Jefferson was a theist, not classically religious for his time:
That said, what if he was arguing from religious premise? Is a notable historical person infallible?
Again, my point is to try to find out what people consider to be a “religious premise.”
These kinds of debates go on all the time. They are hardly new or unexplored. You’re arguing from a point of principle that has already been settled. In a secular society, laws ought not be passed because they are “God’s Will”. It’s generally accepted, though sadly not without exceptions, that argument from religious belief is a weak argument. Must every debate, as part of political discourse, be reduced to proving over and over why arguments based on what people think gods thinks are fundamentally flawed? How many times must we prove it? One more time? Ten? Ten thousand? Would it not be more efficient and practical to just dismiss the argument based on religious tenets as an invalid part of public policy debates?
What are you going to gain by proving over and over to your opponent that his/her religious arguments are entirely unsupported claims many of which are in contradiction with other religions, let alone secularism?
Cite, please.
My take on it is that it’s any argument based on a deistic/theistic belief system. I know “religion” is something more than simply a belief in a supreme being. But all religions start with that premise and go on to presume to tell everyone that they know what their god wants. So if they believe that their god hates fags, they are going to pursue public policy based on that premise.
No, I didn’t say anything about the constitution. If a law is justified by an appeal to religious authority, then it is theocratic. There’s nothing in the constitution that says you cannot justify a law banning wearing hats on saturdays because the church of Flying Ponies says it’s a sin.
If it is an amendment rather than a law, then it is a religiously justified amendment rather than a religiously justified law.
Right, there are people out there who feel that these premise that are written in a book about bronze age goat herders should be enforced in today’s society. I disagree.
You are welcome to embrace arguments based on nothing but “God said so”, but to do so is to admit that you have no reason to believe that it is actually something that is good for society.
But it does mean that others think that I should.
Are you just repeating yourself here?
So you just said that religion has no place in a policy debate. Or at least, that it should be declared as invalid.
Did you answer your question?
That’s not really how that plays out. They will insist that it is the word of god, and no matter what logic or contradictions they throw out you, they will turn around and tell you that you are a sinner for questioning the word of god.
That’s their debate. That’s what you want informing public policy.
Cite for something that does not appear in the bible? That’s a tough one to do. How about you cite where abortion does appear in the bible, and we’ll go from there.
As I said, I don’t think we live in “a secular society”, because I think a significant number of people base their personal morals on religious beliefs. I don’t think it is generally accepted that argument from religious belief is weak, however I do think argument from religious belief other than one’s own religion are generally viewed as weak.
No, you can simply point to a transcript of a previous debate and ask if your opponent has anything to add. If he cannot access the transcript you are obliged to provide access or repeat yourself. I don’t think political debates are ever fully settled - new people are born and if history class fails to teach/convince them to take a political position, even a “settled” debate might come back from the dead. Much like any other fight against ignorance, politics will live on until the end of humanity.
If you are unsure which side to take, you stand to convince yourself of a position. If you are already convinced as to which position is superior, you stand to convince undecided people in the audience. If you find contradictions within your opponent’s position, you even stand to convince your opponent to abandon their position. If you do not want any of these things, why are you debating to begin with?
~Max
If the law is based only on religious belief, then it does violate the US Constitution: because it favors that religious belief over all other religious beliefs and over a lack of religious belief.
And basing laws solely on the belief of a religion is exactly what a theocracy is. ‘God said so, therefore everyone has to do it.’ That’s theocracy: God is considered the supreme ruler of the society.
If the USA amended the Constitution to say that laws based solely on the beliefs of a particular religion are constitutional, that would either pose an existential contradiction with the First Amendment, or would require repealing at least part of the First Amendment. This is theoretically possible, but I think it’s a really bad idea.
Passing an amendment to the Constitution that forbid abortion would also be theoretically possible, and would not in itself pose that problem, because passing such an amendment in itself wouldn’t necessarily be done solely on religious grounds. There are people making secular arguments in favor of banning abortion. I don’t think they’re good arguments, and I think this would also be a bad idea; but I think it’s a bad idea for different reasons.
People very often have multiple reasons for wanting to do something. It’s quite possible, and I’m sure quite common, that a particular person’s decision as to whether they think a particular secular argument is correct, incorrect, or just plain nonsensical may be based on their religious beliefs. But that’s not the same thing as imposing that religious belief on everybody else based only on the fact that some people believe it.
So, in your opinion, is Jefferson’s argument in the Declaration of Independence an example of an argument based on a deistic/theistic belief system?
I don’t follow. A law based on religious belief does not necessarily violate the establishment clause, so long as it was passed democratically. It is still the people passing the law, not a church or state or even God. The government remains a “secular” government despite the motivation behind the law being religious in nature.
A constitutional amendment could change the government into a theocracy, however, and if said theocracy deprives me of fundamental rights I may well refuse to accept the will of society. But a mere legislative act? I wouldn’t take up arms over a law unless it was unconstitutional, and even then only in extreme cases where I can’t wait for the courts.
I [DEL]agree with you[/DEL] concur about the rest.
~Max
A secular society isn’t a society in which nobody is religious. That is just plain not what the term means.
A secular society is one in which believers in different religions, and people who don’t believe in any, are treated equally by the laws, and all have the right to practice or to not practice the religion (or lack of it) of their choice. This requires the laws not to favor the beliefs of one (or several, the things schism and meld all the time anyway) religious groups over the beliefs of other religious groups or of non-believers; and not to require people who don’t want to follow some specific religion to follow its tenets, unless there’s also a non-religiously-based reason to require them to do so.
Secular societies also protect the right to freely espouse religious beliefs. Believers who think they want a religious society generally seem to assume it’s their particular set of beliefs which will be in charge. My reading of history indicates that sooner or later just about everybody will find that it’s somebody else’s beliefs in charge, and their own which are being trampled.
in other words, all arguments from religious belief are viewed as weak; they’re just not all viewed as weak by the same people. Instead, each of them is viewed as weak by atheists, agnostics, members of other religions, and members of different sects of what’s more-or-less the same religion. Which is a whole lot of people.
Religious belief varies widely. Extremely widely. Again, if you want to be ruled by religious belief: watch out. It’s liable not to be yours.
If you don’t mind, I will replace a secular society with our society in the following quotes.
I will grant your first clause on the basis of Amendment XIV, but not your second clause. People in our society do not have the right to practice the religion of their choice. They have the right to hold religious beliefs, but if those religious beliefs conflict with the law, they do not have the right to practice that part of their religion.
I disagree for the same reason as above. If a law is passed that complies with the beliefs of one group over another, and said law complies with the constitution (Amendments I and XIV, not a bill of attainder), it may have the effect of favoring the one group over another. In fact, every law passed in the face of opposition favors the pro- side over the anti- side. Would you argue that people who support a law for moral reasons, whose morals are entirely based on religion, are pushing for an unconstitutional law? Is it not enough that the majority of people supported the law, that “it is the sense of the people”?
Say we didn’t have a public debate, just a bunch of private debates with no transcripts. The state runs a referendum and most people want a certain law passed. The congressmen vote for the law, and in their speeches the only rationale offered is a combination of religious arguments, possibly a very very weak secular reason, and the results of the referendum. Would you ask the judiciary to issue an injunction? On what grounds?
If a tenet is a personal belief, or following a tenet violates some civil right, I agree. Otherwise, I don’t.
Agreed.
Perhaps. I don’t want a religious society because I am not religious, but if it was the will of the people, I wouldn’t have much choice would I? I might move to a different jurisdiction, or if my rights were taken away I might sue or refuse to comply with the law (if extreme).
Also agreed, except sometimes it might not be a “whole lot of people”, especially in local politics.
~Max
If someone wants to make a law that murder should be illegal, and they say, “Because God said so”, I would say that I agree with their proposed law, but not their reason, and I would provide a secual reason for why murder should be illegal.
If we just leave it at “Because god said so”, then we can justify anything at all.
You can be motivated to pass a law due to your religion, but if you cannot justify it through logic and reason, then it is theocracy.
No one is asking you to take up arms, just to recognize that religious based arguments have no place in a secular society. They are free to spout them, but we need to make sure that they do not make it into public policy.
A mere legislative act? So, my God doesn’t think that people with red hair should be allowed to walk in the park on Sundays. Is that a fundamental right? Not really. Is that imposing your beliefs on others? Yes it is.
As I think has been repeated more times than god can count, it is not the motivation behind the argument, but the argument itself that we are talking about when we say that religion has not place in informing public policy.
In the context of the OP a religious argument is a statement made as a premise in a discussion or debate:
All of our rights are derived from God
Abortion violates God’s law
The US has the blessings of heaven on our arms
In God we trust
We are one nation under God
Anyone who would vote wet is lower than a egg suckin hound
US law is based on the 10 commandments
America is Flag, Faith and Firearms
These come to mind. Perhaps someone can offer religious premises that are not romantic nonsense and belong in the political/social discourse.
Basic logic, such as modus ponens;
the cogito;
a rejection of solipsism;
the theory of empirical weight (a posteriori knowledge can lead to phenomenological laws);
possibly dualism or theism;
free will;
the existence and nature of consciousness;
a moral system;
probably more.
~Max
You don’t have to agree with them.
If you don’t have the debate how can you prove their argument is illogical or unreasonable?
I will agree with you that in my opinion, religion has no place in public policy. But also in my opinion, religion has a prominent place in public policy debate.
Maybe you’re on to something. I would argue against that law because it unfairly discriminates against red-haired people.
~Max
I am not well enough informed on this subject to give an erudite opinion. However, it seems to me that it would have been just as important and valid an argument with my edit below:
Jefferson was a deist so I would not exclude the influence his beliefs had on his thinking when he drafted this document (later edited by others). Nor can I dismiss the influence of flourish of oration of that time. On the other hand, it’s so well written, it can hardly be considered deistic at all. 
Truth is, I’m not sure what was in the man’s mind when he hit <send>.
You think all these are religious premises? Seriously?
And I don’t
Because I’ve seen the debate a million times before. In the abortion threads, there were people talking about baby’s souls and god’s will. It is like arguing with a brick wall. You can not use logic and reason to argue someone out of a position they did not use logic or reason to get themselves into.
Okay, I’m not sure what you are trying to get at here, so you need to give an example of how you would go about putting religion in the public policy debate without it being in the public policy.
That’s okay, because God hates red haired people.