Can we divide faith and state

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Thank you. I wondered what the conversation had turned to here.

Slips quietly back away from the PPR section...

You are just sinking into deeper and deeper depths of opaque wierdness dude!

But its okay.

I just now figured it out.


Maybe the problem is that you dont understand what the word "pluralism" means.

Pluralism means "tolerating differing cultures within your society".




And, OR maybe its the word "monotheism" that you dont understand.

The "mono" (meaning "one") in the word "monotheism" means "belief in one god" as opposed to either "belief in no gods" (atheism) or (in more common usage) as opposed to "belief in many gods(polytheism) (like the ancients worshipping the Pagan Gods of Valhalla, or of Mt.Olympus).

Monotheism does not mean "allowing only one religion in your country" (that is not what the "mono" syllable is in the word for- its for the number of deities you worship).



You must be under the misconception that "pluralism" means "your country has freedom of religion"(thats a part of pluralism,but it aint the definiton of pluralism). And you apparently wrongly think that "monotheism" means "allowing only one religion in your country".

So if thats what you thought those two words meant then what you have been saying all along in this thread would kinda sorta make sense (freedom of religion like we have in the USA is pretty much the opposite of the theocratic dictatorships that they have in Saudi Arabia and in Iran that have all but outlawed the religious rivals to official subsets of Islam favored by the two regimes).

But if you are going by the correct meaning of "monotheism" then... all three countries (USA,Iran, SA) have staunchly "monotheistic" populations,and cultures.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 20 Apr 2017, 5:15 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Yeah.

Then why was religious pluralism contextually-presented as a solution for terrorism? Pluralism as a political philosophy would have said nothing about religion and just gone after the Twin-Tower-pilot criminals.

The statement I quoted there is but a very small part of the speech.

Fine

But you responded quicker than I expected.
I changed that post around.
Please reread that above post again.

Nope, I certainly do...and that leaves us with the question of this thread: "Can we divide faith and state?" If we can, then why did so much of GWB's speech include specific religious commentary essentially implying good Muslims are also good pluralists?

So if you are indeed using the two words in question correctly then...once again...why do you insist on saying things that you know full well are nonsense?

Once again why do you equate "pluralism" with "suppressing religion"? Ive asked you a 100 times. Please finnally answer that. And cut out the lying crap about how I havent asked you something that you damn well I have indeed asked you a 100 times.

And dude you are being seriously dishonest in asking the question "why did GWB imply that good muslims are tolerant". The alternative would have been "lets restart the crusades and fight all muslims". You are old enough to remember 9-11 so you know full well that just saying "lets catch the criminals" was not an option for a whole bunch of rather obvious reasons. His choices were to either demonize all muslims, or to not demonize all muslims. He choose the later (to make the point that in his view this was not about religion, and to invite folks in Muslim nations to make common cause with america against the terrorists). GWB did NOT put religion into his speech. The terrorist who murdered 4000 americans in the name of a particular religion were the ones who forced him to mention religion. You know that full well. To claim that you dont know that is deliberate lying on your part.

I could almost believe that if he had not first made much religious comment related to who is a good Muslim and who is a bad Muslim and then declared "Either you are with us [pluralists] or you are with the terrorists." But either way, he certainly did not keep faith and state divided.

You still havent answered my question: why do you equate "pluralism" with "suppressing religion"?

GWB was a raving fervent "monotheist". And even veered into "breaching church and state" in the opposite way- by favoring "monotheism" when he said things like "God is on our side"( he didnt say it that way of course. He said "god is not neutral about" about his policies.

I dont recall him giving sermons to Muslims, but he probably did suggest to muslims that they interpret their faith a certain way on a certain point ( to be tolerant of other religions) rather than another (to wage jihad against all other faiths). He did that obviously to get muslims abroad to be our allies. And I guess you could claim that that tiny venture into talking about Muslim theology to muslims is an example "breaching the divide". Breaching the divide in order to avoid breaching the divide between church and state. So you could claim that GWB's speech shows that true seperation of church and state is impossible because it causes the paradox that you have to breach the divide in order to avoid breaching the divide. And if that IS your point then maybe you do have a point.

So I might kinda agree with what you're saying...if that IS what you are saying.

But I dont think that it IS what you're saying. You seemed to be upset and outraged at Bush for doing something more evil and nefarious than just trying to keep religion out of his war on terrorism by being forced to talk about religion.

So.... I still dont know WTF you're talking about.

I do not.


Not at all.

Then why did you say that you equate pluralism with imposing/surpressing religion in this post (that I have copied and reposted below here) , and why did you act upset with Bush in this post?:

================================================================

9-11 blows all of that wide open, however, since it began "the world's fight...civilization's fight...the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom." --GWB, 20 Sep 2001

The argument there is this: "Increasing religious pluralism in society is a major factor in causing societies to move toward greater religious freedom.", but leaders cannot force the abandonment or removal of monotheism without crossing the "separation of church and state" line.[/quote]

Last edited by naturalplastic on 21 Apr 2017, 6:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think we can divide faith and state because religion still has an effect on laws in America.

If you say you can not divide culture and state, then who can disagree? However, if one goes by the definition of religion given in Wikipedia,



then I do not see the need for Religion in the State. The State is concerned with the corporate interests of its members in the boring, day to day, waking world. That is what defines a "State" from a pragmatic point of view. There is no need for invoking supernatural or transcendental entities to accomplish a State's goals. Further, since not all members are likely to agree on such matters in the first place, shouldn't the goal be to get concensus on those few aspects we can all agree on? Like murder, not a good idea... it is against ones own interest in corporal and corporate self-existence.

One of the biggest problems with unlimited religious tolerance is that many religions come with their own ideas as to what kind of state they would like to have... for EVERYONE! The other problem is that many Types of Religions of Interest { Christianity, Islam, Judaism } believe that Dictatorial Kingdoms based on magical practices is the best kind of State to have. Have to say, not a big fan of such states myself.

Science is not a religion. As science's main concern is socially discovering the laws of reality, the State has a social concern with Science, the same way that an Opensource project has a concern with the software tools that allow its contributors to work together. The State is an evolving system. This makes it of a fundamentally different kind than religious practices that should already be a settled point.

Religious practices rely upon revelation as the way to the truth. This revelation is not to be questioned. Leaders of religious denominations can therefore have a power that is quite strong, representing the very mouth of God. From a scientific point of view, everything is up for grabs. Concensus is made using peer pressure induced by rational argument. Nothing else counts.

So, do you want Government by Self-appointed reality experts; or do you want to have any say at all?

< Math + Golden Rule + Altered States of Consciousness > = < All you need >

Go Vegan!

Other than believing and/or implying it is a global agenda, I never said I equate pluralism with anything.


I do not recall ever being upset with Bush.

No. Because the moment you decide to cut religious morals from government, you automatically decide that atheism is the religious stance of the nations. While better than the lunacy of the middle-east, it's still wrongly slanted. No matter what you do, you're going to be "forcing morals on others", it's just a matter of which ones - and pretending the mindset of humans being mere animals and nothing is truly right or wrong is, which is a necessary conclusion of atheism, is just "okay" is still frankly wrong. Then you have as the grounds for authority mere argumentum ad bacculum only, but all authority comes from Christ and not by force, so no matter what the nations pretend is "right" and "wrong" in their own eyes, there is still only one King, the Lord God Almighty.