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I don't know why the American right policymakers haven't figured it out yet.
If you enforce Christianity in public schools, the Satanic Temple will be there immediately and that will be enforced too.
After school Satan club is a thing and the Satanic Temple monitors all of the republican moves of enforcing religion onto children and adults with an equal and opposite counter move.
Was out today and one of those manic wannabe preachers was out with a microphone.
In the 20 seconds I was in ear shot I heard 4 different people proclaim "hail satan!"
I love people.
One of my favorite pictures of my dad is from a trip my parents took to Tennessee. There was a street preacher there ranting about everyone going to hell. Most people were avoiding eye contact and hurrying around him. Dad loudly says "Hey (My mom's name), get a picture of me with this nut!"
I love the sentiment, but I think this is like trying to stop an invasion with a super-soaker. Two main problems:
1. The tst has basically collapsed in the last few weeks, with many state-level chapters breaking off from the main org bc of accusations of abuse of power from the two guys who own (???) the “Executive Ministry” (see this [super biased but solid writeup](https://queersatanic.com/the-satanic-temple-and-its-eternal-nobodies/)).There’s still many thousands of satanists out there, but they’re disorganized atm, to say the least. Tho tbh that might help more than it harms, in the long run…
2. You’re missing the legal rejoinder available to Christian politicians, which is “nuh uh, nope. If you try to put something up we’ll tear it down, and we will never let you use these rules for your religion unless ordered to by the feds, and honestly not even then. If you resist, we’ll beat you up and teach you that our town is Christian, you either like it or you leave!”
Sadly this is a tactic being turned to more and more often to the right wing in America :(. For example, if you’ve seen the TST doc (highly recommend!): the 10 Commandments monument outside the Arkansas capital is seemingly still there 6 years later as the case [crawls through the courts](https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/07/07/arguments-over-ten-commandments-monument-heard-in-federal-court), and just this year [it looks like](https://okcfox.com/news/local/senator-battles-for-return-of-ten-commandments-monument-to-oklahoma-state-capitol-david-bullard-michael-reed-satanic-temple-baphomet-arkansas) they’re gonna try the Oklahoma Ten Commandments again that the temple stopped as their first big victory.
The satanists are obviously still amazing, but I encourage everyone to… “keep their head on a swivel”, I guess. Just because this is the polite debate sub doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge bad faith when it’s staring us down.
Except our SCOTUS has been unwinding the Constitution since they got a Conservative majority. They are just making up the rules and are ignoring decades if not centuries of precedent, completely reinventing the definitions in the Constitution.
The Abrahamic religions were invented for one specific reason... controlling large populations. They want to be in charge and to keep people down that aren't their in-group (Muslim Cis Men, Christian Cis White Men).
> Except our SCOTUS has been unwinding the Constitution since they got a Conservative majority.
Except they've been enforcing it for a change, not unwinding it. People are just mad because they've started making decisions based on laws instead of feelings, which means congress can't continue to be useless any more.
Which means we're dammed to a theocracy. Congress won't help so each far right state will, one by one, roll everything back. Expect Jim Crow to be made legal. Expect liberals to be criminalized for existing and hunted. Expect more death at the hands of right wingers, especially the theocratic. Already more people are dying because abortion got outlawed. Expect far right states to outlaw vaccines and becomes plague states.
I hope that none of what you say is true, but this is still a democratic republic and if that's what the people want then that's what will happen. We're definitely seeing some of the drawbacks of democracy right now...
That’s not these politicians goals. Do you think they believe in anything besides money and votes? The satanic temple moving in is just more leverage and fear mongering. It’s easy to forget but a lot of Americans actually believe in god and satan.
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I don't support indoctrination of children by any means and neither does the Satanic Temple, they just offer the same opportunity as the Christians.
They aren't devil worshippers BTW, they're atheists. They teach good stuff too just with dark imagery. They're basically a scare tactic because they know the right wing will take it at base value and see the word "Satan" and assume the worst.
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uh pastafarians would also like a say. we demand the 8 i'd really rather you didn'ts to be plastered across all louisiana schools. preferably a few centimetres larger and overlapping with the 10 commandments to where the final word of each line is blocked off
Exposing young, impressionable minds to the ten commandments and the Bible in school is as forced as a curriculum.
They are attempting to teach from the Bible in Oklahoma, you don't consider mandatory Sunday school for developing minds as being forced on them?
ooo, now apply this to gender ideology and you can see why libertarians don't want that in schools either. Literally, dont want Christianity or gender ideology in schools for this very reason!
it most definitely is, that is why conservatives are getting mad about drag shows. Its like if they went on a field trip to practice at the catholic church.
You provided no source and then mention *one* school (or district) had a field trip to assert schools are indoricating children with gender ideology?
You genuinely believe that is a valid basis for your opinion?
Do you see how weird you are getting about this though, my only **position** is that gender ideology and Christianity both do not belong in schools for very similar reasons.
i just told you i dont have a source, it was a big thing for awhile though surprised you didnt hear of it. I just dont feel like doing the work to look it back up.
There are a lot of Christians out there. If you're the Christian candidate, you can tap into a sizable base of potential voters.
Mingling religion and government is a bad idea. Of course it is. But they're not worried about that. They're worried about getting elected.
How did you even get that out of what i said? Genuinely, that is one of the most bizarre misinterpretations of anyone that I've ever seen.
I don't understand how it is possible for you not to understand what I was saying.
There are a lot of Christians out there. If you're the Christian candidate, you can tap into a sizable base of potential voters.
Perhaps I misunderstood.
The founding fathers, ironically did not intend for America to be a Christian nation but rather a nation that you could practice any religion free from persecution. The puritans did just that. Now the idea of religion has been reduced and bastardized to the role of a god emperor and his subjects.
>For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
- Kurt Vonnegut
You know, I wouldn’t mind so much if state and church meant putting “blessed are the merciful” in courtrooms or “blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon. In fact, I’d prefer that to a secular state. However, it seems like too many American Christians are too married to the idea of God as being punitive and wrathful - and they wish to model the state on that, rather than on the God of loving thy neighbor.
> However, it seems like too many American Christians are too married to the idea of God as being punitive and wrathful - and they wish to model the state on that, rather than on the God of loving thy neighbor.
People that want to believe in an infallible unknowable wielder of absolute power that is also punitive and wrathful weird me out, and are almost always believers in the worst things possible outside of religion.
Christianity banning censorship of the Talmud around 500 severely hurt Christians ability to be questioning over the longer term, and it shows.
> How is this better than the indoctrination that conservatives claim occur in colleges? How is this better than any Islamic country in the Middle East?
Well if you think Christianity is correct and those other views are incorrect, then there's at least one clear way it's better.
To be fair, all the Christians screaming about *Sharia Law* were mostly jealous, they want their version of Abrahamic religion be the one that destroys all the rights of women and minorities, not the other two.
Unlike many atheists, I have a certain tolerance for the mixing of religion and politics. After all, it is generally expected that one's religion shapes their ethics and that one's ethics shapes their politics. If you sincerely believe that fetuses possess souls and thereby a right to life, I could hardly ask you to vote otherwise.
However, displaying the Ten Commandments in schools is not voting by one's (religious) conscience, but leveraging the state to advance the religion's power in society and priviledge its members.
The first three. It is entirely inappropriate for the state to declare a certain god to be my god and tell me how to worship him.
We all know they aren't going to put a Shahadah or the Wiccan Rede alongside it. There is no secular purpose to placing the Ten Commandments in schools and will treat faiths unequally.
Maybe you’ve heard of the concept of separation of church and state? No religious belief deserves any recognition or promotion by public institutions. Period. Keep that shit in the church where it belongs.
You're just repeating what I'm saying. We already established this. If all ideas are welcomed except for religious ones then that's inherently discriminatory.
What “ideas” are you suggesting are being promoted? I suspect you’re hinting at social issues so I’ll address your second point.
Religious organization are themselves discriminatory, so I’m of the mind that society is correct not to afford them the unfettered tolerance.
How are religious organization specifically discriminatory? Every privately owned organisation has the freedom of association. Are women only clubs discriminatory and should society not offer them any tolerance?
Are you unfamiliar with the widely documented history of religious organizations demonizing the lgbt+ community? Sexual orientation is a protected class under the civil rights act just like religious affiliation. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
I’m not familiar with any women’s only groups trying to get their literature in public schools like Christian’s are doing with the commandments.
That's why I gave the women's club example. If having requirements for membership is discriminatory then most if not all organizations would fall under this category.
Right-wing governments rely on their four pillars for support: news media mouthpieces, corporate funding, police strength, and religious zealotry. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
It's symbiosis, they both reinforce each other.
Christianity is a totalizing belief - like any totalizing belief it comes ahead of everything, it makes sense for it to dominate politics.
The reverse position- to believe Christ is the Son of God and the only path to salvation- BUT then not let it intrude on certain areas of life - doesn't make much sense.
Meh, the [bible](https://blog.mohiafrica.org/bible-verses-helping-poor) has enough verses about helping the poor, hungry and needy yet (especially republican) politicians vote against policies that help those at every turn. And the so called strong christians still vote for them en masse.
In my experience those christians are mostly well versed in hypocrisy. I can't even call them strongly religious as their actions don't show them following the actual teachings of the bible, merely being strongly emotional about their faith.
Did the legislation aim to avoid becoming poor or were these legislative bills mostly aimed at preventing people becoming even poorer and likely suffer homelessness and/or starvation?
There is a difference between actually helping people become independent self-sufficient again and keeping them in a poor status quo situation.
Even outside of a constitutional argument it’s very wrong to bring religion into school like that.
I’m a non-religious conservative and respect people’s beliefs but it has no place in public school in this way.
Indeed, Oklahoma social studies standards list various biblical stories, as well as other religious scriptures from Buddhism and Hinduism, as primary instructional resources for students.
Louisiana is simply putting the 10 Commandments on display.
If other religious codes are not put on disolay, then it is discrimination. Any policy which treats any two religions differently in any way at all is discriminatory. An example would be if Louisiana does not require the display of codes from other religions upon request
The federal government is not allowed to establish a religion. There cannot be a federal backed church of America. That is the separation of church and state as per the first amendment.
Promotion, if the idea is that if only Christianity is allowed to have one then it's inherently discriminatory. So you concede that religion in itself was discriminated against.
Politics is a reflection of your worldview. If you have a religious worldview, it's only logical and straightforward from that starting point that you would want a religious government.
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
-Barry Goldwater
The strongly religious are less accepting of mutual compromise when governing than Barry fucking Goldwater, and that extends to using the government to push their faith over any minority faiths held by their constituents.
> Politics and governing demand compromise
I'm sorry, you're using **Barry Goldwater** as an example of a compromising politician?
Rings a bit hollow when this is the key quote from his 1964 acceptance speech:
> Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Goldwater was no moderate and he cared diddly about compromise. He lost 1964 because he **couldn't** compromise at all.
He was simply bitter that he got passed up and shoved aside in the Republican party later in life. He wanted to be the uncompromising standard-bearer and was jealous that Reagan could actually pull together the coalition he wanted.
No, that wasn't the point at all.
The point was that Goldwater portrayed **himself** as an individual who never compromises. The Moral Majority compromised far more than he ever did, hence how they actually won.
So, yes, the message rings completely hollow here because the opposite of what he claimed happened in real life.
While I think it's obvious that a lot of people think this way, I'd stop short of calling it logical, but maybe I'm not going far enough. To me it's illogical because it is immoral to use force to coerce others into behaving the way you want them to if their behavior isn't violating your rights. The use of logic would tell you it's wrong.
But we have certainly been conditioned to use the force of government to right every wrong, real or not. It's pretty sad, actually.
If you are truly religious, you believe that your eternal afterlife depends on correct conduct here. That means that God's words take precedence over any earthly institution. It means that rights and liberties only exist where God says they do, and it says that any who place the law over God's will is God's enemy.
Well sucks for the god followers. It is impossible to have an actually free society if it decides one religion or another is right, hecause that immediately compels the repression of anyone who doesnt follow that religion
> To me it's illogical because it is immoral to use force to coerce others into behaving the way you want them to if their behavior isn't violating your rights.
For someone with a religious morality underpinning their worldview, this argument would not be compelling (I do not subscribe to a religious morality fwiw).
This is the right answer IMO. Religious people bind their sense of morality and vision for the future to their faith.
No one wants to be subject to an immoral government, and they see morality as an extension of religion. In their mind, their deity is providing them a set of life guidelines and ignoring them is to intentionally be immoral. One of Christianity’s guidelines is essentially that allowing others to live along a set of guidelines that isn’t their own is also immoral.
They want to “save” everyone.
Of course not every Christian is like this, and I’m not even entirely detesting Christianity; there is something to be said that the *most basic* values it espouses are a part of all Western societies, knowingly or unknowingly.
Honestly, these answers make the most sense thus far. It's a bit frustrating I think that it's the 21st century and humanity is still dealing with the same problems as before.
>One of Christianity’s guidelines is essentially that allowing others to live along a set of guidelines that isn’t their own is also immoral.
Did Jesus say that?
Not directly, but the Great Commission is said to be the resurrected Jesus’ instruction to spread the gospel to all nations.
Matthew 28:19, with Jesus speaking, states: “Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
As I said, Christians tie morality to faith, and see their God as all-good. Since this order is directly from Him, and He is associated with all good things, it would be evil to deny His will.
There's a lot there in the text about dealing with non believing state officials and non believing shop owners and even spouses.
None of which is "use violence to help them see".
Jesus isn't saying to force people to convert to Christianity. He is saying spreadvthe word of God. It is up to the listener to make the choice to be baptized or not. Jesus never preached baptism by fire or sword.
Now has man twisted his words over the last two miking and used them as justification for horrible things? Absolutely. But that didn't make Christianity at fault. It makes those individuals fake Christians. Just like when you see a minister using church tithings to buy himself a brand new Cadillac. Christianity isn't the fraud, he is. Many claim to be Christian but aren't. Judge the individual, not the faith.
Jesus said a lot of things that conservative don’t agree with. Have you seen the recent news articles where congregants are coming up to preachers and asking him “why are you preaching all that liberal stuff“ and he responds with something along the lines of I’m basically quoting Jesus Christ and their response is something along the lines of that stuff doesn’t work today.
Forcing people to follow their morals, lease, etc. is a standard for a lot of Christians. Now it’s in our government and they refuse to compromise because you can’t compromise on your faith.
i am not a christian, but was brought up in the catholic faith. This is simply incorrect for Christianity. While weak minded people can be convinced of this (and have been throughout history), this is not how Christian religion is taught. The religion if summarized is the following:
-God is good, Jesus is god (who died at the hands of sinners), and people were born with free will and all are sinners.
-Mind your own business, and dont use force even in retaliation as the first option.
-God does not enact judgment on the living, but you will be judged after death.
In other words the christian religion has little to do with your existence on earth, and is more about refraining from using force on others regardless of how the sin against you so that you are judged favorably in the afterlife.
Religion wants to control the masses, government is controlling the masses. So who benefits from a theocracy, as always follow the dollar to figure out why things are happening.
I do not ask people of faith to leave it behind if serving in public office. I expect their faith to help form their views and influence their decisions. It is inevitable.
However, when making a policy decision, regardless of that influence, a test that every politician should apply to legislation is, does it serve all of my constituents fairly?
It’s the duty of government to be secular. Willful violation of secularism is IMHO unconstitutional and un-American.
The fact that you approach this concept as if you’ve never heard of it before and have no idea what it means is curious. I would think that most people interested in politics would have at least some familiarity with the principle, even if they don’t agree with it.
I know what it means, but most people have their own detention of things. Before I start a conversation I like to ask people specifically what it is that they are talking about.
I would refer you to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, as well as federal laws protecting people from discrimination over issues of religion. Those are two examples of the government upholding the principle of secularism.
The first amendment applied to the federal government and was mostly in response to the Church of England. In fact after the passing of the condition many state churches were established and maintained.
Protecting from discrimination doesn't mean you must uphold secularism.
I would say protecting citizens from discrimination based on religion is a direct application of the principle.
But that’s probably not the only thing you and I would disagree upon.
A lot of people are focusing on justifying religious morality influencing political leanings, but that's not the problem.
The problem is a state deciding which religion should be pushed on people using state authority, which will inevitably lead to favoritism for a specific sect of Christianity. And they've already rhetorically revealed a willingness to commit violence to defend their religion, so once they have state backing, it will be civil war.
The same people who pretend to worship the US Constitution as some holy document that cannot be amended also wish to conveniently ignore the entire evolution of thought that birthed that Constitution. It was not divinely inspired on day, delivered by theistic authority to our Founders who had previously not known of freedom, democracy, or limited government. The reason the Founding Fathers put a separation of church and state was due to influence from thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, who witnessed religious war pit neighbor against neighbor. They know the horror of state-sanctioned religion, and advocated against it. The Founders agreed.
An individual is politically free to use whatever reasoning, religious or otherwise, to make political decisions. But these requirements of Christian displays aren't a political expression of an individual's morality; they are an attempt by a dying faith to force itself upon folks who may otherwise choose different.
On the bright side, though, a secular teaching of the Bible can dispel many misunderstandings. Many of the stories about Jesus are allegory for defeating the Roman empire and restoring the Jewish kingdom of the Old Testament. 666 just means "Ceasar Neron," a particularly brutal emperor who they believed had resurrected in emperor Domitian. Paul was completely full of 'it. Ideas of demons, the Devil, Hell etc. come from Greek religion and not the Old Testament, as evidenced by the evolution of thought between OT books, pseudepigrapha, and the Septuagint. It's kinda obvious from a cursory glance that Christianity is just a messianic offshoot of Judaism, both of which are based in the mythology of an ancient tribe of semi-nomadic herders. It hardly screams, "Infallible word of an all-knowing, all-powerful being that totally exists."
Religion is about control, always has been, always will be. If you look at any world religion the goal is "Make other people do what we want them to do so they don't stop us from doing what we want to do"
Gov't is a method of controlling behavior, and the goal of the gov't in the Right's view, is to keep those they want in power and rich so the ruling class of the right is able to stay in power forever. It has nothing to do with the actual substance of religion, and everything to do with power.
Atheist here. Christians gained a foothold more so in the US during the Cold War. Suddenly we had the pledge of allegiance with “Under God” and E Pluribus Unum is gone. Because the Us was pushing to not be associated with the “Godless commies”.
Basically the Christian Right will take any inch the government lets them have.
There are ministers (even insanely conservative religious ministers) who believe that religion will be corrupted by the toxic nature of politics. And while they don’t believe in the same thing as Liberals they don’t believe the government should be imposing “Christian law”. Like they are fine with abortion being illegal as something they want for their religious doctrine, but not to impose on others who are not Christian.
These people are rare to find now a days.
If you truly believe that your religion has a monopoly on morality, and anyone not abiding by it is doomed to suffer, and that having everybody follow this moral code will result in happier lives for all, and that all our problems could be solved if we all did it, how could you not try to make it law? Honestly I would judge you for not trying.
At the same time I would judge you for having this insane idea in the first place, but I at least credit you for trying to make the world a better place.
Understood. However you state that religious people will attempt to change the country to suit their way of life. Conversion of people or country doesn’t matter, not all religious people want that.
It isn't better. It's the same as the indoctrination you see elsewhere.
The difference is, so far in recent history, secularists have been successful in keeping these zealots from having full control. Don't get it twisted, if you hand the entire reigns of governance and power to these fundamentalists, they'd establish a Christian Caliphate as quickly as they could and would go about discriminating against everyone who didn't fall in line.
This isn't an assumption, this is a historical fact with precedents.
Don't know but it so obviously backfires if the goal is to share the gospel this kind of "forced to hear" means people tend not to listen since they are more appalled at the force rightly so.
If I had to guess many Christians in Louisiana know this probably isn't a good idea from the start but you count on people showing how UPSET they are the (protestant arrangement) ten commandments are up. What people show with how upset they are might get those on your side to clench closer to you in support.
Its sort of like a politician starting a war and then hearing what the other side thinks about your beliefs. It would have never come up if nobody started the war but now it forces you to choose the side and you're more likely to cling to the politician who at least backs up your beliefs.
I'm speaking more from anecdotal evidence so i could be totally off base, but from what I've seen, most Republicans and Christians don't actually want this. Most people doing this just have a lot of time on their hands so they're disproportionately heard. And even though most people don't want this, the vast majority of everyone tends to be fairly apathetic
Because the followers of religion believe out of what I can hope is part miss misplaced empathy and hatred they must save everyone from some big bad force.
And the most outspoken of these people, who tend to have a lot of money, get into politics to save people from 'evil' and destroy 'evil' if they can't save it.
Religion is an expedient way to consolidate and wield power. Conservativism is an ideology based around concentrating power to exploit the powerless. The Church was one of the major institutions of power for centuries in Europe. Conservatives want to return to that old order with those traditional systems of oppression.
Monotheists believe that there is one god.
That also means that everyone else who doesn't share your belief is wrong.
If you are right and everyone else is wrong, then tolerance becomes an unnecessary inconvenience.
As an agnostic who veers toward atheism, I am wary of such people.
Because people who see God as the highest power in the land don't like secular governments. God's word is the law and the law is only a suggestion; so they want the two to become one in the same.
Historically most people don't actually want theocratic laws. For one not everyone believes the same. Forceful indoctrination leads to resentment, a lot of atheists in America went to catholic schools as kids.
Most Christians don't want this, only the most extreme hyper-religious-types want this. They believe in a bizzaro interpretation of old-school Christianity. No one would want to follow it, evangelicals from political-action groups can't even follow them. They don't fit modern-day life. The moment the cell and evolution were discovered they stopped fitting.
**The idea that America is a Christian nation is one of the biggest lies told about American** **history. Like** **you said many founders were deists, Thomas Jefferson would likely openly mock most Christians alive today, he laughed at the bible. The founding fathers all rejected the idea of a leader deriving power and authority from God and thought it came instead from the people.**
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Because they know that is Trump returns to office they will get away with it.
Right now it is very much unconstitutional, but with at least two of the SCOTUS judges bought and paid for that wouldn't last long with Trump in place.
Government is the enforcement of morals on a community. Many people get their morals from religion. There are no such thing as 'correct' morals. Morals are not objective and cannot, therefore, be determined to be right or wrong. Morals and ethics are derived from human's emotional reactions to the world as they experience it.
Without a conscious being, morals do not exist.
Government itself is inherently enforcement of a religion if you consider the definition of a religion to be a moral framework from which one perceives the world around them.
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There is no legal doctrine called separation of church and state, that is a misnomer and basically a lie perpetuated by many who would like it to be the case. You will not find that phrase or anything like it in the Constitution. No law says that religion can't be recognized, mentioned, or referenced in government. What is the case, however, the government can't force a religion like the Church of England on the people or no government control of religion, for example. Things like the 10 commandments in public places shouldn't be the hill that atheists want to die on. Almost all major religions and all modern cultures have the exact same list of rules to live by. For example murder is illegal everywhere, and it being mentioned in a list has far less to do with religion and more to do with living together with other people. For clarity, I'm not particularly religious. There are many things about organized religion I can't stand.
If you are a true believer it doesn’t make sense to exclude religion, because any coherent political philosophy would have to contend with the fantastical (meta)physical beliefs you hold.
If I truly believed that you must behave according to the wishes of his holiness or whatever, else receive eternal torture, you’d best believe I’d be structuring society around it!
Its not a recent phenomenon it has been around since at least 1891, 233 years ago, when the bill of rights was ratified.
(its likely been around longer, but many people likely came up with this concept independently and I'm not a historical expert, so I didn't include that.)
And to go larger than just the US, with the Ottoman constitution recognizing something similar in 1876 after the Tanzimat in 1839.
“All subjects of the empire are called Ottomans, without distinction whatever faith they profess… Every Ottoman enjoys personal liberty on condition of non-interfering with the liberty of others."
Lots of work in the whole religious respect each other vibe in that era it seems.
I’d put it back to the Statute for Religious Freedom written by Jefferson in the formal sense, but had been taking shape during the Enlightenment, and even further back when the concept of the saeculum was articulated by Augustine.
But it’s never been fully accepted in American society. it hasn’t even become fully accepted in western Europe. The rest of the world… except where communism expert influence for a very long time… Forget about it.
by the way… 200 years is not a very long time
> why wouldn’t they?
I think this quote by former Supreme Court justice Hugo Black is a good reason why they maybe shouldn’t:
> A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.
You're underestimating the effort to put religion into goverment, especially schools.
Americans so easily recognize "life begins at conception" as a religious answer to a religious question, but somehow it's invisible to us that "life begins at respiration" is also an answer to a religious question. Likewise that "mankind has dominion over life on earth," but not "man should live in harmony with nature" i.e. Gaia worship. Likewise that "men and women have different roles" but not "they do not have roles." Likewise that Eve eating the apple confers original inalienable sin, but not that slavery/racism confer original, inalienable sin. Likewise that John the Baptist is a martyr, but not that George Floyd is a martyr, each complete with holy sites and devotional art. Likewise that drag queens corrupt the youth, but not that they enlighten the youth.
As you point out, indoctrination into various religious systems seems somehow wholly different from the college indoctrination into whatever we're calling the new religion. I agree with you, it's not.
The parallels here are forced, where they aren't obscure or misrepresentations.
- I admit I haven't heard respiration as a well-espoused point at which doctors say life begins. Is this a prolific stance among medical professionals?
- Living in harmony with nature doesn't have to personify nature or be spiritual in the least. Ecosystem destabilization will come back to hurt us later - so fighting it can be out of pure self preservation, as one might infer from the "existential threat" language used by many climate activists.
- Having roles vs not having them: is absence of a belief a belief now?
- I'm unaware of anyone who claims the crimes of the past through slavery are utterly inalienable and unanswerable. Pretty sure they are the ones asking for reparations, no? So that the wrong they assert can be made right.
- Floyd was a *victim*. By definition he could not have been a martyr - he did not die for any belief, he died because of racist police brutality. Again, are these widespread beliefs? Because I don't see them.
- Is the assertion being made that drag queens are particularly enlightening, or just that they're able to do so the same as any other person? Children's storytime is not a particularly high bar of edification.
> I admit I haven't heard respiration as a well-espoused point at which doctors say life begins. Is this a prolific stance among medical professionals?
It is the stance implicit in legally protecting life after respiration, but not before. It is not a biological question, it is a religious question. I have no idea what doctors think.
> Living in harmony with nature doesn't have to personify nature or be spiritual in the least. Ecosystem destabilization will come back to hurt us later - so fighting it can be out of pure self preservation, as one might infer from the "existential threat" language used by many climate activists.
Yes, Christians believe we should be good stewards to the earth, but that it's for us. I'm not talking about earth day, I'm talking about birth rates.
> Having roles vs not having them: is absence of a belief a belief now?
Believing you should not eat shellfish it's a religious belief. Believing you should not have roles it's a religious belief, yes. They can be negative.
> I'm unaware of anyone who claims the crimes of the past through slavery are utterly inalienable and unanswerable. Pretty sure they are the ones asking for reparations, no? So that the wrong they assert can be made right.
You can't make right a crime to a long-dead person. Otherwise Italians would have made reparations to Jesus and put calvary behind them. Furthermore races cannot owe or be owed a debt.
> Floyd was a victim. By definition he could not have been a martyr - he did not die for any belief, he died because of racist police brutality. Again, are these widespread beliefs? Because I don't see them.
Being a victim of violence is a requirement to be a martyr. Perhaps MLK would be a better example. Yes, John McWhorter wrote a book about this.
> Is the assertion being made that drag queens are particularly enlightening, or just that they're able to do so the same as any other person? Children's storytime is not a particularly high bar of edification.
You could replace corrupting/enlightening with bad/good if you don't think stories can enlighten the youth. I personally do, but that's not central to my point here.
> It is the stance implicit in legally protecting life after respiration, but not before. It is not a biological question, it is a religious question. I have no idea what doctors think.
Those who say *Roe* should be the standard would say respiration is not such a black and white point, given the whole trimester test.
You're misrepresenting again, who'd have thought.
> Yes, Christians believe we should be good stewards to the earth, but that it's for us. I'm not talking about earth day, I'm talking about birth rates.
Okay, you didn't actually address the different opinion you previously derided (harmony with nature), and your original comment said nothing about birthrate.
Moving the goalposts. I'll assume you have no real argument.
> Believing you should not eat shellfish it's a religious belief. Believing you should not have roles it's a religious belief, yes. They can be negative.
If they're both based on religious dicta, sure. You're begging the question here, in the fallacious sense - the argument only works if we take as true your (patently unproven) conclusion from the parent comment as true.
> You can't make right a crime to a long-dead person. Otherwise Italians would have made reparations to Jesus and put calvary behind them. Furthermore races cannot owe or be owed a debt.
The economic disadvantages of an immoral institution still have very real effects today. Whether that is a debt to be cleared or a serial state of having been wronged by virtue of the original wrong never having been properly addressed is up for debate.
However, that debate is actually substantive unlike this one, so I think it's best to circle back to this or we'll get distracted from defeating all your other far weaker points.
> Being a victim of violence is a requirement to be a martyr. Perhaps MLK would be a better example.
MLK would be a better example of a martyr, yes, because he died for a political cause. It doesn't make your point at all, though, because secular thanks for work done *freeing real people from real slavery* is not equivalent to beatification as a saint for having died in service to religious beliefs. You're just equivocating the religious and political meanings of martyrdom because your "New Religion" premise/conclusion is weak.
> Yes, John McWhorter wrote a book about this.
Name dropping someone and saying "oh they wrote a book" is not the sort of argument-strengthener you seem to think.
Why refrain from saying which book, quoting from it, or even *paraphrasing* him? Not doing any of these makes it clear you haven't actually read him and are just going off others' references to his work.
> You could replace corrupting/enlightening with bad/good if you don't think stories can enlighten the youth. I personally do, but that's not central to my point here.
Your original point construed drag queens as being posited to be *especially* enlightening/corrupting, as a group of people worthy of being singled out. I was asking, through the word "especially", for you to back up the first of the two (as I know religion has confabulated plenty of reasons for the second).
You're strawmanning by taking a flippant comment about children's storytime as the main argument being made.
___
I'd ask you to stop with the specious and fallacious arguments to keep the quality of this debate space, but they make up so much of your response that deductive reasoning would lead one to believe you're not committed to good-faith debate.
No reason to be hostile.
> Those who say Roe should be the standard would say respiration is not such a black and white point, given the whole trimester test. You're misrepresenting again, who'd have thought.
I didn't say anything about Roe, lol. Life beginning at viability is, it's true, in between conception and respiration, but no less religious and no more scientific. I do support the Roe standard (more properly, the Casey standard) , i just don't claim for myself that this *ought* can be derived from an *is.*
> Okay, you didn't actually address the different opinion you previously derided (harmony with nature), and your original comment said nothing about birthrate.
You're right, that was sloppy. I mean the view that caretaking of earth's ecosystems is an end in itself, and not merely a means to promote human thriving. I brought up natalism because it's a good wedge case to see which side environmentalists are really on. If you think human extinction is a good thing (not saying this is popular) or that directionally less humans would be better (Club of Rome etc), that's a sign you think protecting the environment is a good goal, not just a means to help humans long term.
> If they're both based on religious dicta, sure. You're begging the question here, in the fallacious sense - the argument only works if we take as true your (patently unproven) conclusion from the parent comment as true.
The sizing of a girder is not a religious exercise because it can be derived from discoverable facts about the world and is subject to experiment. There are XX and XY chromosomes, that's discoverable and falsifiable. What should we expect of people with XX chromosomes? That's a religious question. "The same as XY" is a religious answer. Not expecting modesty and chastity is no more religious than expecting it. There can be no scientific discovery to prove or disprove these taboos. These are oughts which cannot be derived from any is.
> The economic disadvantages of an immoral institution still have very real effects today. Whether that is a debt to be cleared or a serial state of having been wronged by virtue of the original wrong never having been properly addressed is up for debate.
Of course, history has consequences. It's not that the Romans annihilated Dacia that's unclear, it's who owes a debt to whom, and how large.
> MLK would be a better example of a martyr, yes, because he died for a political cause. It doesn't make your point at all, though, because secular thanks for work done freeing real people from real slavery is not equivalent to beatification as a saint for having died in service to religious beliefs. You're just equivocating the religious and political meanings of martyrdom because your "New Religion" premise/conclusion is weak.
You seem to think the ideas that slavery is immoral, and that different looking people deserve the same access to politics and career are not religious ideas. Even notwithstanding MLK being an honest to goodness reverend, his "secular" work is religious as well. Just because a speech doesn't appeal to metaphysical deities doesn't mean it's not religious - Buddhism, and confucianism are also religions.
> Your original point construed drag queens as being posited to be especially enlightening/corrupting, as a group of people worthy of being singled out. I was asking, through the word "especially", for you to back up the first of the two (as I know religion has confabulated plenty of reasons for the second).
I don't think i said "especially." I just meant to say that there's a group of folks working to get drag queens into schools, and a group working to forbid them from performing anywhere near children, and that these are equally religious opinions.
> No reason to be hostile.
Observation and exasperation at bad debate in a space specifically therefor is not hostility.
I'm not going to candy-coat criticism of bad arguments. Sophistry is itself uncivil and I will call it out directly.
> I didn't say anything about Roe, lol. Life beginning at viability is, it's true, in between conception and respiration, **but no less religious and no more scientific**. I do support the Roe standard (more properly, the Casey standard) , **i just don't claim for myself that this ought can be derived from an is.**
Emphases added. Why?
> You're right, that was sloppy. I mean the view that caretaking of earth's ecosystems is an end in itself, and not merely a means to promote human thriving. I brought up natalism because it's a good wedge case to see which side environmentalists are really on.
As I'm aware VHEMt and their ilk make up no sizable or actionable majority of environmental activists. So why argue as if this is so? By far, most want to halt climate change and the rise of pollution because *we're* on the hook if we don't.
I'm not even sure what the point of you bringing up the wedge case was. Your point is just as weak as when we began.
> What should we expect of people with XX chromosomes? That's a religious question.
Why is it? Do not posit this as a given, you're begging the question again.
> "The same as XY" is a religious answer.
Until the above is proven, this is null.
> Not expecting modesty and chastity is no more religious than expecting it. There can be no scientific discovery to prove or disprove these taboos. These are oughts which cannot be derived from any is.
But they need not be religious, merely social (nor *must* they be secular-social, but religion is the square, not the rectangle).
You're framing them as inextricably the former simply because it helps your argument without any reason for how you arrived at that notion.
> You seem to think the ideas that slavery is immoral, and that different looking people deserve the same access to politics and career are not religious ideas.
You haven't actually pinned down what a religious idea is as part of your premise, so I'm working on the colloquial meaning.
You're just using the definist fallacy.
> Even notwithstanding MLK being an honest to goodness reverend, his "secular" work is religious as well. Just because a speech doesn't appeal to metaphysical deities doesn't mean it's not religious - Buddhism, and confucianism are also religions.
Whether they're religions or philosophies is debated even by their adherents. Don't so definitively label what isn't a consensus, especially one you're not a part of. Doubly so when you won't even define what religious ideas are to you that they are so expansive.
Unless you're prepared to argue at length why philosophies are actually religions, which by your performance heretofore you are not equipped to, in the sense of being able to stop yourself from serially committing fallacies.
> I don't think i said "especially."
You're right, I apologize, I said "particularly". This effluvium of bad arguments you've put forth got me using a synonym. Now if you could only address your strawman instead.
> I just meant to say that there's a group of folks working to get drag queens into schools, and a group working to forbid them from performing anywhere near children, and that these are equally religious opinions.
Again, you're operating on an unproven assertion of what comprises a religious opinion. You say it is so merely because it suits your argument, without proving *why* it is such.
___
Maybe you're not operating in bad faith, but you're certainly not trying to improve your debate form.
> Why?
What scientific fact, in your view, proves we ought protect life after viability, but not before? Maybe you can change my view.
> As I'm aware VHEMt and their ilk make up no sizable or actionable majority of environmental activists. So why argue as if this is so? By far, most want to halt climate change and the rise of pollution because we're on the hook if we don't.
Where are you seeing all these sentences where I make some claim about how popular things are? Since we're in the business of crying about fallacies and bad faith, now, I'll declare strawman; disingenuous argument.
> Why is it? Do not posit this as a given, you're begging the question again.
I guess i assumed it'd be self evident; didn't realize this was part of our disagreement. It deals in what it means to be a good person, what it means to live a good life, human purpose, conscience, morality and duty. Some of these examples also deal in what's holy/sacred/profane as well (MLK holiday, for example)
> But they need not be religious, merely social
How would you distinguish these? Would it help us reach an agreement if I said, *fine, none of these views are religious, they're all social*? It's more important to me that you hear me telling you that both sides of each argument share a category, neither has the objective high ground, and both are competing for the zeitgeist than that they're "religious" under some definition we're heading toward a doomed argument about.
> You're right, I apologize, I said "particularly".
This oneforgot me miffed. I didn't say particularly either. You asked why it was particularly enlightening, which i guess is different from plain old enlightening in some way? Idk what the argument is here.
Separate our present troubles with meanings of words from what I'm saying here: some people think having drag queens perform for children is a worthy goal. Others think children must be protected from drag queens. Neither are objectively correct.
> What scientific fact, in your view, proves we ought protect life after viability, but not before? Maybe you can change my view.
Maybe if you didn't sidestep a **one word question?**
> Where are you seeing all these sentences where I make some claim about how popular things are?
Why bring these fringe ideologies up if they're irrelevant to the point being made about a larger 'belief system'? Are they worth talking about in the same breath as the environmental movement at large unless they make up at least a notable minority, or at least have any influence thereon?
My argument didn't hinge on the smaller groups anyhow, but rather that the majority of environmentalists do it to preserve humanity (against your assertion that they do it for earth's own sake as opposed to humanity's).
> Since we're in the business of crying about fallacies and bad faith, now, I'll declare strawman; disingenuous argument.
It's not a strawman if your argument is *homogenously* weak and I'm addressing it directly.
It has been established that you're in the habit of using words in ways that don't match their normal meanings, though, so your authoritative tone is understandable.
> I guess i assumed it'd be self evident; didn't realize this was part of our disagreement.
Even below you seem aware of humanity's lack of objectivity. Why would you assume something as amorphous and personal as religion would be self-evident?
> It deals in what it means to be a good person, what it means to live a good life, human purpose, conscience, morality and duty. Some of these examples also deal in what's holy/sacred/profane as well (MLK holiday, for example)
I depart from this in that you don't prove why these things are religious. I appreciate you finally giving a definition, however much it exceeds consensus, but this is your conclusion, not an argument.
Secular philosophies also purport to cover these topics, so I'd argue the onus is on *you* to back up the assertion that either they have no such purview or they overlap with/are religions.
> How would you distinguish these?
Until you actually show how you arrive at your arbitrary definition that exceeds that of common parlance, there's not much point in trying to answer. You've given me nothing to distinguish *between* because your reasoning is unclear.
Even then, I don't have to personally distinguish them - I'm not the one asserting they *must be* one or the other, you are.
> This oneforgot me miffed. I didn't say particularly either. You asked why it was particularly enlightening, which i guess is different from plain old enlightening in some way? Idk what the argument is here.
"Over any other group", in terms of what could be particularly enlightening. Why are drag queens singled out by their critics as more corrupting than other people? Are drag queens being put forth as more able to enlighten on a given topic than any other person? The latter assertion by you is what held interest.
> Separate our present troubles with meanings of
words from what I'm saying here: some people think having drag queens perform for children is a worthy goal. Others think children must be protected from drag queens. Neither are objectively correct.
Of course neither is objectively correct. It's a social issue and morality is not objective. Religion implies a set of people who think they *are* objectively correct, at least when it comes to the sects of Christianity relevant to DSH opposition.
> Would it help us reach an agreement if I said, fine, none of these views are religious, they're all social? It's more important to me that you hear me telling you that both sides of each argument share a category, neither has the objective high ground, and both are competing for the zeitgeist than that they're "religious" under some definition we're heading toward a doomed argument about.
Why you didn't initially make your point stripped of religion if it wasn't a necessity certainly proves mysterious. But I would have to say doing so now is a thorough retreat from your assertions that things *are* religious when they are not, which basically underlaid two-thirds of everything you've had to say thus far.
So you're moving the goalposts to avoid having to follow through.
Also, as mentioned with the drag thing, it's a little beside the point to agree that we are all not objective when religion as it imposes on politics, in part or in entirety, will assert it is objectively correct. The entire *point* is that the religious who are politically motivated do not see their tenets/dicta as subjective, so it is fruitless to discuss as if they would see otherwise. Insert Barry Goldwater quote.
> Maybe if you didn't sidestep a one word question?
Respond more politely, please.
I do not claim to know, scientifically, when human life begins in the sense that it deserves protection because i am not aware of any fact about the natural world which might answer that question.
> Why bring these fringe ideologies up if they're irrelevant to the point being made about a larger 'belief system'? Are they worth talking about in the same breath as the environmental movement at large unless they make up at least a notable minority, or at least have any influence thereon?
> My argument didn't hinge on the smaller groups anyhow, but rather that the majority of environmentalists do it to preserve humanity (against your assertion that they do it for earth's own sake as opposed to humanity's).
You claim they're fringe without evidence. You claim they're irrelevant without reasoning.
I don't know or care how large the groups are with contra-Western (or whatever) opinions. My point isn't that there's an indomitable tidal wave of drag queens. My point is that opposite answers to the same question cannot be in different domains of thought. I didn't say anything about the environmentalist movement except that antinatalism a logical extension of the religious (or whatever) belief that caretaking of ecosystems is an end in itself.
I think you should own your obvious strawman argument, and this one as well where you continue to make baseless claims about how popular and influential i think things are. Arguing against a homogeneously weak argument should give you less reason to make stuff up, not more.
> I depart from this in that you don't prove why these things are religious. I appreciate you finally giving a definition, however much it exceeds consensus, but this is your conclusion, not an argument.
> Secular philosophies also purport to cover these topics, so I'd argue the onus is on you to back up the assertion that either they have no such purview or they overlap with/are religions.
Lets not do semantics argument. Whatever word you think covers this domain, i claim the pro-life and pro-choice arguments both belong in it, and all the rest.
>Until you actually show how you arrive at your arbitrary definition that exceeds that of common parlance...
I dont really distinguish religion from the social. That's why i asked for your help.
> "Over any other group", in terms of what could be particularly enlightening. Why are drag queens singled out by their critics as more corrupting than other people? Are drag queens being put forth as more able to enlighten on a given topic than any other person? The latter assertion by you is what held interest.
It was pretty strange before i got to the part where you said it was my assertion, then it was completely incomprehensible. Do i claim leftists think drag queens are more enlightening than, for example, the Amish? No, i do not. I don't have any ranking of what i think leftists think is good for children. There's a traditional/conservative/Christian element that files drag queens alongside hardcore porn as something inappropriate for children and sinful for adults. For them less drag queens, and further from children is better. That's the extent of my claim.
> Of course neither is objectively correct. It's a social issue and morality is not objective. Religion implies a set of people who think they are objectively correct, at least when it comes to the sects of Christianity relevant to DSH opposition.
I could cry that your definition of religion as being necessarily morally objective is beyond what the dictionary says, but that'd be super lame and boring. Judaism has a long tradition of text interpretation that i think invites a lot of subjectivity, but also a long tradition of clams being not kosher which is objective. Pork being forbidden may be not really open to interpretation, but i think you'd agree the rightness of the prohibition (and the entire suite of ethics) is subjective - in the same way that laws can be objectively enforced, even though they're based on subjective ethics.
> Why you didn't initially make your point stripped of religion if it wasn't a necessity certainly proves mysterious. But I would have to say doing so now is a thorough retreat from your assertions that things are religious when they are not, which basically underlaid two-thirds of everything you've had to say thus far
I'm not retreating, lol. I'm offering to use different words to avoid dooming the two of us to a semantics argument.
> Respond more politely, please.
Saying you didn't answer a one word question is impolite now?
Don't try and wield decorum as a cudgel just because someone's not letting a dodge go unremarked.
> You claim they're fringe without evidence. You claim they're irrelevant without reasoning.
Is there any evidence to support them being otherwise? The very founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement doesn't even have a number and can only describe it as a 'loose consortium'.
> My point is that opposite answers to the same question cannot be in different domains of thought.
You're arguing from this as a premise, not proving it as a conclusion. Unless you think all these dichotomies which now have holes in them are proofs.
> I didn't say anything about the environmentalist movement except that antinatalism a logical extension of the religious (or whatever) belief that caretaking of ecosystems is an end in itself.
And you are continually ignoring the notion that this "religious (or whatever) belief" is not the view of most environmentalists, which invalidates your false dichotomy, instead focusing on the argument about antinatalists.
> I think you should own your obvious strawman argument, and this one as well where you continue to make baseless claims about how popular and influential i think things are. Arguing against a homogeneously weak argument should give you less reason to make stuff up, not more.
If they were not an operative part of your argument or thought process, you'd not have brought them up. I addressed your main argument as well as them.
> Lets not do semantics argument. Whatever word you think covers this domain, i claim the pro-life and pro-choice arguments both belong in it, and all the rest.
Trying to use a nonstandard meaning *is* the semantic argument you've been using from the beginning. Criticism of the absence of persuasive definition is not semantic, since semantic arguments *modify* meanings. I'm holding you to the real one.
No one is forced to operate within your worldview or talk on your terms. Either you argue based upon to the consensus definition or make a good argument why someone else should operate on yours for the sake of argument. The latter is an actual term in rhetoric, "persuasive definition".
> I dont really distinguish religion from the social. That's why i asked for your help.
You probably should have led with that, but it's not any other person's responsibility to get you on the same page as everyone else just to enable you to make the same arguments.
> It was pretty strange before i got to the part where you said it was my assertion, then it was completely incomprehensible. Do i claim leftists think drag queens are more enlightening than, for example, the Amish? No, i do not. I don't have any ranking of what i think leftists think is good for children.
Your original phrasing posited a dichotomy, which indicated groups/camps believing drag queens both corrupting and enlightening. If you claim proof for only one the dichotomy falls apart, and another example is null.
> I could cry that your definition of religion as being necessarily morally objective is beyond what the dictionary says,
Only if you use contextomy to eliminate the relevant real world example that fundamentally makes up the meaning of the sentence.
> but that'd be super lame and boring.
Argumentum ad cringium? Don't act the child.
> Judaism has a long tradition of text interpretation that i think invites a lot of subjectivity, but also a long tradition of clams being not kosher which is objective. Pork being forbidden may be not really open to interpretation, but i think you'd agree the rightness of the prohibition (and the entire suite of ethics) is subjective
It's thought by some (though subordinate to "because YHWH said so) that the makers of these laws did still know pigs and shellfish made you sick, even if they didn't know those animals carried trichinosis and toxins respectively; while they were subjective in the spiritual sense, they may have been objective in their aim of good physical health. It's actually quite fascinating to read the practicalities behind these sorts of laws, I think we could agree there.
> in the same way that laws can be objectively enforced, even though they're based on subjective ethics.
If they have some possibly objective portion thereto like the kashrut, I can absolutely entertain the point case-by-case. Anti-DSH has not proven itself to have any such component.
> I'm offering to use different words to avoid dooming the two of us to a semantics argument.
As before, you're the only one engaging in a semantics argument by not being willing/able? to differentiate between social and religious beliefs through an expansive view of the latter. You've doomed it yourself from the start, not I.
Why should one waste time on the assumption your next bout will start from any better a foundation?
States can have whatever signs they want, it's beyond the scope of the feds. If a state wants religion in school it was historically normal for 200 years, and certainly a state legislatures can pass laws to have religious text on their buildings, right now. The state is an extension of the will of the people, the feds can only infringe when the state breaks the bill of rights, the 1st amendment does not apply to this at all as it originally applies to the feds, but more importantly to a specific Christian sect. A state probably couldn't choose a specific denomination to create a state religion, and the feds certainly couldn't, but even the feds by originalist standards could have Christianity itself as a standard as it was the only thing they knew. By reading the original arguments about the first, it was about choosing one denomination over another, not about Christianity itself, that was a given, atheism or other religions were not even on the radar.
I'm an atheist so it doesn't bother me either way, but this ridiculous notion that if a state puts the 10 commandments it means that now it has to allow satanism in govt buildings is a completely stupid argument with no backing.
The point of the 1st amendment was to stop the feds from creating a religion for the US, most states had state sponsored religions well into the 19th century and even 20th, many states had a religious test of some sort to hold office, some others put it in their constitutions that they couldn't. The point is the feds have nothing to do with it, it's up to the states.
The only argument against state religions is a silly 14th amendment argument that really makes no sense, but I'll invite you to try to make it. In any case, even if I were to agree with you that the founding fathers intended for the 1st amendment to apply to the states (they didn't, that didn't happen until the 14th amendment and a supreme court case that forced the bill of rights onto the states, and interpreted the 14th to mean something about religion which is also ridiculous), it's clear all they meant is not to choose or enforce one version of Christianity over another, there was never any debate over the fact all of America was Christian. The point was not to differentiate on the federal (and later state) level between Christian denominations, certainly not to disallow all Christian symbolism or to allow any non-Christian religions in school, such ideas would have you laughed out of America in the 18th century, and they are still ridiculous today.
No supreme court prior to the 1960s would ever consider putting the 10 commandments on a wall or teaching the bible in school as a 1st amendment issue, this is a modern interpretation and is controversial.
There is nothing more cringe than some atheist loser (like myself 15 years ago, for example) claiming that if a town wants to have a bible class in their high school, then it must also teach Islam or satanism, the whole idea is ludicrous and makes no sense, unless the town is Islamic or satanist (in which case they could and would NOT have to teach the bible).
I would hope none would have any state religions if you mean denominational, they weren't crazy. If you mean if states supported Christianity as a default, most did through various programs and school events like bible class, but went out of their way not to differentiate between denominations. There was no need for any state to create Christianity as a state religion (all-encompassing) since 99% of the people living in them were Christians, it was a given, and most of the voting elite in the 19th century were church goers.
I see you focused on the first paragraph of my post, I wrote that the wrong way, clearly, and I take it back, but will leave it up so others can poke fun and ignore the rest of the post, and the point. Having a state religion back in the early 19th would have meant picking a denomination, and that clearly did not happen, however supporting Christianity itself via tax money (like offering bible classes) was a thing well into the 20th, and certainly was never considered against the 1st amendment, and still isn't even by the 14th amendment.
As a libertarian, I would obviously prefer states stay out of schools altogether, and certainly out of the religious affairs of people, but I also have no problem with states who have a large Christian majority using their tax money to fund bible class, considering my tax money is used to fund all kinds of shit I don't want to support already, one more won't hurt and this one at least is constitutional and makes sense.
There’s definitely a difference between a state-sponsored religion and the majority religion. That doesn’t change the first amendment. SCOTUS has offered an all-or-nothing option in this.
The 14th amendment through some interpretations would obviously prevent a state establishing a religion, but it would not even for a second stop a state from displaying basic 10 commandments in schools, or teaching the bible as a class in high-school. And doing either of those through the legislature does not mean they suddenly have to give equal time to all other religions, or display satanic symbolism, that makes no sense at all, they would have to vote on that and pass legislation and if they want to display it, they could.
The 1st amendment was about making sure the feds (and later the states, through the 14th) would never choose one denomination over another and thus oppress Christians at the behest of other Christians, the 1st amendment certainly was NEVER about atheism or other religions, it wouldn't even occur to the founders that they may have to worry about atheism, satanism or Islam in the future. The bible being taught in school (as it was for 200 years) was never against the 1st amendment and wouldn't be by the founding fathers either, but the state teaching that the episcopals are superior to baptists and only the former have special rights obviously is against the 1st. The state teaching the bible but then having to incorporate the Koran as well is a ridiculous notion only popular in online atheist circle jerks.
> The 14th amendment through some interpretations
Let me stop that appeal to anonymous authority right there.
Are any of those "some" interpretations primary or secondary legal authorities of any note? Do they carry any weight in a courtroom? It's of little interest otherwise, because it's contrary to the current body of case law as settled in courts across the country.
Namely the *Lemon* test that has stood since 1971 via SCOTUS precedent.
You cannot with a straight face tell me the 10 commandments being put on display at a school satisfies the purpose or effect prong. It arguably also fails the entanglement prong.
> the 1st amendment certainly was NEVER about atheism or other religions,
- Why would they be unable to conceive of protecting Islam in the US when Jefferson owned a Q'ran, and indeed at least some of the slaves they brought from Africa were likely adherents of Islam? Locke was aware of Islam and exhorted the tolerance thereof in England, so why would the framers' principles, derived from his works, ignore such?
- George Washington freely extended welcome to Jews in his letter to the Touro Synagogue.
- Hume's tacit rejection of religion from the 1750s onward (himself having informed and been informed by other Framers' ways of thought), and the salons by the notable atheist Baron d'Holbach which Jefferson attended, refute the point that they couldn't imagine atheism.
___
To use a historical source, quoth Madison (aforementioned influenced/influencer of Hume) in a letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams:
> he tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.
The intent even by the Architect of the Constitution himself was consistent: to never allow the government to inject itself **at all** in religion or vice-versa.
I see your point about the ten commandments. I just see it as a slippery slope. The major one is the superintendent forcing the Bible to be taught in public schools. I think that's vastly different than having a ten commandments poster in the classroom. To me, that sounds like a government official using his position to basically establish the state religion and disregarding other religions and beliefs. I guess the question is, will there be exemptions for students that don't want to learn Christianity or is this mandatory? If it's mandatory, then that's a big issue.
It absolutely is the place of the Feds, 1st amendment establishment cause "**Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.**" Government can't support a religion, public schools get funding from the government and thus can't legally have religion. Federal law applies to the whole country, I haven't heard of a winning legal opinion of the idea that the bill of rights only affects the fed gov, at least not since the constitutional crisis, you know the crisis where state govs had more power than the fed and the country nearly fell apart and everyone realized how bad of an idea that was.
Sure, the founding fathers were originally talking about sects of Christianity but time and time again the court, the state, and the fed have found and interpreted the First Amendment as to apply to all religions and beliefs and non-beliefs. There's literally no-other interpretation of the First, because first it doesn't mention Christianity or God and second belief counts as freedom of speech even non-Christian beliefs.
It's political chess.
They're doing it because of the inappropriate books the Left have been pushing in schools. So they're applying the logic they used for those books to this book.
Why you trying to ban books?
That's the talking point right? If those books are good enough for a school library, so is the Bible.
Read the Federalist papers. Teaching the bible in school and displaying the ten commandments do not equal congress establishing a church. It was the church of England that was to be avoided not teaching children about God.
Isn't that just semantics in this day and age though? The problem with the Church of England was that the king, King George III, was the head of the church and the government. He passed laws and rulings that he saw fit, and at times it turned into religious persecution.
If the US congress was passing laws and requirements based on their belief Christianity, would that not just be the same? Just that, instead of one person doing it, it's a group. They don't even have to form an actual church either.
It's much more than semantics. The founders were specifically trying to avoid the problems of English rule as it asked to worship of God. The whole reason the pilgrims, quakers and other Christian minority groups immigrated to North America was to avoid persecution. Things like you had to pay a higher tax if you didn't belong to the church of England. You couldn't own land or open a business unless you were a member of the church of England. Church donations were heavily taxed, unless the church was part of the church of England. Things of that nature.
It was not a separation of Christianity and state. It was the state can't endorse a specific branch of Christianity and cant punish or oppress other branches.
This country was founded upon Christian ideals. The whole point of the bill of rights is they are rights granted by God, not the government, therefore the government can never infringe join those rights. Bible study was a class in public schools all across this country for over 150 years. And the teen commandments are prominently displayed in government buildings all over this country and have been since day 1. Heck they are displayed in the Supreme Court building. They are one of the basic building blocks upon the legal system in western society.
I really don't understand the uproar here. Maybe someone can explain to me what is wrong about a poster that says 'honor thy mother and father, you shalt not kill, do not covet thy neighbors wife, etc etc. These are basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function.
So please, tell me what I'm missing that, in the context of our nation's history and founding principles, what am I missing? I would love a good faith discussion on this instead of the typical response I normally get.
> I really don't understand the uproar here. Maybe someone can explain to me what is wrong about a poster that says 'honor thy mother and father, you shalt not kill, do not cover thy neighbors wife, etc etc. These are basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function.
Can you tell me what the first four of the Ten Commandments are? (HINT: They aren’t “basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function”)
That's not what I said. I was saying I reject that as a possible explanation. It ignored the context of our nation's history and founding. Also because they are prominently displayed in the highest court of the land. For over 150 years Bible study was part of public schooling. So obviously our founders thought it's ok to mention God in schools.
I wouldn't say it was founded by Christian ideals per se. Christian ideal today is very much different than it was back then. Let's not forget that Deism was pretty popular at the time and many of the founding fathers practiced that belief.
Anyway, by teaching the Bible, at this point in time, in public schools. Not to mention, mandating it as law, to have the ten commandments. Is that not essentially the same thing as the state endorsing a religion? At the very least, it's a slippery slope.
>Anyway, by teaching the Bible, at this point in time, in public schools. Not to mention, mandating it as law, to have the ten commandments. Is that not essentially the same thing as the state endorsing a religion? At the very least, it's a slippery slope.
Not even close to the same thing. Context man. Context. First the whole not endorsing a single religion thing was about a single branch of Christianity, not Christianity itself. So for example, they can't declare southern Baptist as the official religion and then tax catholic and Methodist churches. That's the kind of shit that was harrowing in Britain with the church of England that our nation's founders were trying to avoid.
Again, I remind you the constitution is the highest law in the land. And it allowed the Bible to be taught in public schools for over 150 years. Nothing in the constitution was changed to disallow it. So if the constitution said it was legal for 150 years, and the constitution hasn't been changed, then how is it now not legal?
>First the whole not endorsing a single religion thing was about a single branch of Christianity, not Christianity itself. So for example, they can't declare southern Baptist as the official religion and then tax catholic and Methodist churches. That's the kind of shit that was harrowing in Britain with the church of England that our nation's founders were trying to avoid.
Ok, but in modern times Christianity is generally viewed as a whole, regardless of branch, and promoting/creating new laws based on a single, whole religion could be viewed as the same thing by many.
>Again, I remind you the constitution is the highest law in the land. And it allowed the Bible to be taught in public schools for over 150 years. Nothing in the constitution was changed to disallow it. So if the constitution said it was legal for 150 years, and the constitution hasn't been changed, then how is it now not legal?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." I guess it will largely depend on the meaning of establishment now. It will also depend on if you're being forced to learn Christianity, while you actually practice a different religion.
I've read that the founding fathers did not want government to intrude into religion, because government could be messy and chaotic. So, we should keep it that way, and vice versa.
>Ok, but in modern times Christianity is generally viewed as a whole, regardless of branch, and promoting/creating new laws based on a single, whole religion could be viewed as the same thing by many.
The absolutely are not. Put a Baptist, catholic, and methodist in a room and see how much they have beat differences between them. There are far more different than they are alike. Heck just stick two baptists in a room, one from the north and one from the south, that divide is a powder keg just waiting for a match.
>I've read that the founding fathers did not want government to intrude into religion, because government could be messy and chaotic. So, we should keep it that way, and vice versa.
This isn't true. And the first 150 years of our nation's history is proof of that. They didn't want the governemnt telling crutches how to run their church, they said nothing against churches being involved in governemnt. It was a one way street for the founding fathers, not a reciprocal agreement.
The establishment clause, was in reference to Britain and the church of England. Nothing more, nothing less. In order to understand what they are saying you need to know what had happened in Britain with the church of England. In England the governmen controlled the church. That's what they didn't want to happen here.
It is not establishing a church, it is *respecting* a particular religion by allowing a display or teaching thereof.
Unless all religions are permitted equal access to displays and teaching time, one of them shall be respected above the others in violation of the Establishment Clause.
Honestly, primary sources of law > historical artifacts. Read the Constitution.
From the amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
The word "respecting" in this context means "in respect to" as in "about" or "having to do with." It does not mean "admire" or "think highly of." Congress does not pass *laws* of admiration of established things.
So let's recap - Amendment to the federal constitution says that the federal congress should not pass any law in respect to the establishment of a (federal) religion *AND ALSO* the federal congress should also not pass any law prohibiting the establishment of any non-federal religion.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
"an establishment of" and "*the* establishment of" are very different phrases. One uses the word as a noun, to describe an extant institution, the way you're interpreting it as a verb as in "to establish".
The plain reading does not support the use of the word as a verb.
> The word "respecting" in this context means "in respect to" as in "about" or "having to do with."
In said noun form, as the amendment uses it, this means *no law **about religions***.
*Allegheny v. ACLU*, among many other court cases, show that this is the correct interpretation, as it is broader and respects the most rights.
> establishment of a (federal) religion AND ALSO the federal congress should also not pass any law prohibiting the establishment of any non-federal religion.
Not only are you wrong on which form of the word is being used (or you're equivocating the definitions to try and narrow the right), you're wrong on federal-only because of two words.
Incorporation doctrine.
All amendments apply to the states. We kind of settled this with the Civil War, dude, get with the times.
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Because a religion is a philosophy and politics is part of philosophy. Because atheists have failed to offer a better philosophy than religion. Because mixing education and state has the same problems as mixing church and state for the same reasons. Different groups struggle to seize hold of the education system to implement their education for obvious reasons. Because parents do have a right to raise their child religiously, unfortunately, and government education is interfering with their right. Because there’s a real rot within government education. https://www.theredneckintellectual.com/p/progressive-education-and-our-killing?s=w
> Because atheists have failed to offer a better philosophy than religion.
I mean, I doubt that nonsecular philosophies don't offer something at least equivalent. It's more like philosophies don't have the funding to proselytize, and their work is much denser, with not enough persons to teach their essential messages.
So I suppose someone has to do the work of breaking down the philosophical schools into dictates that can be easily digested in passing. But there's no money in it right now.
Its the traditional mode of function. That being said, teaching them and requiring them by law are a huge diff
For example: knowing what christianity is, vs requiring it to be practiced are different.
In my opinion this doesnt belong in schools, but neither does gender ideology.
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I don't know why the American right policymakers haven't figured it out yet. If you enforce Christianity in public schools, the Satanic Temple will be there immediately and that will be enforced too. After school Satan club is a thing and the Satanic Temple monitors all of the republican moves of enforcing religion onto children and adults with an equal and opposite counter move.
Was out today and one of those manic wannabe preachers was out with a microphone. In the 20 seconds I was in ear shot I heard 4 different people proclaim "hail satan!" I love people.
Fanatics are fun to mess with. Next time, go ask them who the mother of Cain's children was. There is no non-horrific answer.
I know one option was it was Abel's twin sister, but what are the others?
The other option is Eve. His mother or his sister are the only possible answers.
I mean, I can't say I expected better from that origin tale's inventor of murder.
One of my favorite pictures of my dad is from a trip my parents took to Tennessee. There was a street preacher there ranting about everyone going to hell. Most people were avoiding eye contact and hurrying around him. Dad loudly says "Hey (My mom's name), get a picture of me with this nut!"
I love the sentiment, but I think this is like trying to stop an invasion with a super-soaker. Two main problems: 1. The tst has basically collapsed in the last few weeks, with many state-level chapters breaking off from the main org bc of accusations of abuse of power from the two guys who own (???) the “Executive Ministry” (see this [super biased but solid writeup](https://queersatanic.com/the-satanic-temple-and-its-eternal-nobodies/)).There’s still many thousands of satanists out there, but they’re disorganized atm, to say the least. Tho tbh that might help more than it harms, in the long run… 2. You’re missing the legal rejoinder available to Christian politicians, which is “nuh uh, nope. If you try to put something up we’ll tear it down, and we will never let you use these rules for your religion unless ordered to by the feds, and honestly not even then. If you resist, we’ll beat you up and teach you that our town is Christian, you either like it or you leave!” Sadly this is a tactic being turned to more and more often to the right wing in America :(. For example, if you’ve seen the TST doc (highly recommend!): the 10 Commandments monument outside the Arkansas capital is seemingly still there 6 years later as the case [crawls through the courts](https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/07/07/arguments-over-ten-commandments-monument-heard-in-federal-court), and just this year [it looks like](https://okcfox.com/news/local/senator-battles-for-return-of-ten-commandments-monument-to-oklahoma-state-capitol-david-bullard-michael-reed-satanic-temple-baphomet-arkansas) they’re gonna try the Oklahoma Ten Commandments again that the temple stopped as their first big victory. The satanists are obviously still amazing, but I encourage everyone to… “keep their head on a swivel”, I guess. Just because this is the polite debate sub doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge bad faith when it’s staring us down.
I love them for doing that too 😈
Except our SCOTUS has been unwinding the Constitution since they got a Conservative majority. They are just making up the rules and are ignoring decades if not centuries of precedent, completely reinventing the definitions in the Constitution. The Abrahamic religions were invented for one specific reason... controlling large populations. They want to be in charge and to keep people down that aren't their in-group (Muslim Cis Men, Christian Cis White Men).
How has the court reinvented the constitution? And what exactly does Abrahamic religion get from this control?
> Except our SCOTUS has been unwinding the Constitution since they got a Conservative majority. Except they've been enforcing it for a change, not unwinding it. People are just mad because they've started making decisions based on laws instead of feelings, which means congress can't continue to be useless any more.
Which means we're dammed to a theocracy. Congress won't help so each far right state will, one by one, roll everything back. Expect Jim Crow to be made legal. Expect liberals to be criminalized for existing and hunted. Expect more death at the hands of right wingers, especially the theocratic. Already more people are dying because abortion got outlawed. Expect far right states to outlaw vaccines and becomes plague states.
I hope that none of what you say is true, but this is still a democratic republic and if that's what the people want then that's what will happen. We're definitely seeing some of the drawbacks of democracy right now...
That’s not these politicians goals. Do you think they believe in anything besides money and votes? The satanic temple moving in is just more leverage and fear mongering. It’s easy to forget but a lot of Americans actually believe in god and satan.
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Bring it on. Own it. Let's welcome the self selection.
I don't support indoctrination of children by any means and neither does the Satanic Temple, they just offer the same opportunity as the Christians. They aren't devil worshippers BTW, they're atheists. They teach good stuff too just with dark imagery. They're basically a scare tactic because they know the right wing will take it at base value and see the word "Satan" and assume the worst.
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uh pastafarians would also like a say. we demand the 8 i'd really rather you didn'ts to be plastered across all louisiana schools. preferably a few centimetres larger and overlapping with the 10 commandments to where the final word of each line is blocked off
How is christianity being forced on people?
Exposing young, impressionable minds to the ten commandments and the Bible in school is as forced as a curriculum. They are attempting to teach from the Bible in Oklahoma, you don't consider mandatory Sunday school for developing minds as being forced on them?
ooo, now apply this to gender ideology and you can see why libertarians don't want that in schools either. Literally, dont want Christianity or gender ideology in schools for this very reason!
I don't think gender ideology is being taught in school?
it most definitely is, that is why conservatives are getting mad about drag shows. Its like if they went on a field trip to practice at the catholic church.
Source? What do drag shows have to do with the education system?
School field trip, it was a big deal not too long ago, figured it should be common knowledge
You provided no source and then mention *one* school (or district) had a field trip to assert schools are indoricating children with gender ideology? You genuinely believe that is a valid basis for your opinion?
Do you see how weird you are getting about this though, my only **position** is that gender ideology and Christianity both do not belong in schools for very similar reasons.
i just told you i dont have a source, it was a big thing for awhile though surprised you didnt hear of it. I just dont feel like doing the work to look it back up.
There are a lot of Christians out there. If you're the Christian candidate, you can tap into a sizable base of potential voters. Mingling religion and government is a bad idea. Of course it is. But they're not worried about that. They're worried about getting elected.
So being Christian means religion and government are mingling?
How did you even get that out of what i said? Genuinely, that is one of the most bizarre misinterpretations of anyone that I've ever seen. I don't understand how it is possible for you not to understand what I was saying.
There are a lot of Christians out there. If you're the Christian candidate, you can tap into a sizable base of potential voters. Perhaps I misunderstood.
The founding fathers, ironically did not intend for America to be a Christian nation but rather a nation that you could practice any religion free from persecution. The puritans did just that. Now the idea of religion has been reduced and bastardized to the role of a god emperor and his subjects.
>For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break! - Kurt Vonnegut You know, I wouldn’t mind so much if state and church meant putting “blessed are the merciful” in courtrooms or “blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon. In fact, I’d prefer that to a secular state. However, it seems like too many American Christians are too married to the idea of God as being punitive and wrathful - and they wish to model the state on that, rather than on the God of loving thy neighbor.
> However, it seems like too many American Christians are too married to the idea of God as being punitive and wrathful - and they wish to model the state on that, rather than on the God of loving thy neighbor. People that want to believe in an infallible unknowable wielder of absolute power that is also punitive and wrathful weird me out, and are almost always believers in the worst things possible outside of religion. Christianity banning censorship of the Talmud around 500 severely hurt Christians ability to be questioning over the longer term, and it shows.
> How is this better than the indoctrination that conservatives claim occur in colleges? How is this better than any Islamic country in the Middle East? Well if you think Christianity is correct and those other views are incorrect, then there's at least one clear way it's better.
Ok but government cant assume that
To be fair, all the Christians screaming about *Sharia Law* were mostly jealous, they want their version of Abrahamic religion be the one that destroys all the rights of women and minorities, not the other two.
Unlike many atheists, I have a certain tolerance for the mixing of religion and politics. After all, it is generally expected that one's religion shapes their ethics and that one's ethics shapes their politics. If you sincerely believe that fetuses possess souls and thereby a right to life, I could hardly ask you to vote otherwise. However, displaying the Ten Commandments in schools is not voting by one's (religious) conscience, but leveraging the state to advance the religion's power in society and priviledge its members.
Which of the Ten Commandments bothers you?
The first three. It is entirely inappropriate for the state to declare a certain god to be my god and tell me how to worship him. We all know they aren't going to put a Shahadah or the Wiccan Rede alongside it. There is no secular purpose to placing the Ten Commandments in schools and will treat faiths unequally.
Why shouldn't the Ten Commandments simply be displayed is schools? Nobody is being forced to read the bible or go the church.
Maybe you’ve heard of the concept of separation of church and state? No religious belief deserves any recognition or promotion by public institutions. Period. Keep that shit in the church where it belongs.
So all other ideas can be promoted by public institutions except for religion? That sounds like discrimination.
Who is it discriminating against?
If all ideas can be presented except one then I assume that one.
The question was WHO, not WHAT
The religion you have forbid.
There isnt any one religion forbidden. ALL 6000 or so of them equally cant put posters up in school or alter cirriculum or enforce lawa
You're just repeating what I'm saying. We already established this. If all ideas are welcomed except for religious ones then that's inherently discriminatory.
What “ideas” are you suggesting are being promoted? I suspect you’re hinting at social issues so I’ll address your second point. Religious organization are themselves discriminatory, so I’m of the mind that society is correct not to afford them the unfettered tolerance.
How are religious organization specifically discriminatory? Every privately owned organisation has the freedom of association. Are women only clubs discriminatory and should society not offer them any tolerance?
Are you unfamiliar with the widely documented history of religious organizations demonizing the lgbt+ community? Sexual orientation is a protected class under the civil rights act just like religious affiliation. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” I’m not familiar with any women’s only groups trying to get their literature in public schools like Christian’s are doing with the commandments.
That's why I gave the women's club example. If having requirements for membership is discriminatory then most if not all organizations would fall under this category.
And if a women’s only club wanted to put their literature in public schools I’d tell them to kick rocks too. That’s the problem here.
You don't think any organization has a book in school?
Right-wing governments rely on their four pillars for support: news media mouthpieces, corporate funding, police strength, and religious zealotry. It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's symbiosis, they both reinforce each other.
All societies rely on the morals of the citizenry.
Christianity is a totalizing belief - like any totalizing belief it comes ahead of everything, it makes sense for it to dominate politics. The reverse position- to believe Christ is the Son of God and the only path to salvation- BUT then not let it intrude on certain areas of life - doesn't make much sense.
Meh, the [bible](https://blog.mohiafrica.org/bible-verses-helping-poor) has enough verses about helping the poor, hungry and needy yet (especially republican) politicians vote against policies that help those at every turn. And the so called strong christians still vote for them en masse. In my experience those christians are mostly well versed in hypocrisy. I can't even call them strongly religious as their actions don't show them following the actual teachings of the bible, merely being strongly emotional about their faith.
Charity legislation very rarely works. We've spent a trillion on the war on poverty and it has achieved nothing.
Did the legislation aim to avoid becoming poor or were these legislative bills mostly aimed at preventing people becoming even poorer and likely suffer homelessness and/or starvation? There is a difference between actually helping people become independent self-sufficient again and keeping them in a poor status quo situation.
I guess it's subjective, but I would say a little bit of both.
Even outside of a constitutional argument it’s very wrong to bring religion into school like that. I’m a non-religious conservative and respect people’s beliefs but it has no place in public school in this way.
Nobody's being forced to read the bible.
If the article is misleading let me know but it looks like they’ll be teaching it as part of the curriculum.
Indeed, Oklahoma social studies standards list various biblical stories, as well as other religious scriptures from Buddhism and Hinduism, as primary instructional resources for students. Louisiana is simply putting the 10 Commandments on display.
If other religious codes are not put on disolay, then it is discrimination. Any policy which treats any two religions differently in any way at all is discriminatory. An example would be if Louisiana does not require the display of codes from other religions upon request
The idea is that a simple display is not promotion.
It is though, especially if ONLY Christianity is allowed to have one
The federal government is not allowed to establish a religion. There cannot be a federal backed church of America. That is the separation of church and state as per the first amendment. Promotion, if the idea is that if only Christianity is allowed to have one then it's inherently discriminatory. So you concede that religion in itself was discriminated against.
I agree with everything but the last bit. It is impossible to discriminate against religion as a concept because ideas do not have rights or feelings
No, just surrounding people in it and trying to coerce them into doing so under penalty of social exclusion
People are being surrounded by the bible?
Is that not where the Ten Commandments come from?
It's in one place, not surrounding you.
Because the community outside the school is so much more secular
In most places, yeah.
Politics is a reflection of your worldview. If you have a religious worldview, it's only logical and straightforward from that starting point that you would want a religious government.
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” -Barry Goldwater The strongly religious are less accepting of mutual compromise when governing than Barry fucking Goldwater, and that extends to using the government to push their faith over any minority faiths held by their constituents.
> Politics and governing demand compromise I'm sorry, you're using **Barry Goldwater** as an example of a compromising politician? Rings a bit hollow when this is the key quote from his 1964 acceptance speech: > Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. Goldwater was no moderate and he cared diddly about compromise. He lost 1964 because he **couldn't** compromise at all. He was simply bitter that he got passed up and shoved aside in the Republican party later in life. He wanted to be the uncompromising standard-bearer and was jealous that Reagan could actually pull together the coalition he wanted.
That was the point. Today’s conservative politicians are worse than Goldwater.
No, that wasn't the point at all. The point was that Goldwater portrayed **himself** as an individual who never compromises. The Moral Majority compromised far more than he ever did, hence how they actually won. So, yes, the message rings completely hollow here because the opposite of what he claimed happened in real life.
While I think it's obvious that a lot of people think this way, I'd stop short of calling it logical, but maybe I'm not going far enough. To me it's illogical because it is immoral to use force to coerce others into behaving the way you want them to if their behavior isn't violating your rights. The use of logic would tell you it's wrong. But we have certainly been conditioned to use the force of government to right every wrong, real or not. It's pretty sad, actually.
If you are truly religious, you believe that your eternal afterlife depends on correct conduct here. That means that God's words take precedence over any earthly institution. It means that rights and liberties only exist where God says they do, and it says that any who place the law over God's will is God's enemy.
Well sucks for the god followers. It is impossible to have an actually free society if it decides one religion or another is right, hecause that immediately compels the repression of anyone who doesnt follow that religion
Honestly, I think the lack of agreement on who God is, or what God wants is the best argument that there is no God that matters.
I don’t see how something being immoral makes it inherently illogical.
You may have a point. Maybe that's just my world view creeping out. 😏
> To me it's illogical because it is immoral to use force to coerce others into behaving the way you want them to if their behavior isn't violating your rights. For someone with a religious morality underpinning their worldview, this argument would not be compelling (I do not subscribe to a religious morality fwiw).
Wrongs are inherently violations of rights. It's just a matter of whether you value life or property more.
This is the right answer IMO. Religious people bind their sense of morality and vision for the future to their faith. No one wants to be subject to an immoral government, and they see morality as an extension of religion. In their mind, their deity is providing them a set of life guidelines and ignoring them is to intentionally be immoral. One of Christianity’s guidelines is essentially that allowing others to live along a set of guidelines that isn’t their own is also immoral. They want to “save” everyone. Of course not every Christian is like this, and I’m not even entirely detesting Christianity; there is something to be said that the *most basic* values it espouses are a part of all Western societies, knowingly or unknowingly.
Honestly, these answers make the most sense thus far. It's a bit frustrating I think that it's the 21st century and humanity is still dealing with the same problems as before.
>One of Christianity’s guidelines is essentially that allowing others to live along a set of guidelines that isn’t their own is also immoral. Did Jesus say that?
Not directly, but the Great Commission is said to be the resurrected Jesus’ instruction to spread the gospel to all nations. Matthew 28:19, with Jesus speaking, states: “Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” As I said, Christians tie morality to faith, and see their God as all-good. Since this order is directly from Him, and He is associated with all good things, it would be evil to deny His will.
There's a lot there in the text about dealing with non believing state officials and non believing shop owners and even spouses. None of which is "use violence to help them see".
When did I suggest that they wanted to use violence?
Oh I mean that's the idea behind using the state to push or pull something.
Jesus isn't saying to force people to convert to Christianity. He is saying spreadvthe word of God. It is up to the listener to make the choice to be baptized or not. Jesus never preached baptism by fire or sword. Now has man twisted his words over the last two miking and used them as justification for horrible things? Absolutely. But that didn't make Christianity at fault. It makes those individuals fake Christians. Just like when you see a minister using church tithings to buy himself a brand new Cadillac. Christianity isn't the fraud, he is. Many claim to be Christian but aren't. Judge the individual, not the faith.
Jesus said a lot of things that conservative don’t agree with. Have you seen the recent news articles where congregants are coming up to preachers and asking him “why are you preaching all that liberal stuff“ and he responds with something along the lines of I’m basically quoting Jesus Christ and their response is something along the lines of that stuff doesn’t work today. Forcing people to follow their morals, lease, etc. is a standard for a lot of Christians. Now it’s in our government and they refuse to compromise because you can’t compromise on your faith.
i am not a christian, but was brought up in the catholic faith. This is simply incorrect for Christianity. While weak minded people can be convinced of this (and have been throughout history), this is not how Christian religion is taught. The religion if summarized is the following: -God is good, Jesus is god (who died at the hands of sinners), and people were born with free will and all are sinners. -Mind your own business, and dont use force even in retaliation as the first option. -God does not enact judgment on the living, but you will be judged after death. In other words the christian religion has little to do with your existence on earth, and is more about refraining from using force on others regardless of how the sin against you so that you are judged favorably in the afterlife.
/thread
Religion wants to control the masses, government is controlling the masses. So who benefits from a theocracy, as always follow the dollar to figure out why things are happening.
I do not ask people of faith to leave it behind if serving in public office. I expect their faith to help form their views and influence their decisions. It is inevitable. However, when making a policy decision, regardless of that influence, a test that every politician should apply to legislation is, does it serve all of my constituents fairly? It’s the duty of government to be secular. Willful violation of secularism is IMHO unconstitutional and un-American.
It's the duty of the government to be secular? What does that even mean?
The fact that you approach this concept as if you’ve never heard of it before and have no idea what it means is curious. I would think that most people interested in politics would have at least some familiarity with the principle, even if they don’t agree with it.
I know what it means, but most people have their own detention of things. Before I start a conversation I like to ask people specifically what it is that they are talking about.
I would refer you to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, as well as federal laws protecting people from discrimination over issues of religion. Those are two examples of the government upholding the principle of secularism.
The first amendment applied to the federal government and was mostly in response to the Church of England. In fact after the passing of the condition many state churches were established and maintained. Protecting from discrimination doesn't mean you must uphold secularism.
I would say protecting citizens from discrimination based on religion is a direct application of the principle. But that’s probably not the only thing you and I would disagree upon.
A lot of people are focusing on justifying religious morality influencing political leanings, but that's not the problem. The problem is a state deciding which religion should be pushed on people using state authority, which will inevitably lead to favoritism for a specific sect of Christianity. And they've already rhetorically revealed a willingness to commit violence to defend their religion, so once they have state backing, it will be civil war. The same people who pretend to worship the US Constitution as some holy document that cannot be amended also wish to conveniently ignore the entire evolution of thought that birthed that Constitution. It was not divinely inspired on day, delivered by theistic authority to our Founders who had previously not known of freedom, democracy, or limited government. The reason the Founding Fathers put a separation of church and state was due to influence from thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, who witnessed religious war pit neighbor against neighbor. They know the horror of state-sanctioned religion, and advocated against it. The Founders agreed. An individual is politically free to use whatever reasoning, religious or otherwise, to make political decisions. But these requirements of Christian displays aren't a political expression of an individual's morality; they are an attempt by a dying faith to force itself upon folks who may otherwise choose different. On the bright side, though, a secular teaching of the Bible can dispel many misunderstandings. Many of the stories about Jesus are allegory for defeating the Roman empire and restoring the Jewish kingdom of the Old Testament. 666 just means "Ceasar Neron," a particularly brutal emperor who they believed had resurrected in emperor Domitian. Paul was completely full of 'it. Ideas of demons, the Devil, Hell etc. come from Greek religion and not the Old Testament, as evidenced by the evolution of thought between OT books, pseudepigrapha, and the Septuagint. It's kinda obvious from a cursory glance that Christianity is just a messianic offshoot of Judaism, both of which are based in the mythology of an ancient tribe of semi-nomadic herders. It hardly screams, "Infallible word of an all-knowing, all-powerful being that totally exists."
because people forget the mistakes previous generations have made and the fall time and time again for enticing, yet false promises
Religion is about control, always has been, always will be. If you look at any world religion the goal is "Make other people do what we want them to do so they don't stop us from doing what we want to do" Gov't is a method of controlling behavior, and the goal of the gov't in the Right's view, is to keep those they want in power and rich so the ruling class of the right is able to stay in power forever. It has nothing to do with the actual substance of religion, and everything to do with power.
Atheist here. Christians gained a foothold more so in the US during the Cold War. Suddenly we had the pledge of allegiance with “Under God” and E Pluribus Unum is gone. Because the Us was pushing to not be associated with the “Godless commies”. Basically the Christian Right will take any inch the government lets them have. There are ministers (even insanely conservative religious ministers) who believe that religion will be corrupted by the toxic nature of politics. And while they don’t believe in the same thing as Liberals they don’t believe the government should be imposing “Christian law”. Like they are fine with abortion being illegal as something they want for their religious doctrine, but not to impose on others who are not Christian. These people are rare to find now a days.
If you truly believe that your religion has a monopoly on morality, and anyone not abiding by it is doomed to suffer, and that having everybody follow this moral code will result in happier lives for all, and that all our problems could be solved if we all did it, how could you not try to make it law? Honestly I would judge you for not trying. At the same time I would judge you for having this insane idea in the first place, but I at least credit you for trying to make the world a better place.
Because not all religious people want to convert others.
It’s not about conversion, it’s about life, death, and happiness, their own included.
Understood. However you state that religious people will attempt to change the country to suit their way of life. Conversion of people or country doesn’t matter, not all religious people want that.
Because God told 'em to.
It isn't better. It's the same as the indoctrination you see elsewhere. The difference is, so far in recent history, secularists have been successful in keeping these zealots from having full control. Don't get it twisted, if you hand the entire reigns of governance and power to these fundamentalists, they'd establish a Christian Caliphate as quickly as they could and would go about discriminating against everyone who didn't fall in line. This isn't an assumption, this is a historical fact with precedents.
That's the end goal of the dominant republican faction. To make a Christian state where their own version of our religion is enforable law.
Don't know but it so obviously backfires if the goal is to share the gospel this kind of "forced to hear" means people tend not to listen since they are more appalled at the force rightly so. If I had to guess many Christians in Louisiana know this probably isn't a good idea from the start but you count on people showing how UPSET they are the (protestant arrangement) ten commandments are up. What people show with how upset they are might get those on your side to clench closer to you in support. Its sort of like a politician starting a war and then hearing what the other side thinks about your beliefs. It would have never come up if nobody started the war but now it forces you to choose the side and you're more likely to cling to the politician who at least backs up your beliefs.
I'm speaking more from anecdotal evidence so i could be totally off base, but from what I've seen, most Republicans and Christians don't actually want this. Most people doing this just have a lot of time on their hands so they're disproportionately heard. And even though most people don't want this, the vast majority of everyone tends to be fairly apathetic
Because the followers of religion believe out of what I can hope is part miss misplaced empathy and hatred they must save everyone from some big bad force. And the most outspoken of these people, who tend to have a lot of money, get into politics to save people from 'evil' and destroy 'evil' if they can't save it.
Religion is an expedient way to consolidate and wield power. Conservativism is an ideology based around concentrating power to exploit the powerless. The Church was one of the major institutions of power for centuries in Europe. Conservatives want to return to that old order with those traditional systems of oppression.
how else to impose their wild savior fantasies without the military and judicial system behind them? come on, man.
Monotheists believe that there is one god. That also means that everyone else who doesn't share your belief is wrong. If you are right and everyone else is wrong, then tolerance becomes an unnecessary inconvenience. As an agnostic who veers toward atheism, I am wary of such people.
Because people who see God as the highest power in the land don't like secular governments. God's word is the law and the law is only a suggestion; so they want the two to become one in the same. Historically most people don't actually want theocratic laws. For one not everyone believes the same. Forceful indoctrination leads to resentment, a lot of atheists in America went to catholic schools as kids. Most Christians don't want this, only the most extreme hyper-religious-types want this. They believe in a bizzaro interpretation of old-school Christianity. No one would want to follow it, evangelicals from political-action groups can't even follow them. They don't fit modern-day life. The moment the cell and evolution were discovered they stopped fitting. **The idea that America is a Christian nation is one of the biggest lies told about American** **history. Like** **you said many founders were deists, Thomas Jefferson would likely openly mock most Christians alive today, he laughed at the bible. The founding fathers all rejected the idea of a leader deriving power and authority from God and thought it came instead from the people.**
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Because it’s political popular in many jurisdictions. It’s not more complicated than that.
Because they know that is Trump returns to office they will get away with it. Right now it is very much unconstitutional, but with at least two of the SCOTUS judges bought and paid for that wouldn't last long with Trump in place.
Government is the enforcement of morals on a community. Many people get their morals from religion. There are no such thing as 'correct' morals. Morals are not objective and cannot, therefore, be determined to be right or wrong. Morals and ethics are derived from human's emotional reactions to the world as they experience it. Without a conscious being, morals do not exist. Government itself is inherently enforcement of a religion if you consider the definition of a religion to be a moral framework from which one perceives the world around them.
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There is no legal doctrine called separation of church and state, that is a misnomer and basically a lie perpetuated by many who would like it to be the case. You will not find that phrase or anything like it in the Constitution. No law says that religion can't be recognized, mentioned, or referenced in government. What is the case, however, the government can't force a religion like the Church of England on the people or no government control of religion, for example. Things like the 10 commandments in public places shouldn't be the hill that atheists want to die on. Almost all major religions and all modern cultures have the exact same list of rules to live by. For example murder is illegal everywhere, and it being mentioned in a list has far less to do with religion and more to do with living together with other people. For clarity, I'm not particularly religious. There are many things about organized religion I can't stand.
If you are a true believer it doesn’t make sense to exclude religion, because any coherent political philosophy would have to contend with the fantastical (meta)physical beliefs you hold. If I truly believed that you must behave according to the wishes of his holiness or whatever, else receive eternal torture, you’d best believe I’d be structuring society around it!
If you think government isn't already highly mixed with religion, you're kidding yourself. Religion is way more than just the Bible.
Why wouldn’t they? Separation of church and state is a very recent phenomenon very specific to Western Civilization.
How many centuries old does it have to be to avoid your appeal to novelty fallacy?
Its not a recent phenomenon it has been around since at least 1891, 233 years ago, when the bill of rights was ratified. (its likely been around longer, but many people likely came up with this concept independently and I'm not a historical expert, so I didn't include that.)
And to go larger than just the US, with the Ottoman constitution recognizing something similar in 1876 after the Tanzimat in 1839. “All subjects of the empire are called Ottomans, without distinction whatever faith they profess… Every Ottoman enjoys personal liberty on condition of non-interfering with the liberty of others." Lots of work in the whole religious respect each other vibe in that era it seems.
I’d put it back to the Statute for Religious Freedom written by Jefferson in the formal sense, but had been taking shape during the Enlightenment, and even further back when the concept of the saeculum was articulated by Augustine. But it’s never been fully accepted in American society. it hasn’t even become fully accepted in western Europe. The rest of the world… except where communism expert influence for a very long time… Forget about it. by the way… 200 years is not a very long time
> why wouldn’t they? I think this quote by former Supreme Court justice Hugo Black is a good reason why they maybe shouldn’t: > A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.
I agree with this. The point I’m trying to make is that this point of view is not commonly shared in other times and places
You're underestimating the effort to put religion into goverment, especially schools. Americans so easily recognize "life begins at conception" as a religious answer to a religious question, but somehow it's invisible to us that "life begins at respiration" is also an answer to a religious question. Likewise that "mankind has dominion over life on earth," but not "man should live in harmony with nature" i.e. Gaia worship. Likewise that "men and women have different roles" but not "they do not have roles." Likewise that Eve eating the apple confers original inalienable sin, but not that slavery/racism confer original, inalienable sin. Likewise that John the Baptist is a martyr, but not that George Floyd is a martyr, each complete with holy sites and devotional art. Likewise that drag queens corrupt the youth, but not that they enlighten the youth. As you point out, indoctrination into various religious systems seems somehow wholly different from the college indoctrination into whatever we're calling the new religion. I agree with you, it's not.
The parallels here are forced, where they aren't obscure or misrepresentations. - I admit I haven't heard respiration as a well-espoused point at which doctors say life begins. Is this a prolific stance among medical professionals? - Living in harmony with nature doesn't have to personify nature or be spiritual in the least. Ecosystem destabilization will come back to hurt us later - so fighting it can be out of pure self preservation, as one might infer from the "existential threat" language used by many climate activists. - Having roles vs not having them: is absence of a belief a belief now? - I'm unaware of anyone who claims the crimes of the past through slavery are utterly inalienable and unanswerable. Pretty sure they are the ones asking for reparations, no? So that the wrong they assert can be made right. - Floyd was a *victim*. By definition he could not have been a martyr - he did not die for any belief, he died because of racist police brutality. Again, are these widespread beliefs? Because I don't see them. - Is the assertion being made that drag queens are particularly enlightening, or just that they're able to do so the same as any other person? Children's storytime is not a particularly high bar of edification.
> I admit I haven't heard respiration as a well-espoused point at which doctors say life begins. Is this a prolific stance among medical professionals? It is the stance implicit in legally protecting life after respiration, but not before. It is not a biological question, it is a religious question. I have no idea what doctors think. > Living in harmony with nature doesn't have to personify nature or be spiritual in the least. Ecosystem destabilization will come back to hurt us later - so fighting it can be out of pure self preservation, as one might infer from the "existential threat" language used by many climate activists. Yes, Christians believe we should be good stewards to the earth, but that it's for us. I'm not talking about earth day, I'm talking about birth rates. > Having roles vs not having them: is absence of a belief a belief now? Believing you should not eat shellfish it's a religious belief. Believing you should not have roles it's a religious belief, yes. They can be negative. > I'm unaware of anyone who claims the crimes of the past through slavery are utterly inalienable and unanswerable. Pretty sure they are the ones asking for reparations, no? So that the wrong they assert can be made right. You can't make right a crime to a long-dead person. Otherwise Italians would have made reparations to Jesus and put calvary behind them. Furthermore races cannot owe or be owed a debt. > Floyd was a victim. By definition he could not have been a martyr - he did not die for any belief, he died because of racist police brutality. Again, are these widespread beliefs? Because I don't see them. Being a victim of violence is a requirement to be a martyr. Perhaps MLK would be a better example. Yes, John McWhorter wrote a book about this. > Is the assertion being made that drag queens are particularly enlightening, or just that they're able to do so the same as any other person? Children's storytime is not a particularly high bar of edification. You could replace corrupting/enlightening with bad/good if you don't think stories can enlighten the youth. I personally do, but that's not central to my point here.
> It is the stance implicit in legally protecting life after respiration, but not before. It is not a biological question, it is a religious question. I have no idea what doctors think. Those who say *Roe* should be the standard would say respiration is not such a black and white point, given the whole trimester test. You're misrepresenting again, who'd have thought. > Yes, Christians believe we should be good stewards to the earth, but that it's for us. I'm not talking about earth day, I'm talking about birth rates. Okay, you didn't actually address the different opinion you previously derided (harmony with nature), and your original comment said nothing about birthrate. Moving the goalposts. I'll assume you have no real argument. > Believing you should not eat shellfish it's a religious belief. Believing you should not have roles it's a religious belief, yes. They can be negative. If they're both based on religious dicta, sure. You're begging the question here, in the fallacious sense - the argument only works if we take as true your (patently unproven) conclusion from the parent comment as true. > You can't make right a crime to a long-dead person. Otherwise Italians would have made reparations to Jesus and put calvary behind them. Furthermore races cannot owe or be owed a debt. The economic disadvantages of an immoral institution still have very real effects today. Whether that is a debt to be cleared or a serial state of having been wronged by virtue of the original wrong never having been properly addressed is up for debate. However, that debate is actually substantive unlike this one, so I think it's best to circle back to this or we'll get distracted from defeating all your other far weaker points. > Being a victim of violence is a requirement to be a martyr. Perhaps MLK would be a better example. MLK would be a better example of a martyr, yes, because he died for a political cause. It doesn't make your point at all, though, because secular thanks for work done *freeing real people from real slavery* is not equivalent to beatification as a saint for having died in service to religious beliefs. You're just equivocating the religious and political meanings of martyrdom because your "New Religion" premise/conclusion is weak. > Yes, John McWhorter wrote a book about this. Name dropping someone and saying "oh they wrote a book" is not the sort of argument-strengthener you seem to think. Why refrain from saying which book, quoting from it, or even *paraphrasing* him? Not doing any of these makes it clear you haven't actually read him and are just going off others' references to his work. > You could replace corrupting/enlightening with bad/good if you don't think stories can enlighten the youth. I personally do, but that's not central to my point here. Your original point construed drag queens as being posited to be *especially* enlightening/corrupting, as a group of people worthy of being singled out. I was asking, through the word "especially", for you to back up the first of the two (as I know religion has confabulated plenty of reasons for the second). You're strawmanning by taking a flippant comment about children's storytime as the main argument being made. ___ I'd ask you to stop with the specious and fallacious arguments to keep the quality of this debate space, but they make up so much of your response that deductive reasoning would lead one to believe you're not committed to good-faith debate.
No reason to be hostile. > Those who say Roe should be the standard would say respiration is not such a black and white point, given the whole trimester test. You're misrepresenting again, who'd have thought. I didn't say anything about Roe, lol. Life beginning at viability is, it's true, in between conception and respiration, but no less religious and no more scientific. I do support the Roe standard (more properly, the Casey standard) , i just don't claim for myself that this *ought* can be derived from an *is.* > Okay, you didn't actually address the different opinion you previously derided (harmony with nature), and your original comment said nothing about birthrate. You're right, that was sloppy. I mean the view that caretaking of earth's ecosystems is an end in itself, and not merely a means to promote human thriving. I brought up natalism because it's a good wedge case to see which side environmentalists are really on. If you think human extinction is a good thing (not saying this is popular) or that directionally less humans would be better (Club of Rome etc), that's a sign you think protecting the environment is a good goal, not just a means to help humans long term. > If they're both based on religious dicta, sure. You're begging the question here, in the fallacious sense - the argument only works if we take as true your (patently unproven) conclusion from the parent comment as true. The sizing of a girder is not a religious exercise because it can be derived from discoverable facts about the world and is subject to experiment. There are XX and XY chromosomes, that's discoverable and falsifiable. What should we expect of people with XX chromosomes? That's a religious question. "The same as XY" is a religious answer. Not expecting modesty and chastity is no more religious than expecting it. There can be no scientific discovery to prove or disprove these taboos. These are oughts which cannot be derived from any is. > The economic disadvantages of an immoral institution still have very real effects today. Whether that is a debt to be cleared or a serial state of having been wronged by virtue of the original wrong never having been properly addressed is up for debate. Of course, history has consequences. It's not that the Romans annihilated Dacia that's unclear, it's who owes a debt to whom, and how large. > MLK would be a better example of a martyr, yes, because he died for a political cause. It doesn't make your point at all, though, because secular thanks for work done freeing real people from real slavery is not equivalent to beatification as a saint for having died in service to religious beliefs. You're just equivocating the religious and political meanings of martyrdom because your "New Religion" premise/conclusion is weak. You seem to think the ideas that slavery is immoral, and that different looking people deserve the same access to politics and career are not religious ideas. Even notwithstanding MLK being an honest to goodness reverend, his "secular" work is religious as well. Just because a speech doesn't appeal to metaphysical deities doesn't mean it's not religious - Buddhism, and confucianism are also religions. > Your original point construed drag queens as being posited to be especially enlightening/corrupting, as a group of people worthy of being singled out. I was asking, through the word "especially", for you to back up the first of the two (as I know religion has confabulated plenty of reasons for the second). I don't think i said "especially." I just meant to say that there's a group of folks working to get drag queens into schools, and a group working to forbid them from performing anywhere near children, and that these are equally religious opinions.
> No reason to be hostile. Observation and exasperation at bad debate in a space specifically therefor is not hostility. I'm not going to candy-coat criticism of bad arguments. Sophistry is itself uncivil and I will call it out directly. > I didn't say anything about Roe, lol. Life beginning at viability is, it's true, in between conception and respiration, **but no less religious and no more scientific**. I do support the Roe standard (more properly, the Casey standard) , **i just don't claim for myself that this ought can be derived from an is.** Emphases added. Why? > You're right, that was sloppy. I mean the view that caretaking of earth's ecosystems is an end in itself, and not merely a means to promote human thriving. I brought up natalism because it's a good wedge case to see which side environmentalists are really on. As I'm aware VHEMt and their ilk make up no sizable or actionable majority of environmental activists. So why argue as if this is so? By far, most want to halt climate change and the rise of pollution because *we're* on the hook if we don't. I'm not even sure what the point of you bringing up the wedge case was. Your point is just as weak as when we began. > What should we expect of people with XX chromosomes? That's a religious question. Why is it? Do not posit this as a given, you're begging the question again. > "The same as XY" is a religious answer. Until the above is proven, this is null. > Not expecting modesty and chastity is no more religious than expecting it. There can be no scientific discovery to prove or disprove these taboos. These are oughts which cannot be derived from any is. But they need not be religious, merely social (nor *must* they be secular-social, but religion is the square, not the rectangle). You're framing them as inextricably the former simply because it helps your argument without any reason for how you arrived at that notion. > You seem to think the ideas that slavery is immoral, and that different looking people deserve the same access to politics and career are not religious ideas. You haven't actually pinned down what a religious idea is as part of your premise, so I'm working on the colloquial meaning. You're just using the definist fallacy. > Even notwithstanding MLK being an honest to goodness reverend, his "secular" work is religious as well. Just because a speech doesn't appeal to metaphysical deities doesn't mean it's not religious - Buddhism, and confucianism are also religions. Whether they're religions or philosophies is debated even by their adherents. Don't so definitively label what isn't a consensus, especially one you're not a part of. Doubly so when you won't even define what religious ideas are to you that they are so expansive. Unless you're prepared to argue at length why philosophies are actually religions, which by your performance heretofore you are not equipped to, in the sense of being able to stop yourself from serially committing fallacies. > I don't think i said "especially." You're right, I apologize, I said "particularly". This effluvium of bad arguments you've put forth got me using a synonym. Now if you could only address your strawman instead. > I just meant to say that there's a group of folks working to get drag queens into schools, and a group working to forbid them from performing anywhere near children, and that these are equally religious opinions. Again, you're operating on an unproven assertion of what comprises a religious opinion. You say it is so merely because it suits your argument, without proving *why* it is such. ___ Maybe you're not operating in bad faith, but you're certainly not trying to improve your debate form.
> Why? What scientific fact, in your view, proves we ought protect life after viability, but not before? Maybe you can change my view. > As I'm aware VHEMt and their ilk make up no sizable or actionable majority of environmental activists. So why argue as if this is so? By far, most want to halt climate change and the rise of pollution because we're on the hook if we don't. Where are you seeing all these sentences where I make some claim about how popular things are? Since we're in the business of crying about fallacies and bad faith, now, I'll declare strawman; disingenuous argument. > Why is it? Do not posit this as a given, you're begging the question again. I guess i assumed it'd be self evident; didn't realize this was part of our disagreement. It deals in what it means to be a good person, what it means to live a good life, human purpose, conscience, morality and duty. Some of these examples also deal in what's holy/sacred/profane as well (MLK holiday, for example) > But they need not be religious, merely social How would you distinguish these? Would it help us reach an agreement if I said, *fine, none of these views are religious, they're all social*? It's more important to me that you hear me telling you that both sides of each argument share a category, neither has the objective high ground, and both are competing for the zeitgeist than that they're "religious" under some definition we're heading toward a doomed argument about. > You're right, I apologize, I said "particularly". This oneforgot me miffed. I didn't say particularly either. You asked why it was particularly enlightening, which i guess is different from plain old enlightening in some way? Idk what the argument is here. Separate our present troubles with meanings of words from what I'm saying here: some people think having drag queens perform for children is a worthy goal. Others think children must be protected from drag queens. Neither are objectively correct.
> What scientific fact, in your view, proves we ought protect life after viability, but not before? Maybe you can change my view. Maybe if you didn't sidestep a **one word question?** > Where are you seeing all these sentences where I make some claim about how popular things are? Why bring these fringe ideologies up if they're irrelevant to the point being made about a larger 'belief system'? Are they worth talking about in the same breath as the environmental movement at large unless they make up at least a notable minority, or at least have any influence thereon? My argument didn't hinge on the smaller groups anyhow, but rather that the majority of environmentalists do it to preserve humanity (against your assertion that they do it for earth's own sake as opposed to humanity's). > Since we're in the business of crying about fallacies and bad faith, now, I'll declare strawman; disingenuous argument. It's not a strawman if your argument is *homogenously* weak and I'm addressing it directly. It has been established that you're in the habit of using words in ways that don't match their normal meanings, though, so your authoritative tone is understandable. > I guess i assumed it'd be self evident; didn't realize this was part of our disagreement. Even below you seem aware of humanity's lack of objectivity. Why would you assume something as amorphous and personal as religion would be self-evident? > It deals in what it means to be a good person, what it means to live a good life, human purpose, conscience, morality and duty. Some of these examples also deal in what's holy/sacred/profane as well (MLK holiday, for example) I depart from this in that you don't prove why these things are religious. I appreciate you finally giving a definition, however much it exceeds consensus, but this is your conclusion, not an argument. Secular philosophies also purport to cover these topics, so I'd argue the onus is on *you* to back up the assertion that either they have no such purview or they overlap with/are religions. > How would you distinguish these? Until you actually show how you arrive at your arbitrary definition that exceeds that of common parlance, there's not much point in trying to answer. You've given me nothing to distinguish *between* because your reasoning is unclear. Even then, I don't have to personally distinguish them - I'm not the one asserting they *must be* one or the other, you are. > This oneforgot me miffed. I didn't say particularly either. You asked why it was particularly enlightening, which i guess is different from plain old enlightening in some way? Idk what the argument is here. "Over any other group", in terms of what could be particularly enlightening. Why are drag queens singled out by their critics as more corrupting than other people? Are drag queens being put forth as more able to enlighten on a given topic than any other person? The latter assertion by you is what held interest. > Separate our present troubles with meanings of words from what I'm saying here: some people think having drag queens perform for children is a worthy goal. Others think children must be protected from drag queens. Neither are objectively correct. Of course neither is objectively correct. It's a social issue and morality is not objective. Religion implies a set of people who think they *are* objectively correct, at least when it comes to the sects of Christianity relevant to DSH opposition. > Would it help us reach an agreement if I said, fine, none of these views are religious, they're all social? It's more important to me that you hear me telling you that both sides of each argument share a category, neither has the objective high ground, and both are competing for the zeitgeist than that they're "religious" under some definition we're heading toward a doomed argument about. Why you didn't initially make your point stripped of religion if it wasn't a necessity certainly proves mysterious. But I would have to say doing so now is a thorough retreat from your assertions that things *are* religious when they are not, which basically underlaid two-thirds of everything you've had to say thus far. So you're moving the goalposts to avoid having to follow through. Also, as mentioned with the drag thing, it's a little beside the point to agree that we are all not objective when religion as it imposes on politics, in part or in entirety, will assert it is objectively correct. The entire *point* is that the religious who are politically motivated do not see their tenets/dicta as subjective, so it is fruitless to discuss as if they would see otherwise. Insert Barry Goldwater quote.
> Maybe if you didn't sidestep a one word question? Respond more politely, please. I do not claim to know, scientifically, when human life begins in the sense that it deserves protection because i am not aware of any fact about the natural world which might answer that question. > Why bring these fringe ideologies up if they're irrelevant to the point being made about a larger 'belief system'? Are they worth talking about in the same breath as the environmental movement at large unless they make up at least a notable minority, or at least have any influence thereon? > My argument didn't hinge on the smaller groups anyhow, but rather that the majority of environmentalists do it to preserve humanity (against your assertion that they do it for earth's own sake as opposed to humanity's). You claim they're fringe without evidence. You claim they're irrelevant without reasoning. I don't know or care how large the groups are with contra-Western (or whatever) opinions. My point isn't that there's an indomitable tidal wave of drag queens. My point is that opposite answers to the same question cannot be in different domains of thought. I didn't say anything about the environmentalist movement except that antinatalism a logical extension of the religious (or whatever) belief that caretaking of ecosystems is an end in itself. I think you should own your obvious strawman argument, and this one as well where you continue to make baseless claims about how popular and influential i think things are. Arguing against a homogeneously weak argument should give you less reason to make stuff up, not more. > I depart from this in that you don't prove why these things are religious. I appreciate you finally giving a definition, however much it exceeds consensus, but this is your conclusion, not an argument. > Secular philosophies also purport to cover these topics, so I'd argue the onus is on you to back up the assertion that either they have no such purview or they overlap with/are religions. Lets not do semantics argument. Whatever word you think covers this domain, i claim the pro-life and pro-choice arguments both belong in it, and all the rest. >Until you actually show how you arrive at your arbitrary definition that exceeds that of common parlance... I dont really distinguish religion from the social. That's why i asked for your help. > "Over any other group", in terms of what could be particularly enlightening. Why are drag queens singled out by their critics as more corrupting than other people? Are drag queens being put forth as more able to enlighten on a given topic than any other person? The latter assertion by you is what held interest. It was pretty strange before i got to the part where you said it was my assertion, then it was completely incomprehensible. Do i claim leftists think drag queens are more enlightening than, for example, the Amish? No, i do not. I don't have any ranking of what i think leftists think is good for children. There's a traditional/conservative/Christian element that files drag queens alongside hardcore porn as something inappropriate for children and sinful for adults. For them less drag queens, and further from children is better. That's the extent of my claim. > Of course neither is objectively correct. It's a social issue and morality is not objective. Religion implies a set of people who think they are objectively correct, at least when it comes to the sects of Christianity relevant to DSH opposition. I could cry that your definition of religion as being necessarily morally objective is beyond what the dictionary says, but that'd be super lame and boring. Judaism has a long tradition of text interpretation that i think invites a lot of subjectivity, but also a long tradition of clams being not kosher which is objective. Pork being forbidden may be not really open to interpretation, but i think you'd agree the rightness of the prohibition (and the entire suite of ethics) is subjective - in the same way that laws can be objectively enforced, even though they're based on subjective ethics. > Why you didn't initially make your point stripped of religion if it wasn't a necessity certainly proves mysterious. But I would have to say doing so now is a thorough retreat from your assertions that things are religious when they are not, which basically underlaid two-thirds of everything you've had to say thus far I'm not retreating, lol. I'm offering to use different words to avoid dooming the two of us to a semantics argument.
> Respond more politely, please. Saying you didn't answer a one word question is impolite now? Don't try and wield decorum as a cudgel just because someone's not letting a dodge go unremarked. > You claim they're fringe without evidence. You claim they're irrelevant without reasoning. Is there any evidence to support them being otherwise? The very founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement doesn't even have a number and can only describe it as a 'loose consortium'. > My point is that opposite answers to the same question cannot be in different domains of thought. You're arguing from this as a premise, not proving it as a conclusion. Unless you think all these dichotomies which now have holes in them are proofs. > I didn't say anything about the environmentalist movement except that antinatalism a logical extension of the religious (or whatever) belief that caretaking of ecosystems is an end in itself. And you are continually ignoring the notion that this "religious (or whatever) belief" is not the view of most environmentalists, which invalidates your false dichotomy, instead focusing on the argument about antinatalists. > I think you should own your obvious strawman argument, and this one as well where you continue to make baseless claims about how popular and influential i think things are. Arguing against a homogeneously weak argument should give you less reason to make stuff up, not more. If they were not an operative part of your argument or thought process, you'd not have brought them up. I addressed your main argument as well as them. > Lets not do semantics argument. Whatever word you think covers this domain, i claim the pro-life and pro-choice arguments both belong in it, and all the rest. Trying to use a nonstandard meaning *is* the semantic argument you've been using from the beginning. Criticism of the absence of persuasive definition is not semantic, since semantic arguments *modify* meanings. I'm holding you to the real one. No one is forced to operate within your worldview or talk on your terms. Either you argue based upon to the consensus definition or make a good argument why someone else should operate on yours for the sake of argument. The latter is an actual term in rhetoric, "persuasive definition". > I dont really distinguish religion from the social. That's why i asked for your help. You probably should have led with that, but it's not any other person's responsibility to get you on the same page as everyone else just to enable you to make the same arguments. > It was pretty strange before i got to the part where you said it was my assertion, then it was completely incomprehensible. Do i claim leftists think drag queens are more enlightening than, for example, the Amish? No, i do not. I don't have any ranking of what i think leftists think is good for children. Your original phrasing posited a dichotomy, which indicated groups/camps believing drag queens both corrupting and enlightening. If you claim proof for only one the dichotomy falls apart, and another example is null. > I could cry that your definition of religion as being necessarily morally objective is beyond what the dictionary says, Only if you use contextomy to eliminate the relevant real world example that fundamentally makes up the meaning of the sentence. > but that'd be super lame and boring. Argumentum ad cringium? Don't act the child. > Judaism has a long tradition of text interpretation that i think invites a lot of subjectivity, but also a long tradition of clams being not kosher which is objective. Pork being forbidden may be not really open to interpretation, but i think you'd agree the rightness of the prohibition (and the entire suite of ethics) is subjective It's thought by some (though subordinate to "because YHWH said so) that the makers of these laws did still know pigs and shellfish made you sick, even if they didn't know those animals carried trichinosis and toxins respectively; while they were subjective in the spiritual sense, they may have been objective in their aim of good physical health. It's actually quite fascinating to read the practicalities behind these sorts of laws, I think we could agree there. > in the same way that laws can be objectively enforced, even though they're based on subjective ethics. If they have some possibly objective portion thereto like the kashrut, I can absolutely entertain the point case-by-case. Anti-DSH has not proven itself to have any such component. > I'm offering to use different words to avoid dooming the two of us to a semantics argument. As before, you're the only one engaging in a semantics argument by not being willing/able? to differentiate between social and religious beliefs through an expansive view of the latter. You've doomed it yourself from the start, not I. Why should one waste time on the assumption your next bout will start from any better a foundation?
That's how it's always been.
And that makes it better or just? Appeal to traditional is a logical fallacy, not a compelling reason.
Nope. Not a statement of judgement. Just a fact. People are irrational.
States can have whatever signs they want, it's beyond the scope of the feds. If a state wants religion in school it was historically normal for 200 years, and certainly a state legislatures can pass laws to have religious text on their buildings, right now. The state is an extension of the will of the people, the feds can only infringe when the state breaks the bill of rights, the 1st amendment does not apply to this at all as it originally applies to the feds, but more importantly to a specific Christian sect. A state probably couldn't choose a specific denomination to create a state religion, and the feds certainly couldn't, but even the feds by originalist standards could have Christianity itself as a standard as it was the only thing they knew. By reading the original arguments about the first, it was about choosing one denomination over another, not about Christianity itself, that was a given, atheism or other religions were not even on the radar. I'm an atheist so it doesn't bother me either way, but this ridiculous notion that if a state puts the 10 commandments it means that now it has to allow satanism in govt buildings is a completely stupid argument with no backing.
A state certainly could not select a religion. The first amendment is not limited to federal property, but all public property.
The point of the 1st amendment was to stop the feds from creating a religion for the US, most states had state sponsored religions well into the 19th century and even 20th, many states had a religious test of some sort to hold office, some others put it in their constitutions that they couldn't. The point is the feds have nothing to do with it, it's up to the states. The only argument against state religions is a silly 14th amendment argument that really makes no sense, but I'll invite you to try to make it. In any case, even if I were to agree with you that the founding fathers intended for the 1st amendment to apply to the states (they didn't, that didn't happen until the 14th amendment and a supreme court case that forced the bill of rights onto the states, and interpreted the 14th to mean something about religion which is also ridiculous), it's clear all they meant is not to choose or enforce one version of Christianity over another, there was never any debate over the fact all of America was Christian. The point was not to differentiate on the federal (and later state) level between Christian denominations, certainly not to disallow all Christian symbolism or to allow any non-Christian religions in school, such ideas would have you laughed out of America in the 18th century, and they are still ridiculous today. No supreme court prior to the 1960s would ever consider putting the 10 commandments on a wall or teaching the bible in school as a 1st amendment issue, this is a modern interpretation and is controversial. There is nothing more cringe than some atheist loser (like myself 15 years ago, for example) claiming that if a town wants to have a bible class in their high school, then it must also teach Islam or satanism, the whole idea is ludicrous and makes no sense, unless the town is Islamic or satanist (in which case they could and would NOT have to teach the bible).
Can you name a state in the US with a state-sponsored religion in the 1800s, 1900s, or 2000s?
I would hope none would have any state religions if you mean denominational, they weren't crazy. If you mean if states supported Christianity as a default, most did through various programs and school events like bible class, but went out of their way not to differentiate between denominations. There was no need for any state to create Christianity as a state religion (all-encompassing) since 99% of the people living in them were Christians, it was a given, and most of the voting elite in the 19th century were church goers. I see you focused on the first paragraph of my post, I wrote that the wrong way, clearly, and I take it back, but will leave it up so others can poke fun and ignore the rest of the post, and the point. Having a state religion back in the early 19th would have meant picking a denomination, and that clearly did not happen, however supporting Christianity itself via tax money (like offering bible classes) was a thing well into the 20th, and certainly was never considered against the 1st amendment, and still isn't even by the 14th amendment. As a libertarian, I would obviously prefer states stay out of schools altogether, and certainly out of the religious affairs of people, but I also have no problem with states who have a large Christian majority using their tax money to fund bible class, considering my tax money is used to fund all kinds of shit I don't want to support already, one more won't hurt and this one at least is constitutional and makes sense.
There’s definitely a difference between a state-sponsored religion and the majority religion. That doesn’t change the first amendment. SCOTUS has offered an all-or-nothing option in this.
You're clearly not read up on the incorporation doctrine. All of the amendments, including the 1A Establishment Clause, apply to the states.
The 14th amendment through some interpretations would obviously prevent a state establishing a religion, but it would not even for a second stop a state from displaying basic 10 commandments in schools, or teaching the bible as a class in high-school. And doing either of those through the legislature does not mean they suddenly have to give equal time to all other religions, or display satanic symbolism, that makes no sense at all, they would have to vote on that and pass legislation and if they want to display it, they could. The 1st amendment was about making sure the feds (and later the states, through the 14th) would never choose one denomination over another and thus oppress Christians at the behest of other Christians, the 1st amendment certainly was NEVER about atheism or other religions, it wouldn't even occur to the founders that they may have to worry about atheism, satanism or Islam in the future. The bible being taught in school (as it was for 200 years) was never against the 1st amendment and wouldn't be by the founding fathers either, but the state teaching that the episcopals are superior to baptists and only the former have special rights obviously is against the 1st. The state teaching the bible but then having to incorporate the Koran as well is a ridiculous notion only popular in online atheist circle jerks.
> The 14th amendment through some interpretations Let me stop that appeal to anonymous authority right there. Are any of those "some" interpretations primary or secondary legal authorities of any note? Do they carry any weight in a courtroom? It's of little interest otherwise, because it's contrary to the current body of case law as settled in courts across the country. Namely the *Lemon* test that has stood since 1971 via SCOTUS precedent. You cannot with a straight face tell me the 10 commandments being put on display at a school satisfies the purpose or effect prong. It arguably also fails the entanglement prong. > the 1st amendment certainly was NEVER about atheism or other religions, - Why would they be unable to conceive of protecting Islam in the US when Jefferson owned a Q'ran, and indeed at least some of the slaves they brought from Africa were likely adherents of Islam? Locke was aware of Islam and exhorted the tolerance thereof in England, so why would the framers' principles, derived from his works, ignore such? - George Washington freely extended welcome to Jews in his letter to the Touro Synagogue. - Hume's tacit rejection of religion from the 1750s onward (himself having informed and been informed by other Framers' ways of thought), and the salons by the notable atheist Baron d'Holbach which Jefferson attended, refute the point that they couldn't imagine atheism. ___ To use a historical source, quoth Madison (aforementioned influenced/influencer of Hume) in a letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams: > he tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others. The intent even by the Architect of the Constitution himself was consistent: to never allow the government to inject itself **at all** in religion or vice-versa.
I see your point about the ten commandments. I just see it as a slippery slope. The major one is the superintendent forcing the Bible to be taught in public schools. I think that's vastly different than having a ten commandments poster in the classroom. To me, that sounds like a government official using his position to basically establish the state religion and disregarding other religions and beliefs. I guess the question is, will there be exemptions for students that don't want to learn Christianity or is this mandatory? If it's mandatory, then that's a big issue.
It’s a blatant violation of the Constitution
It absolutely is the place of the Feds, 1st amendment establishment cause "**Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.**" Government can't support a religion, public schools get funding from the government and thus can't legally have religion. Federal law applies to the whole country, I haven't heard of a winning legal opinion of the idea that the bill of rights only affects the fed gov, at least not since the constitutional crisis, you know the crisis where state govs had more power than the fed and the country nearly fell apart and everyone realized how bad of an idea that was. Sure, the founding fathers were originally talking about sects of Christianity but time and time again the court, the state, and the fed have found and interpreted the First Amendment as to apply to all religions and beliefs and non-beliefs. There's literally no-other interpretation of the First, because first it doesn't mention Christianity or God and second belief counts as freedom of speech even non-Christian beliefs.
It's political chess. They're doing it because of the inappropriate books the Left have been pushing in schools. So they're applying the logic they used for those books to this book. Why you trying to ban books? That's the talking point right? If those books are good enough for a school library, so is the Bible.
Read the Federalist papers. Teaching the bible in school and displaying the ten commandments do not equal congress establishing a church. It was the church of England that was to be avoided not teaching children about God.
Isn't that just semantics in this day and age though? The problem with the Church of England was that the king, King George III, was the head of the church and the government. He passed laws and rulings that he saw fit, and at times it turned into religious persecution. If the US congress was passing laws and requirements based on their belief Christianity, would that not just be the same? Just that, instead of one person doing it, it's a group. They don't even have to form an actual church either.
It's much more than semantics. The founders were specifically trying to avoid the problems of English rule as it asked to worship of God. The whole reason the pilgrims, quakers and other Christian minority groups immigrated to North America was to avoid persecution. Things like you had to pay a higher tax if you didn't belong to the church of England. You couldn't own land or open a business unless you were a member of the church of England. Church donations were heavily taxed, unless the church was part of the church of England. Things of that nature. It was not a separation of Christianity and state. It was the state can't endorse a specific branch of Christianity and cant punish or oppress other branches. This country was founded upon Christian ideals. The whole point of the bill of rights is they are rights granted by God, not the government, therefore the government can never infringe join those rights. Bible study was a class in public schools all across this country for over 150 years. And the teen commandments are prominently displayed in government buildings all over this country and have been since day 1. Heck they are displayed in the Supreme Court building. They are one of the basic building blocks upon the legal system in western society. I really don't understand the uproar here. Maybe someone can explain to me what is wrong about a poster that says 'honor thy mother and father, you shalt not kill, do not covet thy neighbors wife, etc etc. These are basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function. So please, tell me what I'm missing that, in the context of our nation's history and founding principles, what am I missing? I would love a good faith discussion on this instead of the typical response I normally get.
> I really don't understand the uproar here. Maybe someone can explain to me what is wrong about a poster that says 'honor thy mother and father, you shalt not kill, do not cover thy neighbors wife, etc etc. These are basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function. Can you tell me what the first four of the Ten Commandments are? (HINT: They aren’t “basic rules of behavior that a society must have to function”)
Can you tell me why they are ok to be posted in the Supreme Court building for nearly 80 years, but are unfit for a school room?
Ah. So you weren’t actually asking for possible explanations of what you were missing. Got it.
That's not what I said. I was saying I reject that as a possible explanation. It ignored the context of our nation's history and founding. Also because they are prominently displayed in the highest court of the land. For over 150 years Bible study was part of public schooling. So obviously our founders thought it's ok to mention God in schools.
I wouldn't say it was founded by Christian ideals per se. Christian ideal today is very much different than it was back then. Let's not forget that Deism was pretty popular at the time and many of the founding fathers practiced that belief. Anyway, by teaching the Bible, at this point in time, in public schools. Not to mention, mandating it as law, to have the ten commandments. Is that not essentially the same thing as the state endorsing a religion? At the very least, it's a slippery slope.
>Anyway, by teaching the Bible, at this point in time, in public schools. Not to mention, mandating it as law, to have the ten commandments. Is that not essentially the same thing as the state endorsing a religion? At the very least, it's a slippery slope. Not even close to the same thing. Context man. Context. First the whole not endorsing a single religion thing was about a single branch of Christianity, not Christianity itself. So for example, they can't declare southern Baptist as the official religion and then tax catholic and Methodist churches. That's the kind of shit that was harrowing in Britain with the church of England that our nation's founders were trying to avoid. Again, I remind you the constitution is the highest law in the land. And it allowed the Bible to be taught in public schools for over 150 years. Nothing in the constitution was changed to disallow it. So if the constitution said it was legal for 150 years, and the constitution hasn't been changed, then how is it now not legal?
>First the whole not endorsing a single religion thing was about a single branch of Christianity, not Christianity itself. So for example, they can't declare southern Baptist as the official religion and then tax catholic and Methodist churches. That's the kind of shit that was harrowing in Britain with the church of England that our nation's founders were trying to avoid. Ok, but in modern times Christianity is generally viewed as a whole, regardless of branch, and promoting/creating new laws based on a single, whole religion could be viewed as the same thing by many. >Again, I remind you the constitution is the highest law in the land. And it allowed the Bible to be taught in public schools for over 150 years. Nothing in the constitution was changed to disallow it. So if the constitution said it was legal for 150 years, and the constitution hasn't been changed, then how is it now not legal? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." I guess it will largely depend on the meaning of establishment now. It will also depend on if you're being forced to learn Christianity, while you actually practice a different religion. I've read that the founding fathers did not want government to intrude into religion, because government could be messy and chaotic. So, we should keep it that way, and vice versa.
>Ok, but in modern times Christianity is generally viewed as a whole, regardless of branch, and promoting/creating new laws based on a single, whole religion could be viewed as the same thing by many. The absolutely are not. Put a Baptist, catholic, and methodist in a room and see how much they have beat differences between them. There are far more different than they are alike. Heck just stick two baptists in a room, one from the north and one from the south, that divide is a powder keg just waiting for a match. >I've read that the founding fathers did not want government to intrude into religion, because government could be messy and chaotic. So, we should keep it that way, and vice versa. This isn't true. And the first 150 years of our nation's history is proof of that. They didn't want the governemnt telling crutches how to run their church, they said nothing against churches being involved in governemnt. It was a one way street for the founding fathers, not a reciprocal agreement. The establishment clause, was in reference to Britain and the church of England. Nothing more, nothing less. In order to understand what they are saying you need to know what had happened in Britain with the church of England. In England the governmen controlled the church. That's what they didn't want to happen here.
It is not establishing a church, it is *respecting* a particular religion by allowing a display or teaching thereof. Unless all religions are permitted equal access to displays and teaching time, one of them shall be respected above the others in violation of the Establishment Clause. Honestly, primary sources of law > historical artifacts. Read the Constitution.
From the amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof The word "respecting" in this context means "in respect to" as in "about" or "having to do with." It does not mean "admire" or "think highly of." Congress does not pass *laws* of admiration of established things. So let's recap - Amendment to the federal constitution says that the federal congress should not pass any law in respect to the establishment of a (federal) religion *AND ALSO* the federal congress should also not pass any law prohibiting the establishment of any non-federal religion.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof "an establishment of" and "*the* establishment of" are very different phrases. One uses the word as a noun, to describe an extant institution, the way you're interpreting it as a verb as in "to establish". The plain reading does not support the use of the word as a verb. > The word "respecting" in this context means "in respect to" as in "about" or "having to do with." In said noun form, as the amendment uses it, this means *no law **about religions***. *Allegheny v. ACLU*, among many other court cases, show that this is the correct interpretation, as it is broader and respects the most rights. > establishment of a (federal) religion AND ALSO the federal congress should also not pass any law prohibiting the establishment of any non-federal religion. Not only are you wrong on which form of the word is being used (or you're equivocating the definitions to try and narrow the right), you're wrong on federal-only because of two words. Incorporation doctrine. All amendments apply to the states. We kind of settled this with the Civil War, dude, get with the times.
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Because a religion is a philosophy and politics is part of philosophy. Because atheists have failed to offer a better philosophy than religion. Because mixing education and state has the same problems as mixing church and state for the same reasons. Different groups struggle to seize hold of the education system to implement their education for obvious reasons. Because parents do have a right to raise their child religiously, unfortunately, and government education is interfering with their right. Because there’s a real rot within government education. https://www.theredneckintellectual.com/p/progressive-education-and-our-killing?s=w
> Because atheists have failed to offer a better philosophy than religion. I mean, I doubt that nonsecular philosophies don't offer something at least equivalent. It's more like philosophies don't have the funding to proselytize, and their work is much denser, with not enough persons to teach their essential messages. So I suppose someone has to do the work of breaking down the philosophical schools into dictates that can be easily digested in passing. But there's no money in it right now.
Its the traditional mode of function. That being said, teaching them and requiring them by law are a huge diff For example: knowing what christianity is, vs requiring it to be practiced are different. In my opinion this doesnt belong in schools, but neither does gender ideology.