Posted by zeugma on April 2, 2006, at 12:54:50
In reply to Re: Public Expression of Religion Act , H.R. 2679, posted by deirdrehbrt on March 31, 2006, at 20:25:22
I am religiously tollerant, but can find good reason to support a case to try to compel that court to either allow other emblems of faith, making the court less intimidating to those who aren't Judeo-Christian, or to remove religious artifacts altogether.>>
It would be easier to remove religious artifacts altogether from a court of law, then to allow multiple symbolic objects of faith. There are too many faiths that people adhere to, and most of them have the unfortunate property of being mutually exclusive.
John Dryden in "Religio Laici" was upset by this, as the particular faith he adhered to circa 1680 consigned to Hell even those who may not have accepted Christianity as the exclusive path to Heaven, not through any choice of theirs, but merely as a result of having been born in some remote region of Central Asia (say) to which Christian doctrine could not possibly have penetrated. (I suppose this consigning to Hell is a kind of "collateral damage" similar to fate of Iraqis who had no part in schemes to obtain mythological WMD's, but were born in a place likely to experience an American airstrike at some time or times in their lives. Geographic misfortune.) Dryden left the faith he adhered to in 1680, perhaps as a result of these considerations, which in the above-mentioned work he was able to dismiss, though uneasily.
But I fear that the precarious freedom we have won from religious prosecution in America, relative to many other nations, is in dager of being eroded, even as we promote it via our foreign policy in the Middle East and adjacent regions.
The problem is that people are usually more tolerant as individuals than as members of a group. Religious groups are no exception, and in this I do not express any anti-religious sentiment whatsoever, only a general statement about group morality and behavior.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:624709
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060322/msgs/627834.html