Dear Constance,

Christianity is not about freedom. Separation of church and state was forced upon Christianity. Several incidents brought this about. One was the burning at the stake of Servetus in Calvin's Protestant Geneva. Almost unanimously Catholic and Protestant clerics approved of the act. Castellio was one exception. He disagreed with Servetus but thought heretics ahould have a right to express their heresy without penalty. Most clerics of the time regarded tolerance for opinions differing from theirs as a sign of poor faith. However, the idea that tolerance was a good thing gradually took hold.

The Constitution of the United States was written by men influenced by the Enlightenment. In general they did not consider themselves Christians but Deists. Deists believed in God but denied supernatural revelation and took no share in formal religious practices. They believed that God created the universe but had no further contact with the world. Deists James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were for the separation and were instrumental in seeing it written into US law. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10725&page=0 and http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10790&page=0 are two articles on the subject I have written for olo.

Dear David F.,

<<However, I do not see why people who believe they have a religious right to challenge or disobey the law have any more right to do so than people who challenge or disobey the law for other reasons.>>

What's a 'right' anyway? By definition, the state doesn't grant anyone rights to disobey its laws, yet many of us believe, for a variety of reasons, that at least under some circumstances one's moral duty is to disobey the state-law.

Religious people do not believe that they have a RIGHT to challenge or disobey conflicting laws - but rather that it is their DUTY to do so, even unto death.

Unlike those who break laws for personal gain, pleasure or comfort, those who break the law on a matter of principle are not criminals, but enemies of the state.

The Australian constitution included section 116 so to avoid turning a large segment of the population into enemies of the state (in contemporary terminology, 'terrorists'), it's like a peace pact between state and religion, to be respected as such. Unfortunately, both parties occasionally break their side-of-the-deal.

I will be extremely happy to see Section 116 extended to all matters of principle, beyond its current interpretation of 'religion' (and what do politicians and judges know about religion anyway?).

If one has principles that are in conflict with the state's, such that one is willing to die for them if necessary, then the question of their legality vs. criminality should not arise, then there are only two possibilities: either the principled behaviour injure or compromise the safety of other citizens who are not party to those principles, or it doesn't. In the first case, the state may hunt the principled people and shoot them down as enemies; in the second, the state should not interfere.

One need not make claims of any nature, supernatural or otherwise, in order to be 'allowed' to live by one's convictions: suffice that one considers their behaviour as a matter of sacred duty and are willing to die rather than break their vows and code.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I agree with you. If one feels the state is wrong and it is not a trivial wrong one must be an enemy of the state. Whether the enemy of the state is guided by religion or not is irrelevant.

Henry Thoreau, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi and Franz Jaegerstatter were all enemies of the state. Bonhoeffer and Franz Jaegerstatter were executed.

David (of AFoA),
>>Atheism doesn't have common world-views and it definitely doesn't have belief systems<<
If you check my first post to pelican, I wrote explicitly that “you use the term ‘belief system’, that is OK with me, however some atheists seem to claim they do not have a belief system”. I then used it myself after pelican assured me that “it would be hard to argue atheists don't have a belief system”. After all, the post was addressed to her.

Even then, I was speaking of atheist world-views or belief systems (in plural), not THE atheist belief system. For instance Marx-Leninism with its Dialectical Materialism, that I grew up with, is AN atheist world view, or belief system, NOT the only one and certainly not a world view most contemporary Western atheists would subscribe to.

There might be subtle differences between belief systems and world-views (the former being sort of the rational backbone of the latter, however to avoid such subtleties I just listed them together.

>>Atheists can only encompass atheism as a part of a world-view. <<
Well that is one way of describing one particular world-view as atheist, again not claiming that there is just one such world-view. Also e.g. Christianity can be encompassed as a part of a wider world-view or general belief system. Of course, all Christian belief systems have something in common, the same as all atheist belief systems have something in common (namely “absence of belief in a divinity or what you like to call it).

>>Why would you make such a 'Stalinist' reference when it is totally out of context for contemporary atheism? <<
I was just referring to my personal experience with one version of atheism, since I assumed that csteele’s comparing Christianity to leeches (as I then understood it) was also caused by some bad experience with one version of Christianity from his/her personal life. Of course, there is a contemporary atheism different from e.g. its Stalinist form, the same as there are forms of Christianity different from and critical of its intellectually and morally less acceptable versions.

Dear csteele,

Thanks for continuing to describe your motivations. I take it that your answer to both of my questions was NO, although the first one asked whether people of religious persuasion should be afraid to proselytize and not whether you wanted them to stop, and the second asked whether you respected their conviction and not whether you loved them for it.

This is all I was interested in: whether, in a secular society that everybody is aiming at, basic Christian convictions (my questions contained no reference to Abraham or homosexuality) could coexists as respectable alternatives to secular humanist convictions, or whether Christianity will eventually be forced to go underground as it almost happened in Communist countries. [Of course, there are convictions on both sides that are not acceptable to the other side - some even to all decent people - as a respectable alternative.]

>> I respectfully submit you display a form of religious chauvanism that really challenges any call for respect.<<
Well, if you call chauvinism my conviction that to understand what the bible is saying to contemporary Christians you have to know something about biblical exegesis, or that to really understand what quantum physics is all about you have to know some mathematics, then be it, call me chauvinist. This in spite of the fact that I myself am - or rather used to know - a mathematician but am absolute ignorant as far as scholarly exegesis is concerned. So I cannot offer any informed opinion on your interpretation, except that it is one of many.

Nevertheless, I agree that the story about Abraham going to sacrifice his son should not have been taught to children (and others?), who cannot understand the bible stories except in their literal form. (ctd)

(ctd)
Perhaps I should mention that I had no formal RE at school, so my approach to religion was more through science and philosophy than through the bible, esoecially the Old Testament. Therefore I find more “stimulus” (albeit negative) for my faith from reading or listening to e.g. Dawkins than from reading the bible. I know with many atheists it is the other way around.