Posted on 08/29/2006 6:51:14 AM PDT by headsonpikes
We all know the basic alternatives that form the familiar "spectrum" of American politics and culture.
If a young person is turned off by religion or attracted by the achievements of science, and he wants to embrace a secular outlook, he is told--by both sides of the debate--that his place is with the collectivists and social subjectivists of the left. On the other hand, if he admires the free market and wants America to have a bold, independent national defense, then he is told--again, by both sides--that his natural home is with the religious right.
But what if all of this is terribly wrong? What if it's possible to hold some of the key convictions associated with the right, being pro-free-market and supporting the war, and even to do so more strongly and consistently than most on the right--but still to be secular? What if it's possible to reject the socialism subjectivism of the left and believe in the importance of morality, but without believing in God? ....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Familiar with Buddhism?
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
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.
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.
Our rights are not limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. Only the government's rights are limited to those enumerated.
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.
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.
Actually it was 65 percent of those who never went to church that voted for Gore. Yes, I would call the secularists.
If God considered slavery to be a "wrong" He would have prohibited it -- that's the point.
Yes. I was agreeing with Ahayes.
Naw, mine comes from Buddhism. When I was Christian, I was taught that some things should not be examined.
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.
So why do we think slavery is wrong?
It comes from logic.
You were taught a strange form of Christianity.
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'?
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.
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.
People who never go to church are secularists. (And I typed that real slow for you.)
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