freediver, "You mean like "thou shalt not kill" and all that bothersome high horse stuff?"

Most societies end up with something like that along with some rules about other peoples property etc. For the most part (including in our western civilisations which have been predominately "christain" for some time they have been applied more strongly to our friends than enemies. We allow killing in some circumstances, historically we have invaded other countries to take their stuff/land.

No credit to christianity for that stuff, it's just what you need to keep things going.

R0bert

Unfortunately, as Boazy so often demonstrates, what we don't have is freedom *from* religion.
Christ ! I'd have never believed I'd be able to agree with CJMorgan but here it is.

So you won't credit christianity with thou shalt not kill, yet you do blame them for all the laws and proposed laws you don't like? How do you justify that? Is it only a christian thing if you don't like it?

Come on freediver, this argument's pretty stupid even for you. "thou shalt not kill" is not a law, it's more a guideline, even amongst Christians.

There are so many exceptions you cannot say it's a law eg.:
......except when being attacked
......except when ordered to do so in the military
......except when it's a punishment (a lot of Christains still believe in the death penalty in Texas, especially GW Bush)

....and so on. Most (if not all) societies believe in not killing unecessarily and it is likely a prerequisite for cooperative behaviour, so much so that people who do not recognise this idea are considered pathological (ie sociopath, psychopath), not atheistic or any other -ism of choice.

But laws against stem cell research, abortion etc. require a solid belief in the existence of a soul and divine retribution, this falls solidly into the monotheistic religious camp, and our most common and powerful to us at the moment is Christianity. I know you understand this, stop being obtuse.

Hi guys, I,ve read all your comments, all nice, but you are not talking about the topic of thread.
Sheikh Haron and some other Australian Muslims believe that two Australian laws are in conflict with each other. One: the laws which give the freedom of religion (so base on those laws Muslim are allowed to rcite or type the Quran for others) in conflict with another law, anti terrorism law, which prohibits "inciting or instructing terrorism even if it is "indirectly" ( so base on this law Muslims are not allowed to recite or type some parts of the Quran). For instance the following verses:
Chapter 2, verses: 190, 191,192,193,194,214,216,217 and 244.
Chapter 3, verses: 142, 156 and 200.
Chapter4 , verses: 71, 75, 76, 84,95 and 96.
Chapter 5, verses: 35 and 87.
Chapter 8, verses: 15, 16, 39, 45, 46, 60 and 96.
Chapter 9, verses: 12 to 16, 19, 20, 24, 29, 36, 38, 39, 41, 73, 123.
Chapter 22, verses: 39 and 78.
Chapter 48, verse 17.
Chapter 60, verse 8.
Chapter 61, verses: 4, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
Chapter 66, verse 9.

http://www.sheikhharon.com/media.html

"But laws against stem cell research, abortion etc. require a solid belief in the existence of a soul and divine retribution

Hardly. If you won't link murder laws to thou shalt not kill, what on earth are you going to link abortion and stem cell laws to? And it doesn't require religious beliefs. Anti abortionism is based on the sanctity of human life (I dope you don't confine that to the religious) and how you define human life (which is not defined in any way in any religious book).