Expanding on discussion in the comments in the post below, it may be time to remind ourselves there is no such thing as a politician who functions at arm’s length from their personal religious beliefs. Even those who claim to leave their individual religious principles “at the door” when they enter the halls of government have accomplished little more than to trade them in for someone else’s.
Even the atheist must take the same leap of faith before declaring that no God exists as the person who declares that He does – it’s merely the path taken and the conclusions drawn that differ.
Thus, in any discussion involving religion in politics, it is a mistake to allow the self-defined “secular community” to assume the default position against which all others are measured, because, in so doing, we are permitting nothing less than the raising one religious belief system to reign supreme over all others.
With the precedent set, it is simply a matter of time before the secular default is replaced or modified to suit the political ownership of the day. Indeed, it’s not hard to make a case that the phenomenon is already in progress, and that we are witnessing signs of the emergence of “extremist secularists” in Canada and the bastardization of the core ideology into a movement that is increasingly repressive and dogmatic.
In modern democracy, all religious viewpoints must be provided a place in the public policy debate without fear of reprisal or official scorn (so long as they are not intent on undermining the very democracy that permits them to speak – there is a difference between religious tolerance and societal stupidity.) It is our duty as citizens in a liberal democracy to condemn the secular intelligencia and their voices in the media in the same matter we would any other extremist group who would silence other religion based opinion – for any system that would disallow an evangelical Christian or orthodox Jew or devout Buddist a voice in the political process, including the right to cast a vote in Parliament with the full respect of all members, is putting their own rights to religious freedom – including the freedom not to “believe” – in jeopardy.
“… and willing to dump me and cross the House for a cabinet position without any hesitation…”
LOL. At least we agree on that! Man, I’ve been dumped a couple of times in my life, but never anything that cold. You’ll notice that poor Peter MacKay didn’t reach for the Bible or Ludwig Wittgenstein, the poor SOB wanted to see his *dog*, and who can blame him? My father called some women a “peach” and other women a “tomato” — he would have called Belinda a frozen ice pick. Man, that is one cold bitch.
“Belinda, my god, last night in the Feathers, you told me you loved me, you told me you were my soul mate. Why, for god’s sake, just tell me why!”
“For the good of Canada, Peter. Don’t get in my way, Peter.” (click)
Logic. Well, I’m a big fan of logic. However logic has its limitations. When one talks of transcendence, the question is “transcend what?” Generally the idea is that it is possible to transcend the rational cognitive levels of the mind and discover another mode that is not dependent on the rational cognitive levels, and furthermore the rational cognitive levels can act as a barrier to experience of the transendent. There are literally thousands of years of comtemplative experience in the Judeo-Christian traditions and other traditions that assert the validity of this possbility.
Logically, if you walk down the street and see a white house, a white car, and a guy in a white t-shirt, it means nothing.
However in a dream if you see white house, white car, guy in white t-shirt, the quality of whiteness being displayed in this way, while meaning nothing logically, can be rich with psychological truth. Hypothetically, even universal truth.
Hermeneutics is based on methods of interpretation of texts that operate similarly to the dream scenario.
So we don’t even have to step outside of the context of ordinary human experience before we begin to run into conundrums that start to reveal the limitations of logic, meritorious though logic certainly is.
Living a Christian life style can not honestly be called anything less than an ideal quality of life at least from a Christian�s perspective.
Well, that’s an empty tautology. In order to argue that it’s a no-lose proposition to live as if God exists, you need to make the case that an [insert your religion here] lifestyle is ideal from an atheistic perspective. No appeals to God, faith, revelation, etc. And if you can do that, it means God, faith, etc., are irrelevant in the whole equation. An odd position for a religious person to take.
Mark do they actually let people surf the internet and post to boards like this in prison. To live a life as you propose you would have to be in prison. All judicial systems of the free world are founded on principals of religion and to be totally free to exercise free will in a totally sociopathic way would demand incarceration.
Momorider: You apparently think our only choice in morality is between obeying God or our whims, between being good Christians or sociopathic criminals. I probably ought to be offended, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re either very young or have managed to get through life unexposed to the myriad philosphical bases proposed for various moral and political systems. My own opinion is that whatever morality you accept, using reality and reason rather than revelation and faith as your guides is bound to produce better results in the long run. In particular, the ethical system I think is right is the one Ayn Rand wrote”>http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_nonfiction”>wrote about.
(Sorry for the badly-formatted link.)
That egoism crap is a joke. It�s odd but seems a lot of so called right winged thinkers are into that crap. If the wages of sin weren�t for real the last role model in my books is going to be a McCarthyist.