Posted on 07/01/2010 4:36:02 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Those who worry about a balance on the Supreme Court of adherents to Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestant Christianity and other religions are concerned about the wrong categories. There are two salient classes of religions - theistic religions and atheistic religions. If we define a religion as a system of beliefs, atheism is just as much a religion as theism is. The religious balance that should most concern us as we assess the composition of our courts is the degree to which our jurists seek to push theistic religions off of the public stage, inviting atheistic religions to take their place. The big question isn't whether church can or should be allowed to play roles in our governments. Rather, the question is whether it is theistic or atheistic religion that will be invited to play those important roles.
Why is the distinction between theistic and atheistic religions the most salient for America? The great British jurist of the early 20th century, Sir John Fletcher Moulton, gave us the best metric I have found to assess the probability that democracy and free markets will flourish in a nation: The extent to which people instinctively obey unenforceable laws. Theistic religions teach their adherents that even if the police or court systems don't catch them breaking laws, with perfect certainty God will catch and punish them. The remarkable and distinctive instinct of so many Americans assiduously to obey unenforceable laws is rooted in the belief that they and/or their ancestors have held that there are eternal, not just temporal, consequences for not following the rules.
Theistic religions are the predominant institutions in our society that work to inculcate the instinct to voluntarily obey unenforceable laws.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
What kind of post-literate comment is that?
Religion, from religio, meand “to bind.”
Sadly, many are bound to a belief there is no God, and rabidly defend/promote that belief.
Atheistic religion.
Religion, from religio, meand “to bind.”
Sadly, many are bound to a belief there is no God, and rabidly defend/promote that belief.
Atheistic religion.
Read the article. The author considers atheism a type of religion for discussion.
And this is because without God there is no rational basis for an objective morality.
I know, but belief in a negative is still not logical.
THey believe in a reality defined by certain truths regarding nature. To put it another way, they assent to certain propositions about the world we live in. They even form communities to promote these notions and to denounced theism.
Secular humanism has been described an atheistic philosophy and the “Ethical Society” as one of it’s organizations.
The funny thing is that atheists espouse very sort of philosophy from radical idealism to materialism, and have no one concept of God that they reject. The on thing they are agreed upon a rejection of the super-natural, but not upon the “natural.” In the same “pew” we have “buddhists” who reject the material world as an illusion, and “realists” who have an absolute faith in the material. All are convinced that they are the “reasonable” ones in the argument’ that we are the deluded. IAC, the real focus of their attack, bottom line, is on Christianity. Being westerners, the only religions they really know anything about are Christianity and Judaism, and usually in the form of them to which they were exposed as children.
I had a boss who emigrated from Iran during the '79 theocratic takeover and is a committed atheist base upon what he saw.
Indeed their knowledge is weak or non-existent, but Christianity and Judaism are the only religions of which they have any meaningful knowledge. After all, eighty percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian.
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