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 16:14:05 GMT
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Viewed:
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521 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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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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No, because his statement is hopelessly vague and unclear. How can you compare
a religion with a government? It’s apples and oranges. But you are absolutely
correct that I believe Christianity is superior to other religions for me. I
know (in a faith sense) that Christianity is a path to salvation. There may
be others; there may be not-- that I don’t know.
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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.
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I would point to the many who would claim to be not Christian or Jewish that
would uphold this preference.
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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.
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I wasn’t trying to show that Judeo-Christian principles were used to frame the
Constitution, just that they were the basis from which the principles were
derived. They are not the same. One would presume to establish a Theocracy,
one not.
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Later in that same thread,
you proclaimed that we are most certainly *not* a secular nation.
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In the sense that we were not formed in a vaccuum beyond the influence of the
Judeo-Christian heritage, as say Russia was. Russia was founded as a secular
nation.
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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.
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There isn’t religious intent or agenda in these laws; only that morality based
on the Judeo-Christian heritage influenced their creation. I agree that laws
should be areligious. I state unequivocally that I would not like to see
Christianity be our state religion. I am only trying to get you all to realize
that our very formation was influenced heavily from the morality and values
derived the Judeo-Christian heritage. You may think that that was a mistake,
but that is the way it was and is.
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Conservatives commonly go out of their way to erode the distintion between
the secular Constitution and the religious sentiments of the far-right.
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I see our FF engaged in this type of blurring from day 1! There has been
praying in Congress for 100s of years. Our currency, our “God language” (from
our very first document, the DoI).
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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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The fact is that we as a society need to draw the line (legally) somewhere.
Perhaps you would care to defend someone’s “right” to marry their sister or
brother?
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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.
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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.
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So what do you conclude about that? That religion is bad or evil? Shoot the
messenger, not the message.
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I am 100% atheist; do you therefore assert that it is impossible
for me to have non-religion-based morality?
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Eventually, yes. I believe that there is no compelling reason to be good
without God.
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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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God is holy, mysterious, and good. Characterizations of God other than that are
at best inaccurate.
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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?
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Specious, and no (unless you mean we hoist the bloated teddy whale onto the
altar;-)
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“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.
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How is this possible without the wholesale erradication of religion? Or do you
feel that this would be a Good Thing®? I believe that religion keeps man from
the brink of chaos and gives us meaning in life. Without it, we are lost and
doomed to self-destruction.
JOHN
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Holy crap! Yggdrasil's taproots...
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| (...) I couldn't say for sure, but I rather imagine the Rus were followers of the Norse gods. I just can't imagine a bunch of Vikings being secular humanists. :-) -->Bruce<-- League of Green-Eyed Odin's Advocates (21 years ago, 15-Oct-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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