randman

Freedom of religion is an explicitly Christian idea first taught by Jesus Christ and the early church, and despite state church corruptions, a large portion of Christ's followers never accepted statist religion, and at times, grew to very large movements and revivals, and were thus attacked and forcibly persecuted by Roman Catholicism and then early Protestants until the Protestants accepted freedom of religion.

To give you an example, as late a date as the founding of Pennsylvania by the Quaker William Penn, the ideas of religious liberty were held by virtually noone outside of Christians sects that beleived in the New Testament vision of Christianity. They were laughed at for allowing religious freedom and for paying for land they bought from the Indians.

The Baptists were key to lobbying for religious freedom and founding Rhode Island. It took a very long time for secular thinkers to embrace religious freedom, and I am not sure they actually embrace ideological freedom overall (look at the Politically Correct movement).

It is not theism itself that has ever been the problem, especially not the type of generalized theism I am talking about here. It is specific concepts and methods of control that are the problem, and they are just as bad under athiesm, or any ideology as they are under any religion.

randman

Also my term global theism refers to beleiving it is inherently wise to do the right thing not only as an individual but as nations.

It has nothing to do with setting up statist religions, though it could mean embracing a generic acknowledement of God, or the Creator, or the Divine, or something along those lines. For America, we already do this and have always done so by opening Congress with prayer and such things as that.

Daggah

Bull! Freedom of religion as we know it came from the philosophical movements that Thomas Paine and John Locke started. Read Locke and Paine. The American Revolution were influenced greatly by those two men - and both were quite critical of Christianity. Read Paine's Age of Reason for proof of this. It is difficult to overstate Paine's influence on the American Revolution. Many of America's concepts of freedoms came from the 17th century philosophers that stated that man had the fundamental right to believe as he chose without coercion. Furthermore our rights according to these influential men were derived from nature and nature's god - the god of Deism, not Christianity.

And in fact the very first commandment of the 10 espouses a view strongly against religious toleration. (In fact all but 3 of the 10 commandments would either be unconstitutional or difficult/impossible to implement as law!) Christianity's toleration works like this: the persecuted Christian espouses freedom of religion. (Early Christians in Roman times frequently did.) Christianity takes over. Religious toleration goes out the window and the persecuted becomes the persecutor.

Your historical knowledge seems to have suffered a great deal from Christian propaganda, randman...next thing we know you'll be claiming that the USA is based off of Christianity. Let's nip that one in the bud:

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..." - Article XI, Treaty of Tripoli

P.S., Randman. If you have a more effective method of discerning truth than science and reasoning, let's hear it. Truth by revelation is unreliable. Truth by faith is pathetically irrational.

[ March 23, 2002: Message edited by: Daggah ]</p>

lpetrich

However, O Randman, they would likely tell you some view like Galileo's, that the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. Randman, your view is closer to the Church's view at that time, that the Bible, being Truth, must be correct about the heavens go. And we all know what the Church had done to Galileo.

It's the other way around; if horses and cows and lions worshipped deities and could make pictures of them, they'd make pictures of horses and cows and lions, as the case may be, as a very wise man said long ago.

And what purpose do apes serve? Especially chimpanzees.

That is pure unhistorical baloney. Try deriving the Constitution from the Bible some time. It simply cannot be done. The Bible has nothing about self-government and the idea that government should be the servant of its citizens and not its master. However, the Founding Fathers, like many educated people of their time, were very familiar with the Greek and Roman classics. Which have something much closer to what they'd constructed. Where did the Senate get its name from? Not from the Bible!

Like the scientific community accepting evolution?

Over the history of humanity, people have believed in lots of religions -- religions often very different from Randman's.

Also, large numbers of political leaders have never tired of bragging about their piety -- and some have even been religious leaders.

Did the Taliban turn Afghanistan into a society of saints? Has Khomeini's regime turned Iran into a society of saints? Has Saudi Arabia's quasi-theocracy turned it into a society of saints?

The US and western Europe have tended to keep religion and state separate, which allowes organized religion to seem saintly. But that was a result of bitter experience with the Wars of Religion, when Europeans were willing to wage bitter wars over whether Europe shall be Catholic or Protestant.

See above for Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Wars of Religion.

lpetrich

And Randman wants some sort of official state religion. Sheesh.

That is also grossly unhistorical. The classical Greek and Roman societies had had plenty of freedom of religion. One had to worship the official gods, but that did not preclude worshipping others. The early Christians had gotten in trouble for refusing to worship those official gods.

Also, many philosophers treated the gods as irrelevant if not fictional; they probably got away with that by showing up at official festivals and making offerings.

The idea of evolution was not a common one, however; there were only vague speculations about that. Anaximander speculated that our species was directly descended from fish, and Empedocles had speculations about body parts getting assembled. Aristotle understood the idea of adaptation with respect to teeth, but he did not extend it much further. And their efforts at classification were limited; none went as far as Linnaeus and his successors.

scigirl

Randman,

Your treatise on whether humans need to believe in a higher being to have a purpose, and thus be moral creatures, was interesting bur irrelevant.

I want specific examples of how your particular creation story outlined in Genesis 1 has helped humans understand themselves and thus found cures for diseases or conditions. Has the knowledge that we came from dirt, and are all sinners because of a fruit, done anything for us specifically? References would be great.

Now I'll give you some examples as to how evolutionary theory has specifically contributed to our understanding:

Evolution has explained why bacteria have developed antibiotic resistance, why there is a link between decreased resistance to malaria and an increase in sickle-cell anemia, and perhaps why we get diabetes. All of these explanations not only increase our understanding, but also provide ways to treat or prevent all of these conditions.

In the future, I have high hopes that evolution can give us insight into other aspects of our behavior such as why are we violent, and why is treating drug addictions so tough?

I’ll be waiting with your examples of how many diseases Genesis 1 has cured, or may cure, in the future.

scigirl

scigirl

Why, because I want to correct misconceptions you have about it?

Please show me where I have worshipped evolution, where I have have created holidays out of evolution, where I have believed in evolution without evidence and just took it on faith. And I mean ME personally, now.

Exactly!!!!!! I am going to quote you again,

In light of this statement, I think you should amend your first statement in this thread to read, "Disclaimer, I was just kidding about needing Genesis to be moral, since "Fact is there is not a huge moral difference unfortunately between religious people and non-religious people."

Yes, IF. I hate to disappoint you, but it is not. Just because evolution disproves your narrow, outdated, and minority view on a book written nearly 6000 years ago that was not intended to be scientific, that does not mean that evolution is an enemy of religion. I work with several scientists who are Christian, and who believe in evolution, and they function just fine. This list includes my boss, who studies the evolution of the immune system.

When I learned evolution in both high school and college, I was also still a christian. I did not become an atheist until I did one thing: read the bible. If you are worried about people converting to atheism, I suggest you spend your efforts keeping kids away from Bibles and churches, not worrying so much about their science classes.

scigirl

Jayhawker Soule

... not to mention the Pope. BTW, 6000 may be far too generous.

Scotty

Just to clarify, the Constitution is freedom FROM religion, not freedom OF religion.
Big distinction.

-Scott

Nialler

Scigirl,

masterly as ever.

But did you need to refer to your boyfriend???

My hopes are dashed