Family Values 101 ~ getting down to the basics

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* "The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives." (Mohandas K Gandhi, Young India, July 7, 1950, quoted from Laird Wilcox, ed., ("The Degeneration of Belief)

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"The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave." (Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), letter to a librarian, from his Autobiography)

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*Jefferson/Paine Religious Terror Taxation Act

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... firmly protects freedom of speech and freedom of and from religion, which must continue to remain absolutely grounded, unfettered and untouched, but impose we must, restraints on the privilege of freedom from taxation.

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*Religious entities of many faiths are privileged with freedom from taxation yet their public worship handbooks are overtly riddled with demands of criminal activity. We cannot, in our truth, in our liberty, in our justice, perpetuate ourselves in the elimination of tyranny and the instillation of liberty; when even now is given financial favor and public embrace to that which we as a nation have fought so valiantly to abolish.

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*"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.-- (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82 )

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Precepts of terror shall no longer reign as platforms of privilege. Religious institutions whose religious teaching handbooks, do not uphold the laws of the land shall no longer be free from the tax of the land.

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Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, religious organizations, universities, all entities privileged from freedom of taxation must expurgate from their public handbooks all text which condone, advocate and command illegal activity according to the laws of The United States of America. *

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We must example unto our children, a lighthouse unto the world, upholding our great nation and embark boldly upon the paths, to face, even now the fields of killing. Those of us with the patience of long-suffering are patient no more. We are a people of honor, a people to uphold civility, equality, human rights and dignity.

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"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, " ( Thomas Paine The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494 )

*Unfetter we shall, the chains of our ancestors, justice we shall, unto to our dead, unloosen we, this misery of matter where answer we, heed the call to brazenly demonstrate spiritual liberty. From we, shall be no favor, from we no privilege, no longer shall those be free of taxation whose very Gods utter unto those who worship them, the most savage of acts, the most abhorrent of cruelties, the most vicious atrocities, depravities, perversions of abomination where even would shudder, that which is evil, to tread upon these paths, where tortured are the footprints of the innocent and bloodied are the hands of the Gods.

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"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Paul Blanshard, ed., Classics of Free Thought, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1977, pp. 134-135.)"

*"It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order." (Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546 )

*The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814)

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