'm not sure how that site handles things. Vietnam's not in the bottom-left of the Asian countries there. The economy and life expectancy seem to have both been getting better and better since 1980, and strongly since 1990. Agent Orange and UXO are both a nightmare and both still there, but the country's not just now dragging itself out of the sewer.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

The Russians have been fighting Hitler since 1941, they were marching towards Berlin when the Allied Forces performed the landing at Normandy.

So yeah, the Allied forces dealt the decisive blow. But roughly 80% of the effort came from Russia, who was fighting the war single-handedly until 1944.

Not single-handedly. The Scharnhorst wasn't heading north to count polar bears, after all. Russia was helped by convoys going north of Scandinavia.

It may not have been much, like there weren't many US citizens flying for the RAF in 1940 when Adlertag went belly-up, but it still counts!

 

[Axle_Bullitt_19]

Stalin was in power longer than hitler and he controlled more land than him

How is this a good reason for him killing over 60 million people, and by the way at the end of the riech's final gain Hitler controled France, Poland, Belarus, Netherlands, Denmark, Luxemburgh, Czechoslavakia, Austria, Norway, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, most of Russia's european half, Greece, Albania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, part Egypt, and Libya. I have a feeling all of these countries are more densly populated also.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

we are the reason hitler didnt start sipping on team in paralemint

No, the fact the Luftwaffe went down in flames over Normandy, Kent and the Channel under British-designed and British-built Hurricanes and Spitfires flown by British, French, Polish, Canadian, South African, Australian, New Zealander, other Commonwealth and a few US pilots was what stopped Adlertag and thus Sealion. The British finishing what the Poles started by cracking Enigma and having the sense to pretend they hadn't also helped, spending on big battleships and scorning submarines because Ubermenschen shouldn't hide under the water while the Royal Navy recognised the threat of U-boats and they and the RAF started getting really good at hunting them made life hard for the Kriegsmarine and the attempt to expand the Dritter Reich into Russia while in a long-term battle for resources and shipping lanes really screwed the Axis pooch.

Anyway, your profile says you weren't even born until 1985, so one way or the other you had nothing to do with it. Who's "we"?

 

[Triforceformer]

I don't know, the hooting retards in my classes never shut the fuck up all year.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Lincoln ...

My ...

You're quoting a politician?

I thought quoting Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers was bad.

 

[lostclause]

Dear Christ 90% of the posts in this thread is just bitching about other people's points of view.

Lie whatever the hell number it is:Clinton was the first president to be impeached.

Technically the teacher didn't say Clinton was the first, he just didn't mention Johnson to my knowlegde.

Ha, I thought you meant LBJ before I looked that up. That confused me.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

Okay, now this seems to have been going on for a long time and I dont have the time to read all of your comments so if I could just ask a single question.

Which of you is on the side saying America was not founded as a Christian nation/or that the majority of the founding fathers were not Christian? :0

I don't know that either are saying it, but I will. The founding fathers were, by and large, Deist and some of them were openly hostile to Christianity. [http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html]

EDIT: By the way, I am aware that links to what I would call a militant atheist website. I do not support militant atheism an more than I support militant Christianity or militant Islam, but it is a good collection of quotes.