That attitude certainly deserves a big ole jab. I think it is very possible to be an evangelical Christian and a racist, since I’ve met several who are. I might agree that it’s impossible to truly follow the teachings of Christ and be a racist, but in the real world those are two different things.
An objective morality? Very intriguing. Care to go into more detail? I believe in an an objective truth, {for lack of a better way to express it} and I think that certainly relates to morality, but I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on objective morals.
They don’t scare me They’re just wrong is all. The only usefull thing I ever heard Rush Limbaugh say was when he quoted someone else. They were speaking of medical care as a “right” It’s simple concise and correct. “A right is something that doesn’t cost anyone else anything”
Nobody has the right to tell someone else, “You are obligated to pay for my medical bills or education” The government isn’t an impersonnal entity. It’s people and taxpayers. **We ** decide as a society what our priorities are and how we will distribute our resources.
I’ve searched and haven’t found this article by Philip Pullman here. I hate to OP if it’s been done before. Perhaps it belongs in this thread. characteristics of religious power (theocracy) It begins like this:
*The war on words
Reading is a democratic activity, argues Philip Pullman, and theocracies discourage it. Khomeini’s Iran and the Soviet Union had similarly degraded views of literature - and Bush’s America is heading the same way
Philip Pullman
Saturday November 6, 2004
Guardian
I start from the position that theocracy is one of the least desirable of all forms of political organisation, and that democracy is a good deal better. But the real division is not between those states that are secular, and therefore democratic, and those that are religious, and therefore totalitarian. I think there is another fault line that is more fundamental and more important than religion. You don’t need a belief in God to have a theocracy.
Here are some characteristics of religious power:*
And I still maintain that since racism and the gospel (or euangellion, from whcih the word evangelical is derived) are mutually exclusive that you therefore cannot be a true “evangelical” and a racist. I will grant you that it is possible to self-identify as an evangelical and be racist, but just becuase you call yourself something does not make it true.
If you haven’t guessed by now I am an evangelical Christian, and my Christianity therefore defines my morality. And I believe that this morality is objective because God objectivly exists. So my morality is informed by what I believe the fundamental reality of the world to be. I think the fundamental reality of the world is relationship. God is triune and therefore in relationship with himself. God created humanity and the world and is therefore in relationship with us and we are in relationship with each other. So then since we are in a relational world, I think that whatever builds these relationships is moral, and that which destroys them is immoral.
Relationships are fed by love, and therefore whatever is loving is moral. Jesus tells us that loving God and loving people fulfills the law. John in 1John tells us that anyone who loves is born of God because God IS love. Love is more than just the emotional feeling though, love is actively seeking the good of the other. And loving people alone is not loving fully. To love fully one must also love God.
FWIW I agree with you, I don’t think you can call education a right in the same sense as you can call a right to life a right. Nevertheless that is not my point. My point is not that education is a right, but that many people think it is.
The issue that I wished to highlight was that many people assume rights to be self-evident, yet when you get into the details of what exactly is a right there is a huge amount of disagreement and very few things are really all that self-evident. The fact that there are some that believe that education is a right and that you disagree with them illustrates this.
Preach it brother
I think living in a theocracy would only be bad if you disagreed with the type of theism on which the society was based. If you did actually adhere to that form of theism that I suggest that living in that theocracy might be quite nice.
Anyway I don’t think anyone here (well at least I am not) are advocating that we institute some sort of theocracy. And the criticisms that the article raises are not in general characteristics of all religions. So for instance it mentions the tendancy for theocracies to limit literature. However if you look at the reformation one of the central issues was the right of all people to have the bible in their own language so they could discern the will of God for themselves. And many protestants like Tyndale were killed for producing or possessing non-Latin bibles. So I don’t think you can claim that protestant Christianity is about investing power in one central body.
If it were still a few years ago, yes, you would be quite correct. Soul competence of the individual believer was one of the most democratizing, decentralizing doctrines of American Protestantism, especially the Baptist churches. That’s why it weirds me out all the more that the Southern Baptists the past few years have been moving in the opposite direction, away from soul competence and in the direction of centralized authoritarianism. This has caused splits in congregations, hasn’t it? A few years ago Jimmy Carter broke with the Southern Baptist leadership over this issue.
I’m an Australian, so I am not entirely up with the church scene in America, but I don’t think it necessarily wrong for a church to have some sort of leadership structure. There are pluses and minuses of loose association models and of heirachical models. Where it becomes troubling is where people assert they are right merely by virtue of being a leader, rather than because their argument is true. If that is the direction that the Southern Baptists are heading, then I agree that is a worry.
However when it comes to the “I am right because I am me” type of arguments I think this is much more prevalent in the theologically liberal churches. Look at they way many liberals treat people who describe themselves as “bible scholars”. In many liberal churches there seems to be a movement away from “this is true because I believe it to be true” to “this is true because some guy with a PhD told me it is true”, or better yet “this is true because a group of people with PhDs told me it is true”. I think there is a very real sense in which many liberal churches are stepping back from the reformation and re-instating a priesthood who interprets the bible for the masses, except this time the priesthood is the bible scholars whose word is unquestionable.
Not of course that biblical scholarship is in of itself worthless, but asserting that something is true because a “scholar” believes it is little better than asserting that something is true because a “priest” believes it.
Your definition of public is misleading here. The secularist view is that a government for all should not take the stance of a particular religion. I know of no atheist who would ban, say, a religious parade, or the broadcast of a religious progam on the public airwaves. Nor do we expect a government official to stop going to church. We do expect them to make decisions based on purely secular ethical grounds.
What is the morality of secularism? I can’t think of any. Secularism does say that ethical decisions must be made on the basis of ethical reasoning that does not appeal to a divine morals giver who cannot be shown to exist. How the ethics comes out can vary widely.
Perhaps this is because there is no constitutional separation of church and state in France? In the US, it is perfectly okay to wear religious symbols anywhere, and religious costumes are fine in schools. My town has lots of Islamic kids, it has not been an issue.
Utterly incorrect. Any religion that does not feel that their special relationship to god gives them special authority in setting public policy should have no problem with a secular government. I can’t think of any “atheistic” legislation in the US. Banning prayers in school simply understands that a government employee of all the people should not do things to exclude a subset. Some of the anti-prayer cases were brought by minority religions, not atheists. Self-started prayer in schools, by students, is allowed.
Which worldview best protects the rights of all? If different religions have different views of abortion, say, which should we choose - the one that allows each person to make up her mind, or the one that makes all follow a particular religion? Some religious worldviews are not equivalent in freedom to a secular worldview, or even a deistic worldview.
You clearly don’t know crap about the creationism debate in the US. Many people see their creation story as exactly reflecting natural truth, and consider the parable view close to heresy.
True - but when the more fundamentalist worldview took over, the science went to hell. Science, which allows the attack on any truth, is an anathema to all sorts of fundamentalist religions - but not all religions.
I don’t see where he said we were progressing towards some “correct” morality, anymore than evolution progresses toward some “perfect” life form. A look at history shows few if any universal moral rules. Religion claims knowledge of perfect morality, but there are serious problems with this view.
There are many examples of altruism in nature, but altruism usually works to help those with shared genes. We have this sort of altruism (surely the concept of tribes and family is genetic) and morals spread by memes. I can hardly think of any universal morals not involving family.
So what should be?
So, if God tells you to stone the man breaking the Sabbath, is this okay? How do you know the morals actually come from God? Where did God get them from? Is there a universal morality that God just reflects, or is morality whatever God feels like at the moment? Many, most, people today are more moral than God of the Torah - just take the Flood, for instance.
Since atheists don’t claim any special access to “true” morality this sort of argument is invalid. We just get people who we may or may not agree with, not atheism as a whole.
This might be a good argument if so many religions have vastly different models of this “higher reality.” Either all are wrong or all but one are wrong - but how do you tell which one is correct?
The answer in the past has been war - not very satisfying moralistically.
You should try studying ethics some day. I know someone who defines ethics as morals minus god.
BTW, one of your earlier posts refer to the question of buying a ticket for a train. When I rode the Munich subway 25 years ago, I was stunned by the honor system. I know of no US subway or rail system that does not check the tickets of each rider. In some cases it is expected that you buy a ticket on the train, in other cases you can with a penalty (fee, not legal.) So not all societies assume that people will do the right thing.
There are some atheists that would, but they are only a small minority.
But the rub comes in expecting a govenment to make decisions on purely secular ethical grounds, above the conerns of any religion. How is that not in effect legislating secular morality? And if legislating morality is in general bad, why isn’t it true in this case?
I do agree that “secularism” isn’t really a full worldview in of itself. In reality secularism is attached to a form of atheism to form a complete worldview (such as secular humanism, secular communism, ect). The point is though not so much what the secular morality is, rather that it differs from varies religious moralities and if we are serious about not legislating morality why is it OK to legislate some form of secular morality?
The “logic” behind the French ruling is that having religious symbols in any way present in government buildings is an implicit acceptance of that religion. (Well, in fairness a part of the French stuff is also motivated by ethnic hatred of Islamic groups). AFAIK the same logic is used in Turkey for the banning or hearing the hijab in government buildings as well. The key issue is what is considered government acceptance of a religion. This just shows that some goverments take a very hard line on what can be considered government acceptance.
The problem is though that you can just as easily exclude a subset by not doing particular things as you can by doing them. So for instance if you believe that a school should have teacher-led prayer (and I am not saying that it should, just posing a hypothetical) than insisting that it is not done is excluding people just as much as doing it is excluding people.
The problem with only allowing those things that do not by their presence exclude anyone means that in the end you end up doing what people who affirm very little would end up wanting. And this is really my point. Try thinking about an issue from different religious viewpoints, and then from different atheistic viewpoints, and then from a secularist viewpoint. In just about every case the secular viewpoint will disagree with one or more religions and in general agree with atheistic viewpoints. This is hardly surprising since as I stated before secular views tend to get their morality from atheistic worldviews.
Besides what do you do if you feel that it is your religious duty to do something, but are prohibited by law? Is that really freedom of religion? Saying that you have freedom to do something except in cases XYZ is hardly freedom at all.
This is an entirely circular argument. Rights are derived from worldviews, and therefore all worldviews uphold what they consider to be rights.
Just because I don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. Because I believe that Genesis is not intending to tell you how the world was created, then so long as you acknowledge that whatever the process was, it was controlled by God, then it doesn’t really matter. I would accuse the “literal 6 day creationists” of falling into the same trap as DSeid of reading “how” questions into an account that never intends to answer them.
Partially right. Science only really deals with the natural world. Anything question outside of that (ie: love, beauty, ect) science cannot answer.
My point was that if you believe that there are no universal moral rules than you cannot talk of someone becoming “more” moral unless you just mean that they get a greater number of moral rules.
You are right in that there are some levels of altruism, in that we commonly want to do good for those whom we love. But this is far from a the universal concept that Der Trihs seems to imagine as it is often quite limited in scope.
This is my point. That if morality is merely a product of evolution then there is no way to determine if it is correct or not, it merely is. If you want to know what I really think, have a look at my response to cosmosdan
There is a famous debate in philosophy over “Does God do something because it is good, or is something good because God does it?” If you posit that God is the highest reality in existance then the only logical answer is that something is good because God does it. To suggest that there is some sort of standard of good above and beyond God that he must operate under is inherently illogical.
Therefore it is impossible to say that anyone is more moral than God. God is moral by definition. So yes, if God tells me to stone someone for breaking the Sabbath, since morality is defined by God then that is OK. You may not like what a particular God does, but once you accept his existance it is impossible to call yourself more moral than he.
I’m just respoinding to Der Trihs’ simplistic all religious morality == bad, all athiestic morality == good. That statement is not in of itself true.
I would say that one religion is right, and that all others in so much as they agree with that one religion is also right, and where they disagree they are wrong.
I think you can decide by examining the premises of each different religion and deciding whether or not they are true. In the end we can’t prove any to be right (in the sense of mathmatical proof) either religious or atheistic. But we can decide what is the most likely. So for me, Christianity is premised on the fact that Jesus really did die and really did rise from the dead. Since I believe this premise to be true I am a Christian.
Meh. I think the problem that secular ethics falls under is that you can either show why people should have a ethical sense, but you can’t really define it, or you can define an ethical system but you can’t really define why people should care. To me secular ethics just sounds incredibly weak since there is no real benefit in being ethical.
Here in Melbourne in .au they got rid of the transit police on trains whose job it was to protect the passengers, and replaced them with “revenue protection officers” (what they are actually called, I kid you not) whose sole job it is to inspect tickets and catch fare evaiders. Kind of shows you what our gevernment values most, eh
Besides my point was that you can’t always assume that people will do the right thing, and the fact that not all societies assume that people will illustrates my point.
How do you know this exactly? You claim that athiests know it all, and then you turn around and do the same thing. Everybody has their own opinions that they view as correct. Do not try to pretend like you do not. Condemning atheists for believing their opinions are correct and the best way is hypocritical to say the least.
Wow, just wow. How in the world have you accepted something as absolute truth that you have no evidence for, but are so sure, that you are willing to kill another person over? The danger of this is so clear and yet so misunderstood.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the overall tone of your posts seem to imply that morality is either impossible or undefinable without religion. I find this to be one of the most vile, short-sighted ignorant positions one can take.
To me, morality comes from the responsiblity to not infringe on others rights while at the same time being allowed to provide for and protect your family. Stealing from me to buy your kid something is immoral because it involves a victim i.e. me. You wearing a cross or some jesus outfit does not infringe on my rights in any way. Therefore, I cannot see how any reasonable person could have a problem with this. When you claim gay marriage should be illegal because of religious morals, then you are depriving someone of their rights, *even * though their union has no bearing whatsoever on your life or rights. That’s like me saying that santa claus has told me that it is morally wrong for Australians to marry, and therefore ok for me to restrict your rights. Neither entity has any more validity that the other, so basing laws on either would be rather ineffective and stupid.
One last note that I feel is the most important of all.
Put a gun to my head, I’m an atheist. Give me a choice, I’m an agnostic.
In regards to the former, I say this because when I compile all the evidence from both sides, a world without a god seems far more likely. I’ve always wondered why people choose one unknown, unprovable entity over another. The evidence for god or any other mythological character is exactly the same. Zero. Maybe you could explain to me why jesus rising from the dead rings true to you, while other similar stories do not?
As for the latter, we all know jackshit. To me, an atheist claiming absolute knowledge is just as laughable as a theist claiming god or jesus to be the truth. Yeah our technology seems pretty fancy and we all think we’re so smart, but when I gaze out into the universe, I have this sinking yet excited feeling that we have more to learn than we’ll ever know.
As always, this is just my opinion and not to be taken as the shining light of truth with no rival or peer.
I understand that everyone has their own opinion. What I am saying is that it is wrong for atheists to in one breath to rail against people legislating religious morality and in the next insist that their brand of morality be legislated under the dubious logic of secularism. If you follow my posts closely I don’t think I have actually advocated enforcing a morality on anyone, not least my own (although you can try and prove me wrong if you want, I sometimes forget what I post). I just reacting against the idea that secularism is actually the fairest for all when it is clearly contradictory to many religious traditions, not just my own.
On further reflection I realise that I really shouldn’t have answered the original question, because it is unfair. The original question could be restated “if you consider killing someone moral, would you kill them?”. If you answer yes, then your a murderer and if you answer no, then you are inconsistent. Kind of like the question “When are you going to stop beating your wife?”
Being willing to kill someone over matters of rights is not something unique to religious people. Have a talk to some gun enthusists about the right to own property and how far they are willing to go to u[hold their rights. The point is that once you decide something is moral then you are bound to do it.
FWIW though since I consider love to be at the heart of ethics then I don’t think it very likely that I would find it moral to kill anyone except in extrodinary circumstances.
That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it. I find attempts to define morality without God intellectually bankrupt and often mired in self-interest.
Unfortunately this argument is entirely circular. You say that morality is upholding rights, but rights are defined by your morality. What you consider to be a right may not be considered as a right by all.
I’m not suggesting that we can prove (in the mathematical sense at least) anything. I agree with you in the end that all worldviews (religion and non-religious ones) rest on premises that cannot be “proven”. Yet I think ultimately you have to decide what the likely nature of the world is, because without some sort of decision you cannot really function in the world.
It is always interesting comparing people’s views of religion and science. I am actually completing a PhD in science (in theoretical chemistry) so I am no scientific slouch. Yet unless you are willing to perform every experiment yourself, science ultimately relies on trust. Furthermore many people quote science as if it is some sort of absolute truth, yet very few people would know how to prove many scientific theories. They just accept that they are true. So for instance if I tell you that molecules are made up of atoms, and that those atoms are in constant vibrational motion, how would you even begin to prove that that is true? Although it is a standard chemical statement of molecules very few people would know how to prove that. In the end most people just trust whatever scientists tell them. Yet when it comes to religion everyone demands airtight proofs before they believe anything. While with science many people are happy just to take someone’s word for it, when it comes to religion people are much more skeptical.
Anyway I think your statement that there is NO proof for different religions is false. Many religions (granted not all) make historical claims that can be tested. So for instance Christianity makes the historical claim that Jesus rose from the dead. If that is true then it is likely that Christianity is true, and if not then it is false. Or the Book of Mormon claims that Israelites came to America pre-Columbus, and that Jesus rose from the dead in America. If that is true then Mormonism is true and if not, then not. I am a Christian because I think the historical claims made by Christianity are true, namely that Jesus did rise from the dead. In fact I know of no better explaination of the events surrounding the early church other than Jesus rose from the dead. In contrast I am not a Mormon, because I don’t think that it is true that ANY Israelites (much less Jesus) made it to America before Columbus.
Just plain false. It is that the state may not impose any particular Godconcept onto its members; that public life does not require adhering to a state religion. God’s relevance to your private life is none of the state’s business. Your right to public display stops where it impsoses upon others or the state’s interest in fostering nationhood aas the group identity (in the case of France). In countries that have less of a tradition of respecting individual rights over the state’s interest (France rel. to the US) the border gets pushed. But that is not atheism pushing, it is nationalism.
Matthew 7:21
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
I understand what you’re saying, but the same principle that applies to rights applies to the Christian concept of morality. Not all Christians agree on what is moral and what isn’t. All of us “see through a glass darkly” and have to make judgement calls. Not all that long ago many Christians thought “seperate but equal” wasn’t racist. Now we’re dealing with another version of bigotry with our attitudes towards gays. Who get’s to decide what a true evangelical Christian is?
On the perception front, folks like Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell to name a couple of beauties, are percieved as representative of Christians, by many non Christians. I shudder at the thought.
Interesting perspective. I put it somewhat differently. The fundamentals are truth and love. Because we see through a glass darkly, we do the best we can with what we percieve to be the truth. We examine our own hearts and minds to see if our actions reflect love or fear. A friend of mine once told me that every choice boils down to one of two things. Love or Power. or Love or Fear. It isn’t always easy to tell which we’re choosing. I agree with the relationship thing. Some things, actions, words, and perceptions seperate us as people, while others work to bring us together. Rather than an Us vs. them mentality we need to cultivate a shared Us.
Whose concept of God should we love? What about those who reject the popular concept of God? Aren’t they just as capable of love?
I think it’s pretty importent that people understand the difference. I was very disappointed when Kerry used the phrase “our* right* to health care” Political cowardice and intellectual dishonesty as far as I’m concerened.
Almost any form of government is fine* if* those who govern are benevolent. Power corrupts and any group having too much power can become corrupted, be they secular or religious, which is why the checks and balances, and seperation of church and state,were put in our form of government
That is a concern. We were discussing that in a thrad about the 1st amendment. IMHO a secular government. especially in the US, has an obligation to defend the freedom of worship of it’s various citizens. That would include wearing a cross in public sphere and the use of religious language in public forums.
Where the rubber meets the road, it doesn’t matter where a presidential candidate got his moral compass, but where his compass is pointing. It might be from a faith in God, or it might be from great philosophical thinkers, or a combination of both. He can speak freely of his faith in campaigns and accept the results of his choice.
We’ve had this discussion on SDMB before. You’ll find that many atheists and agnostics have a deep sense of morality, justice, honor, and right and wrong. Every bit as strong and real as any believer.
As individuals and groups people must take responsibility for their interpretation of what they percieve to be God’s will. Throughout history people have used then"will of God" to justify their crimes and to manipulate others. That’s part of the ongoiong growth and why input from outside sources is nessecary. We can outlaw human sacrifice even if some think that is God’s will. We choose our definition of morality for our own reasons. It may be our perception of God’s will, but that doesn’t make it so. Looking at the history of Christianity we can see changed perceptions and interpretations of God’s will. It would be folly to think current perceptions are at long last the final and correct ones.
Secularism does not just seek to “not impose a Godconcept”, secularism seeks to remove Godconcepts from public life. And it does this because it sees Godconepts as having no value or as being irrelevant. Quite frankly I don’t see how there can be freedom of worship in a country when the state has the right to limit the public expression of people’s faith. If you believe that people do not have a right to freedom of worship, than I can see how secularism may be attractive.
But I would even go so far as to say that secularism is the enemy of democracy.
No wait, hear me out!
One of the key elements of a democracy is that each member of the democracy is given equal say in the running of the community. In the end the reasons why they think the way they do are not really considered, but their ultimate opinion is. So it doesn’t matter why you support or not support something, your vote is counted just like everyone else’s. And because each person’s vote is equal all members of the society, regardless of worldview, are equal.
Secularism however places limits on what is acceptable reasoning for a position. In a secular state you can only hold a public opinion if you do so for areligious reasons. This has the net effect of ignoring those who hold positions for religious reasons in favour of those who hold them for non-religious reasons.
So as an example consider a hypothetical situation where a ban on selling alcohol on Sundays is being considered. Of the population
20% are Christians who oppose the law because Sunday is the Lord’s day, and how dare you sell alcohol on it.
10% are Muslims who oppose the law because Allah forbids the drinking of alcohol on any day
30% are people who support the law because it will stop their employees and coworkers from coming into work on Monday hung-over
40% of people want to drink on Sunday and therefore oppose the law
In a democratic society since the majority (60%) of people support the law then it would pass. It doesn’t matter that half of them support the law for relgious reasons. It wouldn’t matter if half the people supported the law because they thought it would stop aliens from gang-probing them. What matters is that they support the law, and since they are citizens of that society their opinion is counted the same as everyone else’s
However in a secular society, since religion cannot be used as a justification for a law, then a good 30% of the vote would be discounted. And the law would not pass, even though it is only opposed by a minorty. Because then the opinion of the religious people is discounted in this debate, then they in effect become second class citizens. Their opinion is not considered as valid as those who form their opinion in the absence of religion.
I think if we are to be serious about maintaining a state that is fair for all, we should not try to remove religion from public life. We should treat all views equally regardless of the basis for them. We should be allowing all views into the public sphere, not shutting some out at the expense of others. Otherwise all you are doing is enforcing your morality on others.
Part of love is truth. Therefore we should love the God that is actually there (ie: the Triune Father/Son/Holy Spirit). To insist that God is something that he has not, or that he has done something that he has not is unloving.
In terms of others that reject God, I think it is safe to say that those that love God love others more than they would be able to if they did not love God. Yet because some people are just really bad at loving others there are some people that do love others better than those that love God. Hoever God is at work through his Spirit in those that love him to make them into people who are able to love perfectly, a work which the Spirit will complete when Jesus returns.
I don’t doubt this. It takes more strength to be outright ruthless than most people have. And I certainly don’t think that being a Christian makes someone morally perfect. In fact the whole point of being a Christian is that you recognise that you are not morally perfect and therefore in need of God’s forgiveness. However I would say that while many atheists and agnostics do many moral things, the reasons for their actions are not always logical or consistent.
Cite? I haven’t heard any do this. I have heard of theists wishing to impose a theocracy on us (said in a mosque just blocks from my house pre 9/11).
First, the rules that get legislated might match religious morality. Certainly no one objects to rules against murder and theft because a religious person might want to legislate the same thing. And much legislation (or lack of legislation) involves ethics and morality to some extent. What we’re saying is to show us the secular reason to ban some sorts of sex in private (and the Supreme Court couldn’t find any) or to ban gay marriage. Do you think it is correct for 51% of a legistature or people to impose their religious beliefs on the other 49%?
What you’re saying implies a consistent view behind the legislating of this “secular” morality. The only consistent view I see is that each act is backed by sound ethical reasoning, and is not driven by adherence to, or opposition to, any particular religion.
I don’t think it is religion per se but rather the desire for assimilation of new ethnicities. There is a thread on US immigration now running where there is a discussion of this in the US, though in this case it is language and culture, not religion. I’m opposed to the French restrictions, by the way, but I don’t think they are really religiously based.
There is a religious whine in the US that by not doing things my way you are discriminating against me. But clearly we can’t do everything each religion wants. In the example, people spend most of their day not praying - extending that a bit at the beginning of the day can hurt no one. What could hurt would be to ban individual prayer, but that is not done.
The school system my kids just graduated from has a large number of kids from different cultures and religions, and having a prayer from each at the beginning of the day would leave time for little else. The result of this secularism is that everyone gets along.
Not necessarily. You also do what those who hold other religious views would prefer over dealing with the majority religion. Christians here (some, not all) hate any religion in the school but theirs. One elementary class had a section on a Hindu holiday, and there was a tremendous fuss. Chaplains are supported in the US military for all religions, but when they appointed a Wiccan chaplain the fundamentalists objected strongly. Fundamentalists are quite often hypocrites, sorry to say.
And, as I said before, there is not an atheistic moral worldview for secularism to get its morality from.
there is quite a bit of case law in the US on this issue, and often religious freedom trumps law when there is a serious dispute. I believe native American tribes are allowed to use banned hallucinogenic mushrooms in ceremonies. Those with authentic religious beliefs against war are excused from military service. (Though the government does make this hard to prove, rightly in my opinion.) However this stops when the rights of others are violated. The government does not care how strongly you believe the sacrifice of virgins is required to appease the gods …
How do you know God never intended it to be literal? Many parables are labeled as parables, Genesis is not. Certainly it was considered to be true for over 1,000 years. You know and I know that the evidence is against it, but the true creationist believes that any evidence showing that the word of God is false if incorrect by definition.
Just consider if someone came up with an authentic document saying that the body of Jesus was moved from the cave to a common grave a week after the crucifixtion. Would you give up your religion, or would you, on faith, say the note was wrong? I suspect the latter, which is what they are doing. I think it is hard to draw the line between a teeny bit of faith and lots and lots of faith, which is why I’m not into the faith thing.
First, religion gets into the area of science all the time. Second, many religious people do science quite well. When I worked at Bell Labs one of the managers was a nun. She was both truly religious and a good scientist. There are many other examples. However I think scientists tend to be less fundamentalist than other religious people, but just as faithful.
My argument comes from Bertrand Russell. Okay, you say that what God demands is inherently good. And what is moral doesn’t change with time, right? But Christianity, accepting both the Torah and the NT, claims that God has changed what is moral. The treatment of the Sabbath is a good case in point. Some of the prescriptions in the Torah are trivial true, but the Sabbath is very fundamental to Judaism, and is not the same as mixing types of cloth. Jesus did not appear to consider stoning someone for Sabbath violation as being okay - are you more moral than he? Is slavery moral? If being atgainst slavery is more moral than accepting slavery than we must admit that we as a culture are more moral than God.
If there is a “universal” moral code, that does not mean God is bound to it. That would be limiting his power, right? But if he violated it, then a hyothetical person who did not would be more moral than God.
Look, I can accept that God cannot do logically inconsistent things, and that the “God can’t make a stone too big to lift” argument is not valid. But God can easily do morally inconsistent things - not being able to do so means he is not omnipotent. Certainly people can. But if he can, then it is logically absurd to claim that what he does is moral by definition.
I hope I have made the problem clear.
I’m not denying that you believe this, but how do you know. I was raised Jewish, and I never believed that, and I have never seen any good evidence for it. If you intend to legislate morality for me based on Christianity, I’d certainly want more behind it than that you and a lot of other people believe it. You say that our rules are invalidated by Christ, but I checked my files and my ancestors never got the memo. Feel free to give solid evidence that Christianity is correct. Most of the rational believers here give their reason as faith or personal revelations - and most don’t want to force others to play by their rules.
Nonsense. Ethical studies talk all the time about the benefits of being ethical - it’s the old do unto others thing. I’d suspect we’ve had some bit of ethics bred into us, or socially indoctrinated, but like all other traits there is variation, with some people being hyper-ethical and some people having few ethics at all. That’s what laws are for - for those whose ethics are not bred in well. But if no one had ethics we’d have anarchy, and no number of cops would help.
I think the type of ethics people have vary wildly - there are plenty of crooked churchmen, and some who do charitable work on one hand steal on the other. Ethics gives an argument for what people should do, but does not claim that they will actually do it.
So why not have turnstiles? Why not have conductors?
Whoever assumes people will do the right thing? Which society has ever assumed this? We don’t always agree on what the right thing is. Stealing is wrong, but is stealing milk to feed a starving baby from a store during a flood really unethical? How about stealing $100 for glasses to let you see well enough to get a job from Bill Gates, assuming that there is no risk of physical harm involved? The Ten Commandments are very clear - but there are thousands of pages of commentary on what it really means and how to apply it. If God had absolute rules, these wouldn’t be necessary - but the outcome would be ethically abhorrent.
BTW, you should join up. This stuff is addictive, isn’t it.
That reminds me of “One Tin Soldier” by Coven. Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend;
If yo do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
Gandhi once commented that if the church organizations of the Western world actually applied the religion of Jesus, instead of exploiting it for their own gains (cf. the Crusades, the Conquistadors, etc.) we’d be all better off.
–Titus 1:6; Joshua 24:14.
Every group has their lunatic fringe, even atheism.
And here in lies my main objection. The division of reasoning for laws up into “religious” and “non-religious” is a false dichotomy. All ideas of morality stem from some sort of worldview, and therefore you can’t reasonably divide them into religious and non-religious. In insisting that all laws must have some sort of secular or “ethical” (as opposed to “religious”) reasoning results in the effective legislation of those ethical systems, and the inherent devaluing of those on society who hold those religious views. If we are really interested in democracy then we are bound to implement the laws voted on by the majority of the people regardless of why each individual citizen wants that law.
And it is incorrect (and also insulting) to imply that secular reasoning is “logical” and that religious reasoning is not. Both can be inherently logical. The difference is that different worldviews start with different premises on which to derive their views. So for instance if it is true that God will smite any nation that has people working on the Sabbath in it, then it is inherently logical to ban working on the Sabbath. You can try and argue that the premise is wrong, but you can’t really fault the logic.
There is really very little difference between a secular state and a theocratic state. In a theocratic state all laws must have some basis in the theistic worldview of the state. In a secular state all law must have some basis is the atheistic worldview of the state. The only real difference in the two is the worldview that is being legislated.
So your idea of pleasing everyone is to let no-one do what they want. Interesting. But anyway this is not even true. If you look at what in their ideal world all different groups would advocate there (at least) one group that would advocate having no prayer, the atheist group. So by insisting that there be no prayer you are effectively giving them what they would want, and denying everyone else what they would want.
And besides while you claim that in the secular view everyone “gets along”, that is because they have no choice. It is easy to claim that everyone “gets along” when you have an enforced state morality. In a theocratic state everyone would get along just the same because there is no room for dissent.
Well my position is that it is inhenerently unfair to legislate on an a priori basis any one worldview over any others.
You say this, yet your own posts deny it. You talk about gay marraige for instance, and the right for gay people to marry. On what basis do you claim that? Isn’t that a moral decision (ie: that prohibiting gay people from marrying is immoral). And if you decide this issue of morality without reference to God then you have just created an atheistic moral worldview.
I don’t think we know for certain what the original readers of the creation account in Genesis thought about its literalness. But I would suggest that the origina lreaders neither saw it as literal or as non-literal. I am saying that the question of “is this really the way that the world was created” is not really a question that the ancients would have asked.
Nevertheless there are several reasons internal to the Genesis creation account to suggust that they are not intended to be literal. Not least of which is that Genesis 1 is written in a highly poetic fashion, and not in the fashion of a literal account at al, even by biblical standards of literal accounts.
This is just another one of those unfair “When are you going to stop beating your wife?” type questions. I could just as easily ask you if you were convinced that Jesus really rose from the dead, would you become a Christian? If you say no, then I accuse you of being inconsistent, if you say yes, then I have just proved that you would have faith.
And I don’t really have much respect for Bertrand Russell when it comes to religious debate.
I understand your objection, but the problem with it is that you believe that you are talking of a two entity system, really what you describe is a three entity system. Your argument for humanity being more moral than God relies on the existence of
Humanity
God
A universal moral code whose existence does not depend on God.
The problem with this argument is that all moral codes must be tied to some sort of reality in the world on which they exist.
Without the existence of God there is no reason to suggest that there is any universal moral code. Several atheistic philosophers like Nietzsche were quite clear on this point, and in so far as that goes I agree with them. However it is also true to say that without some sort of “super-God” who exists above the God whose morality we are discussing there is no reason to suggest that there is some sort of universal morality that God is bound by. If there is any form of universal morality the nature of that reality is defined by God himself.
Therefore since any universal morality is defined by God himself it is impossible to call God immoral. Gid is by definition moral because morality is defined by him. And when you consider that God is the creator of the world in which we live, the assertion that God is immoral becomes even more absurd. If God is a creator then we have no independant existance apart from God. How then can we claim that God is immoral, if we are merely the creation of that “immoral” God? Why would God create something that would condemn him?
I’m not advocating the legislation of Christianity. I am rejecting the legislation of atheism through the logic of secularism and advocating democracy.
In terms of why Christianity is true, let me ask you do you consider the gospels (ie: Matt, Mark, Luke, John) to be historical account of the life of Jesus? Not the word of God, just mostly accurate in the events they portray?
The problem is though being ethical in many instances just makes you an easy target for those who are unethical. I realsie that being completely ruthless takes more strength of will than most people have. However I see no evidence inherent in any secular ethical systems that I will be better off if I act in an inherently ethical way. Most ethical systems habve no real answer for the question “but if I can get away with it, why shouldn’t I?”, especially if the ethical system is predicated on the self.
Here in Melbourne they brought in an automated ticketing system. They do have turnstyles, but without the revenue protection officers sitting at them people would just jump over them. And turnstyles don’t work in trams.
They did have conductors on the trams before the new ticketing system came in, but part of the reason for the automated ticketing was to get rid of the conductors whose salaries were apparently costing too much. Of course now they either pay the salaries of the revenue protection officers or just put up with fare evasion. A huge improvment over having conductors :rolleyes:
You are right, people don’t always do the right thing. Yet that doesn’t stop people devising ethical systems that assume that people do. So take the “enlightened self interest” idea put forward by Der Trihs earlier on. This only really works if everyone follows the rules.
But anyway the difficulty of applying rigid laws to all situations is one of the reasons that I think that love, not law, is at the heart of morality. You can follow a law and still be immoral. If you truly love others though, then I don’t think you can be immoral.
and they are just untrue statements. Secular is not against religion or God or Godconcepts or any particular religion. It is neutral on the subject. But God is not the basis for the common law. The government may not impose religion on its members.
Let us return to the premise of this thread for a second. Religions are worldviews and various worldviews have competed against each other, sometimes dominating each other, sometimes coexisting. Religions as a worldviews served each of three human/societal needs.
The need to predict and control the natural world. I know that you discount this aspect of religion, so I’ll not discuss it further, but look to many threads and history of religious oraganization and individuals feeling threatened by scientific expalnations to see how much science has been percieved as threatening religion by offfering a different worldview of how the world works.
The value basis for laws. Here secularism says that anyone can have whatever religious value basis they want and the state must stay out of their face about it, unless it conflicts with others’ rights. Then the competing values of individual right to belief and anothers rights or the states interests must be balalnced in a case by case basis. In the United States at least, a high value is place on the individual’s rights. But not without limits. So observe your dietary laws. Pray in public. Try to convert others. Witness away. But the state cannot force others to behave in the same ways solely on the basis of religion. And if your religion includes things like sacrificing children, then the state’s interest in protecting its members trumps the religious freedom imperative. As an individual you can shout creationism from the mountaintops and large radio antennae, but as the State, you keep a particular religious belief out of the publically funded schools.
Group identification. Religion provides this quite well. So does nationhood. People can have more han one identity but some groups are more insecure than others. In France you see what they call secularism being used to impose a French identity above all others, including a religious identity. The issues of public display in France are not anti-God, they are limiting any display that sets up a group as other than French first. A very different version of secularism than the US or the global community versions, and really not secularism at all. It is nationalism gussied up. Again this is not a competition for what should be the value basis, it is competition for how to define group membership. A very different need that religion has historically fulfilled as well.
Now why secularism for the common area of government and international affairs? Why not Christianity or Islam or Hinduism? Secularism wins in the competition because it allows the most members in. Yup, it is based on axioms as much as any religion is. Nope, I have no way of proving that they are closer to some objective morality, than any religion does. But you can be Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, Lutheran, Jewish, Sikh, atheist, or worship the goat god and have exist in a secular society with full rights of membership. This doesn’t make it bettter, but it does make it win as the dominant worldview for the value basis for law in a pluralisitic world that consists of multiple God concepts. If one tried to say that the basis was Islam or was Christianity, then a large part of the world wouldn’t participate. A worldview that says you can be Christian or Islam or whatever and be in the same tent working together can be the only worldview that can build the big tent. It may seem like a tautology but it is that simple. It becomes the common ground for a community of communities because none other can.
Legistation requires a values basis. Rules are based on what a society has acepted is fair and just. What are the rights of it members and what is the obligation of the society. Laws are based on balancing the different values off of each other. Those values derive from a worldview. So pick one to use for a pluralistic socity. The only one that allows for a pluralistic society is the secularist worldview for governance.
I think your problem is that you assume a single ethics based worldview. Ethics is a way of reasoning about moral issues. One could make an ethical argument for or against vegetarianism, say. Holding a view does not devalue a different one. Not wanting to be governed by someone else’s religious law does not devalue that religion either. And the way the US works is that not all majority passed laws are permitted - not if they violate individual rights in the Bill of Rights.
Say vegetarianism is the issue. A Hindu person might be for a law banning the eating of meat, seeing it as a moral evil. A Jewish person would be against this ban, since meat eating is a part of certain rituals, and since Judaism definitely does not directly support vegetarianism. Which to go with? Two ethicists might argue opposite sides based on good land use and cruelty, etc.
Now the Hindu gets to argue the vegetarian side so long as he does it using the principles of the ethicist. His argument that meat eating should be banned based on a certain holy book would not be considered valid. (I know I am misrepresenting religions here - it is a placeholder for any religion with this sort of view.) Ditto the Jewish argument. Whether the ban goes into effect should depend on the majority view of the secular arguments - though we can’t prevent someone from being convinced one way or another based on a religious background, nor should we.
The kicker in the US is that such a ban would probably be ruled unconstitutional, which is right, since so long as there is a dispute you should not diminish the rights of those who want to eat meat, since you are not forcing vegetarians to do so. Secular laws do not force religious people to be secular, they permit non-religious people to be not religious, and proponents of religion X not to have to follow the precepts of religion Y.
Do you really think that not legislating vegetarianism devalues the worldview of the vegetarian Hindu? I agree that an evangelical Hindu, who thinks everyone should believe as he does, might think so.
Where did I mention logic? You are exactly right - it is the premises that are at issue. If the theists could demonstrate the existence of the God they claim gives the laws, it would be a different story. Given that we have so many theologies, we must legislate without reference to any, which is not to say that the legislators are claiming that no God exists. John Kerry put this very well in a debate. He said that as a Catholic he was personally opposed to abortion, but as a representative of all the United States he could not impose his personal religious views on those who did not hold them. He clearly did not feel that he had ethical reasons to oppose abortion, just religious ones. Now that is a model of how a legislator should act.
That’s nonsense. Moslems are free to worship in the secular US, and free to proselytize, atheists (and even Christians) are not free to do so in Saudi Arabia. A secular state is not an atheistic state. An atheist state might say that all religions are wrong - a secular one says that we cannot determine which religion, if any, is right, and so will act not considering them. An atheist state would tax churches, a secular state taxes none, since taxation could be used to favor one or the other. A theocratic state would either support one particular church, and/or ban all the others.
I’m surprised that you are making such an obviously incorrect statement.
No - we’re just forbidding prayer led by a representative of the government, which favors one religion over the others. Individual prayer in schools is specifically protected.
WTF is this enforced state morality of which you speak? Is allowing someone to do something of which you don’t approve (while not forcing you to do it) state morality? Is allowing, for instance, women going around uncovered enforcing state morality?
And executing dissenters does not mean everyone gets along. Enough of my ancestors got killed for being annoyingly non-Christian for me to be a bit sensitive about this.
It is not an atheistic position, totally, since several religions accept gay marriage. I’m a bit of a social libertarian. Unless someone can show me a social harm that comes from gay marriage, I see no reason to oppose it. My marriage sure wouldn’t be affected. I know several very stable gay couples, and I see no reason in the world they shouldn’t be allowed to marry if they want to. I’m not asking churches who oppose it to be forced to marry gay couples - it is their right to refrain. But I don’t see why one segment of society’s purely religious belief be allowed to restrain the freedom of people who don’t buy into it, no more than we should ban the sale of bacon because my Kosher grandmother would never eat it.
If you think there is a non-religious reason to ban gay marriage I’ll start another thread. The last person who tried, IIRC, quickly decided that he was wrong, and changed his mind, which was quite marvelous and rare.
You don’t have to convince me. I understand that in Australia you don’t quite have the concentration of loons that we have here. Count your blessings.
I think you misunderstand. I suspect you would find several very good reasons to doubt the relevance of that document. So would I. Now, if God showed up and did some god-like things, I would probably start believing, but it would have to be something pretty clear.
A universal moral code does not have to be created by god, any more than numbers have to be. Perhaps god has the perfect ethical sense and the perfect access to this code, and so knows the “moral” answer to any dilemma. Being god he is not forced to act on this, but does know it. This violates neither omnipotence or omniscience. It does violate omnibenevolence (if you consider the code the definition of what omnibenevolence is) but you might not require that to be an attribute of god.
I will post a proof of this problem when I get home tonight. Not enough time now.
The legislation of atheism would be just as unconstitutional as the legislation of Christianity. A teacher who taught there was no god would be just as wrong as one who taught there is a job. The right answer to a student asking a question is that this is something the governmenment does not take a position on. If this is atheism to you we need to discuss definitions. It is secularism.
Not at all. They were written long after the fact by non eyewitnesses, they are mutually contradictory in places, they get certain procedures wrong, and they are unconfirmed by any primary non-Biblical source. But that’s what I thought when I still believed in God. And I got enough Jewish theology from five years in Hebrew School to utterly unaccepting of the idea that we cannot talk to god directly. Don’t get me started. I understand how Christians feel, since deep down inside I want the Exodus story to be true. I grew up with it.
I don’t have time to post something more detailed, but this quote demonstrates my main objection. You say that there are some arguments that are acceptable and some that are not acceptable for law in a secular society. Who died and made you God, able to decide what is acceptable and what isn’t. How do you decide what an “acceptable” argument is? If it is by proof and logic then we have no mathematical proof that God does exist, yet we have no evidence that he doesn’t either. Therefore logically all views regardless of whether they are based on the existence of God or not should be accepted. How then is deeming some views unacceptable as the basis of law not enforcing a particular morality on the people, and devaluing the people within society who hold those views.
You claim that secularism is the “fairest” of all systems. What if the majority of people in a society fundamentally desiagree with secularism. Is it still OK to impose a secular state on them, even though the majority of people don’t want it. What if only 40% want a secular state? What if 30%? What if only 10 people want it? What if no-one wants a secular state, but all are in agreement that they want some form of theocracy? Is it still the “most fair” thing to impose a secular state on people who clearly don’t want it.
I think the reason that you feel that secularism is the fairest is that you yourself agree with the tenets of secularism and cannot see that fact that not everyone else does. Whatever system you agree with is obviously going to be the fairest one to you. The way in which you feel about theocratic states many feel the same about secularism. Why is secularism always the fairest in spite of the wishes of the people, and theocracy, which many people support, is always wrong? Is it just a popularity contest and if more people supported a theocratic state, would that become the best option?
They’re just wrong is all. The only usefull thing I ever heard Rush Limbaugh say was when he quoted someone else. They were speaking of medical care as a “right” It’s simple concise and correct. “A right is something that doesn’t cost anyone else anything”
