[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[Horse]

  Hi Ron

You've brought up, for me, an interesting slant on this issue. It looks 
to me, as an outsider, like competing theocracies but from slightly 
different aspects.

I realise that in the strictest sense we aren't looking at the USA as a 
theocracy, but in the broader sense I think this is the case. You 
already have a black president and I can imagine a woman president or an 
openly gay president, but I would have difficulty in imagining an 
atheist president given the predominance of religious belief and 
adherence with your country. Or to put it another way, a Jewish or 
Christian black/female/gay/straight/white president is an odds on 
certainty for the foreseeable future, but i don't see any chance of an 
atheist making any headway any time soon.

In theory you have separation of state and church but how many political 
elections have been run on an atheist ticket and how many political 
appointments have been made to atheist candidates. In theory there 
should be a proportionate number of atheists elected or standing 
reflecting the number of atheists within the US community. From the 
outside, and this is just the impression I get, this just doesn't seem 
to be the case. My impression is that very few people would vote for 
someone who is openly atheistic.
I may be wrong but I thought that the original intention of the US 
constitution was to provide for secular government at all levels. That 
doesn't seem to be happening - at least at the moment.

I think this becomes more obvious at a local level of politics, as 
instanced by the issue we're discussing and some of the comments it's 
raised. Most, I think, see it as a political issue intertwined with 
Islam. Which brings it, broadly, within the confines of theocratic 
competition - i.e. political competition over a religious issue. And as 
Dave T. said, it's likely to tear your country apart - although I think 
that's very likely a while off yet.


Cheers


Horse

.





On 23/08/2010 22:21, X Acto wrote:
> Horse said:
> However, I was just wondering why, in a country that, apparently, prides itself
> on a constitutional right to freedom of religion, and the practice thereof,
> there should be so much opposition to establishing a mosque in close proximity
> to the 9/11 site. I could understand it if it was an Al Qaeda recruitment centre
> but it appears to be no more than what it is. A place of religious worship.
> Can't stand these places personally, be they Islamic, Christian, Jewish or
> whatever as places of religion - they're sometimes OK in architectural/artistic
> terms but that's about it.
> And a mosque is for the use of Moslem folk to come to worship in a similar way
> that Christians and Jews have their places to worship. Would the same people who
> object to this mosque object to a Japanese cultural centre in Hawaii, a German
> travel agency in Israel or a church in Jerusalem? Or perhaps the Catholic church
> should dismantle and recycle their churches where there have been practising
> paedophile priests (although that would probably leave very few Catholic
> churches standing).
> It seems to me that there is a degree of hypocrisy on display here in the way
> your fellow Americans view and treat the Islamic faith when compared to the way
> you treat the Christian and Jewish faiths. The vast majority of Moslems had
> nothing to do with 9/11 and so, in fairness, should not be penalised for the way
> in which a very few Moslems belonging to Al Qaeda have behaved. That just seems
> reasonable to me.
>
> Ron:
> I believe what has quite a few of us yanks up in arms about the Mosque issue is
> the Theocracy issue. I believe the Mosque is rejected on political grounds not
> religous ones.
>
> Being a particularly complex issue, one that has it's basis in the paralysis
> koan RMP mentions, a deeper look at what values are being exercised would shed a bit more
> light on the situation.
>
> One must be careful to distinguish between theocracy and religion, we are not at
> war with a religion but we are at war with a political ideal.
>
>

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