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The fight for religious freedom

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kowalskil

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The fight for religious freedom in America

This PBS video, broadcasted yesterday, is worth watching and thinking about.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2315729403

It is full of topics worth debating, either here or elsewhere. Please share the link with those who might also be interested.

Best wishes to all,

Ludwik Kowalski

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html

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The practical value of religion is as a vessel which carries moral values from generation to generation.

Even if moral values were a liquid in need of a vessel to be carried in, we probably should pick something less porous than a vessel made of fairy-tales and irrationality (with the occasional kid touching sprinkled in for good measure).

But moral values aren't a liquid, they're principles of conduct. What they need is not a vessel, it's rational arguments which convince people to adopt them.

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Immoral people create the demand for dictators due to their failure to govern themselves.
Analogously, irrational (i.e. immoral) people create the demand for religion due to their failure to see that morality does not require a God.
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Even if moral values were a liquid in need of a vessel to be carried in, we probably should pick something less porous than a vessel made of fairy-tales and irrationality (with the occasional kid touching sprinkled in for good measure).

That act is clearly defined by religious values as being evil. Doing evil under the color of religious authority is also clearly defined as evil. It is advised that evil people who cause children to stumble should have millstones hung around their necks and thrown into the sea. There is hardly a condemnation more explicitely vigorous than that. Would you blame the moral values carried within the vessel of religion for the people in positions of religious authority who violate those religious moral values?

But moral values aren't a liquid, they're principles of conduct.

How about if they were solid and carried in the basket of religion? ;)

What they need is not a vessel, it's rational arguments which convince people to adopt them.

And what rational argument would you use to convince a pedophile who already knows what they are doing is wrong?

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