It's necessary that I expand on some things I said earlier. The following posts demonstrate ignorance (I mean that in a naive sense, not as an attack) of some very important aspects of Western history. Interestingly the aspects that are apparently unknown are exactly the fundamental evolutions in thought that are responsible for the existence of the United States of America. What follows is long, but concise. I swear. Please read on:
First, JSF said:
I reject your implied premise that only secularists are capable of moral decisions. Secularists lack a common authority to establish a basis for morality. What is moral to one secularist is immoral to another. There is only moral chaos in such a society. How can some secularist accept the murder of the unborn innocent and not shed a tear? How can some secularists support euthanasia? Tolerance for pornography, tolerance for the abandonment of natural law regarding marital union is the corrupt legacy of a secular society. America’s centrist values far exceed those of your self-centered, de-humanizing society. You may have acceptance in your corruption of Canada, but leave us alone.
And RWIndiana said:
If the people of this country vote to give benefits to hetros and not to homos, that may not be "fair" in a secular sense, but that is what the majority has chosen, and therefore I don't see how it can be called "unfair" either. The question would be whether it is constitutional or not, because unless we view everything through the prism of a single religion, we will never be able to agree on what "fair" is. Secular societies can't agree on what fair is either, and have also persecuted religious people; killing, maiming, and torturing Christians. This sort of thing still goes on today in China, for example. I'm sure many secularists believe this is fair since they think that Christians (or other religious groups) are a serious threat to an "enlightened" society. Yet other secularists believe this is not fair.
So what exactly is "fair?" Is it possible to discern this without a solid base to start from? What should our laws be based upon? Is there such a thing as an evil or criminal act which should be legislated against? After all, the idea of evil stems from religion.
That last sentence is tremendously Nietzschean of you RWIndiana. In fact that entire post is rather Nietzschean, but don't worry I'm sure your God won't send you to hell for just sounding like Nietzsche
. In the interest of an historical allusion, I'm going to agree with you entirely. Rational people have no idea what EVIL is. However, we do have a very good idea of what
bad is. You see, while two guys getting it on for all their worth is probably a little gross to many other men, and is, without a doubt, EVIL, it is not actually
bad in any manner that is of any consequence. I'm making a distinction that most people don't, but it is a very valuable one for people in this discussion to understand. Something that is bad, negatively affects an individual or individuals. Something that is EVIL sends you to hell. Now, going to Hell is a personal choice that even God himself allows all of mankind, Christian
or Atheist, but doing something that is just old fashioned bad is going to hurt people, which has all sorts of consequences that matter
on this planet.
Incidentally, EVIL is also, traditionally, the label used by people to describe something which terrifies them, but doesn't fit under
bad. They just say its evil, and pray everyone will just leave it at that.
Before I continue into the more important aspects of my point however, I want to point out a little confusion JSF and RWIndiana have entertaining throughout this thread. You're confusing rationalism with secularism. A secular individual is not necessarily rational. Also, many rational people believe in God, even the Christian God. Those secular people, committing those crimes that you allude to, were also condemned in my original post. I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I slide the National Socialists, the Bolsheviks, the Chinese Communist Party, and all those other zealous activists under the partisan rug. Now on with what matters...
1. Background:
It is
imperative to recall two crucial assumptions upon which the validity of democracy as an
engineered, political system rests. Afterall, democracy, as a designed system, is only valid if the principles upon which it was premised hold true and if it can satisfy the end
for which it was designed, just as a tool's utility is derived from its ability to effect its purpose. Additionally the people wielding any tool must understand the rules under which it was designed to operate, and the purpose it was designed for, otherwise they are almost certain to injure themselves or, even worse, innocent bystanders.
1.The first assumption upon which the democratic system's utility depends is the affirmation that all human beings are rational creatures, and are capable of making decisions with this faculty (i.e. not only
knowing rationally what they should do, but capable of directing their
will in such a direction). I'm not making this up. This belief was so firmly held by the thinkers that (re)birthed democracy that they didn't even worry about it, which, in retrospect, may have been short sighted.
2.The other assumption is actually the ultimate legacy of modernity: Reason will prevail over all things. The moderns didn't only mean that we would eventually understand the fundamental laws of life, and of existence, but that we would understand the very laws of human nature as well. These sciences are presently known as the Social Sciences, and economics is the most well known, but sociology and psychology are also daughters of this movement. Consequently, they knew, without a doubt, that reason would allow us to reconcile all individuals' interests. We could accomplish such a miracle because human beings were reasonable,
and they were quantifiable (you're not a Christian nihilist are you?). Such was their faith...
Democracy requires both of these beliefs of its disciples. Why? This is crucial. You see,
an irrational individual can have beliefs that are irreconcilable with the common good. A rational person cannot (we're going to leave out nihilists for the sake of argument, and, besides, they didn't exist when democracy was envisioned). The crucial point I'm trying to make here is that democracy is not just about the will of the majority as so many people seem to think. Many Muslims and Christians, today, are absolute, archetypical examples of individuals whose beliefs are entirely irreconcilable with the best interests of human beings. Even if they were the majority and everyone believed as they did, they would still be wrong to put their beliefs into law in any Western democratic state --and anyone who took the time to think critically, and rationally about things
would know it. In fact irregardless of their beliefs they should legislate and vote rationally, while acting in their personal lives by their morality, and allowing others to act by their's to the extent that they harm no one, excepting the actor and/or another consenting adult. I don't mean to use Muslims and Christians as an example with any prejudice, but overzealous Christians and Muslims are simply the most adequate example of our time, and I would be dancing around the elephant in the room if I substituted any other group for an example.
2. Morality:
This leads nicely into another important issue that I didn't get across in my first post. Above I implied that a rational creature would be capable of recognizing that the beliefs of overzealous Muslims and Christians were wrong --even if such overzealous individuals represented the majority, even if the critic was himself Muslim or Christian. It all goes back to a very interesting individual who was, once, in a similar position as that hypothetical, poor rebellious critic might be.
He is very likely the founder of your faith RWIndiana and JSF. I will tell you that rational people are indeed moral, and that they're moral in a sense that Martin Luther himself --one of the most fervent Christians, and without a doubt the
most evangelical in history-- could identify with (by the way, I mean the white one --not to take anything away from the black one).
Luther had the courage to stand up against every other European, all Catholics, and tell them that, if one considers the Bible, if one considers the revealed nature of God, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that every Roman Catholic is wrong. Martin Luther was one of the most knowledgeable Bible scholars of the last five centuries. He also possessed an incredibly critical mind and without a doubt a capable, and yes, rational, intellect. His reason pointed out a very elemental, rational necessity to him --a rational necessity so simple, so fundamentally
necessary that it was doomed to change the world. In fact, it probably changed the world more than any other thought in the last five hundred years. You see, in anticipation of good German tradition, Martin Luther began the liberation of the human mind.
Luther concluded several interesting things, but one is particularly relevant to our discussion. It was the idea that "if God knows me as well as I know myself (maybe better), then do I just have to
do good to get into heaven? Or do I actually have to
be good." It was an innocuously simple question, but it is at the center of why I said no religious individual can ever be moral (although Luther himself was unable to carry his idea to its logical, inevitable conclusion). You see, if I don't break a commandment because devils are going to poke my ass, and flamebroil me for eternity, how
exactly does that make me good? Really, what I'm saying is that I'm a big pussy and I'm scared shitless of barbecues. Luther realized that a moral decision is only truly moral if one chooses it freely (Tannin got right to the point with his post, by the way --sorry if this unnecessary, but the history is part of an overall point I want to make at the end).
Doing the moral thing because one is threatened with punishment is not moral. It is self-interested. True morality is doing what is right even if God says he's going to personally drop you right into the very bottom of Hell to party with Judas, Brutus, and Cassius (that last sentence is me interjecting, not Luther, but God will, by God, get an earful from me if I have to betray my 'liege' to save the life of a homosexual and He tries to give me some time with those three.) True morality is having the courage to stand up to God as a Man (yes, with a capital) and tell him he is full of shit, if it comes to that.
What Luther said understandably scared a lot of people. Most Christians knew deep down that the only thing that kept them in check was the two-sided promise of Heaven for not-EVIL actors, and Hell for EVIL actors, but suddenly they realized that if God was omniscient, which he obviously was, that he was going to see right through their act! However, even more terrifying than the promise of Hell for just about every person on the planet, regardless of whether they behaved or not, was the idea that their 'loving' God created them, knowingly, in full consciousness, just to send them to fry in Hell for eternity. The answer to Luther's question walks ahnd in hand with predestination, and he wasn't afraid to be reasonable and point it out. How could God be so cruel to only impart his Grace on so few...
Now, here's the irony. Do you know what offered Christians potential security from this doom? This is rich considering Evangelical Christians today. It was reason, from the mouth of Immanuel Kant the founder of Universal Human Rights. This didn't surprise anyone at the time, because reason was so obviously the God given characteristic that seperated man from beasts and everyone knew beasts couldn't go to heaven. Now, even if you didn't have God's Grace to make you good, you could do it yourself. Your reason could allow you to recognize your freedom, and, in that freedom, you could use reason to choose morally. The most crucial thing Kant did was rediscover free will and end the terror of predestination (temporarily anyway, damn materialists --and Christians were so happy before Luther had to be honest and intelligent and ruin everybody's party). The essential law that Kant pointed out was necessary for rational beings was called the categorical imperative, and its implications are so far reaching I won't even mention them.
Suffice it to say that reasonable people have a very specific grounding for their morality.
3. Conclusion:
Other than establishing that there is a unanimous, unshakeable foundation upon which rational morality is derived, I wanted to point out a couple of things. First of all, only American Christians are making the arguments you make, and the act of making them betrays that, not only are they uneducated about the history of Western thought in general, but they are uneducated about their own religion. Most people, including most Americans and Christians in other parts of the world, innately understand much of what I have said above. Most people don't need to read Kant or Luther. It's bred into their bones, but there is something about the indoctrination of Christians in some areas of the States that removes even the basic subconscious awareness of these things. Again it's like the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Modernity never took place! It terrifies me that five hundred years of brilliance and blood may all be for nothing.
Arguments like "Secularists lack a common authority to establish a basis for morality. What is moral to one secularist is immoral to another. There is only moral chaos in such a society." only even exist today because we don't study the most basic, most important elements of the history of western nations. No remotely educated Christian would have considered making such an argument even two hundred years ago because it was so obviously false as to be laughable. Not to mention the fact that one of the greatest Christians in history, the saviour of most American Christians, personally birthed the essence of the arguments I have abbreviated above.
Just because you believe in God doesn't mean you have to check your head at the door, or vote with the Bible quote of the month. Your ancestors were given as much freedom of choice, as regards their morality, as was possible with consideration for the safety of others. If you do anything less today, you betray the very existence of yourself and your entire faith.
