Subject:
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Re: Holy crap! (was Re: The partisian trap in California)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 15 Oct 2003 15:00:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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500 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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The silly notion that Christianity is somehow superior to our government and
other religions.
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Again you confuse me. Superior in what way?
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If I may wager a guess, I would infer that you yourself identify Christianity
(specifically, the version to which you adhere) as superior (for you) in some
way to all other faiths and non-faiths. If it were not, then why would you
follow your particular faith in preference to any other? I mean, I can’t
imagine that you’d ever say “I chose my faith because it is inferior to all
others.” To that end, you must in some way perceive it to be superior, so your
question to Mike becomes a trifle disingenuous.
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Well you were talking about legal marragies. Social mores, culture, and
values have no legal basis. The government can not enforce them as laws or
they are in violation of the first amendment.
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Again with the confusion. Laws just don’t pop up out of thin air. They are
based on the morality and sensibility of a given society or culture.
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But laws aren’t immutable, nor should they ever enshrine one group’s morality in
perpetuity. In fact, rather than reflecting the morality or sensibility of the
culture, laws generally reflect the agenda of the group currently in power. If
this happens to coincide with society’s morality (whatever that may be), then
that’s convenient, but it’s hardly essential.
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As this is a government institution, constitutionally it must be
offered to anyone regardless of their religious beliefs.
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Again, the government doesn’t “recognize” religious marriages; only civil
marriages. That society chooses to uphold civil unions between a man and a
woman is a cultural preference, not a religious one.
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This is not a religious issue, but a cultural issue.
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Alas, I believe that you are insincere in making this distinction, because you
have repeatedly declared this to be a nation founded on Judeo/Christian
morality.
Here, for example, you
identify God language as a reflection of patriotism.
Whereas here you declare that
Christianity has been intimately involved with this nation since its
inception, apparently to indicate the propriety of including Christian
principles in the crafting of legislation.
Later in that same thread,
you proclaimed that we are most certainly *not* a secular nation.
From these three quotes, and from the general history of your postings, I
conclude that you do not truly believe the laws of the United States to be free
of religious intent or agenda, whereas US law and the US government by charter
is required to be areligious.
Conservatives commonly go out of their way to erode the distintion between the
secular Constitution and the religious sentiments of the far-right. It is
either shortsighted or deliberate prevarication to assert that the ban on gay
civil unions has been fairly treated as the secular legal issue that it really
is.
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I don’t care if those buildings are leveled tommorow. The principles for
which they are supposed to stand, are indestructable despite the best
efforts of the government to the contrary.
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All righty then. At least now I see where you are coming from. Many
Americans actually do care if those monuments are preserved. I would
characterize your attitude here as “unamerican”.
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If by “unamerican” you mean “uninterested in the idolatrous worship of
buildings, banners, and documents,” then I happily declare myself unamerican.
Actually, I expect that you’re using “unamerican” in this context to mean “in
contast with the majority opinion on certain issues.” To that end, you were
“unamerican” to vote for Dubya.
Anyway, Mike is exactly right on this point. The buildings are not central to
the principles that they memorialize, and the loss of those buildings wouldn’t
affect the underlying principles in the least. However, when a person or group
works to enshrine religion in a public building or in law, then that person is
rendering that building or law inconsistent with the US Constitution,
specifically with the 1st and 14th amendments.
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And yet all of these laws and restrictions do indeed exist in our society.
I seriously doubt that our society (or any society for that matter) could
survive with such freedom. With freedom comes responsibility; responsibility
comes from morality; morality comes from religion.
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You may believe that, but it’s hardly a fact. Great atrocity also comes from
religion, as Hop-Frog has already aptly shown from the actual text of actual
scripture. I am 100% atheist; do you therefore assert that it is impossible for
me to have non-religion-based morality?
I would also assert that God as portrayed in the text of the Old Testament is
hardly a moral paragon, and I’m not even sure that Jesus is as moral as many
other people. Socrates, for example, or Ghandi, just to name two.
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So although our society’s values aren’t based on a particular religion, it
is based on morality derived from religion (in particular Judeo-Christian).
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And Judeo-Christian myth is derived from pre-existing pagan tradition; should we
therefore open our legislative sessions with blood sacrifices to those pagan
gods?
“Derived from” does not mean “wholly beholden to.” I think we as a society will
have made real progress once we can divorce ourselves from the fiction that
selective quotiation of 2000+-year-old myths are the best foundation for
morality, society, or law.
Dave!
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