Talking about religion without a fight

[rug]

Religious and secular Canadians can debate big issues if they display goodwill and ‘thick skins’

By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun columnist May 31, 2013

MONTREAL -- Religion is the most dangerous force in the world.

That is a commonplace belief in “secular” North America.

Many secularists maintain religion is little more than a force that fuels war, persecution, hate, oppression and terrorism.

Since religion is so explosive and non-rational, many secularists maintain, it should be eradicated. Or at least be kept private. Religiously motivated people, they argue, must avoid publicly trying to influence society.

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Douglas+Todd+Talking+about+religion+without+fight/8464009/story.html

[PM Martin]

1. Religion should not dictate public policy.

[rug]

3. Ok. Now what do you think of the subect of the OP?

Religiously motivated people, they argue, must avoid publicly trying to influence society.

Do you agree?

[longship]

9. I agree, wholeheartedly.

Religiously motivated people, they argue, must avoid publicly trying to influence society.

If there is one thing humans need to learn is that what we call religious belief is a poisonous to politics, government, and especially, science.

I don't give a damn what a person believes, or how they come to their beliefs. But when they attempt to use the auspices of government, politics, or -- I shudder -- science to spread what can only be termed as a belief, at best, I have to draw the line.

That's what our founders realized which has been sadly forgotten. And make no mistake, this has so deeply infected our political rhetoric that many no longer recognize it when it is staring us all in our faces. And when a powerful political party latches onto such principles to exclusion of facts, let alone the results of their ideologically determined policies, there is Hell to pay.

I've posted this many times here, but Hitchens was correct. Religion poisons everything. It has certainly poisoned the Republican Party in the USA, as well as every one of their misguided policies. Now, there is not to be any debate on what is known to be the absolute truth, passed down from those historic Republican figures like Moses from Mt. Sinai. This, in spite of the actual history, just as the stories of the Hebrew Bible are most certainly not historic, but legendary.

So, what does one do when such a cultural thing actually happens? Especially at the dawn of another Millenium? How much of what we have learned over that time are we willing to cast away in the name of preserving that equally old cultural meme, religion?

It is a question that all of us should consider, no matter what our beliefs.

[rug]

12. I disagree. Read the statement carefully.

The motives of citizens in a democratic society are essentially irrelevant. To prohibit discourse on the basis of motive is fascist.

The test in a democratic society is action. That action must be based on the governing documents of that society. There is nothing in the American governing documents that provide for public action or public policy to be based on religious belief. But you cannot outlaw speech, or even exhortations based on religious belief.

The fact is, religious motives often overlap secular motives in determining public policy. The fact that one group of citizens acts from religious impulse does not negate that public policy, provided there is a legitimate nonreligious rationale to carry out that policy.

"Shut up" never results in good policy of any kind.

[longship]

13. Well, we have over 200 years of the First Amendment.

And there is no more expressive statement of the balance of religious freedoms and restrictions in that amendment than the Lemon Test in Lemon v. Kurtzman from 1971.

Here is how the Lemon Test is to be applied (from Wikipedia):

The Court's decision in this case established the "Lemon test", which details the requirements for legislation concerning religion. It consists of three prongs:

1. The government's action must have a secular legislative purpose;

2. The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;

3.The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

If any of these 3 prongs are violated, the government's action is deemed unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Now it may be that gay rights should be Constitutionally forbidden. Or, that women's rights to have access to contraceptives should be forbidden. But if one makes those arguments on the basis of religion, it fails the first of the Lemon tests, and is therefore unconstitutional.

But the Republicans know about the Lemon Test. So they play coy about their explicitly religious agenda. Some cannot help but tip their hand, like Bachmann, Akin, and a few others who cannot seem to keep their tongues from flapping about what they really believe.

Does anybody really believe that this isn't just a matter of party discipline? We catch them all the time when they are speaking amongst themselves. And of course, the religious leaders can never keep their mouths sealed about what is really driving this entire political machine.

Sorry, my good friend. The Republican party has been long since co-opted by a religious cabal. It is an exemplar of everything bad that religion has done over so many centuries.

With all due respect, when religion and government mix, nothing good ever comes of it, nor has it ever.

And don't get me started about religion and science.

As always, I appreciate your input.

[rug]

14. It's that 200 year history that gives me confidence we won't have a theocracy.

There is no credible doubt that some religious groups have political agendas and that some political groups use religion to advance their political agendas. There are also racist groups, nationalist groups, sexist groups and asshole groups of every stripe. Fine. Let them speak. I'm confident we can stop them.

Fighting them imo is more important than silencing them.

Don't worry, I agree with you they shouldn't have power. See you on the ramparts. (I'll be the one with a rosary around my neck.)

[longship]

15. Then pray for peace, my good friend.

I will be standing proudly at your side, but sine rosarium.



On edit: but still understand that the GOP really has been taken over by religious conservatives. Lock, stock, and barrel. They are, as a whole, fundamentalist Protestants along with the most conservative of the Catholics, with a sprinkling of Jewish.

I am not too sure where the libertarians figure in except maybe as convenient followers on, if only as strictly economic allies.

The whole lot is nothing but an ideological cult.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

18. You and Hitchens are wrong

Last edited Mon Jun 3, 2013, 03:02 PM - Edit history (1)

When you say "I've posted this many times here, but Hitchens was correct. Religion poisons everything." Religion can poison things, but it does not necessarily do so. As the writer of the story in the Vancouver Sun, Douglas Todd, put it,

My part of the discussion included suggesting that religion is like sex, or fire. All three are extremely powerful forces. All of them can, indeed, be destructive. But religion, sex and fire can also be profoundly healthy, life-giving and instructive.

I daresay that you would agree that the religiously motivated Martin Luther King did not "poison" anything.

[longship]

20. Yes, I know.

And one almost never doesn't hear MLK Jr. as the falsification to Hitchens' claim. Or Ghandi. Or any number of other people in history who have done good, and may have been associated with some religion.

But Hitchens was not saying anything about individuals who can, for any number of justifications, do good things in the world. He was speaking in general terms. Religion does not have a good record with regards to mixing with politics, government, and science, among other things. That is his point.

And I will grant you that MLK Jr. did good things and used his religious position to good advantage to those ends. For good!

But when people let religion into governance like we have here in the USA, nothing good will come of it. That's why we have a godless constitution which was amended first with a proscription against religious entanglements in our laws.

Like Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris, my complaint is not so much with religious people as it is with religious institutions which never seem to tire of interfering in the affairs of everybody, even those not of their beliefs, or of no belief in deities.

I wish I could back down on this opinion and could agree with you that religion is good for society. There's nothing that would make me happier because I really don't care how other people believe. Except to the extent that they would impose their beliefs on others. That's the poison, my friend, and it's something religion always seems to do. (With only a very few exceptions.)

As Dennett has expressed, religion is likely a cultural embed, a meme that likely will never go away. He, like many of us non-believers, would be happy if religion morphed into what he terms "avirulence", a less toxic form.

Finally, do you suppose that maybe believers might have a problem seeing these issues from the inside? Could this be one of our sticking points?

You seem to be very sure that my opinion is wrong. Well, I don't claim absolute truth. I will leave that to religions to claim, which they often do.

I hope this helps you understand my position. Thank you for your response.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

21. If you say "Religion poisons everything"

You are vastly overstating things. There are many things that religion does not "poison".

I brought up MLK because he is a prime example of religion acting for good. Religion can be misused. But you are saying that it is always misused -- that is how I interpret "everything" in your statement.

[longship]

22. I attempted to be clear on what I meant.

Maybe I was not very successful in that. If so, I apologize.

It is apparent that you disagree with me and I am okay with that. Note that although we disagree on this, I would not characterize your statements as being wrong, just different.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

25. My point is that to say "Religion poisons everything" is overstating things

I shall say that we should agree to disagree, and leave it at that.

[Fumesucker]

2. Charlatans can misuse and abuse anything for personal gain

It's just that since religion is so non rational and evidence free it's particularly easy for charlatans to misuse something that can under optimum conditions be a positive experience for some people.

Rather akin to the way commercial interests also abuse our largely non rational sexual urges for commercial gain.

[TygrBright]

4. It's a good thing no one else ever does that. n/t

[rug]

5. Oh there are plenty of charlatans to go around.

There are plenty of people making plenty of money off both religion and irreligion.

[Fumesucker]

6. It's like comparing a mom and pop grocery with Walmart

I made a Jimmy Swaggart CD for an old lady I know just a few weeks ago, she can't buy them in the stores she can get to, he's actually quite a good gospel singer and has a lot of stuff on Youtube.

Here's one of the songs I put on the CD, she was really excited to get it.

[rug]

7. He's got Jerry Lee's genes.

[Fumesucker]

10. Oh yeah, we talked about that and had a good laugh together

Whole lotta shaking going on..

[mike_c]

8. I think that's doomed to failure....

"Bridging the secular divide" is unlikely IMO. The problem is that both sides-- religious believers and secularists who reject religion for a whole variety of reasons-- cannot agree on a methodology that works equally well for both. Secularists, at least those coming from a science background, insist that religious believers either provide real, verifiable data consistent with their religious convictions or that they admit the unreliability of their convictions. Religious believers, on the other hand, will tie themselves into logical contortions and fallacies to avoid the notion of evidence based objective reality that is central to the secular perspective.

I'm an unrepentant secularist, so from my perspective it appears that religious believers will go to any lengths to cling to fairy tales as reality. Now, religious believers might or might not like that characterization, but if they want to "bridge the secular divide" and have a conversation that I can value they have to be willing to work within that framework. Prove-- with objective evidence we can both accept-- that those fairy tales are real and that they mean what religious believers claim they mean. Until that happens, I don't see much hope for bridging that divide.

[rug]

11. Observation precedes methodology.

It's bad science to try to adapt the phenomenon to the method. You don't weigh water with a sieve.

To expect, if not demand, religious belief conform to tests of "evidence based objective reality" is unrealistic science and dishonest polemic. (BTW, secular is not synonymous with scientific.)

So I disagree. What is required is a consensus of what the two camps are describing and discussing. If that can be achieved, then perhaps a methodology, if necessary, can be determined.

[Jim__]

16. It sounds like the beginning of along conversation.

It didn't sound like they agreed to anything specific. Of course, just having the conversation is important.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Daniel Weinstock isn't paying attention

Among other things, Weinstock has been impressed by the way religious leaders in Canada have displayed skill at stating their cases about social and ethical issues in “secular language.”

Weinstock said religious leaders know not to argue about war, euthanasia or taxation on the basis of super-normal events involving Jesus, Moses, Buddha or Vishnu.

“No one I know,” he says, “has simply put forward the argument: ‘God says.’ ”

The Canadian debate about euthanasia has religion all over it. An example:

“Legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide would be a rejection of God’s most precious gift: life itself,” said Catholic Archbishop Terrence Prendergast at a benefit dinner last week in the nation’s capital.

“Let us pray that our governments continue to protect our vulnerable seniors by retaining this prohibition,” he said.

Prendergast opened his speech at the fifth annual Archbishop’s Charity Dinner last Wednesday with a reflection on the fourth commandment, “honour your father and your mother”.

“How we honour our parents changes with the seasons of life. As our elders need more help from us than they can give to us, we honour them by helping them transition from a ministry of doing to a ministry of being,” he said. “We honour our seniors with time, attention, and love”.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canadian-archbishop-39euthanasia-rejects-gods-most-precious-gift-life-itsel/

(Sorry about the source)

[rug]

19. He may be distinguidhing between dialogue among groups and sermons to the troops.

[edhopper]

23. What is meant by religiously motivated people?

We are a far way off from no religious person in the public debate, if ever.

But i do not want a person basing public policy on their religion. Laws should not be based on Church teachings.

There are many times when religions vie for the same things that a good and fair society should do. But just as many times, they are an obstacle to that end.

Enter the discussion for whatever reason you want, but Holy text and religious teachings should not be the reason for public policy.

[cbayer]

24. I think pretty much everyone, if not literally everyone, here would agree with you on this.

Almost every believer here that I have had the opportunity to hear from is also a secularist.