SSM debate and separation of church and state

Great Debates
101

Here’s my real problem:

hypocrisy
You christians have no problem borrowing money and using credit cards, in the bible that is called Usury, neither borrow nor lend money. Christians have no problem at disregarding - that - part of the bible but since anal sex is icky we are going to make a huge national spectacle out of how wrong SSM is, despite completely ignoring:

Exodus 22:25 ESV / 75 helpful votes

“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.

Deuteronomy 23:19-20 ESV / 56 helpful votes

“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Ezekiel 18:13 ESV / 43 helpful votes

Lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself.

Deuteronomy 23:19 ESV / 42 helpful votes

“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.

Leviticus 25:37 ESV / 35 helpful votes

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

Leviticus 25:35-37 ESV / 35 helpful votes

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

Ezekiel 22:12 ESV / 32 helpful votes

In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbors by extortion; but me you have forgotten, declares the Lord God.

Ezekiel 18:8 ESV / 30 helpful votes

Does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man,

Luke 6:35 ESV / 22 helpful votes

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Proverbs 22:7 ESV / 22 helpful votes

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

Leviticus 25:36 ESV / 21 helpful votes

Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.

Proverbs 28:8 ESV / 20 helpful votes

Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.

Ezekiel 18:17 ESV / 19 helpful votes

Withholds his hand from iniquity, takes no interest or profit, obeys my rules, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live.

Psalm 15:5 ESV / 17 helpful votes

Who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Matthew 25:27 ESV / 14 helpful votes

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.

Psalm 112:5-6 ESV / 13 helpful votes

It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever.

Nehemiah 5:1-13 ESV / 11 helpful votes

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.” …

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 ESV / 11 helpful votes

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’

Isaiah 10:1-34 ESV / 10 helpful votes

Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! …

Psalm 15:1-5 ESV / 10 helpful votes

A Psalm of David. O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Jeremiah 15:10 ESV / 9 helpful votes

Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.

Isaiah 53:1-12 ESV / 7 helpful votes

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. …

Nehemiah 5:1-19 ESV / 7 helpful votes

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.” …

Luke 6:38 ESV / 5 helpful votes

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Ezekiel 25:17 ESV / 4 helpful votes

I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them.”

Ezekiel 18:4 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Isaiah 1:1-31 ESV / 3 helpful votes

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. …

102

We are equal, we’re just not all the same. Moral judgements are sticky subjects. Rape is a pretty horrible thing. But is the rapist worse than the man who abandons his family? Is he worse than a murderer? Someone who kills through negligence? Worse than a scam artist who ruins lives? Can we even say for sure that he’s worse than a person with a huge carbon footprint, whose behavior will lead to horrible hardships for all of us? The best we humans can do is figure out what is a crime and punish and hopefully deter the crime. We are better than rapists in the sense that we’re better about respecting womens’ physical autonomy. Going beyond that is dangerous.

As for Salk, while his accomplishment exceeds anything we are likely to ever do, that doesn’t make him better either. It means he accomplished more. What makes thinking of Salk as better than us dangerous is that the next logical step is that people like Salk should rule us and make our decisions for us. Which actually has happened and was briefly flirted with even in our own country.

103

How about the hypocrisy of starting a thread to discuss separation of church and state when what you really wanted to do was post a rant against Christianity? :smiley:

You would be well advised to refrain from hijacking your own thread with irrelevant personal issues.

ETA: While I suspect that it will not change your prejudices, you might want to review Bricker’s discussion of interest vs usury.

104

You know, my friend, a few days ago in another thread, you posted the exact same thing. I responded by patiently debunking your false statements and answering your questions. Now here you are, repeating statements that you know are false and questions that have already been answered. If you want to convince anyone that you’re right, saying things like this may not be a very effective way to do it.

“Hobby Lobby is trying to limit other people’s choices based upon religion.” Nothing that Hobby Lobby does limits anyone’s choice, because anyone can choose to not shop or work there. I explained this to you before. You know it already. In any case, it would be blatantly obvious to a six-year-old.

“What if Hobby Lobby said faith healing was all that was medically necessary and just decided to get rid of insurance for their employees?” Then the employees would buy individual insurance. I explained this to you before as well.

Well then don’t take part in that thought process. But whether you take part in it is irrelevant to the topic you started the thread with, which is legal rights.

105

Well it’s only your side that is rewriting the english language to suit your own agenda.

106

They can do that now. The employer mandate fee is cheaper than providing health insurance. But that’s neither here nor there. There’s a very simple solution to the problem: the federal government can provide contraception coverage. Instead, they chose an intentionally confrontational approach: require the employer to sign off on employees getting contraception coverage first. That’s unnecessary. The government already notices that a company isn’t covering contraception. Just provide it themselves without involving the company at all.

Hobby Lobby isn’t limiting choices because it can’t. There’s no threat of it, because the federal government steps in to provide the coverage where Hobby Lobby won’t.

107

Really?
Look, there are two groups of people that I respect when they talk about the “sincerity” of their beliefs. Catholic priests and nuns and the Amish. Or any such group that actually takes work and sacrifice to follow though on their beliefs. People who cling to their faith only when it’s convenient, comforting or expedient really, do not have my respect.

108

I’m not so sure about the Catholic priests…

109

No, see, if Hobby Lobby says we will not provide insurance then they are not discriminating. If they say we don’t want to provide service because of religious objection, that is discrimination.

110

Well, we’ve had that discussion before and I agreed with you 99.9%.

But the interesting thing about hypocrisy is that it’s better than total amorality. Hypocrisy is an offense against logic, whereas amorality is simply offensive in general, but those of us who like to think too much often see hypocrisy as the greater offense. But hypocrisy implies an ideal, albeit one that is not lived up to. The Founding Fathers were serious hypocrites, but without their vision of what man SHOULD be, we’d never have gotten to the point we are today. So don’t condemn hypocrites too much. Sometimes having an idea and failing to live up to it is necessary before you can have an idea and actually live up to it. People find it hard to change. Pointing out hypocrisy can help people change. Condemning hypocrisy as a high crime though, probably isn’t very constructive.

111

No, because it’s a policy for all of their workers. It’s like claiming that Chik-Fil-A’s close on Sunday policy is discriminatory.

112

There may of been a better way for the situation to be handled but the problem is, if the government steps in to do the things Hobby Lobby objects too, where does it stop?

Do you really not see a problem with gaining your morality from a book where the hero casts demons out of people and cast the demons into pigs and then sends the pigs over a cliff. Can you please address this point specifically?

Is a rapist worse than someone who abandons his family? Probably, just barely, but that discussion has no value to me since I am not a rapist or a con artist nor a dead beat father. In terms of letting the most intelligent, most morally principled people run the country being a mistake, to which examples are you referring?

113

Give it up. You have noted that both sides of the 1947 Supreme Court decision appealed to it while disagreeing over it. In other words, your own citations prove that there is not one sole meaning.
I have no “side” beyond trying to get you to recognize that the phrase has meant different things to different people and that your OP was fatally flawed by your reliance on a phrase that does not appear in the Constitution instead of developing an actual line of thought.
ETA: BTW, what “agenda” do you believe I have? I have expressed no opinions of any actual law or court ruling. If you are attempting to ascribe views to me that I have not expressed, then you are out of line.

114

No, nice try but no. Working on a particular day is not considered a “civil right”. Having access to medical care despite the medical practitioners personal religious bias is most defiently an issue that involves civil rights.

115

LOL

How would you interpret “A wall of separation between the fire department and the police department”. Different purpose, different administration, different personnel. Does that seem “vague” to you?

Protecting the bible/religion (I am answering your question)

116

For the most part true. Doesn’t change the fact that our nation is built on credit so the bible’s admonitions against usury are completely ignored.

117

That is the problem. Religious people use language as it suits them. I’ve never heard an Atheist or an Agnostic have any “confusion” over the terms wall, or, separation. Only christians have said those terms “meant something different”.

118

Why would you think that? It can easily be interpreted either way:
[ol]
[li]Hobby Lobby was right to make a decision based on its religious ideals. The state, being on the opposite side of the wall, has no business interfering with that.[/li][li]The state has passed a law the benefits of which must be made available to all citizens. Hobby lobby was wrong to deny its employees those benefits on religious grounds, because religion - being on the opposite side of the wall - must not interfere with the unviversal applicability of law.[/li][/ol]
It is clear from your argument that you favor the second interpretation (and for what its worth, in the matter at hand I tend to agree), but to say that the first one is not permissible in the debate is akin to not wanting a debate in the first place.

119

It stops where religious freedom and a governmental compelling interest collide. Providing free birth control might be good policy, but it’s not of earth shattering importance. Access to birth control is not really a serious problem for working people demanding a solution that requires people to violate their faith.

Bear with me and let me answer a question with a question. What do you think of the Prime Directive?

I am none of those things either, but I’ve also contributed nothing to this world other than working enough to be a small net contributor to society rather than someone who is dependent on others. Whereas some rapists have positively impacted lives before getting caught. Am I better than Bill Cosby? In the sense that I’m more respectful of women’s personal autonomy, absolutely. But I also haven’t served my country as much as he did. I washed out in BCT, he was a corpsman who helped rehabilitate injured war vets in Korea. He created family friendly shows that positively impacted millions of people, one of which was the first to depict a black middle class family, which contributed immeasurably to more positive social attitudes towards race. He was a philanthropist. So how am I to judge Bill Cosby as a whole person? He had so many defenders precisely because of all the good he did. Many didn’t want to believe he was capable of rape, much less being a serial rapist. But that’s the point. People are complex creatures. I cannot confidently say that I’m a better person than Bill Cosby except in the narrow sense that unlike him, I don’t rape women. I also don’t do any of the good he did.

In this country, the administration of Woodrow Wilson, who thought that rule by an intellectual elite could better order the country than the individual decisions of millions of average Americans of average intelligence.

120

Practitioners, yes, but payers are a different matter and health care is not actually a right in the legal sense.