Posted by:
Gullibles Travels
(
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Date: February 07, 2011 08:08PM
MY COMMENTS: (I put a * before my thoughts and $ before quotes from the article)
* I think it should also be added that freedom OF religion also means freedom FROM religion.
$ "Organized religion is surely on the decline"
* That is the best news I've heard all year!
$ "A visible measure of the decline of religion in our public life is the diminished mention of religious faith and references to God in our public discourse."
* Maybe people are beginning to realize the silliness in talking to or about their imaginary friends in public. I hate to burst your bubble, Mr. Oaks, but most people eventually grow up and out of their need for Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and God.
$ "[T]hey simply cannot, for whatever reason, believe in—or sometimes even conceive of—a given, objective truth, fact, reality, or nature of the world that is independent of their subjective self-experience."
* Perhaps because right and wrong are NOT always so clear cut. 'Subjective self-experience', spoken of as if it is a bad thing, is what SHOULD guide all reasonable, thinking human beings.
* Absolutism, black & white thinking is incredibly destructive as it leaves no room for additional information, or for the inevitable grey area that is the exeption to the rule. Example: Some churches claim that God created men and women and men should marry women and vice versa. Then what of intersexed people?
* With out 'moral relativism' we force each divers individual into a rigid box of conformity to the absolute right and absolute wrong.
* Every rule has an exception. It is a credit to humanity that 'young people' are moving away from medieval black and white thinking to a more enlightened, inclusive, and relativistic mode of thought.
* A government teacher once told me that "a persons right to swing his fist end where the other mans nose begins" That goes for religion as well.
$ "I took sad notice of the fact that the United States Supreme Court had diminished the significance of free exercise by expanding the definition of religion to include what the Court called “religions" not based on belief in God."
*The irony is palpable. He is all for freedom of religion only as long as that religion is is in agreement with his view of what religion should be.
* I also find it ironic that religious people will claim that their rights to freedom of religion are being impinged upon when they have to face the consiquenses brought about by their own attempt to impinge upon the liberties of other citizens.
*Discrimination of homosexuals under the guise of freedom of religion, especially while claiming tax exempt status, or working in an official capacity for the government, SHOULD meet with sanction of some sort.
* If the tables were turned you can bet the farm that the religious persons would want those who discriminate against them likewise sanctioned.
$ "As noted by John A. Howard of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the proponents of banishment “have developed great skills in demonizing those who disagree with them, turning their opponents into objects of fear, hatred and scorn." "
*Methinks Mr. Howard is projecting.
* As to his point: Maybe people are getting tired of hate speech & bigotry hiding behind the tax exempt status of 'religious freedom'.
$ " “For three decades people of faith have watched a systematic and very effective effort waged in the courts and the media to drive them from the public square and to delegitimize their participation in politics as somehow threatening." "
* Seeing as most religions have been on the wrong side of issues such as slavery, equal rights for women, and now the rights of gays to marry, is it any wonder that most reasonable people have grown weary of the persecutors having public office? We can't take away your right to think it, but that doesn't mean you get the only microphone.
* Again with the irony. When the courts and media are used to promote anti gay sentiments it is lauded as of God, but when the public turns the table, the religious cry foul.
* Then he goes on about the govt changing the definition of marriage. I thought he was all about freedom? Isn't marriage personal? Oh, I see, he wants marriage defined in such a way that promoted HIS idea of what marriage and family should be. More black and white thinking. No room for the individual or the individuals needs.
$ "All of this has culminated in attempts to redefine marriage or to urge its complete abolition. The debate continues in the press and elsewhere."
* Abolition of marriage? Really? Hmm, maybe if his marriage was disolved his relationship with his wife would have to be about love and commitment to another person for life, kind of like the situation many gay couples live in every day.
*(Maybe I misunderstood the quote 'hold to the iron rod' and it is actually 'hold to the irony rod'.)
$ "What has caused the current public and legal climate of mounting threats to religious freedom?"
* You mean religious funded and fueled bigotry? Besides, doesn't persecution mean your religion is true?
$ "More and more of our citizens support the idea that all authority and all rules of behavior are man-made and can be accepted or rejected as one chooses. Each person is free to decide for himself or herself what is right and wrong. Our children face the challenge of living in an increasingly godless and amoral society."
* Oh no! Not the children!
So, if they (the laws) are God-made, can they still not be accepted or rejected as one chooses? Is each person still not free to decide for him/herself what is right and wrong?
Excuse me Mr. Oaks, but your dictator is showing.
* Why do religionists think that if one is godless that they are, by default, amoral? Can he REALLY not think of a single moral atheist? or atheist charity? Has he seriously ever read his bible? Maybe his church history? Does he really believe that Brigham Young was more moral than say, Mark Twain?
*Talk about a serious blind spot. Is it any wonder that reasonable people don't want people like Mr. Oaks 'serving' in public office. I cringe at the realization that he even has what influence he has over those that think him an 'authority' on godly matters.
$ “Without God, it would be a world where no one was outraged by crime or cruelty, and no one was inspired to put an end to them. . . . [T]here would be no more inspiring goal for our lives than self-interest. . . . Neither room nor reason for tenderness, generosity, helpfulness.”
* Then why is it, that the most secular countries have the lowest rates of crime?
* What more inspiring goal of life is there than life itself? If ones good name is all that is left of them when their life is over, no heavenly reward, no hellish punishment, then would it not create in mankind the even more imperative need to foster loving relationships with those closest to one, to create lasting legacies that serve to better the human species as a whole?
* I must also ask, where do my godless children gain their infinite capacity for tenderness, generosity, and helpfulness, and their outrage at crime and cruelty?
* In transverse, where do some of the most godly people, even so-called profits called of god get their capacity for cruelty? Where did the witch-hunters of the middle ages get their ispiration to torture and burn inoccent victims? Where did Mohamad Atta get his inspiration to help murder thousands of men, women, and children?
* I think that godlessness with save our society, not condemn it.
$ “What happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't!. . . .
$ “Though we have been taught that all moral values are relative to individuals and cultures, we can‘t live like that. In actual practice we inevitably treat some principles as absolute standards by which we judge the behavior of those who don't share our values. . . . People who laugh at the claim that there is a transcendent moral order do not think that racial genocide is just impractical or self-defeating, but that it is wrong. . . .”
* Does this person even realize that he is talking out of both sides of his mouth?
"Do not pick and choose from the bible-Genocide is wrong." (I am paraphrasing)
* Again, it appears that this person does not read his bible. I can count at least half a dozen time where god sanctioned genocide in the bible.
So where do people who believe the bible is the word of god get the idea that genocide is wrong? (Hint: Not from god.)
$"“Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being 'society's supervisors.' Such 'supervisors' deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.” "
* He criticizes people that impose their standard on society, yet is ready and willing to be the 'spokesman' for god and impose, or help impose, gods standard AS HE SEES IT.
$ "There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text and tenor of public debate. As Elder Quentin L. Cook has said:
$ “In our increasingly unrighteous world, it is essential that values based on religious belief be part of the public discourse. Moral positions informed by a religious conscience must be accorded equal access to the public square.""
* I would hardly call reference to the 'unrighteous world' as 'without sanctimoniousness'.
He wants moral positions granted equal time, but specifically those 'informed by a religious conscience'.
* This whole speech seems on it's surface to apeal to religious freedom, but time after time attempts to place accusations of amorality on the heads of those that do not find their black & white morality moral.
* Perhaps in they eyes of those who need persecution to feel legitimized, this appeal to keep freedom of religion at the top of the queue will hit a resounding cord.
As for one who has felt the crush of dogmatic religious intollerance and told it was really love, I feel I am uniquely qualified to call 'bullshit'.
* The most vocal and defensive crowd of religionists are finally being called on the carpet for their cruelty, judgementalism, bigotry, and hatred for those they feel don't tow the line.
* They wonder why the country is going godless and call those that have had enough of their particular brand of 'moral authority' wicked.
* I think humanity is growing up. These crochety old cogers can't understand why 'Leave it to Beaver' style families are no longer in vogue. What they fail to realize is that they never existed.
* The absolutist, black and white morality that rules the majority of organized religion doesn't work in the real world. When that style of morality is applied is causes pain, heartache, and strife on a personal level, and war, bloodshed, and inhumanity on a global societal level.
* Of course, godless people and societies that are content, prosperious, happy, and *gasp* moral, aren't very good for business, now are they.