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INTRODUCTION
The debate about religion has come to the forefront of national attention.
BACKGROUND
Faith ‘War’ Rages in U.S., Judge Says:
...California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a “war” against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech.
Brown’s remarks come as a partisan battle over judges has evolved into a national debate over the proper mix of God and government and as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) ponders changing the chamber’s rules to prevent Democrats from using procedural moves to block confirmation of conservative jurists such as Brown.
Her comments to a gathering of Roman Catholic legal professionals in Darien, Conn., came on the same day as “Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith,” a program produced by evangelical leaders and simulcast on the Internet and in homes and churches around the country. It was designed to paint opponents of Bush’s judicial nominees as intolerant of believers.
Though unrelated to that program, Brown’s remarks sounded similar themes.
“There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It’s not a shooting war, but it is a war,” she said, according to a report published Monday in the Stamford Advocate.
“These are perilous times for people of faith,” she said, “not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud.”
At the LA Press Club event earlier this week, I was talking to a good friend, who has Liberal views on most subjects. She said she can have no respect for the intelligence of anyone who believes in God. It appears to me that she’s summed up the Liberal view on this subject.
MAIN IDEA
God exists.
DISCUSSION
The Liberal viewpoint makes a lot of sense. Surely there’s no big guy in a gold chair sitting up in the clouds.
But that to which the word God refers does exist. It refers to our emotions of worship, and to that which rightfully deserves our worship, namely, ourselves.
The Bible is the summed experience of mankind, at the time at which it was written, about how to live. It’s not right about everything, but there’s a lot of very valuable and meaningful advice in it. The ten commandments are a good example.
Science is not capable of worship because science addresses information, rather than emotion. Therefore God—that is, the emotion of worship, and that which rightfully deserves it—has, so far, been invisible to science.
Because science has not yet found a scientific name for that to which the word God refers, many Liberals incorrectly state that God does not exist, and inadvertently turn their backs on emotions of devotion, reverence and worship.
CONCLUSION
Devotion, reverence and worship are powerful, beautiful emotions, with which people seek to do good and even loving things for others. That which rightfully deserves those emotions does exist; it is ourselves. It is therefore essential to us as a nation to recognize the existence of these emotions, and to appreciate the powerful contribution they make to all of us.
#2Thanks, MikeZ, and welcome. I agree with you, and I think the Libs are turning their backs on something of great meaning when they say -- hewing blindly to an attempted "scientific" approach -- that there is no God.
It's kind of ridiculous to say, "I don't believe God exists because there is no scientific term for God." And calling these people "liberals" is too nice. They should be referred to as atheists.
#4If your point-of-view dominated the Religious Right, I'd be less worried, but for the most part they see God as a literal Angry Father who lives in a golden palace and rewards and punishes as He will (since all humans are Totally Depraved), and the Bible as an unchangingly ineerant guide to all matters of life.
As to the stupidity of people's believing in God, I'd say that there are a fair number who never _questioned_ their belief in the God in which they were brought-up because they're stupid---just as a Red-Diaper Baby might stupidly never question her belief in Communism and Atheism. However, there are an awfully lot more people in Merka raised to be controlled by God-words than those raised to be controlled by atheism-words, so I think it's likely that there are more people in the nation who believe in God for lack of imagination than those who are atheists thereby.
Vik, liberals (for the most part) do not oppose religion. Although liberals are more secular than conservatives in this country, there are many, many liberal Christians.
I am a liberal, and I certainly do not oppose religion. I am in favor of government staying out of the choice of religion, but folks who cast me as opposed to religion are deliberately avoiding the constitutional point.
Martin Luther King, the hero of the (liberal) civil rights movement, was a minister for heavens sake! My grandfather was a Methodist minister, and he had crosses burned on his lawn for daring to speak out for progressive ideals in the deep south.
#6Martin Luther King, the hero of the (liberal) civil rights movement, was a minister for heavens sake! My grandfather was a Methodist minister, and he had crosses burned on his lawn for daring to speak out for progressive ideals in the deep south.
Excellent. At the same time, the Liberal and Conservative parties have changed quite a bit since the time of MLK.
Vik, liberals (for the most part) do not oppose religion.
Would you not agree that there's a major Liberal movement to drive acknowledgment of the benefits of religion, out of public life?
Would you not agree that there’s a major Liberal movement to drive acknowledgment of the benefits of religion, out of public life?
No, I would NOT acknowledge that. Most liberals I know are religious in some form or another. "Liberals" still include many ministers, but the liberal position is that religion and government don't mix. That's not an attack on religion. The purpose of the separation of church and state is to protect religion. The only people who are opposed to the separation of church and state are those who want to elevate a particular religion over others, which is one of the main things our European founders fled from.
If you would like some counterbalance to Dobson or whatever other people you are reading, I highly recommend Carlos Stouffer's blog, Jesus Politics. You will find, day after day, essays by some of the most intelligent, and I would even say most wise, pastors and ministers and theologians in America's various Christian churches about how religion should--and should not--interact with politics.
#8The purpose of the separation of church and state is to protect religion.
You're making the argument for precisely the movement I'm referring to. The separation of church and state of which you speak was not sought by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, the Ten Commandments are inscribed on the walls of the Supreme Court. There was no widespread movement to support such a movement until recently. That there is such a movement, you can refuse to acknowledge, but you cannot disprove.
#9The separation of church and state of which you speak was not sought by the Founding Fathers.
The Founding Fathers did believe in the separation of church and state, because they were against the persecution of religion as were many of the colonists. Indeed they did mention God in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence, but they usually used the word interchangeably with the meaning of nature and how things are naturally.
It is very similar to Sigmund Freud and how he theorized that everyone is motivated by sex. He was using the word sex interchangeably with the meaning of pleasure and the most basic of instincts.
#10Indeed, we all believe in a certain God, even if it is ourselves or the white bearded man. We all seek <a rel="follow" href="http://www.gardenofwords.net/learn-more-about-bible-prophecy-and-the-christian-faith/">salvation</a> some way or another and yes, the feelings that come along with believing are only to the benefit of society and to ourselves.
(I've just come across this site, by way of an LA Times watch blog.)
I have to wonder about your liberal friend, who questons the intelligence of anyone who believes in God. My own thought is that there are a lot of people a lot smarter than I, who have come to a belief in God rather late in life, and whose intelligence is not opento question.
Just off the top of my head, there's G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Tolkien (though I believe he was raised a Catholic - in any event, his far from middling itellligence did not persuade him otherwise). Gong back further, there's John Henry Cardinal Newman, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine - people against whose intellect we hardly compare.