the tyranny of religion within democracy

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Without doubt Christianity contributed much to the development of reason and science but to ignore the contributions of Islam to chemistry and astronomy is gross ignorance. The prefix al to many chemicals and names of stars testifies to their efforts.

Well, read his Is-Ought problem and a few other things about his thoughts. I have not actually read any book by him. When I argue on moral positions, I tend to refer a lot back to the idea of the Is-Ought problem though. I am sorry if I misrepresented myself as a philosophical scholar, I am just someone who recognizes a few names and some ideas, and at least that logic is limited.

I am completely fine not accepting that conclusion. It isn't mine honestly, I just read that once in a textbook and did not want to engage in a debate upon the Roman empire so I offered up a little concession to avoid the matter.

However, if there is no moral valuation then there is no basis for any action to prevent parents from raising their children Christian. You may prefer that it is not done, however, they would obviously prefer that it is done. Given that I don't even view society as a necessary organization for examination and evaluation, I must flatly reject any view that would put a society over individuals and simply analyze the problem as a matter of different individual views.

Rome's values were destroyed before the Empire existed.

The concept that a collection of individuals interacting within the constraints of society do not constitute some sort of totality strikes me as beyond odd.

A culture of the sacrifice of martyrs will always weaken a culture of strength through arms.
peace j

The difficulties encountered by interposing government between parent and child to produce positive social change can be avoided by introducing moral considerations affecting the child-parent relationship treating the relationship as a unit. The change in attitude within the USA of whites towards blacks was indisputably changed by strong legal restrictions plus changes in the media which treated blacks as equal human beings. There is no doubt that this change still has far to go but it is inarguable that large progress has been made and is continuing. Changes can be successfully legislated. I sincerely doubt that legislation can be initiated and enforced on religious issues outside the basic conception of the separation of church and state.

Beyond odd? Well, I do not see society as much of a constraint as modern peoples have less and less in common, they don't have the same culture, they don't live under the same circumstances, they are incredibly separate today and live independently within their interdependence. The fact that these people interact is meaningless, people interact across the entire world today, people across the world are interdependent upon each other, but they are not even considered to be within the same culture or even continent. The notion of a society thus seems relatively meaningless to me because of the fact that these societies are seen through arbitrary divisions more than anything else, I do not deny culture or anything of that nature, however, the distinct differences in many individuals within the same basic grouping makes it difficult for me to call society an effective way to view things.

I never said that people could not be changed, however, I reject the right of a governing power to enact these changes. It has no moral authority from my perspective to do so despite its physical capability.

The concept that government has no right to enforce moral authority denies the propriety of a good deal of all legal systems which involves property rights and criminal behavior. An astounding proposition.

I don't think he means it that way...

More like Libertarian Relativism I think.

"You may do what you like as long as you do not injure others or damage their property without their explicit consent."

Technically, I stated that it didn't have the moral authority to act, not that it lacked the moral authority to maintain a system. Property rights and criminal behavior fit in the latter. However, the astounding proposition is not something I am afraid of necessarily as I have read and tend to agree with many aspects of anarchist theory. Flagg is right though, libertarian relativism is along the lines of my thought, the ability for individuals to be free is the idea promoted.

Freedom these days is a word tossed around with small consideration of its limits and implications. Any society is configured to lay out how individuals react to each other and to the government in general and this is an intricate architecture with many variations. To speak of freedom as a generality is almost totally meaningless.

Limits? Self-ownership is how I define freedom, it is an effective definition. I know of freedom's nature to a reasonably good extent, your view of freedom hardly matters to me, neither do most of your subjective valuations and crude premises just as you likely reject my own. Frankly, I reject that view of society, I don't react to other individuals as others do and I think it is perfectly fine to do so. I am a libertarian, therefore I see the government as an evil. It is not that intricate, but rather very crude. Meaningless? Self-ownership is freedom, government prevents this, other people do not cause so much problem. People cannot socially force me to act against my desires, governments can legitimately force me to act to their whims, there is an obvious distinction.

Don't tell me to tidy my room - you're not the boss of me ... lol ...

Government, of course, has nothing to do with people. It is run by squinty eyed grey flying saucer pilots.

I'm pretty certain that Government has a lot to do with people, I challenge you try to behave as if there is none! Whether they can relate to their society or reality is a different issue though.

[quote=Awesomelyglorious]
I am a libertarian, therefore I see the government as an evil.
[/quote]

Bandwagon fallacy. And not quite accurate, libertarians are in favor of minimal government interference to personal life as possible (such as providing basic protection and services, but nothing more).

I guess I'll add my two cents.....

I think reason and science has done more for us in terms of progress, whether it be moral, political, technological or otherwise, in the past 150 or so years then religion has ever done in its entire time that it has existed.

And religion has been around for a long time, I want to say about 120,000 years. In addition, religion has contributed much more to intolerance, racism, meaningless wars, sexism, genocide, explotation, and well just about any injustice and irrationality that has ever been conceived of by mankind.

It wasn't really until people developed an empirical, scientific, and reason-based arguments/world view that we were able to work toward a much more moral, and better society. And that happened only fairly recently.