Comments on: DRUNK WITH RELIGIOSITY

By: busboy33

busboy33 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:46:31 +0000

@stevebradle:

pandering to the muslims? care to elaborate?

By: stevebradle

stevebradle — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:38:49 +0000

Huck is going to win I think, and I don’t even like him. He’ll win because America is sick and tired of the political correctness being shoved down our mouths, of the pandering to Muslims while liberal screaming at every mention of Christianity. Liberals have made Christianity a target to supress in schools, courts, everywhere. The pendulum is about to swing back, and the liberals will bury themselves by publicly disavowing the faithful as “evangelicals”, the liberal term for “overly religious people”. What would “overly liberal people” be called? We all know, it’s “socialists”.

All the good people. rich or poor, of any color, who call themselves Christians have had enough, look for a Huck landslide. Liberals will scream bloody murder that “Faith has taken over America”, and Christians will scream back “You’re damed right”.

By: jchfleetguy

jchfleetguy — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:30:40 +0000

No punches from me - at least not in your contention that religion is too important in the current political campaign: for the Democrats and Republicans.

I am a “born again” Evangelical Christian with a blog called “Brain Cramps for God” and I agree.

I am going to give you some definitional advice: religion and faith are two very different words. Religion is a human institution that can certainly be designed to regulate behavior - and never has. It’s primary function is to give people with similiar objects of faith ways to commonly worship.

Faith is the other word: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.” All human beings who are not suicidal or terminally pessimistic share that - but faith is meaningless without an object. The question isn’t whether folks have faith - the question is in what.

Religion is not a question for a politcal compaign. What a candidate places his faith and hope for the future of the country in is entirely a question

By: C Stanley

C Stanley — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:18:43 +0000

On a separate note, I’m growing tired of (and concerned over) the tendency for paleoconservatives to scapegoat the Christian right for the problems of their own movement. If none of the candidates in the field represent a compelling force for paleoconservatives, how exactly is that the fault of the social conservatives? Fiscal cons have been asleep at the wheel for a political generation, and now they’ve awoken in a panic and are looking for someone to blame.

By: C Stanley

C Stanley — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:16:30 +0000

Rick,
You’ve twisted the logic in your critique of Romney. Saying that there are places with freedom of worship but no democracy doesn’t disprove Romney’s premise, because he’s not said that the equation works that way. What he said was that democracy and freedom require religious freedom, not that religious freedom guarantees the existence of other freedoms. The one (religion) acts as a vital support for the other.

You disagree with that, obviously, but you’d have to show examples of atheistic/nonreligious cultures which are able to maintain democratic, free societies. Europe may be heading there now, but they still don’t provide an example of the natural rights being derived from an atheistic worldview (in other words, they still benefitted from the Christian worldview that prevailed at the inception of their governments). It also remains to be seen whether or not their cultures will ultimate survive their increased secularization. Unfortunately it seems that socialism replaces Christianity as a social force for moral treatment of the weaker members of society, and I for one don’t believe that such a system is sustainable.

By: busboy33

busboy33 — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:04:41 +0000

disunreconnected:
Interesting video, but I’m not sure how that’s relating to the discussion.
If your question is how could the girl develop concepts of Heaven and Christian Divinity without it being “taught” to her, the video only said that her mom was an atheist, and that God was not discussed at home. Unless the girl was locked in a room her whole life, she had contact with the world — certainly there are enough sources for her to learn from in society. Not hearing about God at home does not eliminate the subject from the environment — only from the home environment discussions.

By: disunreconnected

disunreconnected — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:50:17 +0000

Rick:
Right on.

Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on what this video shows:

http://tinyurl.com/yxewot

when compared to this statement from your post:

“…religion is, for all practical purposes, a man made institution. It must be taught…”

I read you a lot and hope posting that link doesn’t offend your rules here. And it’s certainly not my intent to push religion on you or anyone. It’s a freedom.

By: Martin C

Martin C — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:40:17 +0000

There are those who say that faith and freedom are not compatible - Baloney! A Christian woman sparked the abolitionist movement. Dr Martin Luther King, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership, a minister himself led a successful civil rights movement. There are those who say that Bible-based Christians are all right wingers who want to turn the middle east into glass. I heard Pat Robertson publicly say that the war in Iraq was a bad idea.

>Jesus|Freak

By: english teacher

english teacher — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:06:39 +0000

if the founders had meant that we “are endowed by the god of abraham and jesus christ with certain unalienable rights” then they would have said exactly that.

By: libarbarian

libarbarian — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:56:24 +0000

What Krauthammer is saying â€“ and what I am agreeing with â€“ is that a line has been crossed, most notably on the Republican side, that seeks to give religion a privileged position in policy debates â€“ absolute moral authority with a vengeance based not on the efficacy of oneâ€™s position on the issues but rather on the strength or nature of their religious beliefs:

We became our enemy a long time ago. Being “Religiously Correct” is part of being “Conservatively Correct” which is now as important to Conservatives as being “Politically Correct” is to liberals.

I remember how in the 80s we used to mock and disparage the Politically Correct notion that the “oppressed” had a privileged viewpoint which was inherently more valid than that of others. We pointed out that while the “oppressed” had a legitimate viewpoint that they were no less subject to human weakness and error than anyone else - that being oppressed did NOT necessarily make ones moral or political vision any clearer and, in fact, sometimes warped and obscured it.

Sometime during the 90s we stopped fighting PC and instead adopted the notion for our own. Conservatives, and especially Christian Conservatives copied the language, arguments, and positions of the PC police and their only change was that they put themselves in the role of the oppressed.

We were amazed when PC feminists screamed “sexual harassment” because there Botticelli’s “Venus” hung on the wall. Now Conservatives scream “War on Christmas” because of signs saying “Happy Holidays” and we nod along.

Where we used to see liberal students who protested having to read the works of “dead white men” as a bad sign of growing ignorance, we now applaud when Conservative and Christian students protest having to simply read (not agree with, just read) Marx, Darwin, or any other author that doesn’t actively reaffirm their prior beliefs.

We used to condemn it when hordes of leftist students intimidated school officials and others into doing their bidding while maintaining that “The personal is political”. Now Conservatives styling themselves “citizen journalists” post the personal information of people on their websites specifically so their readers can harass and intimidate them for saying something unpalatable.