I always confuse the Philippines with Indonesia. I would’ve thunk the Philippines was majority Islamic.
Aren’t all politics the imposition of morality on society? What is so bad about justifying morality with religion rather than other philosophies?
No. In fact those that founded the country were actually concerned about freedom of religion rather than the current evangelical trend of trying to force their beliefs on everyone else.
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Everyone has morality from somewhere though. It has to have a foundation. Why is one foundation better than another? We all agree we can’t just do whatever we want. Why is one set of line drawing superior to the other sets of line drawing? I think most of this boils down to I don’t like their lines so I’m going to complain about it. Which is fine, that’s part of a democracy too.
I think that requires a pretty broad definition of “morality”.
Consider a private partnership agreement. People freely agree to some limits on their actions in exchange for similar limits on others. I suppose you can view that as a “moral” agreement. I think I can also view it as a “maximize my happiness” agreement.
Government can be viewed the same way. Do we make murder illegal because it is “immoral”? Or, do we make it illegal as part of a contract “I agree to give up my freedom to murder you as part of a deal where you give up your freedom to murder me.”
(I suppose that’s “social contract” theory of gov’t, but I know there are other people here who have read a lot more about that than I have.)
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One foundation is
“Morality is the word we use to describe the apparently altruistic feelings that we have toward other people. These feelings are the result of neural and hormonal systems we’ve inherited because they helped our ancestors survive a hostile environment.”
This particular definition doesn’t require that any devine being that is so interested in humans that it would give us rules for our behavior.
I think we can pretty much agree to do whatever we want, provided what we are doing is not directly infringing on others or causing harm to others. Practicing your religion is not infringing on others or causing direct harm, but forcing it upon others is. That is often the key difference in where lines are drawn, not implying one set of beliefs is superior to others.
I do agree with you that a meaningful minority in the country now sees “democracy” as the means to enforce one set of beliefs on the rest of the country.
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If we have to argue about the definition of morality… well, you know.
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i think one thing it should not be based on is divine revelation. partially because we know people will not agree on that. but also because it interferes with their autonomy as a person who has immediate access to whatever it is (perhaps god) that let’s us try to determine what is moral.
i think most americans would agree with this. i know abortion is tricky since it potentially involves two people.
i think it is bad to simply say the basis is a social contract, with the terms simply “given”, maybe with by a majority vote. then there is no way to criticize a majority vote as unjust.
we need something like bigger. two i know about is rawls’ “veil of ignorance” which i guess has fallen out of favor recently. or perhaps this more libertarian idea of preserving individual choice whenever possible, although i’m not sure what higher principle that is based on.
but all of these are better than special revelation, or brute democratic force.
I think there’s two issues…
The first is that our country was partly founded by people fleeing countries where the majority religion greatly inhibited their own liberty. This makes us naturally skeptical of laws inspired by religion. We’d feel the same about Sharia inspired laws.
The other is more basic. I think it’s bad to have a government impose laws where lots of people strongly disagree on the morality of the issue. And that tends to be the case with religious stuff, eg. drinking, smoking, veganism, homosexuality, etc. They are supported by a thin influential majority rather than wide agreement. We tend to regret those kinds of laws.
(Of course maybe I just feel that way-- as you say-- because I’m not religious.)
Um…no? You need to explain what you mean here.
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Eh, they weren’t opposed to a government-imposed religion though… they just wanted it to be their religion… not mine or yours.
The Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment was originally intended to leave the establishment of religion to the individual states… which largely did have established churches. But there was a big Anglican / Congregational divide and neither side would agree to the other being the established church everywhere.
It wasn’t until the 14th Amendment was ratified that the prohibition of established religions extended to the states. By then the last state with an established church, Massachusetts, had already given it up. That happened earlier in the 19th century… well after the ratification of the First Amendment.
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i disagree with that.
i suppose some of it depends on who “they” is.
But the whole enlightenment emphasized autonomy as apart from religious authority, including priests and the bible. it wasn’t only a kind of detente between warring religious factions for the sake of peace (though i agree that was a piece of it.)
Well there existed individuals, such as Thomas Jefferson, who were opposed to established state churches. But the First Amendment was certainly designed to guarantee states the right to have established churches… and they did in fact have them.
No. The vast majority of laws and regulations concern commerce and property rights. Most folks that end up in legal trouble have transgressed those state rules.
And we should be careful here to distinguish “democracy” from a foundational document, e.g. the Constitution. No federal legislation addresses abortion directly, rather the rules are based on judicial interpretation of the Constitution. The latter process is not democratic. It is improper to assert the current legal status is the will of the people.
Morality is pretty nuanced. Take this scenario, and decide what the moral course of action is.
One evening, the state secret police come to your door. They want to find your brother. He is actually in the house right now. How do you answer their question,“do you know where your brother is?”
Turning in your own brother dishonors your familial ties. But lying to the police is also “wrong” in the eyes of the state. To get through this, you’re going to have to rank order which is the moral high ground. Toss religion into the mix, and you then have: family, state, and religious based options. How does one justify a particular rank ordering? I don’t think there is a right answer.
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More often it’s the adjudication of property rights.
But who decided what religious mortality should be imposed on all? The Constitution is largely written to protect the rights of the minority from both a popular majority and the imposition of the state.
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i don’t know my us history well enough to get into the details. but i’m not sure the existence of state churches at that time means all that much. how else would things have been?
The process of becoming something new never happens instantaneously.
I think it’s telling that jefferson is the one who wrote the declaration of independence which is acknowledged as the kind of spiritual statement justifying what the united states tries to be.
and also that many states also eventually modeled their constitutions after the us constitution, which itself is really a “second draft”, or even a third draft including the bill of rights.
As they are now, with states being prohibited from establishing churches.
My tax dollars do not directly go into church coffers. I am not required to be a member of a particular church, nor profess to believe in a particular faith in order to vote, enjoy civil rights, run for office. These things were not generally true in the early days of our country.
They could have done that in 1789, as Jefferson advocated. But notably, they didn’t.
And certainly the colonies had established churches too, as did the states under the Articles of Confederation. It’s not like they were a new thing in 1789.
The view to get rid of slavery was there. But there was not the moral courage or political will to get rid of it.
Similarly, i think the view to fully separate church and state was consciously there too. And also implicit in the other ideals. Clearly there wasn’t the political will to follow through. There still isn’t for that matter.
And plenty of people say that america is fundamentally a slave country. We can probably say the same thing about it as being a country of the christian churches in some sense (a statement which needs more careful nuance than i can give it here.)
But i think that misses the point. It’s confusing what we are at some point in time with what we should try to fully become.
I need to learn something, but you seem to already know: what in the 14th Amendment states this? Something about, “hey, all you state congresses: that means you too!”