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It was a response to incredulity and amazement that any scientist could possibly be religious.
My take: after 30 in a scientific career, I can tell you if you are looking for science to provide you an ultimate truth and pull back the curtains to reveal the deepest nature of objective reality, you are going to be disappointed.
Science and inductive reasoning are great things. Probably western civilization's most important contribution.
But all science can give you is provisional knowlege about how natural phenomena seem to behave.
After that, the meaning of life either comes down to cynicism, skepticism, hedonism, existentialism, religion, or some kind of belief in spiritual truth or moral philosophy.
You are right. Theocracy is an affront to a liberal democracy.
Legislating from the Hebrew Bible, aka Old Testament, is completely off the table.
On the other hand, I do not mind when politicians' conscience and morality is informed by the New Testament. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter were clear that their faith informed their policy choices. Social justice, economic justice, and Christianity have a long history. I doubt there would have been a Civil Rights act without the Christian minister Martin Luther King Jr.
We are not all Christians.
When it comes to passing the laws of the land, we must arrive at moral direction through secular consensus.
We don't need the Christian equivalent of Sharia Law, and fundamentalist evangelicals continue to advocate for essentially that.
They're the American Taliban.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Jack (04-21-2021), ThatOwlWoman (04-21-2021)
Explicitly religious legislation which violate people's civil rights, the bill of rights, common human decency (i.e., stoning adulterers to death) obviously need to be dispatched with the utmost urgency and prejudice.
On the flipside, I think we are kidding ourselves if we do not believe that our personal moral philosophies do not inform our conscience and policy preferences.
In Joe Biden's case, his conscience is informed by the social gospel of the Christian New Testament
Luckily, there is enough overlap between the main moral tenets of world religions and ethical traditions we generally do not have to worry about archaic Jewish law from Deuteronomy or archaic Islamic legal code from Sharia being enacted here.
What of the more insidious type of religious beliefs that the fundies and even some mainstream Xtian religious want inserted into our lives? Examples: teaching creationism alongside biology in public school science classes; prayer in public gatherings like school or city hall, along with religious holiday displays; banning women's right to choose; allowing discrimination if it's based on religion; forbidding gay ppl marriage; disallowing those of certain other religions entry to the country.
"Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals." -- Mark Twain
The theocratic religious right is always going to be a concern. I think their assault on reproductive choice is the most dangerous to possibly succeed.
Creationism and intelligent design in public school were decisively defeated in the courts. Public school endorsement of school prayer was decisively defeated in the courts. Attempts to ban gay marriage or interracial marriage have been decisively defeated in the courts.
Muslim bans seem to me to be based on straightforward bigotry and nationalism - not Christianity or the bible. Islam did not even exist when Jesus lived and the bible says nothing about Islam, which would not exist until six centuries after the New Testament was written.
I agree that the religious right relentlessly attempts to institutionalize it's white, nationalist agenda. But attempting and succeeding are two different things. That is not to say we ever have to be on guard" or roll back where they have had minor successes.
Imagine being both omniscient and omnipotent, but as a creator, this is the best world with which you could bother to come up.
Believers actually worship a god that obviously must have mailed it in!
If it's indeed both omniscient and omnipotent, and this is the world that it created, then the most simple of logic tells us that it certainly, as a god, wasn't all-loving as well.
This very obvious observation proves beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that religious people are, for whatever reason, cultural or otherwise,
logic deficient. We don't need to be trusting them for leadership.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Jack (04-21-2021)
NiftyNiblick (04-21-2021)
This Christian Nation pyramid scheme of injustice where exposing the fabricated misnomer immaculate Jesus the Christ conception results in lynching enforcement department of corrections to insure then ensure their “man is God” diatribe from killing as reason in use of force to avoid Christiananality pedophilia super ego acceptance of under God at all costs.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
ThatOwlWoman (04-21-2021)
But why do you complain that I am a bible thumper self-consciously promoting and proselytizing Christianity....
But you never complain when I am posting about Hinduism...
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...55#post4168755
Or when I post about about indigenous American Animism?
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...16#post4294416
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...35#post4217835
Or when I post about Buddhism, Confucianism, and the atheism, and and skepticism of Nietzsche, David Hume, et al.?
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...ual-traditions
Or when I post about Judaism, Sikhism, Islam?
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...03#post4193903
Or when I make fun of bible thumpers?
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...40#post4131640
Or when I post about the Baha'i faith?
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...18#post3990618
ThatOwlWoman (04-21-2021)
I know, Voltaire's entire Candide was an indictment that a Judeo-Christian God did not create a perfect world free of earthquakes, muder, and house fires. Most world religions have had to address the question of theodicy.
Augustine and others gave the Christian response to the problem of theodicy.
I think the Bagavad Gita gives the Hindu perspective.
The entire Buddhist religion is based on the observation and fact of unnecessary suffering.
I do not have any brilliant answers to the problem of theodicy, I am not smart enough.
But since all major world religions confess to the nature of suffering in the world, it does not strike me as wise to deny political leadership to the world's five billion people who belong to a major faith tradition.
ThatOwlWoman (04-21-2021)
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
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