Aren't laws based on Christian faith un-christian?

Full disclosure: I haven’t set foot inside a church for many years. So if my memory is a little off, please correct me. Also, I am atheist.

From what I remember, the bible can be rather ambiguous about a lot of things. One thing it is NOT ambiguous about is that God gave us free will. The right to choose.

In that vein, is it fair or Christian like to make laws against such things as gay marriage or abortion? I mean, you’ve essentially taken away our right to choose?

I suppose one could always choose to break the law. But is that really a fair choice?

And if you feel the word of God offers such a strong powerful message; why do you need legislation to back it up?

Writing Christianity into the law is an effective means of keeping the religion in power and enforcing its dogma; that’s about as Christian as you can get. As for “free will”; this is the same religion that has commonly held that being coerced into behaving a particular way due to the threat of infinite torture qualifies as “free will”.

It would be more accurate to say that free will is the ability to choose, not the right to choose. Or if you wish, people do have the right to choose, but certain choices have penalties and negative consequences.

Yeah, and following the logic in the OP, taking away one’s right to beat someone to within an inch of their life is taking away free will and is the un-Christian thing to do.

The laws against assault do not stem from religion.

The only argument you hear for laws against abortion and gay marriage is because it makes baby Jesus cry.

…Yeah.

So this is the problem I have with the level of intellectual honesty around here. If someone is a Christian, they say <X is wrong and should be disallowed> because they believe it to be so and you happen to agree with them on this, then the line about “not forcing one’s beliefs on others” or the line for “not having a good reason for opposing said action” go out the window and do not get invoked. But if someone is a Christian, they say <X is wrong and should be disallowed> because they believe it to be so and you happen to disagree with them, then the aforementioned two arguments are sure to be invoked. Go into any thread about abortion or gay marriage and you will see this as true.

Hell, the latter argument often times gets invoked upon learning that someone is a Christian even if they make no reference to their faith in arguing whether something is right or wrong or whether it should be allowed or disallowed. The idea there is that the only reason one opposes <X> is because their religion dictates them to do so, but this assumption is only made when-- as it usually goes-- you disagree with that individual. Again, look at any thread about abortion or gay marriage. You’re assured to find some post about not forcing one’s belief on others or society or however the line goes. In fact, it’s one of the guarantees in life (along with death, taxes and the Undertaker winning at Wrestlemania).

Anyway, to slightly divert away from the OP, take note of the following example. The Catholic Church is staunchly against the death penalty. How many people around here have you seen come out and argue that the Catholic Church shouldn’t be allowed to speak out against the death penalty or that, in this instance, their religious views shouldn’t influence public policy/laws? Very, very, very few, if any at all. But if you change the subject to abortion, then suddenly you’ll get a swarm of people out and about arguing how the Catholic church shouldn’t be able to influence public policy/laws and all that mumbo-jumbo. Have you ever stopped to ponder the logic in that? If you haven’t, then you should.

Well, I’m an atheist too, for what it’s worth, and it seems to me the bible’s pretty damned ambiguous on just that very point. It appears to be possible to interpret it either way; and people have. And died in defence of their opinion.

I’ll confess I’m not sanguine about the chances of reaching a settled decision here.

That’s a hoot because Jesus never spoke on either topic.

I’d guess that for every American Christian who has misgivings about writing religion into law, there’s an equally devout American Christian who thinks it’s a damn fine idea.

Laws based on religious principles are invoked by politicians seeking to garner votes from the theologically illiterate. Not that the churches never stick their oars in the water; the siren song of temporal power falls on ready ears. Jesus’ focus was on individual righteousness. He never taught on abortion or homosexuality. Christians who base political arguments on the Torah don’t know Jesus. The core of Christan theology is not the ten (or 623) commandments, but the sermon on the mount (the Beatitudes).

A devil’s deal was struck in the 1970s where the Democrats, at the risk of their majority, gave the racists and social conservatives to the Republicans in exchange for ethnic minority votes. Republicans have been using social issues as a political tool ever since. IMHO, the Dems got the better of it.

If a church tells you that you face hellfire because of what you are, or how you think, you need a better church.

You got it - there’s no “Official Christian” consensus in this country. In most countries nowadays that have an official Christian religion, nobody goes to church.

Yes, which is why you can’t realistically call doing so “Un-Christian”. Really, you can’t realistically call much of anything un-Christian, since there’s almost certainly somewhere a bunch of Christians who do it or support it. There’s no central authority that determines what is or isn’t Christian.

It’s a lot harder than you think to separate laws based on religious beliefs from laws that aren’t.

Laws against murder are based, at least partly, on the belief that human beings have inherent value and that killing them is wrong.

(Attempted) laws against abortion are based, at least partly, on the belief that unborn human beings have inherent value and that killing them is wrong.

By what criterion do you call the latter a religious belief and the former not?

Because treating a fetus as a “person” only makes sense as an excuse for outlawing abortion and is inconsistent with the rest of our laws and ethical systems. It is an irrational position.

The Church has the right to speak out to their followers, but we have separation of Church and State and no religion can dictate to another. Our founding fathers lived in situations where the religions ruled or was able to see the harm when the Church ruled the State, and the State ruled the religions. No one can force a person to have an abortion nor can they punish a person because of their sexual desires.Every one is free to follow their religious beliefs, but no one can force their beliefs on another.

Jesus didn’t expect people to convert another , just spread the Good news that the Kingdom Of heaven was at hand! There are so many things that Jesus taught that so many of his believer’s dismiss!

The Catholic Church’s official anti-capital punishment position is near irrelevant; it doesn’t push very hard for it and clearly doesn’t really care about it. It does however care a lot about opposing abortion, as part of its fundamentally anti-sex, anti-happiness*, and anti-woman worldview. There’s no reason to get worked up against Catholic attempts to oppose the death penalty even if you support it, since they might as well not exist.

*Suffering and despair are good for you, they produce faith you see.

:dubious: Jesus’ last words to his disciples, according to Matthew, were “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That sounds to me like he was encouraging them to go out and convert people.

As far as the OP, I don’t necessarily think that supporting laws based on your religion is more or less valid than supporting laws based on any other personal beliefs. I disagree with many Christians as to how they apply their beliefs when they vote; but as a Christian myself who is politically liberal, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that my liberal votes are also heavily influenced by my religious beliefs. It just so happens that I tend to vote based on Jesus’ command to care for the poor and needy and powerless. So (for example) I’m anti-abortion; but instead of trying to outlaw abortion I try to support policies that make abortion less necessary or that make other options like adoption more attractive.

Sure, but he didn’t say “go and take over the governments of all nations”.

Do you have other examples, these aren’t really Christian laws. I am a Christian myself, and I support laws providing equal marriage rights for gays. The thing is, the law was already in existence and no one really made any effort to change them until recently. Many Christians oppose those changes, but that’s not so much codifying. I have also met individuals who were atheist and oppose legalizing it because it’s unnatural and wrongly equate it to other forms of sexual behavior that society still strongly frowns on like polygmy, beastiality, and pedophilia. The point is, those are bad arguments against it, but the point is there are non-religious reasons that people oppose it, even if they are dumb reasons.

For abortion, again, there’s a large overlap with Christians and opposing it, but I actually think there’s a stronger non-religious argument, and many of the atheists I’ve met will generally be in favor of some limitations. Obviously the “life begins at conception” is a pretty overwhelmingly religious argument, and you won’t see many non-religious people suggesting a full ban, but I have see arguments put forth for setting a point of life beginning at first heart beat or first measurable brain activity (ftr, both of those are lines I’ve seen proposed by well-known atheists discussing abortion, the latter specifically from Penn Jillette iirc). The whole point is, abortion is fundamentally a rights issue, where those who support banning an abortion at a certain term believe that the unborn is human enough to deserve human rights and thus the right to life trumps the right of the woman over her body, where those who oppose don’t believe it has those rights. And this is why you won’t find many people who support abortions performed the day before the child is due and you also won’t find many people, even many Christians, who would put a full ban even on a 15yo who was raped and elects to abort immediately upon learning that she is. In fact, even among my father and his church, which are pretty straight-forward rightwing Christians, when the issue has come up, they’ve all made some manner of concessions on allowing abortions in some circumstances.

I think my point is that as long as we’re going to be making laws on issues that aren’t purely based on personal or property rights and start treading into territory of establishing morality, you’re going to start seeing religious reasons for it because religious people often appeal to their religious beliefs to establish their moral stance. And that’s why I think we should stay away from trying to legislate right and wrong and just stick to establishing and protecting the rights of people.

As for whether or not it is Christian to do so, I’m not so sure that it’s either. Personally, given my view on the purpose of laws, I don’t think we should be making moral laws of any sort and we should instead try to teach people moral reasoning and to follow it of their own accord. But not everyone would agree with that idea of the purpose of law. Some will believe that the purpose of law is to establish right and wrong and, if that’s the case, then you kind of have to fight to legislate to allow what is right and regulate or ban what is wrong. Of course, I disagree with that view, but I’m not sure that that view is intrinsically religious at all.

I agree; that’s just not what I understood Monavis to be saying. He referred to Jesus not expecting people to convert.