[MD] Christian Ethics and U.S. Law

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Where are homosexuality and not keeping the sabbath crimes?

[Arlo]
You've used "Christian ethics" as support for why homosexual marriage 
should be illegal. Wouldn't the same stance call for making doing 
business on Sunday illegal? Why not?

[Platt]
But your constant attack on Christian ethics flies in the face of 
religious tolerance, something the Founding Fathers tried to build into law.

[Arlo]
When I have attacked Christian ethics? This is about legislating one 
particular ethical system. What the "founders" did was create a legal 
system based on Reason, not on God. You have yet to prove how our 
legal system derives from the Bible, other than saying the "founders" 
said "God" once and a while. This begets the question, can't you 
believe in God and create laws based on reason? In other words, just 
because some of them claimed to be "Christian" does not mean the 
basis for the legal system they developed derives from Biblical law. 
Indeed, it doesn't. "Religious tolerance" itself is a humanist stance 
built on reason. What "God" do you know of that preached respect and 
tolerance for other's people's foreign "gods"? "Christian ethics" is 
quite clear, "Have no other God before me". Hardly "religious tolerance".

[Platt]
Just shows how frustrating it can be to try to legislate morality, 
and how easy it is for those who rail against religion to exhibit hypocrisy.

[Arlo]
Kindly point out where I have "railed against religion"?

[Arlo previously]
No, I'm saying if _you_ want to legislate "Christian ethics", this is 
what it would entail. You can't pick small pieces, ignore the rest, 
and then claim you support law "based on Christian ethics".

[Platt]
I don't know why not. Take the best and leave the rest. We do it all the time.

[Arlo]
A good philosophy, but not one based in "Christian ethics". Where did 
God, for example, say "take the best and leave the rest"?

[Platt]
I don't support the Christian Coalition any more than I support the 
PC Nazis. Both are cut from the same cloth -- intolerant.

[Arlo]
Fair enough.

[Arlo offered Pirsig's statement]
"And yet, although Jefferson called this doctrine of social equality 
"self-evident," it is not at all self-evident. Scientific evidence 
and the social evidence of history indicate the opposite is 
self-evident. There is no "self-evidence" in European history that 
all men are created equal. There's no nation in Europe that doesn't 
trace its history to a time when it was "self-evident" that all men 
are created unequal. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given 
credit for this doctrine, certainly didn't get it from the history of 
Europe or Asia or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World 
upon Europe and from contemplation of one particular kind of 
individual who lived in the New World, the person he called the 
"Noble Savage." (LILA)

[Platt]
I'm no Biblical scholar, but didn't Jesus imply if not actually say 
that we're all God's children and so equal?

[Arlo]
Jesus told people to do Good works, regardless of the "faith" or 
social position of the recipient. But still left God's Grace only for 
those who converted.

[Platt]
You assign to the Founding Fathers the same seriousness as football 
players? Arlo, I'm nonplussed.

[Arlo]
I don't deify people. The founders were people. They got some things 
right, and some things wrong. Some things very right, and some things 
very wrong.

[Platt]
What I don't understand is you want to take the Bible literally yet 
lecture that we shouldn't take words metaphorically. Perhaps you can 
clear up my confusion.

[Arlo]
This is not my position, Platt, it appears to be yours. What I have 
said is that if you want to claim legislation based on "Christian 
ethics", and you literalize parts of that into law, it seems odd that 
you'd ignore the rest, especially the most important parts. All I've 
suggested is to go one way or the other. If you want "Christian 
ethics" to be your basis for government, you can't pick and choose. 
Otherwise you're not basing your government on "Christian ethics" but 
on selected parts to control others. Now, you can take the whole 
thing as metaphor, but then you can't legislate bits and pieces as 
literal truth.

Now, you can say you've abstracted FROM Christian ethics, those 
ethical stances that you feel best order society. But then you are 
right back to law based on reason, with God tossed in here and there 
for authority. In other words, your bits and pieces do not derive 
from the mandate of the Christian God (who would be appalled that you 
are taking bits and pieces) but from your reason. God is just 
paper-authority. Something we can do without.

[Platt]
A slave owns nothing except what is granted to her by her master. Is 
this your idea of an ideal society?

[Arlo]
Without property ownership, there is no "master" as no one own 
property. You are talking about "controlled ownership", not an 
abolition of property ownership altogether.

Like I said, ownership entails a mutual agreement to limit my freedom 
in order to give you exclusive freedom. When you buy a lake, the rest 
of us are very much "less free". The more property gets fenced off, 
the less freedom we all have. And all this is in exchange for a small 
bit of "exclusive freedom".

[Platt]
American Indians enslaved (owned) their captives. And traded what 
they owned for rifles and other white man goods.

[Arlo]
Perhaps we should start a new thread, "Property and Freedom"?

[Platt]
And where are the Indians today?

[Arlo]
Exterminated in large part and forced to live in otherwise unwanted land.