Aldebaran, it is clear that you are as ignorant of American politics, culture, religion, and society as most Americans are of Arab politics, culture, religion, and society.
But the big advantange you have is this message board. On this message board you can converse with many Americans from all parts of America, and listen to them explain how their country actually operates.
The problem is that you don’t LISTEN to the people who are trying to explain what America is actually like.
It would be as if I posted something like: “All Muslims are ordered to kill all Christians, it says so in the Koran.” And you posted to explain that the Koran does NOT actually say that, and you quoted the relevant part of the Koran and explained what it meant. And then I simply repeated my original assertion, without giving any indication that I read or understood what you said.
You don’t understand America. Fine, nothing wrong with that. But you are complaining about something you don’t understand, and don’t want to understand. Why is that? Why are you so wedded to your own ignorance? Why is the idea of learning from Americans about America so threatening to you?
Quoting yes or no word by word president Bush has nothing to do with the fact that everyone who hears him can witness that he uses the word God that often that he sounds as if that is the only word he actually can pronounce without looking at a written example.
If you don’t hear that then you must be deaf.
And what my question here is, is exactly how on earth it is possibly for any person to get elected based on religion in a country that declares to be secular.
That means also that he gets appointed in this position, or don’t you agree that being elected is in fact getting appointed by those who vote for you.
In this case leading to a fanatical judge who sets the “law dictated by God to Moses” as the example to follow in jurisdiction and plants some stone with the Ten Commandments in a place where the State’s jurisdiction should be the rule, and nothing else.
If a State is oh so completely secular then a campaign which is based on religious fanatism wouldn’t be possible since forbidden since the state is secular. And a judge planting the Ten commandments in his courthouse and declare “the law dictated by God to Moses” to be his law wouldn’t be a possibility.
A secular state means to me a state where everyone in a civil servant position should be ordered to refrain of using or refering in public to no matter which religion while in function. Let be that a person would be permitted to set up a campaing based on a religion in order to get elected = appointed by the voters in a public sevant function and do what this person in this example does.
Now can you try to see my point or are you going to try once again to let it pass as if I am “rude” while there is no sign of any rudiness far or nearby, if it is not only your stating that I am rude.
Salaam. A
I ask questions that aren’t much answered by anything else then by complaints that I ask them.
And I explain how the things discussed here are perceived outside the USA. Which provokes more complaints instead of interesting debate.
Information that “this is the way it is” isn’t answering my question about how this can possibly be “the way it is” in a state that declares itself to be secular and where the citizens declare they have a “secular democracy”. (Letting out of the debate here that the USA isn’t a democracy.)
1.providing teachers for religious or non religious classes in schools is of course part of the subsidizing = also part of the general subsidizing of every form of education in the country.
This doesn’t mean that professors on a Catholic university are payed by the government. That is a complete ridiculous assumption.
It only means that the obligated hours in schools (and that is not including higher education level) which must be filled with religious or moral education are part of the subsidizing of the education system in general.
The fact that those teachers are qualified religious scholars only contributes to the quality and guarantees that the teaching is done as it should. Or do you see a Catholic teaching Islam or an atheist teaching Catholicism?
You need to understand that in Belgium every school has to follow the education programs designed by the state for that particular level of education. This include religious education for those students (or their parents) who choose this option, and for those who don’t these hours are filled with what is called “moral” = education by secular teachers or by people who do have a religion and and are qualified to teach this particular courses.
Salaries, retirement, and lodging costs of clergy (not called ministers) is part of the subsidizing of the religion.
Renovations need to show a necessity to be needed, often combined with the need to preserve the cultural heritage of the particular building.
If I declare tomorrow some caban to be a mosque, I’ll hardly get funding to make it one.
The partition between municipal, federal and regional government is inherent on the Belgian state structure.
Everyone has the right to formulate objections that his/her taxmoney is spend on the support of any kind of religion or secular group or on no matter what. That is called democracy.
So since you said here what I said in several posts here, namely that religions are susidized… What is exactly your point?
I think his point is that, in America, we would consider the subsidation that you described to be an unacceptable mix between church and state, even moreso than what Judge Moore is doing.
So from an American perspective, it seems like the United States government is more secular than the Belgian government.
Captain Amazing is right when he says that we are more secular. I’m sorry to know that there is not as much freedom of religion in Belgium and that government officials would not be free to speak of their religious beliefs in public. Does that include the king? I hope that you are mistaken.
If you cannot understand the following as an answer to your question, then the problem does not lie with the Americans who are trying to explain it to you:
Americans have separation of church and state. We don’t let the church interfere with government matters and we don’t let the government interfere with religious matters. That’s why a person can believe that the moon is made out of glue and they can still be elected to office. “It’s a free country.”
In our country, an election is made by many people. An appointment is made by one. Some of our judges are appointed, especially the nine highest judges in the land. Federal judges are appointed also.
The United States is very hard to understand from a distance or if someone has visited only a few times to a few places.
You have only appointed judges? So? That just means our countries are different. It doesn’t mean that we are weird. Or that you are weird.
Belgium is about the size of Maryland, one of our smallest states. It is more crowded than the United States – about eleven times more crowded per square kilometer. And most of the people, 75% or so, are Catholic.
The United States is over 300 times the size of Belgium and we are very culturally diverse. That includes our religious faiths. So anyone who tries to generalize about our country based on what one President says or what one judge does or who one state elects is foolish – especially if that person has difficulty with perception.
Also, Americans are well aware that we have fallen out of favor with the world in general. Some of us are more concerned about that than others. But we haven’t yet recognized you as the authority on how the United States is perceived elsewhere.
What is possible is that the state may decide that a religion is no longer recognized. At that point, the government can stop its subsidies. Therefore, each religion must be very careful to not say or do anything that would cause the government to stop recognizing it. Money is both power and control, and in Belgium, the government uses money to support–and, therfore, to control religion.
It is probably not a a malicious form of control and it is probably not used like a club (very often), but it is there. For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot get any of those subsidies. Why not? They are not known to be very hateful. They do not attack other people. What terrible thing have they done for the government to fail to recognize them? If I were a member of a smaller religious group in Belgium that came to believe that the European Union and NATO were bad ideas, and we began to petition the government to withdraw, the government could decide that we were “not legitimate” and take away our recognition. They would not have to tell us to be quiet: simply making us pay taxes and removing the subsidy might make our group go bankrupt. That (in the U.S.), would be an illegitimate form of control over religion, yet in Belgium where they exercise this control, you ask “how is it possible?” simply because the constitution claims that there is no control.
I think we must be careful here about how we use the term secularism, in that different countries take differing apporaches to the issue. Belgium, the UK, the US, the Soviet Union, PRC, India, and Turkey (to name a few) are all secular governments, yet their approach to secularism is quite different. It’s not correct (IMO) to view secularism as a method of government. Rather, it is a goal of government, which may be implemented differently.
Assertion without support. Please produce an actual quote or series of quotes that support your assertion.
Rudeness.
Answered, several times by several posters. The person in the article you quoted is expressing personal beliefs, not an official government policy. Also, being voted into office is very different from being appointed by other officials. That you either refuse to hear the answer or are not capable of understanding it is not my problem. You apparently want to argue that the US is a theocracy along the lines of Iraq; fine, present your evidence.
What you propose would violate the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. Moreover, check your facts; please show where, in Belgium or any other European country, it is actually against the law for a politician to mention religion during a political campaign. For this is what you are proposing for the US.
Here are two more example of your rudeness:
and
These do nothing at all to support your arguments and I seriously doubt you would speak this way to persons who were actually present in front of you. If you do in fact behave this way with real people, rather than on a message board, I seriously doubt that anyone would spend any time listening to you.
I am thankful I live in America where we have constitutional rights to honor God as we see fit. There are anti-discrimination laws here to prevent what you say in your quote.
You see, America is great because of the diversity of thought we allow here. I for one, do not apologize to anyone for expressions of religion shown in this country whether they be Christian or not.
Remind me never to go to Belgium. I might say something inappropriate.
Just to add my 2 cents… the Economist had this article about a study evaluating the relative value and importance of religion in most countries of the world. The comparison was made to relative prosperity of the countries. Simplyfing it… ABOVE 50% meant religion/religiosity had smaller effect and BELOW 50% meant religion etc. had strong effect on the country.
Countries like Finland and some northern Europeans were very high in this scale… Countries like Muslims and some Catholics like Poland and Philipines were lower on the scale. Some poor countries were above said line… especially some Eastern Europeans.
The most interesting detail thou was that the United States besides being quite a way below that 50% mark... was the only Rich/Developed country below the line. Every other developed country was above that line.
No wonder europe sees America and its relation with religion as such an oddity... every other rich kid has a more blazé or casual relation to their religious beliefs. Bush also has aggravated this view due to putting God in his speeches... something educated Europeans (and South Americans I might add) find highly disconcerting.
It seems to me that the basis of laws vs. pornography, prostitution, gambling, etc. is religious. That is, when these laws were proposed and passed, the people who proposed and passed them did so from religious motivations, and the justifications offered for them were religion-based: “against God’s law,” etc. The fact that today many non-religious people support these laws does not change this.
And I have to suspect that some of those who support these laws today do so for religious motives that they do not admit. They think that in order to keep these laws, they need to deny their relgious basis, so as to head off any separation of church and state argumants against them.
Also, in addition to laws vs. pornography, prostitution, gambling, etc., many of the various States of the US have a number of anti-sex laws still on the books that are more plainly religion-based. Laws vs. adultury and fornication, for example. People are seldom arrested for fornication or adultury, but we seem unwilling or unable to repeal these laws. Some States outlaw sodomy and oral sex – for everyone, even married couples.
Some States define as criminal any sex act that involves a female under the official age of consent – even if the male is the same age or younger. And the official age of consent can be as old as 16 or 17. It’s often customary to enforce statutory rape laws only in cases where the male is over 18 or over 21, but as far as the actual law is concerned, if the cops catch a heterosexual 15 year old couple “going all the way,” they can arrest the boy for statutory rape. They can arrest the girl, too, if they want to – for being a “juvinile in need of supervision” or a “person in need of supervision” (the terminolgy varies). And of course, one type of anti-sex law that was strongly enforced for years were the laws forbidding any and all homosexual acts.
Well, it changes it just to the degree that someone defending such laws can point to the laws’ supporters as arguing from a non-religious standpoint.
And, I think even I (though opposed to pornography, prostitution and gambling laws) could agree that there is some merit to having these things illegal–just not enough to warrant the violation of rights I perceive in them.
Blue laws, on the other hand, have no non-religious justification that I can see. A court might say that Sunday closure is somehow to the benefit of the community, but I don’t see them saying that all communities must have Sunday closure. Seems that they are merely defending a religious-based status quo with some fairly silly rationalization (which is not what I see in the case of, say, prostitution. It exists there, but there is real concern as well).
If this didn’t make sense, I’m blaming it on my lack of caffeine this morning.
I can’t believe how long it took in this thread for someone to mention abortion clinic bombings as religious terrorism, but at least those are not state-supported acts. But I’m amazed nobody has mentioned various state laws restricting abortion and access to contraception as examples of the effects of religion on government in the U.S.
And what about state and local decrees on how human sexuality and reproduction should be taught in the public educational system, or whether they should be taught at all? “Abstinence-only” sex ed isn’t based on religious beliefs?
This country was founded by Freemasons. The Catholic church had an edict against them in the 1700’s. Plenty of religious groups didn’t agree with the founding philosophy at the time.
So we have a kind of nationalist hypocrisy. Everyone has to give lip service to the founding philosophy in the name of patriotism but they may be trying to undermine it in reality.
Teddy Roosevelt called Thomas Paine a “filthy little atheist.”
Benjamin Franklin was called an atheist too but he was a deist.