Comments on: When Is Religion Forced?

By: pskurnick

pskurnick — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:46:09 +0000

We need to hold our religon as personal as our sexual preferences/practices….hmmmmm maybe MORE personal than that.

By: Steve Farrell

Steve Farrell — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:55:03 +0000

Thanks oneShef!

By: oneShef

oneShef — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 01:07:24 +0000

Steve,
One of your best to date! Poingant reminders of a simple and over looked premise. Most of the articles posted about moral/immoral..good goverence/bad goverence, religious vs pious, faith and freedom hit the board like a shotgun…they hit everything but simply get nothing deadon. You have created a good work with this post….

TMOTS, not everyone in America or elsewhere actually care for the secular society you appear to be fond of. Please do not take OUR love of the freedom we enjoy as an offense…we simply enjoy it as much as you do!

By: Steve Farrell

Steve Farrell — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:01:53 +0000

“Bobisartha said: “I truly believe that if all religion was abolished, a large chunk of the worlds violence would end.”

Liberty Letters responds: You don’t understand. Man is a religious animal, and even the most atheistical, secularist states are in fact based on religious ideas. Communism “Ends Justify the Means,” is just that. The bloodiest religion of all is communism, the one that says there is no God, no morality, no truth, and then bans them. Yet, remember, communism generally comes to power by moral appeals to the poor, the downtrodden, the minority, etc., and preaches a heavy sermon of guilt against the land and factory owners, the churches, the exploitive parents, the majority, etc. etc. They call them “greedy, exploitive, cruel, homophobes, whatever … all moral terms denouncing immoral behavior.

We are deceived by a faulty education when we think any political system, any law on the books, has not come into being via moral and religious arguments. We are not robots, and we are not moved to support causes that are morally neutral.

Something so basic as a stop sign appeals to our reverence for life, signing a contract to our reverence for honesty, budgetary oversight, again because of honesty, or frugality, etc. Name the law, name the so-called political system that uses not moral appeals which have their foundation both in conscience (Natural Law – which Blackstone says God implanted in us), and Holy Writ.

The only real question is whether or not those moral appeals are accurate, consistent, wisely applied renditions of eternal laws or not – and whether or not they can be employed in ways that maximize the protection of basic rights, and the stay within the wise and proper limits of government.

All the Islamic perspective is is one that does not go forward consistent with the above paragraph. It is out of harmony with natural and divine law, it does not respect fundamental rights, and it does not stay within the wise and proper limits of government.

Our best protection is not avoiding moral and religious arguments, therefore, nor banning such discussions in the classroom. What we need is more knowledge, more discussion on the subject, so that when we arrive at voter age we are not manipulated by the phony bologna dogma that religion is no good. No, false religion is no good. Or that morality is no good, no false interpretations and applications of morality are no good. Nor fall prey to the belief that there actually is one philosophy or political system out there that does not appeal to man’s moral nature, even if only in a perverted way.

Respectfully, Steve

By: TheManOnTheStreet

TheManOnTheStreet — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:33:27 +0000

See three vox populi posts above for a perfect example…. I won’t use names because then I would be considered a racist, religionist or woman hater…..

TMOTS

By: bodisartha

bodisartha — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:30:08 +0000

I have no problems with people talking about their religions in public places. We all have a right to not listen to them or walk away from them. It is when you are “forced” to listen (such as in Islamic countries) that it becomes wrong.

I truly believe that if all religion was abolished, a large chunk of the worlds violence would end. But I know that will never happen.

By: Roger Knight

Roger Knight — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:47:02 +0000

Say that to the jihadists! I will not submit!
Interestingly, it was the early Christians, who allowed themselves to be killed in arenas rather than submit to the Romans’ demands that they compromise their religious beliefs.
In my answer to anyone who declares that they don’t want any religion forced down their throat, I would remind them of what the early Christians did when the Romans tried to do exactly that. And then tell them that if they mean it, I could no more cram a religion of any kind down their throat than I could violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Kill ‘em. Make them suffer. Pay a jizra tax and force them to agree to be dhimmies, perhaps these things can be done. If they are weak enough.
But a conversion at the point of a sword is no conversion at all.
Religious belief must be honest, or it is of no value at all.

By: amfortas

amfortas — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:04:40 +0000

Yes, I have heard people say ‘don’t force your religion down my throat’. I usually laugh at them. They are beyond such reasoned arguement as you set out. I can tell you it is hard for the Self-Levitating Super-Turtle to get a hearing these days – although physicists do try hard and their collection plates dig right to the bottom og the public purse.

By: Steve Farrell

Steve Farrell — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:22:38 +0000

Thanks and thanks …

By: chas

chas — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 23:55:02 +0000

right on keep preaching

By: mazza

mazza — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 22:54:43 +0000

Many Christians take this abuse. I made the mistake of telling a non-Christian that I celebrated Christmas and the reply was: “nobody could force me to believe that nonsense!”

As usual, it is hardcore liberals that usually say these things.