The State And Religon

[iROBOT]

Ok it seems that some people are portraying me as anti Muslim, I’m not. I’m anti any religion that thinks it can run a society and form its laws. I’m anti any one or any creed that thinks they have the exclusivity to truth.

As secularist I believe that religion (whatever it may be) should be ripped out of the infrastructure of all states right a cross the world, it has no business there any longer. I believe that having religious schools is divisive in society because it separates people. The state should not be culpable to the brain washing of children by their parents. If they want their children to learn any religion then it should be souly up to them, and (more importantly) funded by them after school hours.

Religion should be taught as historical, anthropological phenomena no more, no less.

The state should ban all parties that show allegiance to any religion, because society should be run by REASON AND THE RULE OF LAW not supernatural sky Gods (or whatever)

If a monarchy has to exist then their oaths of allegiance should be to THE PEOPLE not this factious entity.

In short, let’s fucking get with the 21st century.

What are your thoughts?

(Peace).

I’m not on the net until Monday…not trolling just to poor to afford the web at home and I just needed to clarify my position.

Shit if a mod is reading this could you please move to World/current affairs?

 

[yourmom]

wow!

you sound like my o/h - with whom I am in total agreement.

 

[iROBOT]

you sound like my o/h - with whom I am in total agreement.

Who's o/h?....according to Dub I'm an idiot so please type slowly....

 

[Dubversion]

and this needed another thread for why, exactly?

 

[iROBOT]

and this needed another thread for why, exactly?

Because it's there and I can....

it's called freedom of speech...is VP getting those links?? I'm off home in half an hour

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Are you against Faith schools being state funded or just Faith schools irrelevant of their funding?

 

[gentlegreen]

Me too - I feel somewhat "used" - having been sucked into the New Labour approach to "the Muslim Community" - whatever that is.

Maybe I'd have more respect if I saw more female and gay muslims on the TV rather than blokes with beards.
I find it particularly depressing working at a university with the prayer room at the end of my corridor - education and medaievalism don't sit well together in my view

The Judaeo - Christian - Islamic religions are just a pain in the arse IMHO, largely adhered to through social pressure. And those who believe they have a personal relationship with "God" are merely undiagnosed psychotics.

(I got the "religious quest" out of my system 25 years ago)

I long for the day when a self-declared atheist can be president of the USA - or even PM of the UK come to that.

 

[iROBOT]

Are you against Faith schools being state funded or just Faith schools irrelevant of their funding?

I'm against the state funding if faith schools or the teaching of faith at schools as anything other then historic or a social context. What people do with thier time and money is up to them, as long as they respect others around them.

 

[Wilf]

and this needed another thread for why, exactly?

Blessed are the Cheesemakers..

 

[iROBOT]

I long for the day when a self-declared atheist can be president of the USA - or even PM of the UK come to that.

Yes but as long as it's not by some form of secular dogma...if this is the case then what a step to TRUE civilisation.

 

[iROBOT]

Blessed are the Cheesemakers..

Hey what can I say?? I'm a very naughty boy!! lol glad to see somebodies got a sense of humour and isnt playing to the rabble....lol....

Have a great weekend folks!

 

[yourmom]

o/h

o/h = other half = partner

 

[Wilf]

I long for the day when a self-declared atheist can be president of the USA - or even PM of the UK come to that.

might be wrong, but have a feeling Harold Wilson was (an atheist)? Mind, i doubt that he was too public about it

 

[Blagsta]

Any discussion of religion that doesn't acknowledge the fact that lots of people actually get emotional benefits from it is doomed to failure.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Any discussion of religion that doesn't acknowledge the fact that lots of people actually get emotional benefits from it is doomed to failure.

Although tbh the OP isn't saying that all religion should be banned, just that it should be kept out of political life. I guess you could in theory have a deeply religious country which keeps still manages to keep religion as seperate - doesn't keep it in schools and doesn't make the religious laws necessarily legal laws. People would still be able to get their emotional comfort from religion, it would just be more of a personal choice whether to turn to it.

 

[gentlegreen]

People would still be able to get their emotional comfort from religion, it would just be more of a personal choice whether to turn to it.

And in that ideal world, those of us who choose to imbibe plant material from time to time and/or dance all night to repetitive beats would be accomodated too.

.

 

[Idris2002]

I see where you're coming from, iROBOT, but I think you should Ken Macleod's current posting .

I remember back in Ireland in the 1980s, we used to think that if only the power of the church could be broken, then everything would be alright.

It turned out it wasn't as simple as that.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I wonder if it's possible for a state which has a deeply religious majority (of one religion) to have a totally secular state? I think that's how America was designed in it's constitution, but of course has time has gone on that's been eroded and eroded, and even though I believe technically they're more secular than Britain, in reality that concept seems laughable (or cryable more's the point )

 

[montevideo]

o/h = other half = partner

shouldn't that be b/h?

Benson & hedges everyones better half

 

[treelover]

Never, that would be too much, no to such hedonism,

And in that ideal world, those of us who choose to imbibe plant material from time to time and/or dance all night to repetitive beats would be accomodated too.

 

[fela fan]

But maybe one of the wrong directions humans have taken is the belief that religion is the cause of all angst in the world (as idris mentioned). By wrong decision i mean their inability to create peace in the world rather than perpetual war.

The opening post would be more accurate were it to have included politics too. The both of them are mechanisms for dogma, for certain few people to interfere in the lives of the majority other. Both religion and politics are divisive, and for good reason. They serve to create the maintenance and extension of power by those that have it. At the expense of ordinary folk who just want to get on with their lives, their music, sport, friends, families, art, and telly.

My favourite book sums it up, it's called "Priests and Politicians: The Mafia of the Soul".

 

[Engineer]

I too hate the term 'the Muslim community' which community ? Kashmiris,Bangladeshis,Arabs ? muslims from Bradford ,muslims from East London,from Luton, or whatabout from slough or Belgravia -muslims who pray 5 times daily or muslims who go to a mosque strictly for funerals,devout muslims or your mate Mo who has a couple down at the pub with you after workOld men or 3rd generation teenage girls ?

I don't claim to know many English muslims , I know a few professionally and worked quite closely with a guy in Kuwait who was english and muslim and none of them matches the 'community leader' that is paraded on our televisions but then I live in a pretty isolated world in some respects. I've never been to Bradford and only to Brick lane for a Curry.

Its far to easy for people who claim to be spokesmen for English Muslims to distort peoples view to extremes too easily. Noone repreresents the 'muslims community' just as noone represents the 'english community'.

 

[Idris2002]

This morning I was reading a paper on the history of state-religion relations in the Muslim world, and it argued that contrary to the usual, official view that the state and religion should be merged in Islam, since the early days of the faith there has been persistent differentiations between the two.

Which implies that the Jihadi's goal of 'restoring the caliphate' is seeking to restore something that never really existed, and which could not exist, simply because the complexities of both modern societies and the premodern societies such as those of the empires of the middle east (outside Arabia) demand a differentiation of functions between those who preach religion and those who administer the state. Even if both groups may need each other's support in order to maintain their social positions.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I too hate the term 'the Muslim community' which community ? Kashmiris,Bangladeshis,Arabs ? muslims from Bradford ,muslims from East London,from Luton, or whatabout from slough or Belgravia -muslims who pray 5 times daily or muslims who go to a mosque strictly for funerals,devout muslims or your mate Mo who has a couple down at the pub with you after workOld men or 3rd generation teenage girls ?

I don't claim to know many English muslims , I know a few professionally and worked quite closely with a guy in Kuwait who was english and muslim and none of them matches the 'community leader' that is paraded on our televisions but then I live in a pretty isolated world in some respects. I've never been to Bradford and only to Brick lane for a Curry.

Its far to easy for people who claim to be spokesmen for English Muslims to distort peoples view to extremes too easily. Noone repreresents the 'muslims community' just as noone represents the 'english community'.

By extension then, you must also hate the phrase "Jewish community", and yet, although we came from all over, from Russia, from Ukraine (like my great gran), from eastern Europe, from the Med and from North Africa and the Maghreb, we weren't known by our separate nationalities, but by our faith and culture, hence "Jewish community".
The reason people use "xxxxxxxx community" as a shorthand is because, on balance, those people probably share more points of convergence in their identity (their religion and parts of their culture) than points of divergence (their nationality).

I'll agree with you about representation, because those who claim to represent communitites (and this is as true in the Jeiwsh community as in the Muslim one) usually only represent the most vocal or most powerful interests, rather than representing a democratic consensus.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This morning I was reading a paper on the history of state-religion relations in the Muslim world, and it argued that contrary to the usual, official view that the state and religion should be merged in Islam, since the early days of the faith there has been persistent differentiations between the two.

Which implies that the Jihadi's goal of 'restoring the caliphate' is seeking to restore something that never really existed, and which could not exist, simply because the complexities of both modern societies and the premodern societies such as those of the empires of the middle east (outside Arabia) demand a differentiation of functions between those who preach religion and those who administer the state. Even if both groups may need each other's support in order to maintain their social positions.

Ahmed Rashid makes this point quite well in his book "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia" where he explores the philosophies that inform HuT, the Islamic Renaissance Party and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and measures them against the infrastructural requirements of even the most primitive form of homogeneous Islamic entity.

Lets just say he found their ideas wanting, and the mullahs apparently convinced that their G-d would sort out the hassle for them.

 

[Fruitloop]

I see where you're coming from, iROBOT, but I think you should Ken Macleod's current posting .

I remember back in Ireland in the 1980s, we used to think that if only the power of the church could be broken, then everything would be alright.

It turned out it wasn't as simple as that.

His criticism seems a bit toothless. Clearly supporting authoritarian states or mass-murdering despots purely because they're anti-clerical is a poor tactical choice for the atheist libertarian. The rest is just ad hominem comments about the 'rage' of progressive types - the sort of stuff you expect from freepers.

 

[iROBOT]

Any discussion of religion that doesn't acknowledge the fact that lots of people actually get emotional benefits from it is doomed to failure.

Just popped into work...glad to see this has got some reaction.

Blagsta your right, I have myself (in the past) but I'm over it.

This is why I wouldn’t ban religion. The good that it does is unquantifiable (by individual acts to others) as it never gets reported; it's only the bad acts that make the news.

This does not mean however it has any business in forming laws, which I don’t believe it has.

 

[iROBOT]

And in that ideal world, those of us who choose to imbibe plant material from time to time and/or dance all night to repetitive beats would be accomodated too.

Yeh! They'd be the true inheritors of the world!

 

[iROBOT]

I see where you're coming from, iROBOT, but I think you should Ken Macleod's current posting .

I remember back in Ireland in the 1980s, we used to think that if only the power of the church could be broken, then everything would be alright.

It turned out it wasn't as simple as that.

The example of Ireland is as equally complex as Palestine, with history politics and religion all combining.

By removing one element (that truly isn’t necessary, because it's not based on rationality) we can at least make an attempt at a political solution. Not easy but not impossible.

 

[iROBOT]

I wonder if it's possible for a state which has a deeply religious majority (of one religion) to have a totally secular state? I think that's how America was designed in it's constitution, but of course has time has gone on that's been eroded and eroded, and even though I believe technically they're more secular than Britain, in reality that concept seems laughable (or cryable more's the point )

This is why I believe that all right thinking nations should install in their constitutions a clause that removes religion from all of the body politic.

Not easy I'll grant you but I bet you deep down there are more agnostic and atheist then religious people in the west (at least).