01-06-2021, 08:14 AM
(01-06-2021, 06:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-05-2021, 05:27 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(01-05-2021, 04:24 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If that's the case, why are you in the tent of the secular left? The secular left does not recognize religion or religious belief as being equal to their own.
One answer is that the government cannot recognize an official religion and thus cannot enforce religious beliefs. The Bill of Rights is secular, and thus can be enforced by the government. Belief in freedom of religion, about the right to worship as one pleases, is acknowledged, but you cannot force one person to follow another's religious beliefs.
I would really be interested in knowing why anyone would think that religion belongs in the political sphere. Haven't we had enough with the Moral Majority and our Supreme Roman Catholic Court? And take a moment to look at all the countries that enshrine religions of one type or another. None are paragons of virtue: Hinduism in India, Judaism in Israel, Islam and Roman Catholicism in the Middle East and South and Central America, and Marxist Secularism in the countries still practicing that philosophical oxymoron. The countries that succeed both economically and socially keep politics and religion in separate lanes.
Devoutly-religious people will have their faith coloring their political beliefs. Leadership in African-American communities is heavily clergy. Most liberals recognize the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hero... and he was a model for anti-Communist revolutions in central and Balkan Europe. If I must choose between a devout Christian who believes as literal truth that a good society serves its poor at the expense of elite indulgence and a secular reactionary who believes only in the sybaritic excesses of people like him, well, that's easy. I'll take the devout Catholic Joe Biden over Donald Trump or Reverend Raphael Warnock over Kelly (I enrich myself stock deals based on insider information) Loeffler. I'm not a Catholic and I am not involved in any traditionally African-American church. If it takes religious faith to justify moral principles and make one a better person, then so be it. If one must become a Mormon to give up smoking, drinking, and whoring, then become a Mormon.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the greatest political speeches ever made. I wish that many of our self-professed Christians would re-read it as guidance on how to live. Maybe liquidating a job-creating business to give the proceeds to the poor would do less good than hiring some poor people to work for one, but that is my only significant dissent, and that relates to a huge difference between the economic conditions of Antiquity and modernity.
The problem comes when religiosity comes with either gullibility or arrogance. I have nothing but contempt for pseudo-science and superstition that take the mantle of religious faith. An attitude of "believe it or burn (in Hell)" toward non-believers is the definitive effort to hijack "God". I'm not Jewish, but I like the attitude that righteous people of all origins will go to a glorious (if Jewish -- well, it is Judaism) Afterlife and that the most egregious sinners will be out of sight and out of mind. No Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein to trouble you? Fine.
I have my own idea of the relationship of Heaven and Hell. If the Puritans had the idea that one of the delights of Heaven was to watch the torments that God inflicts upon the Damned, then I am tempted that Hell has one closed-circuit TV channel that shows the delights that the Righteous get to enjoy in Heaven but are denied in Hell... as someone like Ernst Kaltenbrunner (in charge of the concentration-camp system of the Third Reich) gets burned, gassed, hanged, and ripped to pieces by dogs. SS dogs, of course. I hope to meet my old friends Duke, Chino, Lady, Paxton, and Bear (dogs) where I am going. I am not so sure about the pet Buffy, who as a cat was an egregious violator of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Birds (his specialty) are probably ripping him to pieces eternally.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.