Reply to Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As I asked before, Would you prefer to live in a Christian country? If so, why? If not, Why not? [/quote]

No the country I love is one that is[b] explicitly not a Christian country[/b]: The best country on the planet, the United States of America.[/quote]

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[i]
'[b]As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion[/b], - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.'[/i]

Treaty of Tripoli, 1797  [/quote]

In 1931 Hunter Miller completed a commission by the United States government to analyze United States' treaties and to explain how they function and what they mean to the United States' legal position in relationship with the rest of the world.[21] According to Hunter Miller's notes, "the Barlow translation is at best a poor attempt at a paraphrase or summary of the sense of the Arabic" and "Article 11 ... does not exist at all."

"The Barbary Treaties : Tripoli 1796 - Hunter Miller's Notes". The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Retrieved 2007-05-08.

After comparing the United States' version by Barlow with the Arabic and the Italian version, Miller continues by claiming that:

The Arabic text which is between Articles 10 and 12 is in form a letter, crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. How that script came to be written and to be regarded, as in the Barlow translation, as Article 11 of the treaty as there written, is a mystery and seemingly must remain so. Nothing in the diplomatic correspondence of the time throws any light whatever on the point.

From this, Miller concludes: "A further and perhaps equal mystery is the fact that since 1797 the Barlow translation has been trustfully and universally accepted as the just equivalent of the Arabic ... yet evidence of the erroneous character of the Barlow translation has been in the archives of the Department of State since perhaps 1800 or thereabouts ..."However, as Miller noted:

It is to be remembered that the Barlow translation is that which was submitted to the Senate (American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 18-19) and which is printed in the Statutes at Large and in treaty collections generally; it is that English text which in the United States has always been deemed the text of the treaty.

Article 11 is stating that differing religious opinions shall not be considered a pretext for violating the treaty. It should be noted that the article is careful to point out that the United States had never engaged in any armed conflict with a Muslim nation.

Consider this 1798 proclamation from President John Adams, who was president when the Treaty of Tripoli was ratified, which states,

“[T]he safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not [sic] exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed.”
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