Church-state separation is entirely possible and healthy. State-religion separation is definitively impossible and utterly unthinkable. Your laws are going to have to come from some belief system(s) and or philosophy. The laws in this country came from progressive Christians in the 18th century.
The laws today come from a number of faiths and philosophies that have asserted themselves into our laws over the years. Atheism is a religious philosophy, even if it is is not a religion per se. A number of culturally commonplace principles now shape our laws.
If the law favored no religion, as it definitely favored progressive Christian religions in the beginning, it would have an even smaller domain. the law must say something is wrong and something is right. Religions, if you try to include all of them, will disagree on virtually every topic. (This includes faiths within "world" religions" like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.)
If you want laws at all, you have to choose. There are some general things, like the violent and sexual crime, where virtually all religions agree in spirit. If you want to include all philosophies, you can at least have those laws. Beyond that, laws addressing worship and prayer will quickly offend someone. That's not including the possibility that someone will simply offend another by practicing a different faith.
Now which religion or philosophy should you favor or choose? That answer is hard to find, because the 11,000 religions of the world each claim to be THE ONE. How many are right? All, most, just one, or none? That belief is a meta-religion itself. And after you answer that question, do the ones you define as wrong or questionable deserve the right to believe anyway? Maybe they do, so long as they don't harm or offend anyone else.
The harm principle and the principle of offending others. That's contemporary social problems in a nutshell. Then you add in the further complications of who is a person who can be harmed, how they can be harmed and how to protect them from harm. Hence, America. The United States of America, since those in South and Central America are also Americans and may be offended that we claim to be the only nationality of the continents.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Are we a Christian nation? Support from Chuck Norris's column: John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, wrote to Jedidiah Morse on Feb. 28, 1797, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers. And it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
Post a Comment