[Grumpy_Mel]

“Since all sin hurts people, I disagree. However, most sins are so minor, common and persistent that they are not worth resources to enforce laws against, and since we are all sinners, and we all don’t want to be hounded by anyone with a grudge or anyone with a badge who is having a bad day, I think Christian and non-Christian will be in agreement on a host of things that should not be outlawed but are still sins to a Christian. When you get to murder (read abortion), prostitution, drugs, and the like, you will find most Christians supporting laws against because they are so destructive, so there is a certain amount of cost/benefit analysis involved. The difference I suppose is that the Christian conservative is less likely than an atheist libertarian to worry that he doesn’t have a right to outlaw some destructive behavior. The Christian has a basis for his view that it is wrong.”

---

So how then do you reconcile

“You shall have no other gods before Me.”

With

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”

Presumably, worshiping a “false god” or maybe even the Devil himself would be a mortal sin to a Christian (i.e. not one of those minor things that wouldn’t be worth the effort to enforce) ...... yet not only is it NOT against the law.... but it is a Constitutionaly enshrined right.

One of our highest laws says that you are free to worship Zeus, Minerva or even Old Scratch himself.

It would seem to me that your basis for how laws should be established would place you in direct opposition to the Bill of Rights.

It’s one of the reasons many libertarians (such as myself) view Social Conservatives with a great deal of trepidation.

[Greg F]

The huge preponderance of voters in the early years of the republic were Christians. They insisted on the Bill of Rights including freedom of religion. Protestant dissenters escaped persecution in Europe from Catholics and state churches, Catholics in Maryland looked around and said yah, in a majority Protestant nation, we’d like freedom of religion please. Jews agreed wholeheartedly

I addressed this in an earlier post as well, where I said: I agree, of course, that we should not outlaw all sin. From a strict perspective, outlawing all sin would require us to outlaw thoughts. In fact, I think it would be against Christian principles to do so regarding many sins, regardless of the cost/benefit involved. Christianity is not a religion of the sword, in which external compliance and forced submission is the goal, it’s an internal change, a personal relationship with Christ that is important. The “heart” not the body. That cannot be forced; it depends on God, not man.

Your trepidation is misplaced. In fact, without Christians in politics you would not have the heritage of liberty at all. Natural rights stem from a belief that God grants the inalienable rights that we enjoy.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Good post Mel. This is going to take a while to read the whole thing.

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