America's Most Distrusted Minority
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nbcrusader
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melon said:
Actually, you can't have freedom from religion beyond the right to exercise one's own religion.
nbcrusader said:
But having someone else's religion as a basis for law certainly goes against the idea of freedom of religion, particularly if that religious basis runs contrary to science and/or logic.
Again, I doubt atheists object to the private exercise of religion as much as public applications of religion shoved down their throat. Including phrases like "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, for instance, just seem like asinine provocation after a while.
Melon
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nbcrusader
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melon said:
Religious influence in laws has always existed and will continue to exist provided it doesn't rise to the level of establishment of government religion.
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
BorderGirl said:
Yes, they did not ADVOCATE freedom from religion--they were not saying religion is a bad thing and religious people shouldn't be involved in the government. But nowhere--NOWWHERE--in the Constitution does it suggest that religous people SHOULD be running the government or religious people are better suited to run the government, or that the United States is a nation created by Christians, for Christians, and to be run by Christians.
The Bill of Rights does NOT say that we are entitled to any religion we choose as long as we choose some religion for all citizens are expected to be religious.
What IS reflected in the Constitution is that religion (including Christianity) is a private matter and the government has no business promoting or discouraging it. The founders had the seen damage of state churches and they didn't want to see that happen in America. To me it is very clear that they wanted to create a secular government (though not necessarily a secular nation--to try to create a NATION that was specifically secular or religious would have gone against the very principles they were promoting). And as a Christian, I do not want any other kind of government.
nbcrusader
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maycocksean said:
There is no express provision that an athiest, secular humanist, hindu, muslim, jew, etc. SHOULD be running the government or are better suited to running the government.
So far, it has been a product of the free choice of the electorate.
nbcrusader
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maycocksean said:
There is a large gap between the establishment of a state religion and the requirement of a pure secular government.
verte76
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nbcrusader said:
Yes, but the only way to provide true freedom of religion is to have a secular state. Otherwise someone is going to find themselves having to follow someone else's religion. That's what they did in Turkey to stop forcing people who didn't want to practice Islam the right not to.
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nbcrusader
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verte76 said:
I'm sorry, are people lacking in religious freedom here? Unlike many other countries, we have a free market place of religious ideas and practices. People practice and preach without fear of government retribution. Try sharing your beliefs on a corner in Cairo if you want to understand lack of religious freedom.
So, the idea that the only way for free religion is a secular society is not quite true.
Besides, we have a secular society, but we also have laws that gain support from religious groups. However, none of those laws could be passed without the support of a non-religious segment of society.
verte76
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nbcrusader said:
Cairo.........no thanks. We have freedom of religion here because we have a secular society. But you've got a point, religious people support freedom of religion because they want to be free to practice their religion.
A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
They only support it as far as it allows them to gain, once it involves them being knocked they try to compromise it.
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Irvine511
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A_Wanderer said:
nbcrusader
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A_Wanderer said:
That sounds like a universal maxim.
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Irvine511
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nbcrusader said:
yes, because we don't have a religious litmus test -- at least on paper -- in a SECULAR government, which we do have, and even though it is set in stone, there are those who seek to chip away at it, each and every day, and it requires the vigilance *especially* of those who are not religious to keep that boundary in place.
your point about "the people" making their choices -- and instilling a de facto litmus test guaranteeing that all presidents have been, and will continue to be, Christian and white and male (and certainly heterosexual) -- actually speaks to exactly why the founding fathers were so insistent upon the freedom of the state from religious influence in the structure and operation of the government.
the constitution was written in a period when the country was beseiged by fundamentalist religious revivals. our Founding Fathers, in their detached and most likely "elitist" Deism, built in various checks on the power of direct democracy: they limited who could vote, assemblies elected Senators, and we now know a great deal about the Electoral College.
in short, they didn't want the fundies making the important decisions. these days, the democratic process has become much more inclusive, and the consequence of this is that the group of people whose religious enthusiasm the Founders once sought to exclude are now moving to the front and center of the political process.
welcome to democracy in a predominantly Christian land with a strong tradition of evangelicalism. we are at the future that the Founders hoped to avoid.
thus, we must seek to prevent the persecution of some of the people by most of the people, since ultimatley, it is ALL of the people who will benefit
nbcrusader
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The whole "vigilence" argument is nonsense. It is more a matter of political decisions with which you disagree and not a matter of the goverment turning into a theocracy.
The statement "we are the future that the Founders hoped to avoid" is another example of a revisionist look at history to criticize where we are today. Rather than being disappointed with what has happened in this country, I would think the Founders would be surprised (and approve) that we've made it this long.
The statement "we are the future that the Founders hoped to avoid" is another example of a revisionist look at history to criticize where we are today. Rather than being disappointed with what has happened in this country, I would think the Founders would be surprised (and approve) that we've made it this long.
nbcrusader said:
You mean "revisionism" like claiming that the U.S. was founded on Judeo-Christian values?
Just because that popular view is 150 years old, it doesn't make it any less a product of 19th century romanticism.
Melon
nbcrusader
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I got to hand it to you - you just keep on trying!
nbcrusader
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melon said:
No arguments there. The selective use of facts is more the issue.
nathan1977
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melon said:
I'm sorry, how old is the United States again? Just shy over 200 years? Your interpretation sounds a little revisionist to me, given the timeline you laid out for yourself.
As far as targeting the United States as the most religiously aggressive nation on earth...you have been to the Middle East, right, Irvine?
And no one has yet pointed out how a country where 80+% of the population is Christian, and which holds to a democratic government, is discriminatory, when in fact it seems merely representative of its electorate.
A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
Yes it applies to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Budhists - Atheists comitted the most crimes against humanity in the 20th Century but I would argue that it was from a set of inherently totalitarian and plain anti-freedom ideologies (Nazism and Communism). Guaranteed and protected freedoms are the only safeguard against this - keeping those boundaries clearly defined (keeping religion seperated from state) and excercising those rights (practicing your faith, criticising a faith or both) ensures that the marketplace of ideas cannot be dominated.nbcrusader said:
People should have the freedom to practice their beliefs as long as they do not violate other peoples rights - people do not have a right to not be offended so beliefs that are bigoted and hateful are free to be professed by believers and savagely mocked by others, that is the price of free speech and free expression.
Heres a thought that I have two minds about government and by extension democracy cannot be allowed to compromise liberties.
I question the depth of faith of people who will react in anger if any part of their beliefs are affronted or challenged - it's fun to make that mask slip.
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A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
The matter of respect is important, offering respect to beliefs that are quite simply wrong is dishonest. Offering it to beliefs that would compromise your rights is stupid.
nathan1977 said:
The timeline is correct. The second "Great Awakening" (c. 1820s-1830s) is the evangelical movement that created the legend of America's Founding Fathers being devout Christians (along with the legend of George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree). Prior to that, America was cool to religion.
Scholars have noted that America goes through 80 year cycles of religiosity and apathy. The first Great Awakening occurred in the 1730s and 1740s, with the period of apathy occurring from the 1770s. America was disgusted with religion, due to the state religion, and our Founding Fathers were agnostics, unitarians, and deists. They would not be "saved" by evangelical standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Awakening
It's important to note that some scholars accept the 1960s and 1970s as the fourth Great Awakening, meaning that present evangelicals are sowing the seeds of apathy due to appear somewhere between 2010 and 2020.
Melon
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
nbcrusader said:
Which is as it should be. I don't buy into the idea the Christian fundamentalists have "taken over the country" or are on the verge of doing so. I also don't buy the idea that the "secular humanists" have taken over the country. I do think that perhaps entertainment has taken over our country, that politics for the electorate has become a "reality TV show" and that the electorate by and large is making it's decisions (when it bothers to participate at all) based on "entertainment politics." Watching Hannity and Colmes debate liberals at an arena isn't quite the Lincoln/Douglas Debates.
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
verte76 said:
It's important to point out that "secular" does not equal "anti-religious." Religious people engage in secular activities all the time. Basketball games are secular events. Going to the movies. Eating (beyond communion that is). Many of our jobs are "secular" in nature. Granted you can bring your religious values to bear on all those activities but they are still essentially "secular." They aren't anti or pro-religious, they just are. And that's the way government in a democracy should be.
As a Christian, I believe that in heaven we will not live in a democracy and we will not have a secular government. It will be a theocratic monarchy, and I'm okay with that as long as it's God who's at the head of it. As far as here on this earth, in this life, I believe a secular democracy is the best form of government. I don't trust people who are trying to bring Christ's kingdom--which he insisted was NOT of this world--into the governement. Every time this has been attempted it has had horrifying results.
Just a side note on the subject of Turkey. They've still got quite a ways to go in terms of true religious freedom. Christian missionaries are still banned there. I agree with nbcrusader that there are many--actually, MOST--countries who have much,much less religious freedom than we do.
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Irvine511
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nbcrusader said:
[q]"The price of democracy is eternal vigilance" -- Thomas Jefferson [/q]
but don't worry -- i'm looking out for your best interests. so you can continue to practice your religion as passionately and as robustly as possible, i'm going to continue to sound the THEOCRACY WATCH alarm whenever and wherever the wall between the separation of church and state might be chipped away, and to shine a bright spotlight on the Christianzing of America in every dark corner. it is simply undeniable that the rise of the Republican Party to electoral hegemony has been advanced by the politicization of culturally alienated traditionalist Christians, specifically the anti-liberal evangelical Protestants.
i wonder what their vigilance does to upset you so much -- is the removal of a nativity scene from a public building really that much of an affront of your freedom to practice religion however you see fit? isn't there ample piety in America?
it seems to me that the social, political, scientific, and economic dynamism of modern life requires that traditionalist believers make a choice. you can either adapt to modernity by embracing at least some degree of liberalization, or you can battle modernity in the name of theological purity.
one day, the religous will thank the secularists. after all, it is only liberal democracy exasperates traditional religion and denies any one faith the power to organize the whole of social life as democracy undermines absolutism in all its forms. important questions of public policy will continue to be determined by the systematic skepticisim of the scientific method.
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Irvine511
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nathan1977 said:
i have been to North Africa, and i would still say that the United States is the most aggressively religious first world nation, especially among nations with the ability to blow up the world several times over.
nbcrusader
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A_Wanderer said:
Very well said.
nbcrusader
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melon said:
Cool to religion? Towns throught the original colonies were centered around their local church. People came to this country for the free exercise of their religion - which more often than not was Christianity.
nbcrusader
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Irvine511 said:
The trumpet call of "theocracy watch" may give you a degree of comfort when the political process does not proceed as you desire. It certainly is alot easier to claim attack by a group (through the false claim of theocracy) instead of engaging in the discussion of public policy.
Questioning your "vigilence" is not a matter of being upset, but rather a matter of challenging what I consider a false premise.
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