I agree with the Pope!
“Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted,” he said.
AMEN and ALLAH AKBAR to you my friend!
here’s why I do….ALL religions need to be discussed in public. Can you imagine if Van Goh wasn’t murdered on the street because he drew a picture of Mohammed? Can you imagine being able to discuss abortion, IVF and stem Cell research in public without being shot down as immoral, godless and unpatriotic? It will allow the believers to be subject to further criticism. There won’t be anymore of this Religion is Private Crap that has completely backfired on us. Because we want it out of government liberals are evil…So I agree with the Pope in a way, I don’t agree with his slightly veiled way of saying Islam needs to be discussed, but ALL religions.
and this guys book, The Secular Conscience is a great read that totally supporst the Pope
The link did not take me to The Onion.
WTF?
having just read The Secular Conscience this was the major point he made.
I will elaborate further…
Separation of church and State that is the law of this land. Who cares what religion you are or aren’t. Thats why the right wing can use Rev. Wrights words as if Obama had said them or believed them. Thats why we can’t have a major discussion in america about the Zionists in Israel and their treatment of the Palestinans…Thats why the neo cons and the evangelicals are moving together to make Christianity the one faith of America. Thats exactly what our founding fathers fought against. When you are campaigning for a public office or elected to a public office, you take an oath to protect and serve all the people of this country…that includes snake worshipers, or rock lovers. Religion has no place in american politics. We should aspire to being secular humanists and stop this religious diatribe affecting our foreign policy and our way of life.
Of course this is not the vein in which the Pope comment was offered. Although I completely agree with DV, the statement was taken out of context. Benedict meant that one cannot go to church on Sunday and think one thing then go to work and believe another. It was an admonition against cognitive dissonance.
Aquinas stated that reason was the greatest enemy to faith. The more study done on comparative religions the more inane and contradictory they are shown to be. Believers need to be challenged about what part of the dogma they truly belief and which parts are dismissed out of hand.
Liz – I actually do care what people believe. If someone thinks homosexuality is immoral on biblical grounds, for example, or believes the earth is 6,000 years old, or thinks Muhammed flew to heaven on a winged horse, on that three ounces of lamp oil last 12 days, I want to know about it. I need to understand whether or not someone is rationale or not.
Is the point that many go to church yet behave differently elsewhere the basis for why McDowell can spend Monday through Friday in unholy union with the Masters of Darkness at DP&L? And by Masters or Darkness, I mean that if you don’t pay their 51% increase in electric, they will be Master of your ass while it sits in Darkness.
59%, but who’s counting…
I try very hard not to listen to the Pope. However, being Italian and raised Catholic, I am given permission to disregard the Pope. (Been to Italy lately? Italians don’t listen to the Pope!)
He does have a point on practicing your religion after Sunday. Indulge me for a minute… Last summer there was a neighbor of mine who made a big deal out of attending Mass every day. After returning home one day she said this: “If AQ wants to make a real impression, they should bomb Sea Colony in Bethany Beach. That place is full of Jews.”
She then turned to me and said, “What do you think of that?”
I said, “Maybe you should go to church twice a day.”
She isn’t speaking to me anymore. Wonder why?
DV, your point is valid, and I just ordered your rec. book off of Amazon. I welcome the discussion, because, I believe, doctrine only works when you don’t know the individual involved. Easy to tell “those” people what to do while making your sister, brother, friend the exception.
Who cares about what someone thinks about their particular faith? The issue is how they behave. Blount using tax-payer paid-for materials to promote his candidacy is not explained away by declarations of devotion. gReed taking insurance industry money does not reduce the conflict of interest even if he is pious. McDowell selling his soul to DP&L is not forgiven in confession.
What is the core of the matter is how people act. Declarations of holiness do not mitigate dishonesty, immorality, and impropriety. Asking about faith, or claiming your own, is to me an issue as important as all those women spending extra care on their appearance should donviti show up at a Drinking Liberally. Will he care?
Disbelief: “Who cares about what someone thinks about their particular faith? The issue is how they behave.”
Precisely the point.
I have always wondered how those who disregard and dismiss religion and religious practices and beliefs … And who concurrently 100% support Darwin’s evolution theories … How do they introduce “MORALS”.
Where is the foundation for protecting the weak? Seems like a contradiction TO “Survival of the fittest. ” Winner take all.
So when someone says “Religion has no place in American politics.” – I want to know where they get their beliefs from, and why I Should follow
them.
I am not so sure Homo Sapiens is as advanced as my dog. Just another random animal, when the idea of a creator is eliminated.
Here today and gone tomorrow with no afterlife and no evaluation of how one has conducted themselves. Carpe Diem. Time to go hunting.
.
Not being unnecessarily violent or hurtful, doing the right thing, acting ethically, being fair, showing mercy, discernment, and compassion can be seen as a survival mechanism. Scientists believe that we diverged from apes about 5 million years ago – that is an awful lot of time for a huge number of behavioral trial and error scenarios to be played out.
Isn’t it reasonable to assume that ancient tribes or clans that had some internal code of ethics would thrive while a group that failed to develop that trait would fail?
I don’t see ay conflict at all between evolution and morality.
I think like the Greeks, “what you do with the office is what counts, not what you say when you are inside your home with wife and kids.”
Action and standard of action, not belief should be the standard. For example, I do not care if John Yoo has all kinds of weird opinions- but when he nullifies the 4th amendment, he has moved into the realm of action that is clearly harmful to the civic good of the people. At that point I care deeply.
Cretin,
As Christopher Hitchens would say, show me a good deed that an athiest couldn’t do that a religious man could…
or something like that 🙂
Please just b/c you are without religion doesn’t mean you don’t have morals. Monkey’s know right from wrong. They know a fair deal and bad one. So how is it possible that man, without religion wouldn’t know what the right thing to do is?
oh and thanks for visiting and commenting
Does this mean its wrong to make fun of Rob Foraker?