Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: coatta@cs.ubc.ca (Terry Coatta) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Church and State Message-ID: Date: 30 Aug 90 06:24:59 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 50 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu John DiMarco writes: > That's not true for Christians. The objective reality we refer to is the > objective reality of God, esp. in Jesus Christ. Concretely, for Christians > "God's way" is the "right way". Of course, there is some confusion among > Christians as to what, exactly, is "God's way". You are using the term objective reality in a different sense than I was. What I had intended was a ``right way'' thatcould be provably asserted to anyone, Christian or otherwise. And that is the point of this discussion after all -- that there exist people who ar enot Christian and we have to establish a means of co-existing with them. > I respect other people's religious views because they are often heart-felt > and fervent. But respect doesn't imply agreement. Nor did I state that it should. > And so, where such contradictions occur, I must > respectfully and humbly disagree with those holding positions in variance > with my own. But there is a vast difference between you, as an individual, disagreeing with someone, and you, as an individual, participating in a process of legislating the correctness of your viewpoint. Does legislation demanding that everyone become a Christian produce a nation of Christians? You'd have to have a peculiar definition of ``Christian'' to accept this. > Love for another may involve fighting for legal protection for that > other's life. I agree. This is a particular difficulty that we as Christians face with respect to civil law. I can understand Christians violating civil law in order to protect the lives of others. I can even understand attempting to have such protection legislated -- as long as Christian religious beliefs are not explicitly legislated as a result (obviously laws such as those against murder are in accord with our Christian beliefs, but Christianity is not explicitly promoted by such laws, nor are such laws justified via theological arguments). At the risk of the wrath of OFM I will note that many of those who clamour for laws against abortion violate this principle by claiming that the foetus has a soul from conception and so deserves the full protection of the law as a person. Permitting such a law, justified in this manner, is tantamount to legislating the existence of God. Terry Coatta (coatta@cs.ubc.ca) Dept. of Computer Science, UBC, Vancouver BC, Canada `What I lack in intelligence, I more than compensate for with stupidity'