Matt Davies for August 18, 2011

If the Tea Party is Christian. Jesus is rolling over in his gra—oops, that might upset some people.

From Baker to Roberts, to Robertson, Falwell et al, looking at the influence of “dominion” movements has never been scarier- even to real CHRISTIANS! They hide behind their flag pin burkas, not going TOO public with their real motives – which are exactly the same as radical Islam, just a different excuse for their insanity.

zing

Well, the Satanist’s Creed (1) is “Do as thou wilt. That is the whole of the Law.” Seems pretty Ayn Randish, to me.

The Wiccan Creed (2), however, is “An it hurt no one, do as thou wilt”, which adds a pretty important qualifier.

Jesus (3) said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” echoing Hillel (4), who said “Do not to unto others that which would be hateful to yourself.” Some would say those are simply two different ways of saying the same thing, but others would disagree.

So, speaking ONLY for myself, a godless Liberal who nonetheless believes there’s a difference between ethical behavior and unethical behavior, I’ll put myself somewhere between (2) and (3)/(4).

fritzoid: Zoroaster said the Golden Rule even earlier…a lot of early Christianity takes its cues from Mithraism.

I’ve seen coverage of Tea party rallies on the news with the occasional tea bag dangling from a hat, but it’s not the main fashion accessory.

motive, I’ve got a book in storage somewhere which lists maybe a dozen (maybe more) formulations of the Golden Rule from various cultures. My attribution of it to Jesus is, I hope, understandable in context of the instant cartoon, and citing Hillel as well was to show that, even within Jesus’ own tradition, it wasn’t wholly new. Whether Hillel got it from the Zoroastrians or came up with it independently I’ll neither support nor gainsay, but it’s true that in the Hellenized Middle East there was a lot of cross-pollenation. Alexander, for better or worse, changed the world.

^Oh, sure, fritzoid, just chiming in.

No worries, mm. I didn’t imagine you were trying to step on my point.

Ah, the Golden Rule. Few people practice it, othes are at each other’s throats over who said it and who’s evil.

Corosive Frog, I think it’s a mispeception (or at least a misstatement) that motive and I are “at each other’s throats.” It seems to me that the point we BOTH are trying to make is that it doesn’t MATTER who said it first; it’s a fundamental concept that could easily have arisen independently at many times in many cultures.

Personally, I suspect the seeds of it go back AT LEAST as far as two club-carrying cavemen who met by chance and each of them thought “If I don’t try to club him, maybe he won’t try to club me.” From there it’s just a step (maybe big, maybe small, but a straight line) to “If I’m nice to him, maybe he’ll be nice to me.” That’s not just mutual-nonagression, that’s “Peace, Love, and Understanding.”

My own belief is that human beings are fundamentally “good” rather than the contrary, because it’s been my experience and observation that more people will go slightly out of their way to be nice to a stranger than will go slighly out of their way to be mean. Someone a couple of hundred years ago (I don’t remember who, but that certainly COULD be looked up) said something like “Every time we go out of our front doors, we have to take it on trust that everybody we meet will not try to kill us.” I’m willing to take that “leap of faith”, because in 46 years on this planet nobody has tried to kill me as I walked down the street.

PS: After “That’s not just mutual-nonagression, that’s ‘Peace, Love, and Understanding,’” I meant to add “You don’t need a God or prophet speaking from a mountaintop to arrive at this notion.”

Bruce, I’ve never found Liberals to be any more contemptuous of others’ religious beliefs than Conservatives. It appears to me that Religious Conservatives are, on the whole, protective of their own freedoms far more than they’re protective of others’. But then, I’d imagine one’s personal experiences would color one’s perceptions on the matter to a large degree. A Hindu immigrant might feel far safer overtly professing Hinduism in a community that already embraces Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and so on, than in one that is otherwise exclusively Christian (or even one that embraces a slightly-different sect of Hinduism; look at the experiences of Catholics in overwhelmingly Protestant areas, or vice-versa).

The vast majority of Americans are Christians of one stripe or another, but even though we are a democracy that does not make us a “Christian nation”; under the 1st Amendment, no law can be made which favors, or endorses, or even recognizes one religion as having any more legitimacy than any other. That certainly includes religions that are polytheistic (such as Hinduism), non-theistic (such as Buddhism), or atheistic (assuming, for the sake of argument, that “atheism” is a “religion” at all). Religious questions have no basis for being considered at all by any level of civil government in this country (or by any other taxpayer-supported institution, such as public schools).

As I stated above, I am an atheist/agnostic; I profess no religion at all. I have what I feel is an acceptable “moral sense”, as does virtually every other “godless”, non-religious person of my acquaintance, but I do not ascribe that “moral sense” to having been infused in me by some metaphysical omnipotence. And, upon examination, I find that there’s a lot of overlap between what I believe is ethical/“good” and what theists believe is “Good” (I believe Jesus was largely right, but I don’t believe he was God; and to quote somebody or another, “If Jesus was right, what does it MATTER whether he was God?”)

Questions such as the legality of abortion or recognition of same-sex marriage (or simply whether it’s legal to sell used cars on Sundays, to name a particularly idiotic Blue Law that was passed by the State of Illinois when I was a kid) must be decided on the basis of their impact on human society in this world, not on the basis of a lawmaker’s individual conviction of “what God wants.” If you think abortion is immoral, don’t have one. If you think homosexuality is immoral, don’t cruse public restrooms for rough trade. And if you don’t want to sell used cars on Sunday, don’t. But don’t forbid anybody else from doing it, and don’t claim you’re being persecuted if you can’t get your dogma passed into law.

No, Bruce, I expressly do NOT agree. The 10 Commandments have no business being displayed at the courthouse, outside or inside, because it’s a government facility. Displaying them there endorses Mosaic religion. If you invite the local pastor to pray before your City Council meeting, you must also invite (and give equal time to) the local Rabbi, Imam, Shinto priest, Buddhist lama, and so on, including a free-thinker/atheist to give an “opposing view.” To give equal time to ALL the religions you can think of (and all the ones you haven’t thought of yet), there would be no time to conduct any official business. To put up statues or monuments of all the religions on government property, you’d never be able to find the door.

If you have 99 Baptist students in a classroom and one Jew, it’s inappropriate to have an organized prayer to Jesus. If you have 50 Baptists, 20 Catholics, 3 Jews, a Buddhist, and an Atheist, it’s inappropriate to have any prayer at all, or even a moment of silence. The simplest and cheapest and most effective solution is simply to leave prayer, or scripture, or commemoration of religious holidays, or whatever, outside of the classroom/courtroom/Halls of Government entirely.

Religion need not be kept out of the public eye, but it needs to be kept out of the public sector. Mixing religion and government leads to corruption of both.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, and render unto the Lord that which is the Lord’s.”

hmm, as to “truth”. In “Power vs Force”, David Hawkins notes that on a “truth” scale- Jesus’ original teachings rate 1,000. Today’s extremist “Christian” fundamentalist groups rate 125. Mohammed started at 540 and today’s Muslim extremists rate 130. Buddha started at 1,000 and today’s Mahayana Buddhism still ranks at 950! In Judaism, Abraham started at 985 and modern Judaism rates a 499. Hinduism started at 1,000 and remains at 850 today!! So much for “polytheists” losing THEIR way!

The numbers reflect “truth” as strength and shows where “practice what you preach” has gone with “interpretations”.

When you look at these numbers, extremist “Christian fundamentalists” rank right down there with well, nobody else, for “truth”. (or,well, LACK of it!)