Actually, scratch that title out and replace it with “Religion Should Be Kept In Politics.” C’mon, say it with me: Religion should be kept in politics. Now, didn’t it feel kinda good and kinda cathartic to say that?
Conventional moderate, liberal, or secular wisdom--whatever have you--tells us that religion should be kept out of politics. Religion + politics = violence, right? So you shouldn’t mix the two. Or you wouldn’t someone else’s religious views made into law and foisted at you, right? So you should not mix religion and politics. Or religious beliefs are (per the stupid supposition at hand) unprovable by definition, and surely it is not right to legislate based on unprovable ideas, right? The secular Western mind would tell us this, but idea is also one that is false.
If someone says that people should keep religion out of politics because the combination of the two creates violence, then that person should be consistent with such a belief. Marxism and communism probably should be left out of politics, given their history in proxy wars during the Cold War. Libertarianism and the mere idea that people should be free: these also have to kept out of politics, given their deadly history with the Revolutionary War and other fits of violence in history. (Notice immediately that this does not leave room for much of any belief or political paradigm in the public sphere.) Of course, if someone then tries to say, “But there is still room to vote and to govern by mere moral or just principles, without reference to any religious belief” then I think he can find, if he will check the history books, that there is no room even to vote and govern by mere moral principles. Examples would be any number of anti-colonial wars that this planet has seen in the past 300 years.
In fact, if anyone asks me if I would like to live under Islamic law, as if this question demonstrated that religion and politics should be kept separate, then my response is It does not matter. I don’t like the nonsense government and body of regulations that we are currently subjected to in America. Same goes for the U.S. government and its legal code as they existed in 1964, 1954, 1854, or 1754: it is all disagreeable in toto, even if it relatively good.
Again, if anyone asks me if I would like to live under Islamic law, as if this question demonstrated that religion and politics should be kept separate, then my response is It does not matter. Suppose you had a land with a million citizens, all of whom were Christians. This land does not yet have a functioning government with binding regulations. Meanwhile, suppose that the philosophy of government that these quaint, unsophisticated people happen to have is that any and every law should be taken directly from the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. Bear in mind that these quaint, unsophisticated people’s only notion of legal philosophy is that laws should be taken from the Decalogue: the logical result is such that if they do not pass a law in this way they’re not going to ever think to pass a law in any other way. Now, which would you rather be the case: that these people in this manner legally prohibt things such as murder and theft, or instead not prohibit anything since, after all, religion and government should be kept separate?
Finally, why not actually read the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States sometime, before mindlessly spouting some vague, almost-meaningless line such as, “The 1st Amendment establishes a separation between church and state”? Here is what is written:
Conventional moderate, liberal, or secular wisdom--whatever have you--tells us that religion should be kept out of politics. Religion + politics = violence, right? So you shouldn’t mix the two. Or you wouldn’t someone else’s religious views made into law and foisted at you, right? So you should not mix religion and politics. Or religious beliefs are (per the stupid supposition at hand) unprovable by definition, and surely it is not right to legislate based on unprovable ideas, right? The secular Western mind would tell us this, but idea is also one that is false.
If someone says that people should keep religion out of politics because the combination of the two creates violence, then that person should be consistent with such a belief. Marxism and communism probably should be left out of politics, given their history in proxy wars during the Cold War. Libertarianism and the mere idea that people should be free: these also have to kept out of politics, given their deadly history with the Revolutionary War and other fits of violence in history. (Notice immediately that this does not leave room for much of any belief or political paradigm in the public sphere.) Of course, if someone then tries to say, “But there is still room to vote and to govern by mere moral or just principles, without reference to any religious belief” then I think he can find, if he will check the history books, that there is no room even to vote and govern by mere moral principles. Examples would be any number of anti-colonial wars that this planet has seen in the past 300 years.
In fact, if anyone asks me if I would like to live under Islamic law, as if this question demonstrated that religion and politics should be kept separate, then my response is It does not matter. I don’t like the nonsense government and body of regulations that we are currently subjected to in America. Same goes for the U.S. government and its legal code as they existed in 1964, 1954, 1854, or 1754: it is all disagreeable in toto, even if it relatively good.
Again, if anyone asks me if I would like to live under Islamic law, as if this question demonstrated that religion and politics should be kept separate, then my response is It does not matter. Suppose you had a land with a million citizens, all of whom were Christians. This land does not yet have a functioning government with binding regulations. Meanwhile, suppose that the philosophy of government that these quaint, unsophisticated people happen to have is that any and every law should be taken directly from the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. Bear in mind that these quaint, unsophisticated people’s only notion of legal philosophy is that laws should be taken from the Decalogue: the logical result is such that if they do not pass a law in this way they’re not going to ever think to pass a law in any other way. Now, which would you rather be the case: that these people in this manner legally prohibt things such as murder and theft, or instead not prohibit anything since, after all, religion and government should be kept separate?
Finally, why not actually read the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States sometime, before mindlessly spouting some vague, almost-meaningless line such as, “The 1st Amendment establishes a separation between church and state”? Here is what is written:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
For instance, if your religion calls for you to vote Klansmen (and Klansmen obviously are no friends of mine) into public office, then the Constitution of the United States does NOT prohibit this. After all, the law does say “shall make no law...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
And if you as either a voter or state representative were to enact a law requiring that people rest on Saturdays, this would NOT necessarily be proscribed by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. If one were to enact a law requiring that people rest on Saturdays, this neither establishes a state religion nor promotes any particular religion above and against another particular one. It does not establish Judaism any more than it establishes Seventh-Day Adventism, and it does not establish Seventh-Day Adventism any more than it establishes Seventh-Day Baptist brands of theology.
Someone might retort, “If Congress were to pass such a law based merely on moral principles, it would be constitutional. But if Congress were to pass such a law based on religious beliefs of theirs, then it would be unconstitutional.” However, this rejoinder would be a questionable one.
After all, one can approach the study of various religions in a purely logical fashion and attempt to ascertain their validity, truthfulness, or veridicality in the same ways nonreligious ideas and paradigms are tested and rejected in the natural epistemology which is already in place in philosophy.
For example, and without endoring anyone’s beliefs here, one could conclude from a McDowell/Strobel sort of argumentation that the Gospel narratives are demonstrably true and provable by normal means of logic without deference to “blind faith” or wishful thinking. The Gospel narratives consequently could be deemed trustworthy, and any propositions which the narratives are committed to are also true by logical consequence; for example, on Matthew chapter nineteen, divorce would therefore be shown to be worthy of prohibition or penalty in some instances.
With that said, it is dubious that the Framers of U.S. Constitution were ever categorically loathe to the idea of having a religion inform one’s conscience or moral reasoning and thus have an impact on jurisprudence. When people say that government in the U.S. should enact laws based merely on “moral principles,” they are talking about a natural or extrareligious epistemology as a basis (and without regard to whether the epistemology is done correctly, mind you). Well, you can use such a study of knowledge to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that various ideas deemed “religious” are just and should be promoted by government. Therefore, the enactment of various would-be “religious” laws will not always be necessarily unconstitutional or illegal.
**************
All things considered, the only people who need to shy away from openly admitting that religion is rightly wedded with politics are religious politicians. :)
And if you as either a voter or state representative were to enact a law requiring that people rest on Saturdays, this would NOT necessarily be proscribed by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. If one were to enact a law requiring that people rest on Saturdays, this neither establishes a state religion nor promotes any particular religion above and against another particular one. It does not establish Judaism any more than it establishes Seventh-Day Adventism, and it does not establish Seventh-Day Adventism any more than it establishes Seventh-Day Baptist brands of theology.
Someone might retort, “If Congress were to pass such a law based merely on moral principles, it would be constitutional. But if Congress were to pass such a law based on religious beliefs of theirs, then it would be unconstitutional.” However, this rejoinder would be a questionable one.
After all, one can approach the study of various religions in a purely logical fashion and attempt to ascertain their validity, truthfulness, or veridicality in the same ways nonreligious ideas and paradigms are tested and rejected in the natural epistemology which is already in place in philosophy.
For example, and without endoring anyone’s beliefs here, one could conclude from a McDowell/Strobel sort of argumentation that the Gospel narratives are demonstrably true and provable by normal means of logic without deference to “blind faith” or wishful thinking. The Gospel narratives consequently could be deemed trustworthy, and any propositions which the narratives are committed to are also true by logical consequence; for example, on Matthew chapter nineteen, divorce would therefore be shown to be worthy of prohibition or penalty in some instances.
With that said, it is dubious that the Framers of U.S. Constitution were ever categorically loathe to the idea of having a religion inform one’s conscience or moral reasoning and thus have an impact on jurisprudence. When people say that government in the U.S. should enact laws based merely on “moral principles,” they are talking about a natural or extrareligious epistemology as a basis (and without regard to whether the epistemology is done correctly, mind you). Well, you can use such a study of knowledge to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that various ideas deemed “religious” are just and should be promoted by government. Therefore, the enactment of various would-be “religious” laws will not always be necessarily unconstitutional or illegal.
**************
All things considered, the only people who need to shy away from openly admitting that religion is rightly wedded with politics are religious politicians. :)
1 comment:
Finally, why not actually read the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States sometime, before mindlessly spouting some vague, almost-meaningless line such as, “The 1st Amendment establishes a separation between church and state”?
----The act of saying that the Constitution says or suggests a "separation of church and state", I think, shows the ignorance of the speaker. Perhaps they have gotten those religious, crazy ignorant Christians to shut up when they say this. Or they are just blindly repeating a phrase they heard on TV. :-)
All things considered, the only people who need to shy away from openly admitting that religion is rightly wedded with politics are religious politicians. :)
---True. It reminds me of what Dennis Prager has said about hypocrisy. He said something to the effect of...only those who actually stand for or espouse morality can be accused of hypocrisy.
So, the politician that doesn't stand for truth or family values or religion can lie, cheat and have a mistress without the (ironic) moral judgement of their peers and media. Pretty sweet deal...Stand for nothing, fall for anything...
D.
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