''No, we MUST talk about how they are Muslim before anything else.''

That's exactly right.

only one christian dead in this story. but youre right most of the violence in this region is toward the jews

Find me a time in history when Jews weren't persecuted. Islam isn't doing anything new - that's not to defend them, but to point out that it's not just Muslims who do it. And IMO, if Muslims aren't the only one's doing that, then there's no reason for you to define Islam by it's persecution of Jews. It's not really a distinguishing characteristic.

With every post you put up, I realize more and more that attempting to debate with you is like talking to a pre-programmed child's toy that repeats a set of four phrases. I feel ridiculous for ever having engaged you in the past.

ok i'll bite. how about the suppression and subjugation of women, or sharia law? what about death to any religion but their own? how about not being able to get along with their neighbors or expectations of host countries acquiescing to their demands instead of living peacefully. now i realize not all muslims feel or live this way but enough of them do that it poses a real threat around the world. what needs to be done is those that disagree with those that espouse terrorism need to stand up in force and denounce it

Thing is, there are people denouncing it. You just aren't listening. I say this every time, but you all turn your heads away and continue to insist that it's not happening.

The fundamentalist voices are the loudest. The rest of the Muslim world isn't fundamentalist. It's not their fault you won't listen to them. If you want to hear them, you just need to look for them. And they're not hard to find.

As for the treatment of women - there are actually Muslim feminists, and it'd do you a world of good to start listening to them too. As for death to any religion but their own - what number of people actually believe that? And what number of that number are Muslim? Probably less than you'd think.

I suppose there's no point, again, because you're going to pretend I didn't say what I'm saying, but: just look for them, and you'll find those Muslims who aren't our enemies.

We've already addressed this over and over again several different separate times, MOST muslim countries, including several within the Arab world and the Middle East, are more than happy to encourage individuals of almost ANY religion in the known world to come and to live in their countries.
The population of the Christian community in Egypt alone rivals that in most Western European nations. And Turkey, a Western Democratic Capitalist Muslim nation which exists half in Europe, and half in West Asia, is fairly relatively evenly divided demographically between Christianity and Islam, and their court system honors western traditions such a free press, freedom of assembly and petition, and the right to an attorney and trial by jury; despite the Parliamentary and Presidential branches of the government being Muslim.

Talking points such as "Muslim Countries persecute kill all people of any religion other than Islam" serve no purpose other than to reveal their users' own bias and prejudices

What about Galileo Galilei, a Catholic Priest and a firm believer the truth of a literal interpretation of the Creation Myth in the Book of Genesis, discovery that Jupiter had 14 moons orbiting it, and that Saturn had Rings in 1610, getting him locked away under house arrest for the rest of his life in 1634?

What about the Catholic church burning a hundred thousand of women, young and old, alive at the stake as witches for over four hundred years (14th-18th Centuries)?
What about the Puritan Massachusetts colony's malicious persecution a couple dozen individuals, mostly young women, in the village of Boston in 1692-93, based upon nothing more than hearsay, lies, and malicious rumors prompted by interpersonal feuds and vengeful vendettas, resulting in the execution by hanging of almost twenty people, and the torturing to death of half a dozen more?
How about women, to this day, never being allowed or permitted to hold any rank or position of any power or authority within the rigid and inflexible hierarchical power structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of England, as well as any and all of their global worldwide subsidiaries?
"Subjugation of women" anyone?

How about Catholic Monk Martin Luther's posting of a treatise of protests against the corrupt and gluttonous policies of the Vatican and the Pope in Rome, which started a schism from the Roman Catholic Church by free individuals calling themselves "Protestants", prompting the Vatican to launch a bloody, brutal and merciless campaign of malicious persecution of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Puritans that became known as the "Reformation Genocides"?
What about the Anglican Church of England malicious persecution of the Puritan and Calvinist Protestants, causing the Puritans to flee Europe and establish new colonies they called Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in North America in 1620?
How THAT For "not getting along with one's neighbors"?

Where is the Vatican's denunciation of American Domestic Terrorist, "Pro-Life" [Read: Anti-Choice] "Operation Rescue"'s Scott Roeder's assassination shooting in the eye at close range of Women's Gynecological Health clinic Medical Doctor George Tiller inside the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31, 2009?
Or of Shelly Shannon's shooting of Doctor Tiller FIVE TIMES while he was in his car on August 19, 1993?
Or of the firebombing of Doctor Tiller's Women's Health clinic in 1986?

Or of Christian Terrorist (their words, not mine) Eric Rudolph [the Centennial Olympic Park Bomber (Atlanta, Georgia, July 27, 1996; during the 1996 Summer Olympics, killing spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounding 111 others]'s bombings of two Women's Health Clinics in Sandy Springs (Atlanta Suburb), Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama on January 16, 1997 and January 29, 1998, killing Birmingham Police Officer Robert Sanderson instantly, and gravely critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons, who lost an eye.

Or of "Pro-Life" [Read: Anti-Choice] Fundamentalist Christian Terrorist (their words, not mine) Michael Griffin's assassination of physician and OBGYN Doctor David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida on March 10, 1993?
Or of Anti-Choice Terrorist (again, their words, not mine) Paul Hill's assassination of OBGYN Doctor John Britton in the head, and the murder of his body guard, Air Force Lt. James Barrett (Retired, 74) and woundingo of Doctor Britton's wife June, 68, (a retired nurse) with twelve-guage shotgun at Doctor Britton's Women's Health Clinic, [again in Pensacola, Florida, having replace the murdered Doctor Gunn] on July 29, 1994?
Or of "young people" Matt Goldsby, Jimmy Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Kaye Wiggins' "a gift to Jesus on his birthday"; the bombing of An abortion clinic and two physicians' offices in Pensacola, Florida in the early morning of Christmas Day, December 25, 1984?

Or of Anti-Choice militant James Kopp's assassination of Physician Barnett Slepian inside his home in Buffalo, New York on October 23, 1998?

Or of Anti-Choice Terrorist (Their words, not mine) John Salvi's murder of receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols, wounding five others, in two attacks on Women's Health Clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts on December 30, 1994?

If you were to ask me (which, i do notice, you haven't); then i would tell you the the Christian Churches of the Western European World have one hell of a lot to answer for.

Christian Persecution in The Middle East

Kuwaitis who convert to Christianity publicly face harassment and arrest. Converts in Morocco endure loss of employment and imprisonment for their faith. Yemeni converts from Islam face the death penalty if discovered.[i]

The quotes above are just a sampling of the recent persecution of Christian believers in the Middle East. There are 54 nations on the planet that are extremely hostile to Christian groups and of those, 20 are in the Middle East. Only four of the 54 nations are not Muslim-dominated countries. Although other faith groups are persecuted around the world as well, the focus of this paper will be on the Christian persecuted church. I will try to address why the governments of the Middle Eastern countries are slow to address this issue and the inherent complications of enforcing religious tolerance.

The obvious difference between the Christian and Muslim faith is that Christians have disconnected their religion from the government for many centuries now. In the United States, for example, we have separation of church and state. In Muslim countries the opposite is true and, to a certain extent, this seems to work well for them. Islam and politics go hand in hand and there seems to be no separating the two. The question remains though, why are the Christians quashed in these countries? Two Muslim brothers, Ergun and Emir Caner, who left the faith for Christianity say, “For all their rhetoric about tolerance, not one Muslim­-controlled government offers comprehensive religious freedom.”[ii]http://www.xomba.com/christian_persecution_middle_east#_edn1

good to hear and a welcome change when it eventually transpires in all of the middle east. unfortunately many countries are run by islamic thugs who prefer keeping women subservient. but like in the u.s. which is hardly a comparison, women fought their way to equality and in many ways have it better than men and with the right backing could eventually work for the muslim women as well. for the worlds sake i pray it shall be someday

The Freedom From Religion that we enjoy here in the United States is thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who co-wrote the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to Constitution of the United States of America, which begins with the words:
"Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting An Establishment Of Religion, Nor Prohibiting The Free Exercise Thereof."

It is from Jefferson's writing on the subject matter that we get the phrase "Separation of Church and State".

"...religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

- Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was ideologically diametrically opposed to the convert-or-be-damned dogmatic doctrine of missionary evangelicals

The lack of Religious Government [known as "Theocracy"] that we have in the Western European World is NOT a "difference between Christianity and Islam"
if for no other reason than because the freedom from religion, let alone to say nothing of the separation of church and state, is NOT, never has been, and never will be, consistent, or even compatible, with the missionary ideology of Evangelical Fundamentalist Christianity. The Christian church, especially in the United States of America, has been striving and struggling to overcome and maneuver around the "Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment for as long as our nation has existed.
The Separation between Religion and government as we know it is NOT part of any identity we may or may not have as the "christian west"
it is, rather instead, merely a product of Western Civilization have long since moved BEYOND the narrowly limited confinements of Christian dogmatic doctrine.

What Thomas Jefferson and his Secretary of State James Madison were doing when they penned the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution had nothing at all to do with their own personal religious beliefs
they were setting the foundations for the world's first-ever SECULAR [non-religious] nation in the known recorded history of modern human civilization as we know it

The founders of our nation believed that the only way that the citizens of the United States could ever enjoy any true freedom OF religion, was if the laws of the land granted them the freedom FROM religion.
They were right;
as has been demonstrated by the Evangelical Fundamentalists' recent attempts to legislate literal interpretation of bigoted and prejudiced Old Testament Biblical verses into laws, and even Amendments to our very own Constitution, the very FIRST Amendment to which has been, and [benevolent-goddess-willing] will always and forever continue to be, the only thing standing steadfastly in their way
and by many of the very same Evangelical Fundamentalist attempting to institute the indoctrination of a literal interpretation of the Old-Testament Biblical Creation Origin Mythology [with it roots in Babylonian legends of Ancient Sumerian Mesopotamian myths] into the life-sciences and Earth-sciences classrooms of our nations government-funded public school educational system

The Founders of our Nation knew that in order for every religious faith in the known history of human civilization to co-exist in their new "melting pot" of a country, the official state religion of the United States of America must, by necessity, need to be that of no religion at all.
The United States of America, upon its founding in 1789, was the very first nation in the known recorded history of modern human civilization as we know it, wherein the government had NO official state religion.
Other nations would soon follow after, all of them modeling their new Constitutional democracies on the principles laid out by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

The utter, complete, and total LACK of any sort of kind of variety of separation between religion and government in the Fundamentalist Islamic Theocratic dictatorships of nations such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, Quatar, and the United Arab Emirates, is not due in any way shape or form because of any fundamental difference between the twisted, distorted and perverted variation of Islam that those Theocracies enforce upon their citizens and supposed alleged Christianity of Western European nations
it is merely because, being roughly around about approximately a thousand years NEWER than Christendom, the Muslim has not YET mastered the delicate and fragile balance required in order to sustain secular constitution democracy

Neither had the Christian world of western Europe a millennium ago, as evidenced by the very existence of what was known as the Holy Roman Empire, in what is now France and Germany, and by the fact the quite literally every single king, emperor, and duke in all of Europe at that time, and for several centuries both before and after that period (now known as the Feudal Medieval "Dark Ages" and with very good reason), was directly answerable to the will and whim of the Pope, and of the Vatican, of the Roman Catholic Church.
Any disobedience that differed at all in even the slightest way from the dogmatic doctrine preached by the Pope, was immediately and expediently punishable by prompt summary excommunication from Catholicism; followed closely by, more often than not, brutal assassination by agents with loyalties tracing directly back to the Vatican in Rome

it was not until the late 18th Century, fueled and driven by the Enlightenment Period, that the Western European world for the first time invented a system that would distinguish between the government of the nation-state, and the state's official religion.
and this was only done by the founders of the first nation in known recorded history to have not state-instituted official religion of any kind whatsoever

although far from perfect it's good to see that for the most part christian churches have evolved since the middle ages. youre right about one thing though, thanks to the constitution we have little to fear from the more extreme christian cults or fundamentalism. islam as practiced by many in several countries has plenty of catching up to do.

Tolerance doesn't necessarily equate to acceptance. . . it is reasonable to state Muslims don't accept Jews and Christians for the most part in Islamic ruled countries (or any religion other than Islam), that is undeniable.

so you are taking your position to a more malevolent level?
you dont accept islam.hey tolerance is nice, but intolerance aint so bad especialy when it isnt acted on.but refusal to accept them is a pro-active negative.refusal to accept those who live in a manor that suites them but doesnt satisfy you?really?

it isnt reasonable at all to state that muslims dont accept jews and christians.
1-history (thousands of years worth of it) show the opposite to be true.as the middle east would have no christians and jews in it if that were the case.yet they do.all the sephardim who populate israel came from where again?and for how long were those families there?christians:same argument.
2-people dont accept the existance of other people for varieties of reasons, with no religion being an actual source of any of it.at times christians didnt accept the existance of jews, but that doesnt man christianity as an institution is opposed to judaism.and similarly the jews didnt accept the christians and that hardly makes judaism opposed to christianity.

at present, the tide has shifted in a way that has the middle east, not all muslim nations, invested in a path of muslim arab nationalism.as a result of this all others who are not arab muslims are subject to a system that sees them as less.once upon a time europe held similary policies from a christian view point.before that israel held that position from a jewish view point.making it a human flaw more than any particular religous flaw.

So you say that intolerance has not been suppressive to faiths other than Islam in Muslim nations throughout the ages?
That is total prevarication.
Keeping in mind that holds true in any country of any majorative theological persuasion for the most part . . . and yes that does include the US of A to some degree.

Indonesia is the world's largest, most populous country with a state-instituted official religion of Islam
yet in every city throughout the indonesian islands, you will find churches, next to synagogues, synagogues next to mosques, mosques next to shinto shrines, next to buddhist temples, next to hindu temples, on virtually every street corner, everywhere you look

Turkey is the only nation on the Continent of Europe where the official state religion is Islam, yet in its capitol city, istanbul, are some of the oldest, largest, and most ornately elaborate churches in the Old World

the bias and prejudice that the Western World, America in especial, has against the Muslim world comes through most frequently, and most obviously, in statements such as "Muslim Countries don't accept other religions.
To my knowledge, the only western European nation that does NOT accept other religions within its borders is The Holy See, Vatican City, in the Middle of Rome, Italy; the World's smallest country.

Nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are all that people in the Western world, once again America in particular, ever see (thanks in no small part to such religious right-wing fundamentalist ideologue and zealotry espousers as the Saudi-Owned and operated Faux "News" Channel Network) of the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who practice the religion of Islam, and of the dozens of nations all around the world, on every inhabited continent accept the Americas and Australia, that have chosen, (emphasis on the word "CHOSEN") the Muslim faith as their state government's religion of choice

Projection is an ugly thing, and those who claim that Muslim nations do not accept people of other faiths are, more than likely, more likely than not and more often than not, those people who
a. believe that the United States was founded as, and is, a Christian nation, in spite of all of the available evidence being starkly to the contrary, (such as the fact that, in all of the founding documents of this nation, the word "god" appears only one time, directly preceded by the word "nature").
b. do not wish individuals of any other faith, even the other two Abrahamic Monotheistic Religions, to have the same rights and privileges afforded to members of their own Judeo-Christian cult, (such as the right to construct places of worship wherever and whenever they so choose, a privilege Christians have enjoyed throughout the Western European world for two thousand years).

such obviously, evidently, and blatantly prejudiced and biased people have no place in the civilized public discourse of a nation founded upon the principle of, by far and away above and beyond all else, PLURALISM, the plurality of ideas, and accepting of more than one point of view,
(something which is diametrically and fervently opposed by the very fundamentalist fanatics such people are want to claim that they detest).

no i say intolerance is a shared element of the human condition that holds no home in the hearts of any group of people more than any other.
with that understanding to call and religion intolerant is erronious as all share this error exemplified by thier followers

I believe I've just said that.

it's only biblical in the sense that its preposterously, ludicrously, ridiculously, demonstrably, absurdly false, deceptive, untrue, and misleading

The word "biblical" means "like the bible"
so "biblical" should be used to describe anything that is pure, plain, uncensored, unadulterated blatant BULLSH@#$%^&T

agreed, but they both go hand in hand

The primary reason, among many numerous others, why i choose science over organized religion any given day is, if anything quite simply, the complete LACK of facts.
Evangelical fundamentalist zealots and ideologues face a significant disadvantage in their perpetual quest to eliminate science; and it is on of their very own invention. Religious extremists most often fail in their attempts to undermine scientific understanding of the physical universe primarily because of their pre-ordained determination of the assumption that such science is a kind of doctrine, much as the dogma to which they blindly subscribe.
Quite simply, They Could Not Be More Wrong if they tried.
These fundamentalists take the point of view that everything in their narrow, yet all-encompassing, doctrine is just that, absolute FACT, not up to interpretation, not metaphorical, not interchangeable, not open for discussion.
They therefore, not unsurprisingly, assume that scientist view their naturalistic “laws” in much a similar way.
Very directly to the contrary, the most extraordinary thing about science itself, and the reason it has persisted throughout 2+ millennia of constant siege, is the simple reality that in Science There ARE No Facts.
The term “scientific law” is a misleading misnomer, there are only theories.
Science is not perfect, and it does not answer every question, but it is based on observations which can be predicted tested, and proven.
In any Religion, the operative word is Faith, a concept demonstrated repeatedly time and again by the very existence of some belief systems
In summary:
FAITH - FACTS =FANTASTICAL FICTION-FUN- FULFILLMENT + FINALITY +FRENETIC FUNDAMENTALISM+ FRIGIDNESS- FLEXIBILITY -FACILITATION- FAIRNESS- FRIENDLINESS + FACELESS FEAR= FAILING FATALISM+ FRANTIC FANATICISM+ FASCINATION+ FUTILITY+ FEDERAL FUNDING+FRIENDLY FACILITIES- FREEDOM= FEUDALISM+ FRACTURED FACTIONS= FAMILY FATALITIES

That's politics
i've gotten used to it

Science and Religion are diametrically contradictory, and are mutually exclusive ideologies

Christianity has ALWAYS been blindly and violently opposed to all forms of science in all of their varying historical incarnations, from the Inquisition in the 14th century (the “Eppur Si Muove” trial of Galileo Galilei and the murders of Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler) to the Reformation Genocides in the 16th century (Unitarianism universalism to this day strongly supports scientific progress) to the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 20th and the Pennsylvania “Pandas and People: CreatIntelligent Designtionism” legal proceeding just a couple of years ago

yeah me to. but to not appear totally biased and hypocritical one must recognize that theyre getting screwed from both ends

dont care about any particular religions position on the science issue nor anyone elses for that matter. from my own personal experiences the two mesh up quite well.

wow ian, try standing on a street corner anywhere in the middle east outside of israel and try to recite your mastery of the bible and see how long your puny worthless life continues to exist.

One of my cousins' husband met a man in Istanbul who did just that outside of the Hagia Sophia
he stood at the corner of the intersection and read the bible out loud from beginning to end
(you can hardly turn your head in Istanbul without seeing a cross of some kind somewhere, and churches are quite literally around every street corner)

And one of my father's employees brought back some pictures she took on my dad's trip to Kuala Lampur of guys on virtually EVERY street corner preaching some kind of holy book: The Muslim Koran, the Jewish Torah, the Hindu Vedas and Gitas...

There was news story just the other day on one of the networks about a group of people who went to Sumatra and sold bibles and gave the money away to help the survivors and victims of the tsunami

There was actually a television special just, i think, last year, about a church in Delhi that broadcast reenactments of classical biblical stories on the television and radio

And one of my relatives who traveled on vacation to see the Great Pyramids told us that there are poster hanging on walls all over the place everywhere you look all around throughout downtown Cairo, advertising everything from pain killers to soap, that begin and end with old testament bible verses

There are several exclusive clubs throughout the indonesian islands where the password to get in is a quote from one of the books of the old Testament of the bible

The inscriptions over the doorways to a number of Churches in countries along the Northwest and southwest coasts of Saharan Africans are arabic translations of quotes from the book of genesis
and several mosaic murals, both in Egypt and elsewhere in West Asia feature prominently passages from the old testament books

good to see that some countries are more enlightened than others. but most of the countries you mention have a comfortable mix of religion, each of which are somewhat accepting and tolerant of each other. not too unlike the u.s.

Indonesia is the largest, most-populous country on Earth with the State Religion of Islam
I do concede that Islam is not, in fact, the state religion of the majority of the nation India
and that Malaysia is only partly, not entirely, Muslim, and has no state religion

Modern-day Istanbul (formerly, until the 15th Century, Constantinople) was the first Major capitol (of the Byzantine Empire) city founded as Christian, after the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, a Olympian Pantheon Polytheistic Pagan himself, Converted the Official State Religion of the the Roman Empire to Christianity in the Fourth Century CE

And, in between Egypt and Turkey, the other nations in the Arabic world have a system of governance that is strikingly similar to the one of the early United States, shortly after the Ratification of our Constitution, under the Alien and Sedition Acts during the lat 18th and early 19th Centuries,
where questioning the government or its leadership, whether out loud or in print, was punishable by arrest, public beatings, and life imprisonment
(reports form the time period of public state-sponsored capital executions being carried out in isolated areas throughout the 13 states are, for the most part, largely unverified)

If the United States of America did indeed have a State Religion (something expressly strictly forbidden by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States of America, Ratified by the First united States Congress in 1789), it would be Deism, the religious faith expressed and held by the vast majority of the authors of the Founding documents of this nation
(in all of which put together combined, the word "god" appears only exactly precisely ONCE, and there it is directly preceded by the word "nature", expressing the belief of Deists such as myself that the two are actually, in fact, one and the same)

"...And to assume amongst the powers of the Earth, the Separate and Equal station to which the Laws of NATURE, and of NATURE's god, entitle them..."
-Declaration of Independence, by Third President of the United States Thomas Jefferson [Naturalist, ecologist, zoologist, biologist, theological scholar, Linguist, architect, mechanical engineer, inventor etc.], Signed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1776

Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers # of
Founding
Fathers % of
Founding
Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
TOTAL 204

Religious Affiliation of the Signers of the
Declaration of Independence
Episcopalian/Anglican 32 57.1%
Congregationalist 13 23.2%
Presbyterian 12 21.4%
Quaker 2 3.6%
Unitarian or Universalist 2 3.6%
Catholic 1 1.8%
TOTAL 56 100%

Name of Signer State Religious Affiliation
Charles Carroll Maryland Catholic
Samuel Huntington Connecticut Congregationalist
Roger Sherman Connecticut Congregationalist
William Williams Connecticut Congregationalist
Oliver Wolcott Connecticut Congregationalist
Lyman Hall Georgia Congregationalist
Samuel Adams Massachusetts Congregationalist
John Hancock Massachusetts Congregationalist
Josiah Bartlett New Hampshire Congregationalist
William Whipple New Hampshire Congregationalist
William Ellery Rhode Island Congregationalist
John Adams Massachusetts Congregationalist; Unitarian
Robert Treat Paine Massachusetts Congregationalist; Unitarian
George Walton Georgia Episcopalian
John Penn North Carolina Episcopalian
George Ross Pennsylvania Episcopalian
Thomas Heyward Jr. South Carolina Episcopalian
Thomas Lynch Jr. South Carolina Episcopalian
Arthur Middleton South Carolina Episcopalian
Edward Rutledge South Carolina Episcopalian
Francis Lightfoot Lee Virginia Episcopalian
Richard Henry Lee Virginia Episcopalian
George Read Delaware Episcopalian
Caesar Rodney Delaware Episcopalian
Samuel Chase Maryland Episcopalian
William Paca Maryland Episcopalian
Thomas Stone Maryland Episcopalian
Elbridge Gerry Massachusetts Episcopalian
Francis Hopkinson New Jersey Episcopalian
Francis Lewis New York Episcopalian
Lewis Morris New York Episcopalian
William Hooper North Carolina Episcopalian
Robert Morris Pennsylvania Episcopalian
John Morton Pennsylvania Episcopalian
Stephen Hopkins Rhode Island Episcopalian
Carter Braxton Virginia Episcopalian
Benjamin Harrison Virginia Episcopalian
Thomas Nelson Jr. Virginia Episcopalian
George Wythe Virginia Episcopalian
Thomas Jefferson Virginia Episcopalian (Deist)
Benjamin Franklin Pennsylvania Episcopalian (Deist)
Button Gwinnett Georgia Episcopalian; Congregationalist
James Wilson Pennsylvania Episcopalian; Presbyterian
Joseph Hewes North Carolina Quaker, Episcopalian
George Clymer Pennsylvania Quaker, Episcopalian
Thomas McKean Delaware Presbyterian
Matthew Thornton New Hampshire Presbyterian
Abraham Clark New Jersey Presbyterian
John Hart New Jersey Presbyterian
Richard Stockton New Jersey Presbyterian
John Witherspoon New Jersey Presbyterian
William Floyd New York Presbyterian
Philip Livingston New York Presbyterian
James Smith Pennsylvania Presbyterian
George Taylor Pennsylvania Presbyterian
Benjamin Rush Pennsylvania Presbyterian

Notice: I said nothing about the people who SIGNED the documents.
My comments were in regards to the majority of those individuals who WROTE the documents .
The authors of both the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Third and Fourth Presidents of the United States respectively, were Enlightenment Deists.
Deism is often mistaken for Unitarian Universalism, as its worldview is strikingly similar (which is why i myself have been attending at a Unitarian Universalist congregation, with my older brother and his girlfriend on a predictably consistent regular basis since i have been living here in Portland.
The only real difference between the two of them is in that Deism, (an Enlightenment-Western-European philosophy with its roots and origins in the pagan beginnings of science [now known as astrology and alchemy, and presently regarded as "pseudo-sciences"] from the Polyheistic Olympian Pantheon of the Ancient Greco-Roman Civilizations of the Ancient world), has its very own unique origin and creation belief system, incorporating the principles of both Darwinian Decent with Modification via Natural Selection as well as Linnaean Cladistic symplesiomorphic and synapomorphic [monophyletic, paraphyletic, and polyphyletic] homologous Phylogenetic Taxonomy.

Amongst the most famous Deists of all time, in addition to Thomas Jefferson, was himself a Naturalist, ecologist, zoologist, and biologist; was Mid-17th and Early-18th Century English physicist, mathematician, astronomer Sir Isaac Newton, who was also an infamous and notorious Alchemist and a well-read Theological scholar.
Newton was also the founder of the scientific field of study know as "Physics", and the inventor of the mathematical system we call "Calculus".
Since the practitioners of Astrology and Alchemy in the Ancient world were known as "Magi" [the root word of the terms "Magic" and "Magician"], what the Nativity Story in the New Testament of the Christian Bible refers to "Wise Men" (often mistakenly called "kings", as in the song->); Sir Issac Newton has often been referred to as "The Last Sorcerer".

([->"We Three Kings of Orient Are.": #1a. Nowhere in any scripture does it say that there were three of them. #2b. They were not kings, they were astrologers. #3c. They were not from the "Orient" [southeast Asia and China], they came either from the University at Baghdad in Mesopotamia, or from the Library at Alexandria in Egypt.])

Throughout the Late-14th to Late-18th Centuries, the Catholic Church burned millions of people alive, for the most part tens of thousands of young women
[See: Catholic Church Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer's Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for "Hammer of the Wicked"; 1484],
who were suspected of the practice of Alchemy, or as the Vatican called it "Witchcraft".
This is also why the Luciferian Illuminati Society Organization calling themselves the "FreeMasons", and including among their ranks the first Six Presidents of the United States, were so fervently and maliciously hunted and persecuted by the Catholic Church (each of the Six Presidents was also a strong believer in Deism).
The penalty for the authors of the Founding Documents of our Nation, had they been captured by the British Empire, was hanging, beheading, disembowelment, followed by the burning of internal entrails (intestines and organs), and finally burning at the stake.
And King George III wasn't even a Catholic!
He, like all of the British Kings and Queens before and after him since King Henry VIII in 1534, was a devotee of the Anglican Church of England.

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams were are FreeMasons, and they were all Deists.
The Author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson, the Third President of the United States. The Author of the Constitution of the United States of America was James Madison, President Jefferson's Secretary of State and the Fourth President of the United States.
The first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution, together collectively known as the Bill of Rights, and in Particular the First Amendment; with its freedom from Religion, and freedoms of speech, and of a free press, and rights of assembly and to petition; was a cooperative endeavor by Jefferson and Madison both working together.
So what i stated before was true.
The authors of the founding documents of our nation were, BOTH of them, Deists, like myself.

actually, as a matter of fact, now that i come to think about it; since those are only a very few of the most outright and downright disgusting and revolting passages in the whole of he old testament,
it would be my guess that those are PRECISELY the sordid variety of sample examples from Judeo-Christian scriptures that the Arabic Islamic Fundamentalist radical extremists you are referring to would most love to hear about.

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
And I do not find in our particular superstition (orthodox Christianity) one redeeming feature.
They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
"We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication ."
-Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."

- Thomas Jefferson

you know what i find most interesting is that opinions and understanding of any topic is directly linked to a persons particular bias and outlook of the world. to be truly honest one must accept that possibly both of us are wrong, but i doubt it. if the quotes are true it looks as though for a religious man thomas jefferson wrestled with his own demons. it all depends on ones sources and if they are truly reliable. but whether these quotes are in reality linked to thomas jefferson they remain in doubt. included are a few other quotes that may be worth pondering...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.

* After extensive searches this quotation though it sounds plausible, may well be spurious. Two sources have been mentioned: "The Jefferson Bible" and a Letter to a "Dr. Wood" with no date given, but the accuracy of either of these citations remains dubious, and I have not yet been able to reliably verify them. If anyone else can, please do so.
* A variant "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." seems to be spreading even more broadly on the internet, but without ANY citation of sources that I could find, and appears to be merely a somewhat casual and improper paraphrase of the more extensive statement. Until such time as a reliable sources are provided for either of these statements, I am inclined to consider them spurious. I was prompted to investigate these quotes after finding the shorter one on Wikiquote's Religion Theme page, and though long an admirer of Jefferson I could not recall ever encountering it before. I am now going to remove it from there, as probably spurious, until proven otherwise. Kalki 00:58, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
* The earliest source I've been able to track down, is John Remsberg's "Six Historic Americans" (1906), which cites only "Letter to Dr. Woods." --Simplicius 17:51, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This article features several quotes attributed to Jefferson which if accurate should presumably be recorded under the section on Race, even if, or especially because, they don't show Jefferson in a great light.

However, the article might include misattributed quotations, I'd be interested if anyone could settle the matter either way. The quotes are:

"Because you beat them, you mutilated them, you raped them and you sold them. But [that’s okay], these people aren’t capable of grief" ('them' here being african americans)

“Blacks smell bad and are physically unattractive...”

“dumb, cowardly, need less sleep and are incapable of feeling grief.”

The article is reporting the comments of Dr Joy DeGruy-Leary (author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing). If anyone has access to the work that might help if it is footnoted. I'd note also the lady in question has no wiki page to her name as yet.
I have just noticed that some remarks of Jefferson and Lincoln have today been posted, that anyone who is aware of history, and the pervasive influence of racist presumptions know are possibly, or even probably genuine, — I am familiar with such remarks by both men, and have not yet bothered to do any search to see whether these are accurate or not.
That there are racist ideas that have infected the minds of even brilliant people in the past, and many very unbrilliant fools even today cannot be denied. It is perhaps best that we are occasionally reminded of such stupidity, that we are aware of its severity, and less prone to fall into it ourselves. I am posting this remark in both the Lincoln and Jefferson talk pages. I hope that we can avoid becoming a place where such idiots as still hold such views will feel welcome to post their particular forms of nonsense, as if showing that some notable and otherwise admirable person (often with much less opportunity to become aware of the deficiencies of such ideas) made such comments ages, or even a few decades ago, as if they should be held up as if it were testimony that such inane ideas were right, and their own continued ignorance, bigotry and other forms of stupidity were justified. Moby 00:29, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Both quotations seem accurate, and do reflect the appalling prevelance of racism and other forms of bigotry in human history.
If the poster was attempting to show the deficiency of these individuals, rather than support for the inane ideas expressed, it should be remembered, that social environments shape one's ideas and perceptions, but the truly great focus upon shaping social environments through expressions that are true and beneficial, rather than those that are false or create needless hostilities and resentments.
There are many forms of narrow mindendness and presumption that persist even today, that many people remain oblivious to, or which they promote in various ways. No person is immune to being infected by extreme forms of nonsense taken for sense, especially when most of those around them are already profoundly infested, and have much invested in having such situations of intolerence of diversity become or remain an accepted norm. Moby 20:31, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Thomas_Jefferson

not really, new country, new violence, although there always seems to be an underlying theme in this region. but one things for sure, youre right in a way. but its religious based violence not racist since theyre all egyptians. it would be refreshing if those middle eastern muslims would quit beating on that same dead horse or should i say horses, jews and christians.

yet once again (same old shit) no nuance is offered in regard to the culture or the nature of the issues at hand.instead its the same old "muslims bad christians good".
it would be far more refreshing if we limited the field of threats from the billion and a half muslims of the world and limited it to the factors that actualy contribute to those who commit these errors.

while we are scrutenizing every bearded arab out of some arrogant notion that racism is a vaible means of thought, threats to the innocent continue as we arent looking at them.cuz they dont fit the mistaken,broad predermined criteria by wich we see one as a threat.

where ever did you get that idea? i didnt once mention the word muslim, apparently youre looking under the wrong rocks.

if it was as simple as muslims are the threat, the solution would be equaly simple.

but would you really consider us safe and free from such threats even if we made ourselves free from all muslim interaction? it isnt like if we damn every muslim on the planet and refuse to allow them anywhere near us, that terrorism would stop.

ted kazinski would still be at it.tim mcviegh would still be the retard he was.and so on

dude, i interact with muslims daily. most of the ones that i do interact with are quite pleasant and friendly. but those arent the ones i'm talking about. the extreme right wing cracker whackos like the two you mention are less of a threat than our ongoing war with islamo-fascism.

the thing that you fail to understand, for what ever reason, is we arent psychic and dont know when you say "muslim" exactly to whom you are refering.
feel free to condem muslim extremists, or jihadis,or islamofascists,or terrorists.but when you simply say "muslims" you are condeming every single person of the muslim faith.up to and including those you interact with, as you offer no distinction.

geez for a blasphamous heretic and an infidel you sure know your bible

Most Atheists know more about the Bible than most Christians.

Atheists even have a saying- the easiest way to turn a Christian into an Atheist is to ask them to read the Bible cover to cover.

No one who has actually read the thing would believe it is divine.

1> I am not an Atheist, I am a Deist
2. If the Bible had been written by a supreme being, then it wouldn’t contain the mistakes that it does.
If it was written by a truly superior being, and meant to be read as a literal history, then the Bible wouldn’t contain anything that it does.

Bible has some shocking ‘family values’
http://judgian12365.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/god-is-the-product-of-human-weaknes...

glad someone keeps accurate statistics on who reads what, i always preferred playboy as my religious indoctrination, it was heavenly! try the torah sometime.

no one ever claimed that the bible was written by god. it is purported to be the word of god written by the ever fallible man. it would be awesome if god had written it himself. i wonder who wrote the qu'ran

I have been waiting, eagerly anticipating, for the better part of the past decade now, for some future President or Congressional Representative to take their oath of office with their left hand on the Sports Illustrated Annual Swimsuit Issue, or an issue of Maxim Magazine
Playboy Hustler, or FHM would be all right too also as well, i suppose
I think at it would liberate them from a whole lot of the indentured indebtedness that our elected government officials appear to feel to serve the every whim and desire of the the Religious Fundamentalist Fanatic community at large in general, and the Christian church in especial.

oh they do, but not in public

the human brain is the most complex and sophisticated supercomputer known to exist. We as scientists have only just started to begin to barely scratch the surface, with a fine-bristled brush, of all of what it is that the human brain is capable of. If you got together a group of 100, or even 2,000 for that matter, of the world's greatest, most brilliant, and most intelligent minds; and you told them to design and build a functioning, working human brain; i guarantee, and would be willing to bet you any amount of money, that they would NOT be able to do it.
The Book of Genesis says that Humans were created from dust; but it also states that people were made in Gods own image;
1. Does this mean that god was made from dust as well; in which case you would be a fervent believer in Heavenly Dirt Mites?
2. How is it that god was able to design, make, and create something (the human brain) that is SO COMPLICATED that we humans, made in gods own image, can not even begin to comprehend it?
3. If we are indeed made in Gods own image, and we know next to nothing about the universe; would that not also mean that god (effectively our mirror image) doesn't understand the universe either?
4. If, as is stated repeatedly throughout christian literature, God is infallible; then how could he have created a species of life (human beings) about whom so much is flawed (glands installed backwards, intestines looped like garden hoses, snagged and hooked; to say nothing of how easily the aforementioned brain is broken)

You do know that the torah is just the first part of the Old Testament of the Bible, don't you? That's where the nuttiest stuff in the Bible resides.

And Playboy is not my cup of tea, thanks.

LOTS of people claim the Bible was written by God, such as all Christian Fundamentalists who adhere to the doctrine of "Biblical Inerrancy" instead of what you describe, which is simply "Biblical Infallibility".

Do you remember "Bible Codes"? It is based on the concept of Biblical Inerrancy, to the point where they believe each and every letter in the Bible is placed there by God so we can play Word Search games with them.

The Qur'an was written by Mohammed.
Unlike Jesus, he actually wrote stuff down.

so it is written, but verifiable is another question

being jewish i am well aware of the torah and how many consider the old testiment of the bible to be fashioned after it. many also believe that muhamed plagiarized most of the material for the qu'ran from the torah. i am also well aware of your lack of intimate interest in the female persuasion unless its to borrow clothes. peace

i dont know for sure, but i'll be sure to ask him next time he and i meet up

notwithstanding, the fact remains that the accounts in the Muslim Koran of the Islamic law practiced by the Prophet Mohammed during his lifetime WERE actually, in fact, written during the time that he lived

No account of the life of Jeshua Ben Josef of Nazareth was ever written down until many several centuries after his execution at the hands of the Roman Imperial occupation

It's pretty verifiable that all religion is nuts.
Religion is another name for mass delusion.

The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it!
This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front.

no doubt, it took another 2000 years for men to become as superior as i

youre pretty verifiable yourself. so not being religious, whats your excuse?

Just my superior intellect, charm, and keen fashion sense.
All 100% delusion-free.

My point is that, Relatively speaking, Islam is a very young religion.
The Prophet Mohammed lived in the 4th Century CE, the first Caliphate did not construct its empire until the 8th Century
The founding of Christianity and Islam were separated by almost a thousand years
Islam is a religion 800 years younger than Christianity
And if you think about it, in terms of the course taken by the development of a civilized society, the predicament the Muslim world is in right now at this very moment today is strikingly similar to the place where Christendom was in the 9th- through the-13th Centuries, sometimes referred to as the "Medieval Dark Ages"
What was the Christian world doing during the 10th and 12th Centuries?
They were waging "Crusades" [Literally: "War for the Cross"] against the Muslim world in the Middle East.
And they were conducting "Inquisitions" wherein they arrested and tortured to death all "heretics" and "heathens" by accusing them of Satanic worship rituals and the practice of witchcraft and wizardry.
So, keeping with that perspective in mind,
Let us take a look at where the Arabic Islamic world is today.
There are those who have dedicated themselves to a "Jihad" [Literally translated meaning "Struggle"] against the secular democratized, capitalist industrialized Western European "free" "civilized" world.
And there are also many who expend a great deal of time, energy, and material resources in the pursuit of tormenting and in some cases exterminating all those that they deem to term "unbelievers" or "infidels".

The activities of individuals and institutions in the Muslim world today does not make them any more or less "evil" or "wicked" than the deeds undertaken by the populations and leaderships of the Christian world a millennium ago made their practitioners evil persons.

In human terms, i would have to say that Islam is in its adolescence; a time of uprising, rebellion, and conflict; resulting in wide-spread and far-reaching disorder, chaos and pandemonium
Christianity itself went through the same, or at the very least strikingly similar, phase as well also almost a thousand years ago
While Christianity is now in its autumn years, what some might prefer to call the "golden years". Christianity is a senior citizen; ancient, antiquated, outdated, arcane, senile, and demented; having lost all sense of perspective about what is important for the future, and most, if not all of its memory of what it itself has done at times throughout its past.
Christianity does not remember, and/or does not want to recall, its past, and so they cannot learn from their history. But it is also a gradually fading, antiquated and arcane belief system and worldview, and so will not be able to survive for very much longer in the now-constantly changing modern world; and so naturally it of course cares not at all about what may or may not happen in the future, long after Christendom itself has left the world

islam's phase of rebellious insurrection will also fade as well, i predict very soon, and it will enter the phase that Christianity experience in the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th Century, the period in Western Europe known as the "Renaissance" [literally meaning "Re-Birth"], the "Reformation", and the "Enlightenment"
In the Western European World, the Renaissance in Italy borught with it great men such as Leonardo Da Vinci, inventor of the airplane, and Galileo Galilei, Discoverer of the outer gas ginat planet of our Solar System;
In Germany, Johannes Kepler and Nicholas Copernicus remade the common citizenry's understanding of the planet Earth's Place in the Universe
The Reformation was quickly and brutally crushed by the Catholic Church in what became known as the "Reformation Genocides", prompting King Henry VIII of England to form his own church, which he christened the "Anglican", or Church of England) known in the Americas as the Episcopal

The Reformation was what any psychologist or psychiatrist would immediately diagnose as having been Christianity's "Middle Age" or more appropriately "Mid-Life Crisis".

With seniority comes wisdom,
that was the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment brought forth greater thinkers still, such as Francois Voltaire, a major figure in the French Revolution against the "Sun King" Louis XVI in Versaille in 1789;
Rene Descartes, (““Je Pense, Donc Je Suis.” (“Cogito, Ergo sum.”) [“I Think, Therefore I Am.”] inventor of the Scientific Method;
Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the stove and of bifocal glasses (as well as contact lenses) and credited with the discovery of the Force of Nature known as ElectroMagnetism;
As well as, of course, my personal hero and idol, Thomas Jefferson [Naturalist, ecologist, zoologist, biologist, theological scholar, Linguist, architect, mechanical engineer, inventor etc.] (Author of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd President of the United States [Democratic-Republican Party from Monticello, Virginia)

What this phase of periods, particularly the Reformation in especial, will eventually come to look like in the Arabic Muslim world is anyone's guess, yours is as good as mine,

but with old age come senility
as is evidenced now by such concepts as "CreatIntelligent-Designtionism" [a verbatim word-for-word quote taken directly from the Discovery Institute's textbook "Of Pandas and People"];
and their insistence that what most doctors would diagnose as being a cancerous malignant tumor growth on the inside of a woman's uterus is, in fact a living sentient human being
or the idea that the United States of America, the world's first-ever secular nation-state in history, was in fact founded on "Judeo-Christian" principles
The Senility and Dementia that comes with old age also frequently brings with it a blatant xenophobia and bigotry, often exhibiting itself as fervent prejudices, such as racism [case in point: a significantly substantial percentage of anyone and everyone who ever votes for "Republican" [Now called "Tea"]-Party Candidates are over the age of 50
(this explains why the vast majority of politically active Christians are members of the Republican party)
This is expressed in this case in projectionist statements such as "Muslim Countries Don't Accept People From Other Religions", or "The Muslim Holy Book is a Cult of Violence and Hatred"

i can only hope that the human race survives these rigors long enough, without blasting itself to high hell, to see Islam, too experience its own old age and eventual inevitable decline, just as we are witnessing now with Christianity

so do we have an ancient case of plagierism or accurate records passed down through generations?

i have no doubt, at least the part about fashion sense

fortunately for me, i'm in heaven

Joshua 6:21-27
21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
22 But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country, Go into the harlot's house, and bring out thence the woman, and all that she hath, as ye sware unto her.
23 And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them without the camp of Israel.
24 And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
25 And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
26 And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.
27 So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.

2 Kings 10:19-27
19 Now therefore call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests; let none be wanting: for I have a great sacrifice to do to Baal; whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live. But Jehu did it in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of Baal.
20 And Jehu said, Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. And they proclaimed it.
21 And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshippers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came not. And they came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another.
22 And he said unto him that was over the vestry, Bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal. And he brought them forth vestments.
23 And Jehu went, and Jehonadab the son of Rechab, into the house of Baal, and said unto the worshippers of Baal, Search, and look that there be here with you none of the servants of the LORD, but the worshippers of Baal only.
24 And when they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings, Jehu appointed fourscore men without, and said, If any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him.
25 And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, and slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal.
26 And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.
27 And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day.

Ah all that pillage, cannibalism, genocide...makes for wonderful reading. I like action stories.

We’re talking about people who believe that snakes and donkeys can talk ([Genesis 3; Numbers 22:1-35]),
that rabbits chew cud ([Leviticus 11:6]),
and that bats are birds ([Deuteronomy 14:11-18; Leviticus 11:13-19]),
and whales are fish (Jonah 1:17; Matthew 12:40]),
that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves (Genesis 30:37-43]).
These folks thought that if you use a magic wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of leprosy.

They believe in incantations ([Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14 ,20, 24, 29]),
blood sacrifice ([Genesis 4:4 & 31:54; Leviticus 1:9 & 9:18; 2nd Kings 16:15; Ezekiel 39:17]),
ritual spells ([Leviticus 14]),
enchanted artifacts (1 Samuel 5: 6-9; Exodus 7:8-12; 1 Samuel 5:69, 6:19]),
pyrotechnic potions ([Numbers 5:20-26]),
astrology ([Genesis 1:14-15; Job 38:32; Isaiah 14:12-14; Luke 21:25; Matthew 12:32 & 28:20]),
and the five elements of witchcraft ([Leviticus 14]),
and that Pi is a round number (1st Kings 7:23; 2nd Chronicles 4:2]).