"Non-Believers" View of Bible-Believing Christians

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

Rooster7 writes:

...what's the underlying reason...what "works"?

 

The law is to prevent road accidents, but the decision on whether to drive on the right side or left is not religious at all. By the way, did you have a point with this line of argument?

 

...Explain to me why you would argue against the reversal of Roe V. Wade.

 

Because I don't think it ought to be reversed.

 

 

Do you agree with the pretence that the beginning of life is debatable? If so, it seems to me that you'd have no motivation to take either side.

 

Well, you're simply wrong, then. There are lots of issues that are debatable, yet I have no problem taking sides in many of them, and being neutral on other issues.

 

Can you give me a valid law that only has religious reasons for existing?

 

No. Can you provide an example of one? Or of one that was proposed?

 

Well yes, the law struck down in Stone v. Graham that I cited earlier. Posting the ten commandments in public schools.

 

OGE writes:

No car dealers are open on Sunday nor are the liquor stores open until noon. I think these are civil laws based on religious precepts. Now, I know you will say these arent "valid", but why havent the "blue" laws been a target of the ACLU?

 

They have been. Courts generally upheld these kinds of laws in the 1960s, but soon after people started to repeal lots of them, so I don't think the ACLU got involved much after that. A challenge to e.g. Sunday closing laws might succeed today, because they were upheld based on the gov't arguing that employees deserve at least one day off - however, I don't see anything in that argument that requires that that one day off a week needs to be Sunday.

 

An Orthodox Jew could make a good argument that a law specifying Sunday unconstitutionally burdens his free exercise, since he can't be open Sunday and his religion prohibits him from working on Saturday, instead of choosing Saturday as his one-day-a-week to close and being open on Sunday. As it is, he would not be able to be open for any of the weekend (except Saturday after sunset).

 

The ACLU has been more successful in getting other blue laws removed, like the ones against consensual sex acts by adults.

[NJCubScouter 1389]

Merlyn, I once heard a slightly different argument as to why the blue laws have a secular purpose, which is to protect small retailers (with few or no employees other than the owners) from being driven out of business by the large chains, mega-stores etc. The argument went that with stores open 7 days a week, the large stores could easily stagger their employees' schedules so that they work only 5 or 6 days a week each while the store remains open every day, while "Mom and Pop" could never take a day off because they would have to close the store and lose that day's business (one-seventh of their business per week) to Walmart. However, if all stores had to be closed on the same day, Mom and Pop could close the store and go to the beach (or church) for the day, secure in the knowledge that their regular customers were not abandoning them for Walmart, since Walmart is closed too. It wouldn't work if the mandatory day off wasn't all on the same day. As for why Sunday, well, what day would most citizens prefer to have off? Probably Sunday, and as the argument went, it is not up to the government to inquire why that is the day the people want off, that's just the day they want, and that creates a legitimate secular governmental purpose.

 

That's how the argument went, anyway. I didn't say it necessarily was a good argument, and I do not know how it would play in Court or if it has ever been used, but that was the argument. It at least attempts to explain why the "mandatory day off" had to be all on the same day. Interestingly, I believe there is still one county in New Jersey that has blue laws. The blue laws in the county I live in were repealed only in the early 80's, not very long ago in the general scheme of things.

 

Did I hear someone say "Off Topic"? Oh well...

[stlscouter 10]

even off topic-doesn't the fact that religious instutions (notwithastanding the "wall of separation")are given tax exemptions show a specific set of laws that are borne of religion?(This message has been edited by stlscouter)

[Fuzzy Bear 12]

My personal belief is that abortion is wrong because it kills/murders a relationship with the unborn child, the prospective father, and one's God. If anybody else believes as I do, then the law is already in their heart and nobody else has to bother with making another law or reversing the older one for us. Life begins even before conception, the first heartbeat, or the first breath if there is a relationship between two people that love each other and they want to give each other the very best there is in life.

 

As for rape, incest, Saturday night fun and acts done with a turkey baster; all Church people need to gather their money together to house and feed the results of such non-relationships. The government would not need to be involved, or change the laws and nobody would need to say "no" ever again.

 

Animal lusting was not invented in the 20th or the 21st centuries.

 

Rooster,

 

Your challenge about laws and morality is circular reasoning. Your faith in morality by majority vote falls short of belief in a real God.

 

to the other poster,

concrete form is misleading.

 

FB

(This message has been edited by Fuzzy Bear)(This message has been edited by Fuzzy Bear)

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

stlscouter writes:

doesn't the fact that religious instutions (notwithastanding the "wall of separation")are given tax exemptions show a specific set of laws that are borne of religion?

 

Lots of institutions are given all kinds of tax exemptions. In fact, when a Texas law only exempted religious publications from sales tax, it was struck down. Here's part of Texas Monthly inc v. Bullock:

The exemption lacks sufficient breadth to pass scrutiny under the Establishment Clause. The fact that a subsidy incidentally benefits religious groups does not deprive it of the secular purpose and effect mandated by the Clause, so long as it is conferred on a wide array of nonsectarian groups as well as religious organizations in pursuit of some legitimate secular end. However, when, as here, government directs a subsidy exclusively to religious organizations that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and that either burdens nonbeneficiaries markedly or cannot reasonably be seen as removing a significant state-imposed deterrent to the free exercise of religion, it cannot be viewed as anything but impermissible state sponsorship of religion, particularly where the subsidy is targeted at writings that promulgate the teachings of religious faiths.

 

NJCubScouter, you may be right, though there seems to be a lot of state-level litigation and not much reaching the supreme court, McGowan v. Maryland (1961) being one. That one talks about a "uniform day of rest", but doesn't say it's for mom & pop stores to compete, and there isn't much to justify why it has to be "uniform".

[evmori 11]

Well yes, the law struck down in Stone v. Graham that I cited earlier. Posting the ten commandments in public schools.

 

Posting the Ten Commandments in public school was not a law. One was created to have them removed. So the question is still unanswered.

 

Merlyn,

You are pro-abortion? If I might ask, why?

 

Prairie,

I don't think I ever mentioned "the injection of the soul".

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[stlscouter 10]

Merlyn- the reasoning used in the case you sight shows that religious institutions were included in the thought process and that they benefited incidently but that non-sectarian also benefit-again the laws were passed but the motivation in the mind of the legislators/judges shows religion was indeed present and part and parcel of thought process. The idea that any group should not be taxed or be tax exempt shows that there is a conscious effort to recognize a diffence in the role of government and religion. And that taxes could be used as a weapon against people exercising an enumerated right and practice thereof. I guess I still would maintain the Law of the Land in it's 1st amendment is borne out of a religious context.

[Hunt 11]

There seem to be at least three threads here (maybe more), and I'd like to respond to all of them.

 

First, the original question of why some people seem not to like Christians elicited this response: "For example, how would devout Christians like for someone to come in, explain to them that their beliefs were misguided or worse yet wrong (look at the reception Merlyn gets from many on this forum) and attempted to convert them to something else?" The answer, for me anyway, is that we wouldn't be "offended" if somebody did this--we would essentially see that person as a competitor for the hearts and minds of others--sort of the way a Ford dealer might see a Honda dealer. What's more, devout Christians of various stripes are always trying to convert each other, so we're pretty used to it.

 

Second, the question of whether laws have a religious basis or not: Clever lawyers can come up with a secular purpose for just about any law you can think of, and we may soon have a Supreme Court that will accept those arguments, so this issue may become increasingly moot. But I do think the back-and-forth between Rooster and Merlyn shows something, that when you look at the underpinnings of all our laws, they are based on certain moral judgments about human life and society that are not (despite the views of the Founding Fathers) really self-evident. In my opinion, most of those moral judgments evolved from religious beliefs even if they were not directly based on a particular religion.

 

Finally, on the issue of life and heartbeat, Bob White asks "to your knowledge has anyone ever knowingly taken a brain dead individual and buried or cremated them while they still had a heartbeat?" No, but I have heard of the beating heart of such a person actually being cut out of that person, and then transferred to another person, allowing the first person to die. As I pointed out, the question of whether someone or something is "alive" is not the same as whether it is a "person" or not--which is a much harder question. I was just listening to some lectures by Alexander McCall Smith on these kinds of issues, and he offered the interesting argument (I'm not saying it's his view, or mine) that an embryo cannot be considered a "person" while it is still possible for it to divide into twins. (Obviously, that's long before it has a heartbeat, but it's yet another possibility on the continuum.)

[Prairie_Scouter 10]

Very good post, Hunt. Thank you.

 

Ed,

It was I who mentioned the concept of "injecting the soul". It was in response to one of your posts, and I was just commenting on the difficulty of determining when life begins since you can't really prove when a soul enters a being (or a cell, or group of cells, or however you want to define it). This was followed by a question about using a heartbeat; I answered that a heartbeat isn't necessarily indicative of the beginning of life, and this answer was then expanded to begin a discussion on whether, in general, a heartbeat was an indicator of life, which is a fine discussion, but not what I was originally responding to.

[Eagledad 2779]

>>STDs, child support payments, fury of a scorned woman - there is much fear to go around! Not that fear should be the motivation factor but as I've always believed, it takes two to tango.

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

Ed writes:

Posting the Ten Commandments in public school was not a law.

 

Yes it was, Ed. Kentucky passed a law requiring that the ten commandments be put up in every classroom in the state.

 

One was created to have them removed.

 

No Ed, the law was struck down by the courts, so they were removed.

 

How do you manage to get things exactly backwards?

 

 

[evmori 11]

I stand corrected.

 

Now, Merlyn, how about those other questions I asked you?

 

[packsaddle 753]

Rooster7, is it too late to mention that much of Europe drives on the same side of the road that we do? Either that or else I must have really teed off a lot of people over there.

As for the other stuff, Huh? In the spirit of your original post (...not intended to single out any particular individual) I never mentioned "any particular individual". The phrase, "he doth protest too much" comes to mind, however.

 

I don't know what you believe and I can't. Likewise, you are equally ignorant of my beliefs. But you evidently read things in my post that seemed real to you. It may actually exemplify part of the point I was trying to make - a person who reacts defensively simply because others fail to agree, that is, simply not ascribing to a closely-held idea perhaps because of failure to understand (and different, in this sense, from actual disagreement in which the others support an opposing idea)...that defensive reaction is a thinking error. If this is part of a general pattern of reaction it could be categorized as 'victim stance'.

And to clarify a fine point, persons engaging in 'victim stance' often are not actual victims, hence part of the nature of the thinking error. H'mmmm?

But you're right, you're not a victim.

 

As for what is living or non-living (to leave the original post again...I think), life does not 'begin' at any particular point. Rather it is a continuum...that is, unless you think hapoid gametes are dead - which they are not. If they were, the planet's ecosystems would begin restoration in just a few human generations;). Or perhaps we don't care about those hapoid life forms...except I think we do, at least in some religions where all forms of birth control are prohibited. For that matter, what was it that Anita Bryant was going on about gays and orange juice or something? And then there was also General Jack Ripper's concern for the purity of the essence (and I don't mean pearls here) of his precious bodily fluids. (OGE, you and NJ will probably get that one.)

 

The political/religious wrangling over the 'beginning of life' is actually an attempt to draw a legal line in the timeline of human reproduction. Any line that is drawn will be arbitrary to some degree and, I think, biologically bankrupt. That is why, although I disagree with them, I consider the Catholic Church's official policy to be a beacon of clarity among a morass of so-called 'prolife' views.

 

So what was the third thread, Hunt?

[Fuzzy Bear 12]

In the movie Gladiator, Maximus was killed by a lose of blood and being poisoned with a loaded dagger. After he falls to the ground dead, the close up shot of his head still shows his blood vessel on the right side still pumping. So technically, he should not have entered heavens gates as shown because it should have been his heart that stopped but didnt. The fine line on death is determined by a series of tests: no breath, no pupil dilation and no response to pain. In the Roman days it was determined by no movement, which means that even lazy people were probably buried. Death comes after the blood flow to the brain has stopped, so the brain will never function again at that point. Other organs such as the heart, kidneys, or liver, are dead but may function for a few more days. So it is possible in most instances to bury a person with a beating heart, unless donated to a dying person and then it lives but without the original person attached. The heart continues to beat because electrical impulses engage beating by means of an organic pacemaker. A more difficult problem to figure out was with the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz who lived without a brain until the end of the movie and then he was awarded a diploma/brain. It gives credence to another paradox of figuring out the fine line of intelligence.

FB

[johndaigler 10]

I'm sorry that I've been missing out on all the fun!!!! Three threads at one time - quite impressive! Confusing to those of us with little tiny brains, but quite impressive!!

 

Statistics show that over 80% of abortions are performed on girls under the age of 21, most of them having sex as early as 11 or 12 right under their parent(s) noses.

 

If BadenP is to be believed (and I find no reason to doubt his numbers)then he's right that abortion is about what we're teaching our children moreso than religion, a woman's changing role in society, or heart-beats. We tell our kids that sex at their age is unsafe, unwise and "wrong". But meanwhile we give over the lie, because we, as a society, are highly conflicted about sex and our kids see through our lies and contradictions. Just watch TV for a week, choosing those shows that advertise youth related products. We aim adult messages at kids all the time, then we're shocked at what they do. Culturally, we want them to act like adults in all those ways that make our lives easier, but not in all ways. It's no wonder they make dramatic choices and mistakes.

 

 

Back to Rooster's original thoughts . . .

 

IMHO, "Bible-believing Christians" (not my term)"...are portrayed as ignorant, arrogant, hateful, bigoted or combination of all of these..." for EXACTLY the same reasons that "Liberals" (again, not a term of mine) are portrayed likewise.

 

 

BTW, the sky ISN'T blue. That's just a view you hold based on your perspective and life experiences. . . . Without being sarcastic, I wonder if there's a metaphor to be found there?

 

jd