"The language of human rights has come to dominate our world because we cannot any longer talk about truth. This is another way of saying that we can no longer, in the public square, talk about God."

Wow, Peter, you just broke my irony meter. At least you would have, if I thought you actually believed this and weren't merely rabbiting on for polemical purposes as usual.

In the first place, what are we doing right here, right now? If we're not 'talking in the public square about God', then I have no idea what you actually mean by this convenient phrase.

In the second place, it's you, not us, who has demonstrated a desperate reluctance to talk about your God, and to hedge and back and dodge with articles about Jesus and art and writing and everything under the sun rather than to come out with a clear straightforward description of what you think your Sky Daddy is actually like, and an explanation of how you know this.

And in the third place, there are numerous forums on which people are allowed -- in fact encouraged -- to talk about God, and to respond honestly to critical questions and comments. I've never seen you on any of them. Perhaps that's because the theists who participate usually realise fairly soon that unsupported claims and Biblical nonsense don't go over well in a genuinely 'public square', and have very little to do with the truth.

I'm sure you're a good chap at heart, Peter, so please drop the Jeremiads about how awful to theists the modern world is. It only makes you look like a blind fool.

Those who have privilege at a given point in time are the ones who determine the truth by which the rest of us are obliged to live. In any era, it’s the privileged who control the mouthpieces of ‘truth’ – usually by creating a set of beliefs that portrays them as indispensable to the livelihoods and wellbeing of those they exploit and dispossess.

If human rights has now become a ‘hot’ issue in the modern era, it’s more than likely a natural correction to many centuries of unbalanced control by the privileged to hog the natural world for their own benefit, usually to the detriment of everyone else. Rabbiting on about the perils of moral relativism creates a sense of righteousness among the privileged, but ignores the growing necessity to bring the natural world back into balance with human need.

Three Truth telling references in response to Sell's usual nonsense re the presumed superiority of applied ethics and justice in times past when Christian-ISM "informed" the actions and murderously reasonable intentions of the powers-that-be in Christian Europe and the various European colonies

As far as I remember I havent posted this one before.
http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/birthday_message/index.html

An essay on Justice - it was written in response to the execution of the former bad guy leader of Iraq.
http://www.dabase.org/p9rightness.htm

Plus Truth when fully Realized sets you free
http://global.adidam.org/books/eleutherios.html

Plus why not check out Britain's Empire by Richard Gott to find out how old-time "justice" was really applied to the uppity yellow and brown skinned peoples, or rather victims of Christian based European "civilization".

I think liberalism’s respect for the dignity and value of the individual person, on which the concept of human rights is based, derives largely from Christianity and its insistence that each person is loved and valued by God. Our modern egalitarian worldview can underestimate what a strange and unnatural view this would be for most cultures in history.

This Sunday, churches that follow the lectionary will hear the story of the Good Samaritan. It affirms that a person’s worth is not determined by their class, sect, racial group or religious observance. Quintessentially liberal, in many respects.

They still hold ridiculous rules about contraception. Also they think marriage is a God construct, instead of a societal one, instituted for the protection of children and society, by leaders and society in earlier centuries, when families were large.

Children had to be provided for financially and cared for. The people having the children had to be forced to stay together and provide that care and financial support or once again it would have placed a huge burden on the rest of society if children were just abandoned on doorsteps in droves.

Just because they had their delusional beaks in the performing of the ceremony they think marriage is all about God and them. Honestly these
people can't think 2centimetres outside their square.

Law and order and protection of citizens is about common sense
measures to ensure the survival of a strong co-hesive community.

Common Sense, something church leaders seem to not have much of.

Of course society can't allow open-slather murder in communities,
communities and societies fall apart without law and order, it has
nothing to do with God and all to do with common sense and community
cohesion and survival. Read my Lips-"common sense, not God.

Facts and religious dogma make uneasy bedfellows -- best they sleep in separate rooms.