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THe Secular Right
Real Clear Politics ^ | Aug. 29, 2006 | Robert Trascinski

Posted on 08/29/2006 6:51:14 AM PDT by headsonpikes

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To: Mamzelle
Hey what's up with dat? you rated all the work and time for them to make up a 'ignore graphic' from their own website they then link here to the FR and all to tell you that you are being ignored LOL. All the while putting their 'darwincentral.org' stamp on the place.

I was on the official 'ignore roster' of a evo freeprs profile page and for a few days I even made it onto his blog ;)

It is absurd isn't it, all the energy and time they burn up to let us know we are ignored.., LOL

W.
261 posted on 08/29/2006 5:11:17 PM PDT by RunningWolf (2-1 Cav 1975)
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To: etlib


Familiar with Buddhism?


262 posted on 08/29/2006 5:11:47 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: ahayes
but I'm afraid it in no way supports your assertion that our rights are assigned by legislative bodies and are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution.

You make a very good point and I can see where you take what I wrote as saying such but that's not the point I'm trying to make:

The busy bodies are the secularists.
They want to:
(snip)
-- Find Constitutional rights that were never passed -- much less considered -- by a legislative body
-- Ignore those that were.

IOW, they will find a right to privacy -- never articulated in the Constitution and which is basically impossible to define -- and ignore a spelled-out mandate to protect life

263 posted on 08/29/2006 5:12:13 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: ml1954
The Catholic demographics were 52% Bush, 47% Kerry.

But the Church-going Catholics vote was 56 percent to 43 percent which is pretty overwhelming especially since that vote would include Hispanics suspicious of nativists and Roosevelt babies suspicious of free-marketers.

264 posted on 08/29/2006 5:16:49 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: x
I don't know if religion is necessary to morality, but so many of the secularist arguments look weak. Morality needs all the help it can get, and religious support is to be welcomed.

I found Ross Douthat's comments quite germane:

...the Victorian project (which persists to this day) of doing away with Christian dogma but trying to keep Christian morality intact is doomed to failure. Not because Christian morality can’t be approached rationally by nonbelievers of good will, but because without the lived experience of a religious tradition it will never be anything more than an abstraction, an arid intellectualism, something that gets followed when following it is easy to follow and abandoned as soon as the going gets tough.

If we lived in the 15th or 16th century, secularism would provide the necessary corrective to the certainties of religion.

I'm really not sure that period can be rightly described as secular. As I read it, the aftermath of the Reformation led to the rise of divine-right monarchy, then later to the pseudo-religion of nationalism.

Yet I am pretty sure that the kind of skeptical examination of self and society on display here was nurtured in a Christian culture. I doubt that it will survive intact should that culture be significantly compromised, as is happening today.

265 posted on 08/29/2006 5:17:07 PM PDT by Dumb_Ox (http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com)
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To: Tribune7

Our rights are not limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. Only the government's rights are limited to those enumerated.


266 posted on 08/29/2006 5:17:13 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: Dracian

I don't know why so many wish to argue that morality is not inherently logical.

Buddha figured it out, and said nothing of God.


267 posted on 08/29/2006 5:17:25 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: etlib
True, but in those societies there are strong rules surrounding even that. In a duel, for instance, both individuals are equally armed, seconds are available to ensure the rules are followed, and there is a referee. Each participant also understands the results of the duel are final and there will be no retribution by relatives of the loser.

Vendettas are extremely disruptive of society, so society evolves rules to handle them. The duel (and the code duello) you mentioned above are one. Scandinavians developed the concept of weregeld where the killer pays the family of the deceased to head off any retribution. These rules and formalities are so important that crime families are known to use similar such to head off general blood baths between them.

268 posted on 08/29/2006 5:18:27 PM PDT by Junior (Identical fecal matter, alternate diurnal period)
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To: ml1954
So you assert that if someone doesn't attend church every week, they are not religious, and by your definition secularists?

Actually it was 65 percent of those who never went to church that voted for Gore. Yes, I would call the secularists.

269 posted on 08/29/2006 5:19:43 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: etlib

If God considered slavery to be a "wrong" He would have prohibited it -- that's the point.


270 posted on 08/29/2006 5:19:56 PM PDT by Junior (Identical fecal matter, alternate diurnal period)
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To: js1138
Our rights are not limited to those enumerated in the Constitution.

Yes. I was agreeing with Ahayes.

271 posted on 08/29/2006 5:21:50 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Dumb_Ox
Yet I am pretty sure that the kind of skeptical examination of self and society on display here was nurtured in a Christian culture.

Naw, mine comes from Buddhism. When I was Christian, I was taught that some things should not be examined.

272 posted on 08/29/2006 5:23:46 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: b_sharp
Yet in a world without God we developed that set of morals some currently attribute to a God.

Your opinion, not a fact.

In your perspective what you are really considering is not a world without God but a world started by a God who quite generously gave a set of morals but where that God suddenly disappeared.

For a Christian, God did not "suddenly disappear" but remains with the world.

You are also asking two questions. The first is 'where did the morals we have today originate' and the second is 'how would we act if we did not believe in retribution from on high'. You will note that the second question does not depend on the true origin of the set of morals.

I don't thing questions are being asked but claims are being made. Related to your questions the claims are:

If you want to answer the first question you cannot simply assume God then ponder a 'what if' - you need to look to both assumptions; that the current moral set has two potential origins, one with God and one without, and then compare their explanations.

Perhaps you cannot, but I certainly can and do. You also make a mistake if you think I assume God exists. It is a deeply reasoned belief.

To answer the second question you need to examine a number of cultures (not an individual), current or historical, that does not have a retributive God figure.

I have no such obligation.

273 posted on 08/29/2006 5:24:03 PM PDT by etlib (No creature without tentacles has ever developed true intelligence)
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To: Junior
If God considered slavery to be a "wrong" He would have prohibited it -- that's the point.

So why do we think slavery is wrong?

274 posted on 08/29/2006 5:24:49 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Protagoras

It comes from logic.


275 posted on 08/29/2006 5:24:55 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: stands2reason
When I was Christian, I was taught that some things should not be examined.

You were taught a strange form of Christianity.

276 posted on 08/29/2006 5:26:12 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Tribune7

But the Church-going Catholics vote was 56 percent to 43 percent which is pretty overwhelming especially since that vote would include Hispanics suspicious of nativists and Roosevelt babies suspicious of free-marketers.

Again, hardly overwhelming. And I'm still trying to get to your definition of secularists. Are people that don't attend church every week secularists? Are they by definition not religious? Are they lumped in with those people you included in your statement that 'The regligion of those who vote Democrat is mostly atheism'?

277 posted on 08/29/2006 5:26:56 PM PDT by ml1954 (ID = Case closed....no further inquiry allowed...now move along.)
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To: Tribune7

How is it so hard to define? It means people should be allowed to do as they like without the government snooping and interfering, as long as they're not harming another person unlawfully. The debate regarding abortion then is over whether a fetus is a person, not over whether people have a right to privacy.


278 posted on 08/29/2006 5:27:30 PM PDT by ahayes ("If intelligent design evolved from creationism, then why are there still creationists?"--Quark2005)
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To: Junior
If God considered slavery to be a "wrong" He would have prohibited it -- that's the point.

The bible is pretty good at spelling out what's right and what's wrong. It never says that slavery is wrong. In fact ...

leviticus
25:44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

25:45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

25:46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.


279 posted on 08/29/2006 5:28:55 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (The universe is made for life, therefore ID. Life can't arise naturally, therefore ID.)
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To: ml1954
And I'm still trying to get to your definition of secularists.

People who never go to church are secularists. (And I typed that real slow for you.)

280 posted on 08/29/2006 5:29:33 PM PDT by Tribune7
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