[MD] Christian Ethics and U.S. Law

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu>:


> [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?

Please quote where I used Christian ethics to support marriage between
man and woman.

> [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".

Your screeds against making Christian ethics into law is intolerance at
its best. Do you claim tolerance of the Christian Coalition, for example?

> [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"?

Every time I turn around you are railing against making Christian ethics
into law, claiming the Founding Fathers weren't religious but merely reasonable.

> [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"?

You are being literal again, something you have also railed against.
 
> [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.

Show where he said that in the Bible after you explain what 
"God's grace" means. 

> [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.

I never said the Founding Fathers were Gods. Take about distortion. 

> [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.

According to you, laws are just metaphors, and there is no such thing as 
"literal truth."

> [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.

Of course I'm not talking about abolishing property ownership altogether,
Who is besides Marx and perhaps a few other dinosaurs? 

> 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".

I'm less free because you own a lake? Are you serious? Just makes me work
harder in order to buy the lake from you, or your heirs. If that doesn't
pan out, I'll find another lake, or build my own.

> [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.

So maybe their social system, whatever it was, wasn't so hot after all. Goodness
knows they had all the resources to develop a civilization equivalent to the 
Europeans. Or, do you consider Europeans and Americans less moral altogether
than Indians? Keep in mind that Indian tribes also fought one another and devised
exquisite forms of torture, not to mention the practice of scalping.