The Puritans (shorthand version) were a pretty faithful bunch, but they agreed to the inclusion of separation of church and state in the Constitution. One suspects this was due to the benefit of bitter experience and personal understanding of two-edged swords.

Is the progressive faith movement willing to agree to re-approve the separation of church and state?

sPh

Religious committment has been an integral part of the American political experience since the beginning of the colonial period. There have always been two major strains of influence exerted. One is a moralistic, dogmatic, and oppressive religious strain. The other has been a reforming, nondogmatic, and liberating religious strain.

Religion, one way or another informs much of what most Americans think about life in our society. It is a filter through which, in a certain sense, all things are viewed for the typical American citizen. Thus, it is of critical importance how the citizens of the nation understand religion. And again, this has always been the case in our country. The choice is between the two strains. As a practical matter it is impossible to remove the influence of religion from American politics.

The impact, decidedly beneficial, of the more liberal strain of religious influence cannot be denied. The Transcendentalists of the early 19th Century, the central role religion played in the Abolitionist movement, the role of religion in the reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, the supportive role that religion played in the labor movement in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century, the pivotal role of religion in the creation and life of the modern civil rights movement and the role of religion in opposition to the Viet Nam war are all very positive examples of how religious values and committment can work in tandem with our civic values generally and our committment to liberty and justice for all.

Religion becomes pernicious and works at odds with our civic values when the moralizing dogmatists grow in power and influence and then attempt to impose their dogmatic beliefs and demands for conformity on our free society. They cannot help it. It is the logical outcome of their world view. So, in my opinion, the enemy is not religion as a whole. The enemy is moralism instead of morality and it is dogma instead of ethics.

The problem is that right now, the religious leaders who represent the positive, nondogmatic strain are silent or ineffective and thus one would conclude that the only real religious influence on our society comes from the moralizing dogmatist fundamentalists of the right. The situation is analogous to the wimpy, inneffective and completely outflanked Democrats we have been electing to Congress. The weakness and incompetence of both progressive religious and political leaders and the problems they have allowed to be created is one of the biggest problems we face in terms of getting America back on track to being the kind of nation it has always striven to be. I would hope that as progressives begin to grow in influence across the political landscape (which I believe is underway) that religious progressives, will begin to demand more spine and more courage from their leaders too.

What is needed is not a discussion about whether or not religion has it's place in the public square. That is a self evident reality. Debating it is foolish and a waste of time. The question we need to debate is why religious and political leaders whose values are strongly progressive do not fight for those values and instead hide and cower in the corner when faced with a moral/political challenge such as those we have been facing since their silence began somewhere back in the 1970's?

You don't have to be religious to believe in the very same things a religious person believes in, in terms of our obligations to our fellow human beings, what kind of society we want to build for ourselves and our posterity, or whether the values that America has traditionally stood for in the world are worth preserving. All progressives agree on these general tenets.

Why have our leaders failed so miserably on just about every important issue these past 30 years? Progressive citizens ought to ask themselves this question whether religious or not. What can we do about it and how do we accomplish those things are also good questions for progressives of all stripes to be considering. Whether religious or not, progressives must unite in order to accomplish their shared goals.

IMHO, we find ourselves in a time of unprecedented peril and possibility in this regard. The right has thoroughly discredited itself these past seven years particularly. They have failed on all fronts to produce results that our citizens can be satisfied with. But in order to capitalize on this failure, progressives must be willing to stand and fight for what they believe and demonstrate some palpable courage and leadership or else we will fail to reach our goals. We can only hope that both our political and religious leaders will answer the call.

No, the Puritans did not agree to separation of church and state. They agreed that the national government would not recognize an established church, but they kept an established church in Massachutsetts, where they were dominant, until the 1830s. It wasn't until the 14th amendment extended the Bill of Rights to cover the states that established churches by states were banned.

If you're part of the religious left, then you pick and choose what parts of Scripture influence your sense of ethics. You reject the parts that tell you that disrespectful children should be stoned, or that homosexuals should be killed, or that women should be silent in the churches, yet you are inspired by the Sermon on the Mount.

That's fine, but you are clearly using something other than religion as defined by revelation to make those judgments, picking those parts that you find inspirational and helpful and leaving the rest. So clearly the ethical judgments that you are making don't come from Scripture (or how could you pick and choose)? They come from somewhere else. This "somewhere else" is the same place that informs the ethical sense of those of us that are nonreligious, so it seems that in the end, ethics doesn't come from religion at all, even for religious people. It can come from teachers who self-identify as religious or non-religious, and in most cases both approaches produce the same result; after all, both Jesus and Confucius came up with nearly identical language for the Golden Rule.

I think that fear gives the issue the wrong emphasis. Certainly one can fear loss of the separation of church and state, and comments to that effect on the previous post were well taken. When the candidate talks of finding a middle ground between government regulation and silence, we can fairly demand clearer answers on where that could lie.

However, it's also a bit of a red herring, I think, a playing of the victim card that should raise concerns, just as it would when we hear of liberal bias in the media or the war on Christmas. I don't often hear all that much fear of a Christian left. Mostly, I hear the very rare liberal evangelical and some skepticism whether it's much to build on.  

And I do mean skepticism. Again, when I hear a utopian felt need to transform our attitudes, sure I have fears. But mostly I think that the individual's politics have failed us. If we all changed our lives and the kind of society we lived in, maybe it would save the world. Or maybe not, at least unless it included the big polluters and consumers that the left should be targeting. But that's not politics, and it's not worth waiting for. 

If you want to get people to use less gas, you can plead with them. You can scratch your head and wonder why they don't abandon the suburbs for, depending on your private utopia, a commune or the inner city. Or you can start taxing gasoline, funding mass transit, building affordable city housing, and mandating mileage standards.

I fully expect you to draw your politics from your most deeply held beliefs. I am an atheist, but I am inspired myself by the Bible, by the example of MLK and others, and by philosophers and literature of variously secular and nonsecular stripes. But if you have to justify your religion to me, or mine to you, you haven't just offended me, although you sure have. You've also let me down. 

Can't you see that you're talking not just the language of the religious right? You're talking the language the right, period. Individual choice. Charity. It'll all take care of things. Well, god help us.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

I don't think it is all that difficult for anyone: left, right or center to identify the portions of any religious faith that are transcendent truths vs socio-cultural artifacts of a certain time and/or place. Reason is applicable at all times and informed faith does not require it's suspension.

The comments here have pretty much said what I feel but am unable to put into words (not as well as these guys, anyway).

As mentioned by a poster on Nathan's odd thread, the anti-porn, anti-gangsta rap thing really came out of the blue. It was like taking a nice walk through the park and suddenly being hit in the face with a baseball bat.

This is what, imo, led to some of the extreme reactions yesterday. And it is not an over-reaction. There are some code-words (concepts) in political discourse that send red flags flying all over the place.

I think you will find more reasoned comments in today's post (not that yesterday's comments were all unreasonable), but still not a llot of support on this issue.

I, for one, fear a religous left in the same way I fear a religous right. It's like trading a round box for a square box. Sure, they look different, but they both serve the same purpose.

No religion in politics, ever. It gives both a bad name at a time when both are in dire need of a makeover.

Hmm--Sorry Oleeb. I thought (and still think) that I accounted for those religious people in the last paragraph of my posting. If you believe in God, but you base your public policy decisions on secular grounds (including morality as separate from religion), then you are on "my team" even if we disagree about mystical celestial beings.

I don't think I "lumped" all religious people together. In fact, I had several categories of religious people that I meant to discuss, and of course I recognize that not everyone fits into one of the categories. Many people do the same thing on these boards when they talk about "conservatives" or "liberals", etc., and people do not complain. It's a given that generalizations exclude people with more nuanced views. That doesn't deprive the general comments of value.

Some things I can try to address quickly, and others with more time. Most but not all of these are places where my writing was not very clear.

To sPh’s point, I certainly support the separation of church and state, which I believe leaves both the state and faith communities stronger.

To Allsburg’s related point, I did not mean to conflate religion and morality and appreciate the pushback. I believe that morality and ethics (which I intentionally conflate) are a proper discourse for politics. Religion makes sense for a candidate to discuss to the extent that it shaped a candidates values. In other words, I do not care about a candidate’s faith but I sure as hell care about his or her values, whether that comes from a secular/philospophical or religious space.

To John, I am also with you about justice, not charity. I am for universal health care, a living wage, etc on the justice front. My point about government regulation not being able to solve all problems was in the narrow context of the earlier conversation about the accessibility of internet porn. Much to the contrary, what I have been trying to criticize all week is how much the Dems continue to argue within a framework set by the right in the 80s. I think we are so scared to talk about government that we appeal to the same greed that they invoke. A call to the common good is a restoration of what I consider a founding principle of progressive, namely that we are in this together.

Eric, a quick clarification there as well. I was not arguing that a lack of religion caused our moral decline. The cause was a convergence of factors, including the “greed is good” logic offered by conservatives in the 1980s. In the words of my earlier post, they made virtue out of vice by suggesting that the best way to help others is to look out ruthlessly for yourself.

More responses shortly. Thanks for all the feedback, positive and negative.

Look at the quote. It is a pretty broad brush you are applying to whatever the religious left is:

"The justifications for the religious left's positions are not ultimately based upon reason, a utilitiarian calculation of maximal benefit, or on a deontological conception of inalienable rights. Instead, it is anchored on a subjective belief (divorced from evidence) as to what God wants."

To illustrate why I find your reasoning faulty, how would you say a Zen Buddhist fits into your assertion in the quote above? Does the Zen Buddhist (many of whom consider themselves on the religious left) believe that morality is based upon "what God wants?"

Your point of view automatically assumes certain things about religious belief which simply are not universal among those who consider themselves religious. It is a very wide spectrum and your interpretation of what all religious people on the left believe and their basis for belief simply doesn't apply in any accurate or meaningful way. It's an overly broad generalization based on an assumption of a fairly unsophisticated perspective, perhaps even childlike perspective, on the part of the religious left as to their beliefs about God, and their logic for determining what is or is not moral according to their beliefs. This assumption is not even remotely adequate in terms of covering the vast array of perspectives even on the religious Christian left, let alone of the religious left as a whole. I feel sure that your position does apply to a very narrow swath of that spectrum of people who consider themselves on the religious left but not at all to everyone or even a large minority who consider themselves on the religious left.

My definition of "religious left" was one I (perhaps unfairly) inferred from Perriello. I understood him to be talking about a phenomena of people whose progressive ideas stemmed from their religious beliefs. While I indicated that I could agree with the conclusions that they draw, the source of their conclusions made me nervous. I went on to describe another type of religious person who had my respect: one who based their political opinions not on the tenets of their religion but upon a more even-handed public policy analysis. I said:

By the way, I'd also like to point out that there's an alternative to the religious left that deserves mentioning: those religious people who subscribe to political views not because of their religion, but because of an independent commitment to the secular framework of our government. Such people may hold the most fundamentalist or liberal religious beliefs, but they also believe that the running of government for an entire nation is not the right forum for the expression of those beliefs. To some degree, I trust these people more than the "religious left."

oleeb, I kind of think that rather than being narrow-minded, I was recognizing the very distinction that you criticize me for ignoring.

And why do you have such an obsession with somehow melding religious values with social policy, when it would be easier to simply propose and justify the policy on completely non-religious grounds. The common good is, you know, a Constitutional value! So that's covered without the intrusion of religion. Was that common good a religiously derived concept, yes, maybe, but it's in there as a secular or non-religious value and that's good enough for me. And so are most of the other things you mention. We have plenty of good solid practical and ethical reasons to do these things, and the promptings of religious value can only be divisive.

And there's something else you've gotts face: Are people more easily or more effectively motivated to do good things or bad things as a result of "religious values" (and once you let the "religious" in with the "values" in comes the rest of the metaphysics and supernatural). As awful as it may be to comptemplate, in terms of politics, the bad things predominate when religion (or it's "values") mix with politics.
And Tom, it's not my religions business to glorify your politics, and I damnsure don't need your politics to help my religion.

And if I am not mistaken, these are pretty much, in much better wrought words and phrases, the feelings of the founders of the US.

No, respectfully, you were not recognizing the very distinction I made.

Read what you wrote.

You may have meant to do what you are now saying you did, but that would not be clear by reading your post and not knowing your intended meaning which is not what you posted.

You can't identify the religious left distinctly as you did and then identify what you, yourself call another group as therby encompassing people who may or may not be on the left but who have a different take on reaching moral conclusions entirely but who you are comfotable with and then expect a reader to somehow know that you didn't really mean what you originally said about those on the religious left. Additionally, your final graph does not encompass the religious left either because not everyone who doesn't fit the first category you created fits into the second either.

It is in no way narrow minded to take you at your word and not impute meaning that is not evident in the words you wrote. It certainly was not at all clear that you inferred the definition of religious left from the author. It would have been clear had you written that, but you didn't. You put the "religious left" all under one label unequivocally stating that they base their moral judgements on a belief that is more or less that they must do or choose what God wants and that is simply not the case. It is an inaccurate generalization of the religious left that assumes all in that group hold a simplistic, unsophisticated view of whatever "God" is and their view of their role as believers.

And, BTW, you didn't answer my question about the Zen bBuddhist on the religious left. HOw does the Zen Buddhist fit in to either of your categories? I think the Zen Buddhist and plenty of others I could name of widely differing religious approaches fit in neither.

Tom, with you and Nathan, I've tried to stay rational as well as to articulate principle. But can I put this in personal terms? At the risk of its becoming thus an unfair, ad hominem attack on you, I respect you enough that I hope it'll help you see what your posts read like to me.

When I hear Obama talk of his Christian roots, I empathize with his entire life story and feel that he's out to change America for the good. In his campaign he often fails to live up to that, but I don't hold his faith against him for that. When Clinton talks about her faith and relates it to her "village" theme, I suspect sham, but I do feel good about the theme and, again, the potential to change America. 

When I read what you wrote, I think, he doesn't give a hoot about all that. He thinks reforming America and its political agenda won't come until he's changed Americans, and most specifically changed me.  And I think, well, this isn't realistic, it isn't progressive, and he can shove it. It's the territory shared by Stalinists, fundamentalists, and Bush, and it's not where the America I care about lives. I never, ever agree with those who think a Democratic candidate is such a sellout that I'd rather not vote or vote GOP. But I'd make an exception for you.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

One last thing I would like to add to this.

For the past 20 years, and more specifically the past seven, we have seen religion- and Christianity in particular (in the US)- be used in horrible ways.

From Schaivo to Foley to Craig to stem-cell research to gay marraige to criminality to abortion to war to schools.

What it all boils down to is that the Republican agenda has been "if you secular idiots would just convert to Christianity, the country would be a better place."

People are getting turned off by that- as they should. It is giving Christianity a bad name and making politicians look like hypocrites (as if they needed any help).

I don't care where you worship, or whether you worship at all. But the second you tell me that you would base your political positions on some unproven entity, some book that was written thousands of years ago, I immediately question your judgement.

The point is, this argument is getting old. Porn and violent movies and gay marraige have nothing to do with the issues at hand. It is the anti-porn, anti-gay marraige, anti-violent movie crowd that are wreaking the most havoc.

If there is truly no religous test to run for public office, then why mention it at all? The electorate should vote for you on your positions, not what "defined" your positions.

Re: But I feel that the very nature of religion injects a certain amount of irrationality into any political discourse.

Emotions of any sort do this. And since we are not Star Trek Vulcans we will always have emotions in our politics. Which isn't necessarily bad: the issue is not whether or not we shall be moved by emotional considerations, but what emotions are moving us.

You're not a scary guy. You seem like a good guy and I wish you well, and more than that, victory.

You know there's a "but" here, right?

BUT... I like American culture. I don't think it's sick or in a malaise or anything like that. I see great creativity at work in the artistic world (if you believe in a distcintion between pop and fine art, what I'm saying encompasses both) and so when it comes to all of those cultural expressions that people fret about (Porn, violent movies and videogames, dirty lyrics...) I say there's some good stuff in all of those. There's a lot of trash too, but to each his own.

The population got tricked into a war. I don't think we should read too much into that. Because of technology we're headed towards more of everything. That means more stupid youtube sketches and more unshaven amateurs. I think everyone's mature enough to pick and choose and that the more choices are available, the better.

I understand your impulse which is to say that for some of the things that happened to have happened (Bush being elected twice-ish, the Iraq War...) that there must be something wrong with the culture. But I think you're blaming the victim, a bit.

The culture has endured and prospered in spite of Bush's travesty (and the travesty of Bush) and maybe, just maybe, people are suspicious of religion in politics because it was the religious right that helped foist Bush on the nation which has made the last few years a struggle for those of us with a more liberal or even lbertine view of where our culture should go.

I want more, more, more choices in all arenas of expression. And nobody wagging a finger at me when I indulge them.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Religion more likely dealt with human suffering and death, the illogic of being born, desiring so much to live, to love and be loved, only for it to end relatively soon, and that with some serious suffering along the way. The soul asks why? And I recognize that there is awareness of other than 'all of this'.

What's the secret behind this status quo? We get hints of greater purposes, and can feel conscience. The term "progressive" implies becoming better from being worse.

We sometimes become cynical and resign to battling over the management of the time and access to ephemeral goods here, or, some may search for higher meaning and to protect the inner commodities, such as love, faith, hope, service to others and purity for an investment in spiritual treasures and peace of mind.

[S]ome believe there is a contradiction between being progressive and talking publicly about religion. This tees up today’s post about whether there is a role for a progressive religious voice in American political discourse.

That is such a mendacious pile of bollocks. For one thing, you know that the reaction was not to the concept of a culture of greed but to your conviction that everyone surely must share your opinions about what forms of entertainment are suitable for adults.

But mostly - Give me a break, you think RELIGIOUS PEOPLE are some kind of poor put-upon minority? When every Presidential candidate is expected to have a favorite BIBLE VERSE? Not just a story or a set of values, an actually memorized piece of some translation of the primary text of one set of religions?

Let me ask you, is there any public role in American politics for a non-theistic voice? You're allowed to not believe in fairy tales in the privacy of your own head but don't ever talk about it in public.

The so-called progressive religious community seems to spend an inordinate amount of time moaning about how they just aren't taken Seriously. You might try being a bit less emo, and a bit more concerned about actual progressive issues.

Say what now? If morality comes from God, you're correct that He could have told us murder is a sacrament (as the Aztecs and Hawaiian islanders, among others, believed) and that helping those in need is a sin (as many Republicans apparently believe).

The fact that "that seems wrong" to us, however, simply means that He DIDN'T reverse moral polarities, not that there are "ethical truths independent of God."

The Aztecs and Hawaiians were pursuing their own religious convictions when they were cutting the hearts out of thousands of humans at a time on their altars or throwing hapless fellow citizens off cliffs (respectively). Their religions led them astray, as do religions that demand animal sacrifice, polygamy, snake handling, orgiastic rites, etc., etc., etc.

All religions are not equally sane, ethical, or worthy of respect. And whether all morality comes from God is hardly relevant to the achievement of a "general agreement about ethics, and why such a general agreement has to be "independent of religious beliefs" is obscure to me.

You don't have to think your ethics come from God in order for it to be true. And you don't have to believe they come from God to behave ethically.

The Hawaiians and the Aztecs threw off their onerous and murderous religions because the Europeans offered them a vision of a forgiving God that did not demand blood sacrifice to appease his wrath. What you seem to be saying is that they could just as easily have convinced themselves that their Gods did NOT demand these sacrifices , but that their murderous sets of "ethics" were "independent" of their Gods. It just seems a pointless and circuitous route to ethical behavior. Why not just accept the religion that offers a moral compass that parallels your internal one? This, of course, is what they did.

"A politician should be honest about what shapes her values."

Does it really matter where her values come from? Isn't it far more important what they are?

Frankly, I think we hear far too much about the origin of a politician's values as opposed to the values themselves. Bush used his alleged Christian re-birth as a shorthand for expressing a belief system that he doesn't really have.

"...many progressives cry foul the second I suggest that perhaps we need to look at...what we spend our money on, how much we cheer for the torture scene in a movie, and even on issues of sex."

Well, since you brought it up and are running for office, what are you going to do legislatively about these issues of personal morality? If nothing, what's the point of bringing them up in a political campaign? That's not a rhetorical question, btw.

"I believe that part of what puts the Constitution at risk is a me/now culture that is ready to sacrifice principle for a shot-term pay off. I do believe there is a connection between the challenges of deferring gratification as individuals and as a country, even if this causal link is not simple."

Well, I'd say this doesn't make the top 25 list of threats to the Constitution. Can you give a policy example of "deferring gratification as a country" and demonstrate how NOT deferring this gratification threatens the Constitution? And what legislative action do you have in mind to roll back the "me/now culture?"

Wow. I'd hate to see our political discourse lapse into irrationality!
Touche.

The fact that "that seems wrong" to us, however, simply means that He DIDN'T reverse moral polarities, not that there are "ethical truths independent of God."

Well, why didn't he, then? If there are no ethics independent of God (an idea few theologians would sign unto) why would God prefer one set of moral polarities to another? Did God just flip a coin? (A coin presumably lacking the image of Caesar). Is he as we speak now flipping a coin furiously to come up with the digits of Chaitin's Constant or did he do all that before he invented time?

Your last paragraph speaks of the abuse of God seeking people by political cooption as "utilities." Religious leadership was a convenient organization to coopt. If you coopted its leadership, it could be a political boon. It's happening in the Russian Federation.

We should not fear a religious people. We should fear a religious partisanship on par with religious/secular partisanship.

We should also fear a completely secular society, as I firmly believe that we have a large number of unprincipled sophists and philosophes abusing science to suggest that religion and spirituality may be ruled-out by science on topics such as the afterlife, soul, God and so on.

When I know that's false yet the same groups continue making such statements, political ideology is at work which understands that religious faith stands in the way of a Brave New World vision worse than previously conceived by Huxley.

The new law in California forbidding use of filial words like mom and dad and allowing gender identification as if it were an elective class in public schools is a good sign that the California Assembly has lost its marbles and begun to revise an entire population out of its identity for the sake of a tiny minority which thinks its woes are greater than everyone elses. Good sense has been too gone for too long in California.

So? All Jefferson is saying is that belief in God is not necessary to act morally. That doesn't mean the morality of the atheist didn't come from God. If the atheist's morality didn't come from God, where DID it come from?

Christians believe God's moves are mysterious (i.e., His reasons are not necessarily apparent), but simply because his motives are not apparent does not mean that his decisions are random.

Either there is no reason but random whim that God would prefer something to another, i.e "ethical truths independent of God", or there are such truths. Those reasons may not be apparent--but nearly every theologian speculates on them (hence the field of theodicy, for example).

Independent of such truths, all ethics merely becomes "do what God says because he'll punish you otherwise and he's bigger than you are", except that given the Christian God's forgiving nature that doesn't even get you very far.

In contrast to your assertion, many Christian apologists use the very existence of ethics and morality as evidence of God's existence. Where else did morality come from? Ethical and moral behavior is by no means adaptive. How much easier survival would be if we, like every other animal, were unencumbered by principles or a sense of right and wrong.

Your notion of what is adaptive is profoundly impoverished. Yes, social norms are adaptive. (See kin selection and Tit for Tat.)

But that's besides the point in that this apologia has nothing to do with anything I or Allsburg said--suppose God miraculously causes maladaptive (in terms of gene selection) behavior to persist and multiply because it aspires to some standard of ethics and morals. This is all the more reason to think that God has some reason for preferring this set of ethics to a different set. This apologetic technique, flawed though it is (it would be better to argue that life or reason would require God to persist rather than ethics which holds just fine given both of those) does nothing to contradict anything I said.

Your arrogance is amazing; your willful disregard for reality is confounding.  Do you honestly believe that before Moses came down from the mountain with the tablets of stone there were no prohibitions against killing other humans, that no man ever thought that coveting their neighbor's wife might be stepping over the line of decency, that parents were thrown into the wayside ditch when they became feeble, that if caught cheating on a spouse there there was no negative price to pay, that theft was condoned and that false testimony given at trial was not harshly punished?

You imply that the only thing that keeps you on the straight and narrow is your desire for an eternal life?  You'll not find salvation down that road.

Tell me, is it the godless Americans who are justifying acts of human torture?  Is it the atheists that impelled this country into the immoral war upon Iraq?  NO, they were and are in large majority, persons who claim the faith.

Your statement conjures some orchard of ethical truths growing somewhere and an image of God plucking some of these at random and inculcating them in man.

Well, no, I'd say that's the only alternative to the statement. Assuming God's existence, I would interpret the statement "there are ethical truths independent of God" as equivalent to "God did not choose moral principles arbitrarily/ randomly/accidentally", in that each would imply the other.

It is NOT, by the way, having anything to do with any adaptationist argument. The ethical truth independent of God need not be adaptive.

As for my notion of what's adaptive, it's at least arguable that the individual's survival is enhanced by lack of morality and personal ethics.

Would you not admit that there is a huge gulf between "by no means" and "at least arguable"?

The idea that all aspects of human thought and behavior can be explained by natural selection requires at least as much faith as the belief that our morality comes from God.

It's more of a null hypothesis than an active belief--i.e. I'd have to see some reason to reject it. I think physical and logical fine-tuning arguments are non-crazy, but given the physics and metaphysics of the current world as assumptions, I have seen no reason that life and society as we know it could not have evolved on this planet. But that doesn't really pertain to the matter at hand.

This is just false, since you said that many theologians admit to the existence of ethics independent of God.

But that apologia is orthogonal to that issue! If ethics are maladaptive, that is just all the more reason suggesting they are not arbitrary selections of God--that God had some reason for having them be one way rather than another more adaptive way.

You seem to be "confounded," and I think maybe the problem is that you're confounding "God" with "religion." God, in the Hebrew and Christian traditions (and many others, I suppose) is all-knowing and everlasting. He created mankind, and created right and wrong (metaphorically, the tree of knowledge) and gave mankind knowledge of right and wrong.

Now you may not believe any of this, but if you don't you still ought to account in a convincing way for the existence of human morality. It's not enough to say that atheists can be moral, so that proves morality didn't come from God; it proves nothing of the sort. It only proves that religion is not necessary to act morally.

Well look, my mother is an extremely religious Southern Baptist (also hardcore Dem) so that's where I'm coming from. I had religion rammed down my throat since I was a baby so I'm not particularly devout, probably as a contrarian response. I do profess Christianity (I had my first religious experience while studying the political aspect of the records of Christ at age 21, amusingly) and after going to private religious schools filled largely with the brainwashed children of right wing evangelicals I hope I can see what really gets to the opposition of this, encapsulated by the anti-pornography statement.

It's not so much that there's disagreement that less pornography would probably be better, it's the concern of switching from persuasion to force (in this case, using government to force the change) which, because the opposition is informed by your faith, has shades of theocracy. Sure goals are probably highly influenced (and perhaps rightly so) by religious and ethical considerations, its the METHODS that need to be separated and equally applied and you need to articulate those methods. Also, that those methods be reasonable to the problem, i.e. it's probably more acceptable to use stricter methods to mitigate global warming than consumption of pr0n.

There's a fine line between appeal to religious faith and demagoguery.

The burning stake, the iron maiden, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the decimation of indigenous American populations using blakents that carried smallpox, The Dark Ages.  All of these examples were the result of state actions from people claiming their faith was Christianity.  It is only in reality where your assertion can properly be judged.  Time an time again the reality is that inhumane actions have been caused by Christians.

Look at the myth: "There are no atheists in foxholes".  What are its implications?  If you found you God upon a battlefield, you worship evil.

"Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.  A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not."

James Madison,   "A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments",  June 20, 1785

For every axe-wielding Crusader and sadistic Inquisitor, there's been a nun risking murder by a Guatemalan death squad to teach poor kids to read, or an abolitionist minister conducting slaves along the Underground Railroad.

Of course many evil people have disguised themselves as pious Christians to mask their evil. But why not look at the words of Christ himself to judge them? Did Jesus tell them to poison indigenous peiple or to torture non-believers? He did not. He told them to feed the hungry, minister to the sick, visit people in prison, and give shelter to strangers. He told them to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. People that don't do these things and profess Christianity are frauds.

Well, you're right that people aren't perfect, which I guess is your point when you say that all "Christianity," all "governments", and all "corporate middle management" are populated by "venal, power-hungry toadies."

So just what societal institutions pass your litmus test (whatever it is) and AREN'T saturated by venal, power-hungry toadies? Schools? They're far from perfect, and besides they are part of government, and the privare ones are corporations, either for-profit ot non-profit. Health care? That's either governmental or corporate.

All you are saying is that people suck, or that people suck when they form organizations. That's not much of an insight or contribution. I disagree. In the simplistic terms your post educes, I think people both suck and don't suck, in varying degrees and on an individual basis.

There's a lot more to this than simply evaluating each day of Christian history (or that of any religion, since I assume you're not singling out Christianity for this criticism) as a net moral plus or minus.

I'm not sure what "assertions" of faith you're referring to. And I'm not suggesting that "evil manifestations" should be ignored. I AM saying there's more to religion than its "evil manifestations." Do you judge all of baseball by the actions of the Black Sox of 1919? All Germans on the actions of Hitler? Is it really so "illogical" and "UnAmerican" to avoid making sweeping, generalized judgments about large groups of people based on the actions of a few?

I enjoyed your use of the phrase "unproveable faith," which is sort of the opposite of an oxymoron. ALL faith is unproveable. That's what faith is: belief without knowledge.

However, my faith or lack of it has nothing to do with the basis of my argument. The original discussion was about whether a morality existed outside of God. The question, which I did not pose, ASSUMES the existence of God. My arguments flowed from that.

For every child-molesting priest who makes the nightly news, there are a thousand who busy themselves feeding the hungry and housing the homeless
a) Citations?
b) So?

So, 6700 subtantiated claims of sexual abuse by priests against children since 1950, or about 130 per year. And at least 80,000 reports of sexual abuse against children per year in the U.S. So by rough estimate about 1 out of every 600 incidents of child sex abuse in the US was by a priest, at least before the recent publicity and and reaction against sex abusers in the clergy.

if you lived in China, you'd hate atheism

Ethnocentrifical Farce? Why not you'd hate Confucianism, or the Dhao, or the I Ching? Could it be that you fear these may bring into being a higher morality in reality than your faith?

Or are you just more spiteful and/or ignorant about Chinese?

Oh. Are there a lot of Confucianists and Daoists in China? I meant if he lived in China NOW, not a hundred years ago.

While all religions don't have an equally moral basis, I'm not sure Confucianists are going to win any morality sweepstakes. Foot-binding and torturing confessions out of accused prisoners were hallmarks of the Confucianist ascendancy.

Actually, PCA, the most egregious criminal behavior in this whole issue is by the very institution of the Church, whose policy it was to cover up for the pederasts and move them into new parishes, providing a fresh crop of children for the priests' "saving love."

The Church also fought to preserve records of criminal behavior and promoted the individuals who engaged in the coverups.

Do we suppose the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages was more corrupt than that of today? It's probably a toss up.

Well, who DO you like? What group or organization DOESN'T raise your hackles? SDS? The Freemasons? Oddfellows? Gay and Lesbian Alliance? Or is your world made up of a bunch of inadequate, morally flawed, torturers, child molesters, and you?

I thought you'd just say they were all atheists...

Instead you use the very same kind of argument that you've been denying has validity when pointing out the fallaciousness of your assertion that morality only springs from God:  That a faith can be properly judged by how its believers act in reality.  I am amused, and through here.