A Modern Secular Religion

Lola, it's called Ethics and it's been on the curriculum of nearly every advance education institution. Are our public schools teaching Ethics? The Catholic Church hardly as a pristine record for ethics -- the building of the cathedrals has been rife with breaches of ethics over the centuries. The church teaching morals? As entities, they have to clean up their own act before pontificating on our individual morals.

I actually do believe we have a new secular religion, but I think it is pop culture, not government. What the government is doing is a whole other issue.

Thanks george,

That helps clarify the debate for me and when I have a chance, I'll return with some comments of my own. In the meantime, I'm interested in where it takes the discussion. Back later.

My reference to a dead horse was to the issue of whether or not a god exists, and the arguments for, against, about that topic, none of which is very germaine to the topic at hand, other than a tangential contention about a flawed authority for religious pronouncements. A great deal of space has been wasted in this thread on that topic, and very little space has been devoted, after the first few pages, to the stated topic. However . . .

As a thread diversion terrorist of long standing and wide repute, i'm hardly in a position to take a high tone with others for this hijacking. However, when i hijack a thread, i try to do it for humorous reasons, and there is frankly nothing but tedium associated with the god question at this site, where it has been chopped into a fine hash to rival the parsley powder which obsessive chefs insist upon to garnish their culinary fantasies. If you're gonna hijack the thread, guys, get some new and entertaining material, 'k?

Well Setanta, perhaps you are aware that I see you in two parts, one that I like and admire, another that merely pisses me off. Occasionally I wonder which dominates. After the first paragraph of your last post I was sure it was the dark side. Then in the second, when I saw the frank acknowledgement of thread diversion and hijacking, I was again confronted with the Setanta I like. However,...

What is tedium to you may be quite interesting to others. What is humor to you may appear to others as mere petulance. Frank took the thread in a direction I didn't anticipate or originally want when I wrote (poorly it turns out) the original proposition. His position was and is far different from mine and it did take me some time to understand it. However I found the dialogue with him both interesting and challenging. It sharpened and altered my own understanding and gave me some insights to the point of view of an interesting and engaging individual whose life so far has taken different turns than mine. Some others found it at least interesting enough to hang around and comment. All, yourself included, had every opportunity to go elsewhere.

So, basically, you're saying if i don't like it, i can take my toys and go elsewhere? I may do so, since i think the topic originally introduced to be worthy of a continued discussion. I'd be likely, however, just to drop the subject, since the time and effort i've put into what i have hoped are thoughtful responses to the base contentions of your original thesis and the elaborations you've made on it have been ignored.

As for the god discussion, i've gotten to the point where i rarely read anything Frank writes, because he's looking like turning in to a one-trick-pony, with the god discussion as the only topic he'll discuss.

Setanta,

Not at all. Clearly there was more on the table than any of us could cope with, no doubt a result of my poor definition of the question. We are still here and still able to resume the other aspects - as Lola has already helped us do - nothing has been lost, and no one injured. As I inferred before, you are too well-equipped to require such reactions.

I don't know Frank and have no prejudgements about his interests. I would have a hard time faulting anyone with an excess preoccupation with the idea of God - should they be watching Opra instead? As the dialogue unfolded the depth and foundation of his interests became clear. He has his reasons and does evidently posess enough of the rugged honesty he proclaims to be taken seriously, at least by me. I found the dialogue with him to be informative, challenging, and fascinating.

I don't have a problem with your reaction George. My perspective is that after the tenth or twelfth iteration, i've gotten to the point where i find Frank's routine to be tedious.

Let us by all means resume the original discussion.

Thanks, You are Irish.

Got to drive to the office now - I'll resume with a cleverly composed and devastating attack on your earlier posts in an hour or so.

I await your assault with an appropriate trepidation.

george

Good god, man! If you had an invisible dwarf on your shoulder yelling "TURN LEFT IDIOT!", or "SCRAT LOVES YOU AND HE WANTS TO CARRY YOUR BABY", or "TELL HIM BUDDHISTS HAVE NO CREATOR MYTH" you would be distracted too.

You're a smart and thoughtful guy, as differentiated from Setanta, who is an insane grump-ogre, and talking with you is both fun and challenging. But your knapsack o'erflows with contentions contentious. Let's take the quote you've repeated for Lola (who, by the way, is just the cutest and brightest little thing in town, as differentiated from Setanta, who probably looks like some demon from a Catholic's sex nightmare)... How is it that 'government' is 'other' while the church and voluntary associations are 'us'? Surely, to say "a church of the people, by the people and for the people" is a far less comprehensible notion than Lincoln's formulation.

The charivari was an early north american (transplanted from europe) voluntary association which often concerned itself with matters of local governance, there commonly being no other governing presence, secular or political, in those small early communities. So, someone would break some unwritten rule (old rich fart marries young ripe thing) and everyone would get liquored and head out into the proscriptive night to bang pots in front of the old fart's house. Or, later, go hang some black guy because he affronted by looking directly at a white man's eyes. Local associations were and are arbitrary...and dangerous as hell for that in terms of justice and liberty.

And the church as haven for the odd man out? A very benign view of the role of the church. Setanta has done a very nice job in pointing to the statements made by the smart boys there at the beginning, and how they understood civil government as protection against the evils that had fallen from both church and arbitrary local associations.

Now, I must head to work. As a practicing forensic proctologist, my work seems never done.

Forensic proctologist eh, so you basically find the asshole who started it...

But as a forensic pathologist, you are always at the end of your work. And much of the work is dun (and dung) indeed. Confusing, that.

Methinks Setanta doth protest too much here.

He certainly reads what I write enough to respond rather frequently -- even if most of his responses have turned into the kind of thing one might hear from kids playing in a schoolyard.

And he certainly reads what I write enough to come to the conclusion that I am a one-trick-pony -- "with god" as the only topic I'll discuss.

He's wrong there -- as he is wrong on so many things. I've discussed politics, poetry, art, astronomy, physics, philosophy, and a variety of other topics both here and in Abuzz. And right now, I am discussing Setanta -- and his opinion of what I write about.

It appears Setanta is bothered because I called attention to the fact that his dogmatic proclamations that "THERE ARE NO GODS OR GODESSES" appears to be a guess. I supect he also is bothered by the fact that his insistance and/or inference that it is not a guess calls into question his ethics, honesty, logic, and integrity.

Hey, ya can't please everybody!

This is what confuses. While I don't labor under the notion that our representative democracy is, at all times and in all cases, a government of the people, for the people, and by the people (please forgive me if I've confused the order of that series), I still don't believe that our government is an independently operating entity. These decisions as to, say, the content of public education are made by elected representatives of the people, from school boards on up. While there is a vocal contingent of the population who believe that the government has gone too far to infuse ethics or morals into public education, there are others who believe that it has not gone far enough to correct past and present inadequacies in the system. Perhaps if you could present me with some examples where you think that government has overreached its moral authority in opposition to the wishes of the voting public, perhaps we could discuss those, and also discuss how such a pernicious assault on our liberties is a result of the absence of the church or some other "absolute moral authority" in/above our governing bodies.

Please forgive me for asking for specific examples; I am young in the ways of the world and can only understand the abstract through the concrete. Hey, maybe we'll find Hoffa at the bottom of this thing.

If you're digging around in concrete, and especially if yer underwater, you very likely will find Jimmy Hoffa. I think your question very germaine, PD, and i also think it points to the "whose ox has been gored" aspect of this issue. I've characterized this entire topic in such terms because one man's educational reform is another's government intrusion, in the example you provide.

Could you clarify for me, briefly, this "ox" thing? I seem to have overlooked it somewhere, and now I just can't get a yoke on the concept. (Yeah, punny, but I still don't know what you're talking aboot.)

Frank, you are so full of yourself, i am confused, because you are so obviously full of shitl, as well. You want to stipulate anything you like in your imperious, and in your terms "ethically superior" manner about the god discussion, you help yerself. I'm through with the topic, because i've stated my case, and find the issue obtrudes tediously on far to many topics at this site.

Population density has got too high.

Martin Luther characterized sectarian disputes in Reformation Germany, and complaints of injustice as a case of whose ox had been gored--i.e., if two peasants are disputing the right of way on a country road, the one who will claim to have had his rights trampled on will be he whose ox was gored.