Directly contrary to what I said. But hey who's arguing?richards1000 wrote:I believe that you are advocating the policy position that national governments, including the U.S. federal government, should ban all religious groups and prohibit the practice of all forms of religion. In support of this position, you argue that the U.S. government is violating the U.S. constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion.
And as I have said before I think that they should. How can there be a separation when what amounts to a corporate system legitimized by irrationality is given special allowances of any type or allowed to act as a said corporation with impunity? We don't want someone from Halliburton running the country, why should we have to accept the member of a religious-political body? There is an imbalance in the country and it favors these irrational faith based institutions (and multinational corporations). If anything it must be remembered that these "faith based charities" are little more than a collection humans no better or worse than non-faith based groups. God of any belief doesn't exist and a preacher is no better for believing that he does. Right now a religious group with political aspirations will be granted a tax exemption where similar secular groups are not.richards1000 wrote:Neither claim that you adduced has been accepted by any U.S. federal court, to my knowledge; that is, no U.S. federal court has ruled in an actual case that the Internal Revenue Code’s religious tax exemption provisions or the existence of the executive branch’s office of faith-based initiatives violates the Establishment Clause.
http://atheism.about.com/od/churchestax ... ptions.htm
You have shown an impressive understanding of how the system is currently set up. At least superficially. I was hoping to have a more theoretical discussion rather than one relying on legalese. You helped prove an important point of mine though: American Governmental policy towards religion needs reworking, bad.
I adduce that you reduce me to arguments not of my own making. Talking about the way things are now is not the focus here. You want to argue with the Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of British Columbia who wrote the article go ahead, I'm interested in the subject but please don't pin me directly to it or write off what I have written because of it.richards1000 wrote: Accordingly, both claims you adduce to support your argument that the U.S. government is violating the Establishment Clause seem unpersuasive, because they are unsupported by any judicial decision or constitutional text.
Your link is broken second paragraph.
I don't see how. Your founding fathers didn't what religion to influence the rational order of the state and religion didn't want to lower its self to the mundane running of state. Sounds like an ideal situation to me until you get Bush wrenched. Many countries adopt a state religion in an attempt to have control over religious influence, America is not one of them. The rise of political religionism as we can observe in the United States is a rather contemporary phenomenon. I can only hope that you don't require any proof or background information to know that this is true.richards1000 wrote: I respect that view, but I believe that view is inconsistent with the policy of the U.S. government.
http://www.crosscurrents.org/Demerath.htm
You restate the flip side to the very coin of my own words! Finally you have struck upon the topic! My perspective was from the alternative viewpoint that the "voluntary religious beliefs" begin to threaten government when they become too influential and that it is the government's protectionist responsibility to enact some measure of control. Of course I am not advocating any kind of mouthpiece - I don't know where you got that idea from - rather that the government must maintain its fastidious secularism.roberts1000 wrote:Voluntary religious belief and expression may be as threatened when government takes the mantle of religion upon itself as when government directly interferes with private religious practices.
Ummmm...you've taken this defensive position before and I am confused as to where exactly it stems from. Certainly not anything I have said or implied. I'm just not picking up the extreme authoritarianism in any of the posts you seem to feel needs reprimanding. But maybe you not reading the posts.roberts1000 wrote:I disagree with the view that all religious groups should be banned and the practice of all forms of religion prohibited, because such a view would violate basic norms of human rights...
roberts1000 wrote: How can there be a “gray area” between them?
An inability to recognize a problem does not mean that there is no problem. And I would recommend that we should be erring on the side of there being a problem here.
Third paragraph...great points. This is where the difficulty I expressed comes in. You would feel that no changes are needed and that religious corporations can exert whatever influence they are capable of. My own personal disagreement was the impetus for this thread.
theistic agendas = church taught actions [i.e. "Bush is God's spokesperson, your vote is a prayer."]
atheistic apathy = "What radical religious right-wing? There is no God I don't need to vote anyway."
Sorry, not at all interested in the American legalese system, I don't believe that you would need to be all too intimately familiar to recognize that a wheel is loose somewhere. Having said that I will do some reading of your links and actually find out what the heck an Establishment Clause is and perhaps even attempt to forceably ingest some of the more legal mumble-dumble.
