George..."As to Obama, would you have preferred the McCain/Palin alternative?", now, really, what sort of question is that?

But my point is that O'Bama has decided to surround himself with the same cloak as Bush and Palin. They may not be the same people, but they are still seeking guidance from above, and looking at America, and its appalling record on so many issues, there is clearly a massive disconnect between what they say they believe in and what they do. As with most nations, of course.

What is the real benefit of having some charlatans 'advise' you on what the clouds said today?

Why hide human inspiration in some un-human cloak?

"If in 2012 the majority of Americans will not like what he achieved they will not re-elect him. I do not think that where he gets his inspiration from will matter that much."..so you agree, it's a sham to get re elected?

Where is this from "you had a bad experience with religion (Christianity?), which is regrettable and hard to argue against"?

I take it as a means for you to dismiss some very real concerns about the ever increasing, shrill, noise from 'religionists' as they demand ever greater space in the public square.

I am happy for them to be 'private', and I look forward to the post-secular world Habermas wrote of, but in recent years what has happened is that religion has been used far more overtly as a base political tool, with payoffs to the noisiest players, and an redefining of the role religions play with a total absence of a two sided debate.

Some already have empires, even though they look frayed at the edges at times, but others are in empire building mode, and they are not of the 'tolerant' kind of Catholic such as Foxy, and others.

As a student of 'security issues', I regard this as a very serious imposition on the security of our nation-state.

There is no 'peace in our time' available with these people/movements.

It is, as their literature says, a war against the secular world.

George,

I whacked my last response to you together very quickly while I was at work so I’d like to make a few additional comments that I think are important.

I said before that I would take back my “sweeping statement” the day I see most moderates band together and say, "Enough is enough. Shape-up or ship-out".

But then I remembered that would just mean that the loonies would move off and form yet another sect of their religion.

So what I think really needs to change, is the general attitude of Theists to the perceived virtuousness and sacredness of their beliefs. They need to stop perpetuating this notion that their beliefs are a no-go-zone. Otherwise we’d simply be back to square one and the radicals would still be hiding behind this cover that is provided to them by the wider and more moderate religious community.

That being said, you can disregard the 99.9% figure. My argument doesn’t rely on it anyway. The response Dawkins got on Q&A (that TBC and I were referring to earlier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PxDHUE3o8M)) along with my example of the comparison between the reaction one faces when criticising religion, and the reaction one faces when criticizing Left/Right political views here on OLO, is support enough for my argument.

But back to what I was saying though, religion is very much a group mentality - a communal thing. So when big lobby groups such as the ACL start throwing their unjustifiably large weight around, then the beliefs of the adherents to the belief system that they purport to represent become everyone’s business and should remain open to criticism.

Continued...

...Continued

Now to your new post to me...

It’s quite late at the moment and the article you linked to looks very in depth, so I can’t read all of it now, but from the skimming I did, I couldn’t see how I would have a problem with what Habermas has said there.

<<...I grew up with them [Atheist extremists], my marx-leninist teachers, many of whom were, believe me, as naive as our Young Earth Creationists.>>

They were Marxist-Leninist extremists who were Atheists. They weren’t necessarily extreme about, or because of their Atheism.

I would suggest their extremism was more to do with a collectivist and anti-capitalist stance.

<<Do you use this pejorative description because you want to deny parents the right to bring up their children the way they want just because they are Christian? How would you want to implement this denial, what laws what you suggest?>>

C’mon George. Don’t play dumb. You’re deliberately missing my point and instead offering me an offensive question.

I believe it’s a right for parents to educate their children from any view-point they have. In fact, I think that’s unavoidable.

Religious indoctrination is not just education though. In children, it is emotional manipulation used to coerce a child into believing what the parent knows the child won’t accept if they don’t get in there before critical thinking skills develop.

Of course we can’t make laws against childhood indoctrination, but that still doesn’t make it right.

George,
Thanks for the Habermas piece; I've finally ploughed through it(since our one year old twins are keeping us awake anyway). Very interesting, though my conclusion is that a secular state is still imperative as a modus vivendi in the post-secular cultural sphere. Quite right of course that the cacophony of religio-cultural truth-claims is entitled to its respective, and respectful, legitimation, though I like Habermas's rider that this concept of universal respect depends on the willingness of all parties to revise self-reflexively the tenets of their belief systems. This is an anti-fundametalist rider that calls for broad subscription to anti-essentialist, historicist ("hermeneutic") relativism rather than literal readings of holy or secular (Enlightenment) texts, when arguably relativism is itself the "belief" or assumption that there is no monolithic truth (I'm thinking of our recent debate), also that Habermas is still foisting a preference for "enlightened" or "reasonable" truth claims over fundamentalism--also the target of his liberal sibling, Dawkins. Such a peacefully polyphonicist society might be desirable, but since Habermas points himself to the rise of fundamentalism as "the fastest-growing religious movements, such as the Pentecostals and the radical Muslims" it hardly seems workable (I say "might be desirable" because for me liberal democracy under capitalism is already indefensible). In any event, only a secular state, that shows no favouritism, could accommodate this post-secular atomisation of creeds. And even if we argue that secularism is itself a belief system or language game (as it must be in an anti-foundational and relativised universe), I'm not saying that secularism or atheism should be imposed on our scrambled culture, but on political/ideological state apparatuses (to use the Marxist term). By all means let culture resolve "itself", but as long as it remains "nominally" diverse (under the overwhelming aegis of capitalism, belief systems are mere commodities, economic patronage), surely only a secular, non-partisan, separation of church and state can accommodate it it?

TBC,
Thanks for your quick response.
>>what sort of question is that?<<
A rhetorical one to remind you that there are/were only two alternatives as to who will/could become the US President, irrespective of what you or I wish.

>>some charlatans 'advise' you on what the clouds said today?<<
I checked again, there was nothing to support this in the article you linked to. It is about a list of people Obama “turns to for prayer and spiritual and moral discussion”. Only the “moral” part should be of a concern to an atheist, and the article does not say whether Obama does not turn also to atheist professors of ethics for moral discussions/advise. Nevertheless, it is a simple fact that for the average American “religiosity” and “morals” are somehow interlinked, if for no other than historical reasons. Call it sham if you wish, but to get re-elected is what most politicians aim at, and for an outsider the only criterion of his/her success.

Is it a problem, that also Obama prefers to support moderate Christians and Muslims (and apparently also atheists), rather than pour oil on the “clash of civilisations” fire as his predecessor did?

>>very real concerns about the ever increasing, shrill, noise from 'religionists' as they demand ever greater space in the public square<<
I do not understand your perspective: I am pretty sure that in our society the influence of Church and its dignitaries (if that is what you mean by ‘religionists’) in the public square has been diminishing over the last decades, although one might wish to make them retreat even further. So if by “shrill from religionists” you mean their resistance to this trend, I could understand you. Many lobyists are disliked by many people.

Neither you nor I will live to see what our society will look like when not only these Christian ‘religionists’ (the Muslim ‘religionists’ will not go that easily) but also what they are supposed to stand for completely disappear from the political scene, or rather are driven into the “private” underground.

AJ Philips,
Thank you for the link to the TV programs featuring Dawkins in Australia that I could not watch on TV from overseas. I was wondering, who chose the people who sat with him on the panel. There was, to my knowledge, no specialist in the philosophy of science and religion to challenge him.

I think in a democratic society you cannot stop people from “perpetuating the notion that their beliefs are a no-go-zone” as you cannot stop others from perpetuating their notion that religious education is indoctrination and “emotional manipulation used to coerce a child into believing what the parent knows the child won’t accept if they don’t get in there before critical thinking skills develop”. On the other hand, you can try to stop people from sexually abusing children or producing child pornography by making it illegal even in a democratic society, because there is a general consensus that these things are not right, whereas there is (yet?) no consensus that giving your child a Christian education is not right. Sorry if you found my rhetorical question offensive.

>> They weren’t necessarily extreme about, or because of their Atheism <<
You asked for “atheist extremists” and I gave an example. I never claimed they were extremists “because of their atheism”. Like if you asked for Australian thieves, giving an example would not mean one claims they are thieves because of their Australian nationality. There are Australians who are not thieves as there are atheists who are not extremists and Christians who are not fundamentalists.

Squeers,
I knew you would understand and appreciate Habermas better than I could, since he is closer to your expertise. Thank you for the interesting comment on his article. I did not find there anything I would necessarily have to disagree with.

Only future (that you and I are not going to see) will tell to what extent this model of a system that is completely fair to all world-views (whether based on some religion or on atheism) is also workable.