Christian Seberino wrote:
On Tue, March 27, 2007 5:26 am, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Christian Seberino wrote:
On many things I think Christianity *does* accept compromise,
flexibility,
admission of errors and tolerance.
It depends on your flavor of Christianity. The problem we are currently
having is that 50+% of Christians do not accept compromise on
functional, secular concerns like evolution and science.
The problem is who gets to decide that your flavor of Christianity is
acceptable and that some other is not?
Yes but you get a spectrum of reasonableness and silliness in any group.
Even Dems and Republicans have their extremes. And yes different people
have different opinions on what is extreme or silly. I don't think we'll
solve this one in our lifetimes.
If you give the government that power, then it can persecute. Thus, the
only way out is to prevent the government from touching religious
concerns at all.
If religious groups were the only groups with extremists that might be
true. Correct me if I'm wrong but in a democracy if the majority wants
something they are allowed to change the laws to get it. Not just
Christians but any group. This is an argument to make sure the voting
populace is well educated, sane and fair if you ask me.
I assume you are referring to _this_ democracy (i.e. the USA). But then
we don't live in a democracy, we live in a democratic republic. While
it's possible for the majority to change the law, it is purposely very
difficult for the majority to pass very bad laws. This is why we have a
Constitution and why we have three-branch governments. These two things
are designed to discourage an ignorant public from imposing wrongful
laws on itself.
In principle anyway.
In practice...?
While the converse does not *have* to be true, more qualified, more
religious men than I have argued that when religion enters the political
arena to accomplish its goals, it gets corrupted by worldly concerns and
inevitably loses its moral core. I see no evidence that they are wrong.
Yes I agree power can be tempting and corrupting. This is true for
everyone. Are you saying non-religious people are somehow immune to this
corruption?
No, but religious people are more inclined to consider those with
dissimilar religious views as being corrupt, at which point they feel
compelled to "correct" at least the resulting behaviour, if not the
beliefs, of those non-believers through the law of the state. This is
the point at which religion becomes the most dangerous.
I submit that such behaviour, or the support of it, on the part of at
least the leadership, if not the membership-at-large of most religious
groups is an inherent part of accepting such religious beliefs. It's, if
you will, a condition of membership.
However, you are correct. I have a few very core principles that I will
not compromise. Freedom of speech, for example, is a big one. Once
freedom of speech is gone, little else matters. Equality under the law
is another big one. If one does not believe in these kinds of
principles, I do wish them removed from my society.
OK good I'm glad you said that. So Christians aren't really that
different from non-Christians as far as this goes. It is not a question
of one side being tolerant/flexible/open while the other side is not.
Chris
More specifically, Christians aren't that different from members of
other religions. However, members of religions in general /are/ often
really that different from those who are non-religious. As I said above,
it's part of the fundamental definition of being religious. It's a
political party not unlike any other political party, only usually much
less tolerant of opposing parties.
My problem is that I'm not welcome in religious organizations because I
tend to be both rational and tolerant (to borrow from Jon Stewart).
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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