Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.

I can’t tell you how many times Chris Gidman has come at me with a machete over my lack of faith.

In all seriousness, I’m going to give her a little slack here and extend her remarks in order to salvage something.  If Rosie is saying “If Radical Christianity happened to be operating in the US with the intensity we see in Radical Islam, then it is just as dangerous”, I’d be right there with her.  Certainly, ANY movement that wants to kill people outside of the movement, overturn freedom, and turn back the clock to the middle ages isn’t really compatible with what most of us believe.

Unfortunately, I suspect Rosie isn’t assuming any stipulations to her statement.  In her mind, she probably does see the occasional Christian whack-job as indication that all of Christianity is really no better than what we see in Radical Islam.  She’s entitled to her view…

The Religious Right of the GOP has long been an uncomfortable faction for me. I’m not interested in politicians being too literal with Biblical law, just as I am not interested in living under Sharia.

That isn’t to say anything of religious origins has no place in society. On the contrary, the secular aspects of the Ten Commandments are a very reasonable core for a just society, and somewhat codify Natural Law. We shouldn’t toss them aside strictly because they are from the Judeo-Christian ethic. But we shouldn’t enshrine “Thou shall not worship false gods” right up there with “Thou shall not kill”.

Katherine Harris, of Florida 2000 fame, has shot off her mouth in an entirely inappropriate way.

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is “a lie” and God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will “legislate sin,” including abortion and gay marriage.

I don’t know where Ms. Harris received her education on the nation’s founding, but the Founders were mostly Deists, who generally rejected Christianity and all revealed religions. They were quite specific about theology being seperate from politics, and while they acknowledged the Divine Providence in Creation, they believed that God did not intervene in earthly matters. A quick search of the Federalist Papers reveal a handful of references to religion, and mostly in the context of securing the freedom of the citizenry to worship as they please.

Ms. Harris continues -

Separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told,” Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is “wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

I suppose one could make the case that electoral outcome is a result of God moving us to go to the voting booth. I wonder if Ms. Harris would then accept the Presidency of Bill Clinton as divinely inspired? How about Hillary pulling it off in 2008?

Ms. Harris and her fellow travelers are free to think as they choose. I wish they would go form their own party and become a fringe minority, but for whatever reason, the rapidly diminishing GOP will continue to embrace this stuff.

It is getting harder and harder for me to find a party with which I can remain comfortably affiliated.

Technorati Tags: religion, harris, seperation, church, state

Scout Oath
On my honor
I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and
To obey the scout law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Yeah, getting rid of these trouble makers is probably going to fix those crime problems right up. 

We’re screwed.

Sources:
http://www.bsalegal.org/
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/15132591.htm

Why?

American and European church attendance has been in decline for decades.  Some would argue that general morality is in steep decline (I don’t know that I agree, but certainly traditional institutions like marriage are changing radically).  I think it is fair to ask: why is Christianity having a hard time selling itself, yet fictional works of pseudo-spiritual inquiry sell like crazy?

An easy answer is that Dan Brown doesn’t require you to change your behavior.  Sure, I can see that.  But I think we are still seeing an undeniable hunger in the spiritual arena, and it still remains for the established faiths to harvest that ‘market’.  Right or wrong, the Church is failing in this endeavor.

I don’t have an answer for them.  I’m not suggesting some bizarre convergence of Christ and Da Vinci.  I don’t know what they should do.

The observations lead to more observations about people as a whole.  We’ve always been drawn to the mystery.  Before we had Loch Ness and Yeti, we had maps with ‘Here Be Dragons’.  Science continues to push back the boundary of mystery, until the truly unknowable becomes too esoteric for most people to even understand what isn’t known.  There are few mysteries left that people care about, so is it any surprise that some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories flourish despite hard evidence to the contrary?

People like to know things.  People enjoy discovery.  But gone are the days of the garage laboratory providing any meaningful discovery.  The frontier of science is dominated by billion dollar machines and consortiums of hundreds of scientists devoted to truly microscopic discoveries.

I wonder about those ancient, famous Greeks whose names should be recognizable in the roots of many common English words.  Were these men exceptionally brilliant even by today’s terms, or were they ‘fortunate’ to live in a world where the things to be discovered practically littered the ground around them?  Was Pythagoras a staggering genius, or just the first guy to get some basic ideas down on parchment and was lucky enough to see that scrap of text survive?

No disrespect intended.

My point is about the human nature to seek answers.  The modern world does not indulge this drive too easily when it comes to the physical sciences.  That well is pretty much dry.  So are we now turning to the less rigorous arena of pseudo-science or historical revision as away to indulge this drive?  Is this why these things sell?

As a people, we hunger.  But for what?

Francis Porretto discusses the idea of Catholic ‘Reform’ in a lengthy and fascinating post. I touched upon similar concerns, but in a vastly inferior way, in a recent post.

A church must, by its very nature, be a conservative institution. The point of a church is the conservation and dissemination of a body of doctrines. In the case of a Christian church, the body of doctrines to be conserved and disseminated was laid down by Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians hold to have been the Son of God, made flesh to bring them to us.

I can’t do this justice with a single pullquote, and it isn’t ethical to reproduce the whole thing, so in the words of Francis, hie thee hence and read it.

The discussion naturally turns to the future of the Church, and the inconsistencies begin to fly.

Those that seek to change the Church, the critics, do so for a great many reasons, but I believe they all lack the fundamental honesty in embracing their own motives.

Critics fall into two large groups. Non-Catholic Critics and Catholic Critics. While in many cases they may seek the same thing, the distinction in their faith speaks to each group’s fundamental motivation.

The Non-Catholic Critics split along two general lines: The Secular Critic and the Faithful Critic. The Faithful Critic already believes that the Catholic Church is fundamentally wrong on matters of theology (or they would BE Catholic). So why do they wish to reform the Church? Does a Lutheran wish to blur the distinction between Roman Catholics and themselves? Does a gay Unitarian seek to be a Cardinal in Rome? Critics with vested interest in other faiths might engage in Catholic kibitzing as a means of illustrating their own perceived superior faith, or it might simply be a matter of ‘a man fails to mind his own business when it isn’t worth minding.’

The Secular Critic has a different set of motivations. While they are not always hostile to religious organizations, they tend to be the more vocal of critics. They are upset about the Church’s perspective on birth control, the role of women, the acceptance of homosexuality and so forth. While I can understand the heat generated by these issues, I’m not entirely sure why they feel the need to reform these positions. Most take the tack of fighting against ‘the harm to society’ perpetrated by Catholic teaching. One can argue, with some merit, that family planning in the Third World is in need of a more realistic solution than Church doctrine of abstinence, but the Catholic Church is not a coercive body in physical matters. And while I can understand the indignation of a gay man in the face of Catholic neighbors, Catholic policy is not currently aligned with Islamic thinking, particularly in the ‘bury them to the neck and collapse a stone wall upon them’ method.

It seems to me, in a general sense, that the Secular Critic dislikes being disliked for engaging in activities that are anathema to a church in which they don’t even profess to belong. Why seek a realignment of the Church in this case? Would it not be better to simply ignore the teachings and members of such a Church, provided the Church isn’t collapsing walls on people or burning them at the stake for the use of birth control? A Church is not a country club, and you can’t reasonably expect to change the rules from the outside.

The Catholic Critic is a curious thing. One of two things must be true to the average Catholic.

1). The arbitrators of the Word of God are fallible.

Or

2). The arbitrators of the Word of God are infallible.

If you believe in Number 2, then you really have no recourse to criticize the Church. You must believe fully that the position of the Church is aligned with the intent of God. Some might take the ‘cafeteria’ approach, picking and choosing on matters of fallibility, but how does one make such a distinction with a straight face? Undermining the authority of the Church on one matter or another casts doubt upon the whole of accepted Canon, and the Church becomes a thing of Men rather than a thing of God. A true Catholic of the Second Order expressed above must accept the whole cloth of the Church, therefore criticism is not consistent with faith.

The Catholic Critic that acknowledges fallibility of Church officials has several different paths available to him. One is the path of Luther and others, striking out to form a new meme more suitable to their beliefs. While this is a respectable path (as a heretic can be admired by the dispassionate observer), it isn’t practical for the vast majority of the discontent. But the common discontent Catholic has the option of migrating to an existing faith that is more suitable for their wants. However, does a change of faiths suggest that a Church has a secondary function in the practice of faith, serving more as an association of people rather than a conduit to God? Does the specific flavor of Christianity matter, or are all manmade interpretations of God’s word suspect and perhaps unneeded? The migratory Christian raises some interesting questions about the relation of Man and God through a formal organization.

Finally, the entrenched Catholic Critic who doubts the legitimacy of Church leadership has a right to remain a Catholic and seek reform from within. However, I personally question the extent of such reform. On matters of Doctrine clearly stated in acceptable Canonical sources, how can one seek to alter Church policy? At what point does Catholic reformation become Catholic transmutation to something else? Where the Word of God is unambiguous, any attempt at change suggests that God’s Will can be mutated to meet the needs of the age. This hardly seems acceptable.

In matters of ambiguity, the issue of reform is quite legitimate. But I wonder how many tenants of Catholicism are truly ambiguous? I am not Catholic in the slightest, so my education here is lacking. My point is merely this – the realm of ambiguous Church principles is probably much more limited than the scope of debate suggests. Those that wish to debate beyond these bounds are probably more at home in a different Church. The Church is not a social club open to bylaw modification. To assume so is to diminish the power of membership.

It would seem that all classes of Critic could use a bit more honesty about what it is they seek, and why.

We are being rightfully mocked on sites like this one, and this one.

This is one of the reasons I consider myself more of a Conservative than a Republican. I understand that the evangelical right is a voting block with considerable power, and maybe they do lay awake at night worrying about what SpongeBob is doing inside of that pineapple, but this kind of garbage doesn’t serve the conservative movement. At best, it confirms an existing stereotype of religious conservatives, and at worst, it harms the electoral potential of the conservative cause.

The GOP is on the cusp of being the dominant party for the next twenty years, but so long as they embrace this kind of embarrassment, I can’t personally subscribe to the party as part of my political identity.

Unfortunately, the Libertarians have their own problems.

The evangelicals are free to hold on to their beliefs about gays, but I still don’t quite understand how you can reconcile the hatred when the tenants of your faith demand universal love. But then again, I don’t quite understand a religion of peace preaching death to the infidel. Behold the corrosive power of a meme on the ability to reason.

While I still have significant problems with the GOP, it is our last hope for bringing a real conservative movement to power some day. George Bush is NOT that man on domestic policy, and some might argue that he isn’t that man on foreign policy. But the GOP, as a viable party, is closer to the ideas of limited government than any other viable political party.

Welcoming gays into the conservative cause isn’t a matter of cold political calculus (but make no mistake it would help the movement), but rather a matter of common human decency. While I am repelled by a faction of the gay movement that wishes to introduce the lifestyle to as many people as possible, I don’t believe this represents the majority of gays. Your bedroom activities are a private matter, and a conservative movement that harbors judgment of people based on private matters is unworthy of power. Responsible conservatives have a duty to speak out against this kind of bigotry whenever it is encountered.

If gays are outlawed, only Leftists will have gays.

First, Ali’s position can best be summarized here.

What I’m trying to say is that no religion in its present form is compatible with democracy and both democracy and religion can only co-exist if that religion is marginalized. In my mind all present religions, if you take them from the mouths of their advocators, being Imams, priests or whatever they are called in other religions and look at them with a modern rational mind, are (pardon me) so full of sh*t! (Note that I’m not talking about the core of those beliefs but how they’re presented to us now).

I’ve been a vocal critic of the Islamic world and the seeming inability of that faith to reconcile itself with the larger ideas of religious tolerance and personal freedom. I think the criticism is still well founded, but it is fair to extend the criticism to western religion. Since 9/11, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that western faith had similar problems in the Middle Ages, and the first step toward resolution was the Treaty of Westphalia. While it didn’t solve all of the problems of religious intolerance, it was a significant step toward doing exactly what Ali is talking about here.

Namely, marginalization of religion is essential for a sustained peace and cohesion in a diverse population. This isn’t intended to diminish the role of faith in a culture, and indeed a homogenized faith is essential to bind people together in a common culture initially. But at some point, either through assimilation or contact with a larger world, enough Others will be encountered to cause problems. In the Middle Ages, this led to war and persecution.

Religion is a powerful meme, and by nature, memes demand obedience to the idea. Religions are designed to either convert or supplant, and they do it remarkably well. Fortunately for Western Civilization, the meme was marginalized enough to allow another meme to move in, namely, the ideas of personal liberty and tolerance of the Other. Without that essential change, Europe would pretty much look like the Middle East today.

So I agree with Ali. Religion, ascended to primacy, is not only incompatible with ‘democracy’ (a term I dislike), it is incompatible with essential freedoms that form the backbone of Western Civilization. Now, that isn’t to say that religion has no place in society. Far from it. Media Lies sums it up nicely –

That is not to say that the precepts of a religion cannot influence the formation of laws in a democracy. They most certainly can and do. And they can be adjusted over time by the influence of other religions. However, the laws cannot be identical to the precepts of any religion where those precepts are inimical to the rights of those who are not followers of that religion.

The Judeo-Christian ethic is an essential core of Western Law, and to pretend otherwise is silly. But that core doesn’t make us a theocracy. Westerners consider secular law as the primary authority, while acknowledging the roots of this law but not demanding the continued presence of religion in the practice of government. Unfortunately, it seems Islam, as practiced today, demands a primary role in both the interpretation and administration of law and government.

Freedom and compatibility with the modern world will only come to the Middle East when they have their Westphalia moment. Such reform isn’t going to be driven by the United States. It’s going to come from a small group of religious figures, hopefully alive today, who will stand up and offer a new interpretation of Islam. I am optimistic about this in the long run.

Fundamentally, popular elections are a bad idea for the Senate. The people have representation in the House of Representatives. The Senate was established to represent the interests of the State. Orignally, Senators were appointed by State Legislators and the Governer. The population had no say beyond the election of their State officials, indirectly influencing who would be appointed.

So essentially, the States have had no official representation in DC since 1913, and the case for States Rights has declined since then. We should restore the original intent of the Framers and repeal the amendment.

But I can’t see it happening, since the average American is too uninformed to understand the ramifications. The Left has managed to brainwash us into thinking we are a Democracy, and we should have a say in everything.

Okay, this is just completely insane!! Regardless of the gender connatation of the word ‘magi’, we can’t ignore the realities of female status in 0 AD Persian culture. The odds of a woman holding any position of power or education are about the same as Dennis Kucinich getting elected in November.

Come on!!!