Protecting Democracy Comes Before Promoting Faith

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Regarding this ridiculous article entitled "Protecting Democracy Comes Before Promoting Faith," I must say, this is most ironic, for Daniel Dennett is an enemy of democracy. He demonstrates here that he doesn't know the meaning of the word. He's nothing more than a fanatical anti-religious bigot, who has been given a soapbox by you fine people.

Let us forget the inane babbling of the man that constitutes the bulk of the article. The title is sufficient for analysis.

Protecting democracy comes before promoting faith. Think hard on it. Let us define democracy together. George Bernard Shaw said that it is that form of government by which the people deserve their leaders. This is true. As Dennett is so fond of bringing to light radical Islamic movements in obscure parts of the world in order to shock his silly audience into a noble anti-religious fervor (As if history is devoid of radical Islamic activity! As if Islam can honestly be compared to Christianity! It can't!), I shall invoke the case of Hamas. Here we have evil men elected by an obvious petty people. Fair enough. Good thing they happen to be in a desert somewhere far from here. The fact is, however, a democratic government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. That our government generally does not is beside the point at the moment. Suffice it to say, we understand democracy to mean self-government.

Now, let us define religion, shall we? It is easy. It is what someone believes. We need not go any farther. For there is no special distinction between my belief in God, and my belief in Daniel Dennett. They're both real, and the latter thinks he is the former. For the latter, Mr. Daniel Dennett, wants to save democracy by telling the people to put aside their beliefs for the sake of self-government! Are the people supposed to take this nonsense seriously? They do not. Only the fools among us do.

Protecting Democracy Comes Before Promoting Faith... Translation: Promoting Self-Government Comes Before Your Beliefs. Which is to say, Dennetts version of self-government means nothing at all. I say, promote democracy BY promoting YOUR faith! For that is your voice, and it should resound through all the legislative chambers, in the courts, and the White House. THAT is self-government. And if the will of the people should ever fail the cause of righteousness, by God, we'll deserve our leaders. Tufts certainly deserves their professors.

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36/40 old ojo opp,Hopeba
college, maza maza lagos
Nigeria.

ATTENTION,PASTOR,

Appeal for financial Assistant
Dear sir,

Greatings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.My name is Evangelist Emmanuel ,president of the HOSPITALS,ORPHANAGE HOMES,AND PRISONS EVANGELICAL OUTREACH[H O P] a neutral and no-denominational ministry.This ministry was commsioned by our Lord Jesus Christ in the year 1998 to propagate the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the sick,those in prisons and the orphans/some fellow nigerians who are into hostage take in the oil rich state niger delta and to give them the word of God and turn there mind to christ .Our purpose is to bring them to repentance through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our ministry now focuses on two areas[a] How to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ.[b]How to train others to do the same.Again special emphasis is placed on learning to communicate the gospel effectively to non-christians.
We spend much money on daily basis fo this trainings and for taking care of the sick,the orphans and those in prisons here Nigeria.We spend much also on transports,gift items and christian books and other welfares, and it is on this note that we seek for your financial support as some one who is spcial,a friend of Jesus and some one who cares for the sick,the orphans and the captives.We see you also as some one who has the milk of heart, who can come to our aid and that person is you berthren in chirst.
We also undertake all this programmes free.

curriculum[courses]

a]How the bible mandates the proclamation of the gospel.
b]How to contexlualize the gospel message.
c]How to present Christ relevantly to people of other faiths.
d]How to evanglise.
e]How to motivate your self and others .
f]How to communicate effectively.
g]How to practise good stewardship.
h]How to train others.
i]How to lead.

At this point i want to appeal to you once again that we need your financial support now and also that of your ministry.
Presently,we need gospel Financial support, to enable us put a smile once again on the faces of this suffering people.

Beloved Pastor, i believe that our good God will answer our prayer through you and we appeal most specially for you to be our partner.we need you and we need your support.we are expecting to hear from you soonest.
May the Lord Bless you and guide you as you prayerfully get involved in this ministry.

With greetings in Christ.
Yours sincerely
EVANGELIST/Pastor Emmanuel Uboh
PRESIDENT, [H O P] EVANGELICAL OUTREACH
PHONE 234802-432-2382

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You never separate a man's religion or beliefs from his politics. They will always influence them.

And yet we require Police Officers, Judges to uphold the laws even when it goes against their personal faith or beliefs. Point in fact a man who may have racist veiws that are related to his religious beliefs and teachings of his Church would still be required to deal as fairly as this society deems prudent with an individual whom he may consider "Inferior". Even if it contradicted his religious beliefs.

So why can we not do the same with our politicians.

E Pluribus Unum, is the real motto of the United States as set forth by Benjamin Franklin. It does not say in God We Trust, it says "From Many One. The implication being that this nation is made of many differing views and backgrounds, and that the only way for us to co-exist is to set up guidelines to allow that existence without infringeing on the rights of others.

If we are a Christian Nation, which Christianity? My Neigbors across the street go to an "Open Door Bible" church yet they proclaim that my wife being a Catholic is not a Christian, but an Idol whorshipper, some friends of ours as Jehovah Witnesses are really Devil whorshippers. And they just love me as an Atheist. It would seem that The fears of the Founding Fathers of fostering Christianity as official could lead to something like the Religious Wars in Europe has some merit.

"It is a weak Religion that requires the Government to Sanction or support it. It should stand on its own merits or fall for a lack of them."

my saying

Arthur

For those who state that this is a nation founded on the Christian religion, I would like to direct you to the Treaty of Tripoli, signed in 1796. The translation of Article 11 reads:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; ... "

The text above was approved by President John Adams, and was ratified by the congress.

Grumpy, of course

G.O.D.

Grump Old Dad

We had been sitting in her living room, chatting about friends and family for only a few minutes, when my friend noticed that her one year-old son had reached up and taken a pair of scissors from a table top and was happily sucking on the sharp point as he toddled around. Quick as a panther, my friend bounded up from her chair and ran to the child, pausing a split second on the way to grab a pacifier. She then skillfully pulled the scissors from the boy’s mouth while substituting the pacifier for the dangerous plaything. The boy hardly noticed the change and happily began sucking on the pacifier as his mother lifted him up.

She turned to me and said, made wise by past experience, “You can never take something away without giving something in return.”

The original idea for my book, Building a Better God, probably occurred to me more than 30 years ago. At the time I was a very young man, working in a high school in Los Angeles. It wasn’t a very demanding job and there was frequently time to chat about anything and everything with the small staff. One middle-aged woman employed there, I learned, was a Jehovah's Witness, and curious about her faith, I began to ask her questions..

(I had always been interested in ideas and philosophies, and had in high school once asked a friend who was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) “What do you believe?”

I’m not sure if he had an accurate knowledge of his faith at that age, but he replied, telling me among other things, “We believe if you are good - I mean really good - that when you die you get your own solar system to be God to.”

I was astonished. “You mean like a MacDonald’s franchise?” I asked, and further angered him by asking, “Are there already people on the planets in the solar system- -or do you have to wait around for billions of years for intelligent life to evolve that you can torment?”)

My questions to the Jehovah's Witness weren’t quite as rude. I was mainly interested to know why they chose to interpret so severely a vague passage from the Bible concerning the mixing of the blood as to let their children die rather than allow blood infusions, as I would have interpreted the passage as simply a warning against intermarrying with non-Jews.

Her reply to me, after some minutes of my questions, shocked me and shut me up. She said, “If I didn’t have my religion I wouldn’t have any reason to live.”

No reason to live! We have the sun and the stars! We have the sound of babies’ laughter. We have butterflies and waterfalls, flowers and rainbows. Do we absolutely have to have strange and illogical explanations for our existence and for the bountiful heavens? And explanations that require us to waste our lives standing on street corners handing out dismal tracts? What kind of cold-hearted God would require such a life from his followers? And perhaps more importantly, would such a God deserve our worship?

But I stopped my questions, for I had nothing to replace her faith if my questions managed to severely shake it. I had no comfortable pacifier with which to replace the sharp scissors.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

- Bertrand Russell

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

- H. L. Mencken

If the reader has ever tried to talk about or write about God for more than 5 minutes, the reader will have discovered how very hard it is to avoid using “He”. For, when one believes, as I do, that the idea of God having a gender is absurd, one would like to dispense with such inaccurate and primitive pronouns – but Lord, it ain’t easy.

So, as far as (humanly) possible I will try to use “He” only when describing the traditional view of God described in many religions and cultures. That is, God as the father, as the alpha-male.

I’m sure the Pope, the Grand Ayatollah, and some Hindu priests, if cornered, would all admit that-no, God isn’t male, a man, the possessor of a long white beard, much less a penis (..what would he use it for?? Unless the universe is a result of masturbation instead of intercourse!)

But none the less, for the sake of simple understanding, we are always told of His will, His love, His heaven, the other guy’s hell. Yes, the devil, too, is viewed as a masculine force. The female force, on the other hand, is apparently considered too impotent to be either truly godly - or ungodly.

And while so-called more primitive religions, such as Hinduism (so denigrated by us because of their multitude of Gods, both male and female) allow for female empowerment, Christianity and Islam seem to suggest the greatest divinity allowed females is virginity.

Along with the wish to consider a God who would be more moral, logical and thus more useful than the God traditionally described in Judeo-Christian terms, it is the wish of my book to get beyond a gender-based view of The Creator.

But a gender-neutral view of God will not be easy, as we seem to require a God who is in fact not all-forgiving- -and thus seemingly too feminine. Rather we seem to masochistically long for the stern disciplinarian. Someone overtly masculine to keep the other guy in line.

Perhaps our tendency to think of God as the Father, as a masculine force, comes from our concept of nature as something unpredictable and violent instead of nurturing and benign. The masculine propensity for aggression affects the human psyche and makes most of us subconsciously long for the ultimate father figure, a father who is always loving and just. But try as we may it remains almost impossible for us to believe the Ultimate Father does not also contain negative traits such as anger and irritability and the lust for vengeance. At best, God is occasionally a Grumpy Old Dad, at worst a dangerous tyrant, a maniac who demands the sacrifice of sons as a sign of obedience.
If humanity is to get beyond God as the ultimate human male, for good or bad, it is vital to always keep in mind our psychology, our biology and our family relations. And it is equally essential to realize that God, if God exists, does not possess our hopes, our fears, our desires or emotions. If God does possess anything akin to desires and emotions, these “feelings” are unlikely to bear any resemblance to ours. Unsettling as it may be, God may not be interested in love, justice, murder, sin, morality. Perhaps God is not even capable of interest in anything. For if God just is, it may be a fact that God has no consciousness, as Nature has no conscious overview, designs or goals.

Such an unconscious comatose God can be of little use to us, and of practically no prolonged interest. We could in some sense be grateful to such a God for coalescing everything, but we would find it difficult to continue much adoration.

And just as an unconscious God would seem fairly useless to us, an overly superior one would be equally useless. Imagine a race of beings visiting us from another planet, a race so intellectually superior that they were in essence unable to distinguish us and our feeble endeavours from bacteria and their by-products. We could never hope to easily relate to such beings. The vast distance between us would be an impossible chasm, and we should quickly come to hate such superior beings if they should ever deign to show interest or sympathy for us.

No, the distance between ourselves and our God cannot be too great. And in lieu of something better, we will sadly continue to content ourselves with Grumpy Old Dad.

Unless we are provided with a sensible alternative...

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
- Susan B. Anthony , addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in 1896

In all religiousness there lurks the suspicion that we invented the story that God Loves us."

- Sebastian Moore

God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

- W. H. Auden

If God created us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment.

- Voltaire

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.

- Sir Richard Francis Burton

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

- Peter O’Toole

If dogs had a god it would look like a dog.

- unknown

Not First But Last?

As in all things, when contemplating God and the hereafter, we should reflect with some humility, as so-called impossible or absurd things, do show themselves to exist in our universe from time to time. And when we contemplate the nature of God and “His” creations, we cannot rule out a God who has and does behave absurdly.

But as creatures of free will, we should never blindly nor gladly worship an absurd god, Ours, if we feel the need to have one, should behave with some decorum, and should refrain from creating such shameful and childish theme parks such as heaven or hell.

And if God won’t behave himself we shall have to build a better one. Here’s one proposal – a God who has been here from start to finish, but so far remains innocent!

In the time before time, in the time before time had a framework to crawl upon, in the time before all movement - for there was nothing to move and no distances to transverse - there was the ultimate negativity. The ultimate absence. There was no place, no time, no light, no thing and no context.

And this lack of all and any manifested itself in negative energy, possibly understood by us metaphorically as a great hunger, a great longing for something.

Nature hates a vacuum, we are told. And this ultimate vacuum, this longing to abandon the negative, this yearning for simple existence, was so great, that an explosion of desire occurred. When did it occur? Exactly at the beginning, for there was no time and therefore no before before the beginning.

But with the explosion time, place and distance began, as sub-particles of sub-particles appeared and the physical placement and relations to each other in the outflowing space being created, caused the 4 dimensions we recognize and possible others unseen to us to be born. Within trillion parts of the first second the rapid growth, the outpouring of the desire to be, accelerated, like cells dividing.

It was in this proto-second that God, the sum total of everything, was born and began to evolve. And for all time past, and for all future time, this still-sleeping God/fetus will remain blissfully unconscious, growing as the galaxies, born-evolving-dying, spiral further and further away from the singularity, from the birthplace.

And all through this continuing period of gestation the future-God will grow increasingly complex, this complexity aided by the actions of evolving intelligent beings within God’s still unconscious body. And for countless millennia these beings, us and others, will increasingly manipulate energy and matter, until every sub-atomic particle has been ordered and systematized.

Finally, at the last nano-second of time, when every bit of energy and matter has been manipulated into its final and most complexly possible state, God will awaken. God will be truly born and set free.

What will God do then, at the end of time as we know it?

Perhaps God will begin to behave with honor and curiosity, and possibly go on to greater more noble pastimes than we contributors were ever capable of?

Perhaps God will yawn, stretching cosmic muscles and say with a star-toothed smile, “Now to accomplish something!”

http://www.dextervandango.com/view.do?contentId=128&menuId=128

Well I've tried to post this in other threads but have received no response and while I'm not sure if it's particularly germane to this one, I figure I might get an anser here.

I've seen the claim that the Founding Fathers were atheists, agnostic or deists in several other threads. Being the skeptic that I am, I tried to confirm it on the internets. What I found was a bunch of quotes from about 5 or so of the Founding Fathers that seem to indicate that the are deists. These were generally repeated over and over again on various websites. My question is: what about the other 100 or so Founding Fathers?

Dexter VanDango,

"The first example is one of classic circular thinking: I know what God wants. God wants you to be good. In order for you to be good, because I know what God wants, you have to listen to me."

I believe strongly in a healthy sense of skepticism when it comes to those claims about God. But to brand all such claims as subterfuges by powerful elites, I think that goes too far. Many religious dogmas sound oppressive to me, but that doesn't automatically mean that there is a totalitarian motive behind those dogmas.

Religious organizations, like all organizations, have a strong interest in their own self-preservation. In my view, that is why religious organizations emphasize doctrine over individual faith. While I see that as a misplaced emphasis, I do not see it as inherently evil or malicious. It's just that the self-preservation often stands in opposition to the wishes of the individual.

Dexter,
I hate you! I wish I could have said what you wrote in your posts so clearly and with such wit. Well put!

THE TRICKS OF THE ALPHA MALE

People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.

- H. L. Mencken

Humility and self-effacement seem to be an important component to most religions. Yet despite the fact that humility is usually considered genuine only if it's voluntary, most religions resort to brutal coercion to illicit subordination and signs of humility from the populace.

As in all things animal, human behavior, too, is structured on some form of hierarchy and pecking order. Some hierarchies are rigid and obvious, some are subtle and invisible. Admittedly such structured systems allow for quicker communication and response, and possibly for a lesser degree of conflict and violence. Hierarchical systems can and do work effectively, but all too often they suffer from a major flaw: the need of the elite or the ultimate alpha male to feel absolutely secure and absolutely dominant.

This need for security shows itself when the elite and/or the alpha male demands that the dominated loudly and loyally proclaim a belief in even the most bizarre and illogical claims of the leadership. “Christ walked on water and raised the dead.” “Masturbate and burn in Hell.” “Drink this Kool-aide and end in paradise with me,” as Jim Jones told his followers. “Drink this poison and come aboard the flying saucer,” another self-proclaimed prophet told his flock. “Spread poison gas in the subway and achieve divinity,” one jolly Japanese guru ordered. “Murder these pigs,” Charles Manson told his followers. “Invade Poland and Russia, and by the way, lieblings, you won't need mittens. It'll be easy!” Adolph told the herrfolk. The doctrines of National Socialism and Communism are religious beliefs, and as such demand absolute adherence, and they differ only in the smallest ways from traditional world religions.

The followers of Kim Jung Il parrot the belief that he was born on a magic mountain in Korea despite his birth in Russia. Mao swam 12 miles in 12 minutes. Other gods, we are told, never really died, but ascended into heaven while still alive, either lifted up by angels or sitting astride their favorite horse.

By this simple tool, the creation of patently unbelievable dogmas, the alpha elites are able to quickly see who are the cowered and loyal, and who are the skeptics. Once the skeptics have been spotted they can quickly be weeded out. Heretics are burned.

An alpha elite has no interest in forcing its subjects to believe the reasonable or the logical. The reasonable and the logical can be arrived at by anyone and at any time. It is the acceptance of only the most insane ideas that are the true test of the population's gullibility or fear, and these dogmas become effective weapons for controlling the subjugated. It is the acceptance of the illogical which shows true allegiance. That is why fundamentalist Christians are so opposed to Darwin's teachings. If the population can be forced to embrace the idea the earth is only 4,400 years old.. and the dinosaur skeletons no older, but put there by a tricky God to test our faith--then they have collected conclusive proof their brain-washing has succeeded.

Recognizing the tricks of the alpha elite is simple enough at times. The following samples immediately spring to mind. The first example is one of classic circular thinking: I know what God wants. God wants you to be good. In order for you to be good, because I know what God wants, you have to listen to me.

There is no room for the slightest doubt. Our beliefs are absolutely correct. Any divergence or nuance is fallacy and heresy. Unimpeachable witnesses attest to miracles occurring which support our beliefs. If you doubt them you doubt us. Because our God is absolute good and absolute love, to doubt him is bad and proof of a hateful soul. And doubt is punishable by exclusion--or death when we can get away with it.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

- Arthur C. Clark

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

- John Burroughs

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

- Robert Green Ingersoll

Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Praying is like a rocking chair -- it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

-- Gypsy Rose Lee

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?.

-- Douglas Adams,

For the religious the holy is truth, for the philosophic the truth is holy

-Feuerbach

People are crazy. They can’t create a fly, but they create gods by the dozen!

-Michel de Montaigne

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

--Voltaire

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

-- Woody Allen

They say God has existed from the beginning of time and will exist beyond the end of time. Can you imagine trying to sit through his home movies?

- Scott Roeben

God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.
-- Edward Abbey

From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
-- Edward Abbey

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
-- Jean Anouilh

To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom.
-- Susan B. Anthony

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
-- Ambrose Bierce

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
-- Napoleon Bonapart

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

-- Napoleon Bonapart

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
-- Napoleon Bonapart

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

--George Bush sr.

Those who oppose capital punishment and war are moral perverts and degenerates; they have lost the capacity for righteous indignation.

--Rev. R. H. Charles

We recognize the Negro the way God, and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him -- our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude.

--Jefferson Davis

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.

--Rev. Jerry Fallwell

The difference between the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely different species.

--Rabbi Saadya Grama

Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work.
-

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people.

--Adolph Hitler

We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, "We've had enough," we are going to take over.

--Rev. Pat Robertson

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.

--The Roman Catholic church in condemnation of Galileo

If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.

-- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
--Albert Einstein

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.
-- Richard P. Feynman

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?
-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.-

--H.L. Mencken

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!.
-- George Bernard Shaw

I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.
-- Mark Twain

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation?
-- Joseph Heller

The Church of the Cosmic Huh?

Throughout the ages religions and philosophies have arisen to fill psychological needs as well as lessen the miseries resulting from social chaos.

Fundamentalist Islam, for example can be hard for some of us to understand, unless we realize that conditions on the Arabian peninsula may well have been fragmented, murderous – in short an ongoing nightmare – until Mohammed devised a belief system that could work as a framework for stability. Tribal feuds and vendettas were banned. Laws were made and rewards and punishments clearly spelled out. Daily life may well have been made easier by the suggestion and then the imposition of commonly binding rules. (Karl Marx and his wayward step-children, Lenin and Stalin attempted something similar.)

In today’s world the vast majority of the Earth’s population either lives lives ruled directly by - or at least guided by the principles and beliefs of the 5 or 6 great world religions. Millions, however, are unhappy with the belief systems they were born into and drop them in practice, while continuing to pay lip service to their community’s norms. Others switch religions or pursue a life-long search for a belief system that can satisfy their needs.

As there are, and always will be, millions who seek solace in some form of spirituality, it would make sense to rationally construct a more beneficial framework for a 21st century spiritual idea - an idea devoid of superstition, dogmas and certainties. Perhaps a spiritual framework meant to evolve much in the same way as the Linux computer operating system lacks certainty and evolves – anyone in or out of this Linux spiritual framework can contribute – and ideas which prove beneficial will survive.

But just as Linux has a basic skeleton, any proposed spiritual system built along these lines would also need a basic set of principles as a skeleton - hopefully far less than 10 Commandments - mainly for simplicity’s sake, but also as a constant emphasis of the fact that the fewer the rules the less the risk of ossified dogma. Cast iron rules ought always provoke skepticism and caution.

Surely our first necessary and fundamental principal is contained in the name, The Church of the Cosmic Huh?

Life is a question, a curiosity, a longing to know more. Danger and degradation arise from certainties. The central tenant to the Church of the Cosmic Huh? is that no one has the answers, no one can tell you you should stop searching, no one can tell you their take on life, death and the cosmos is definitely the correct one. No one can say, “Look no further. Jesus is the answer. Buddha is the answer. Atheism is the answer. All other ideas are false.”

BEWARE OF THE CERTAIN

In the Christian faith the most famous prayer begins with, Our Father who art in Heaven..

Perhaps The Church of the Cosmic Huh?’s repeated credo should be this wondering pondering preamble: I may well be wrong.. but it could it be that…?

But the first question which might spring to mind in the reader now could be, “If you want to construct a spiritual system based on eternal questioning or doubt, what will be the glue that holds it together? What would your community have as an attractive framework to grow upon?

This question, is of course, central. In order to construct a system that can in some ways resemble yet surpass traditional religions, it ought to have built into it techniques and strategies for the nurturing and strengthening of such a new community.

Rituals may be essential. As we all know, rituals bind people together. Gatherings and ceremonies such as baptisms, weddings and funerals unite. Many religions have rites of passage ceremonies, too, for the transition into adulthood and responsibility. Holidays such as Christmas and Easter were newer expropriated versions of older holidays having to do with birth and renewal.

The Church of the Cosmic Huh? must have all these things – although it must always be stressed that these new traditions and rituals must be constantly evolving. That there is no dogma attached to them and no priesthood who can either condone or condemn or declare legitimate or illegitimate.

The central meaning of the Church of the Cosmic Huh is to prevent dogma and certainty, and to constantly remind the world that no one has the answers – certainly not the final answer to any question regarding spirituality. Perhaps not even God – if one exists.

God is, of course, welcome to sit in our church as a guest.

But God’s presence is neither central nor essential. Nor should it be overshadowing or intrusive. The Church of the Cosmic Huh? is about humanity’s search for higher values regardless of whether God exists or not – or what God’s true intentions may be.

The essence, the heart of this idea is that the open-minded and eternal search is what is paramount, moral and inspiring.

To think one has found “the answer” is to lapse into spiritual inertia and forever frozen aspirations.

The Church of the Cosmic Huh? can only grow if it becomes virtual as well as electronic. Spreading the idea on the Internet is essential as a start up and a suppliment. But the Net can never be the sole home or promoter of Huh?’s message. Real gatherings, church services if you will, will have to take place. A physical sense of closeness and community is vital for any real bonding or sharing of ideas.

Huh? indicates humor as well as searching. Spirituality and philosophic musings are often best illuminated when conveyed through humor. One idea which might be very appropriate is that comedy clubs across the world might receive an extra income by holding a weekly Church of the Cosmic Huh? “service”. Comedians would be encouraged to act as temporary preachers, their sermons being serious as well as funny examinations of spirituality, religion, morals, frustrations. As it has been noted before, many comedians like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Woody Allen were preachers for a new age who concerned themselves with moral and sexual hypocrisy. Comedians might be the ideal hosts for our services as they would emphasize that mankind’s certainties are absurd. And M.C. – or Master of Ceremonies – might be a far better title than priest for our (temporary) shepards.

As we begin the foundation of the church of the Cosmic Huh? we ask readers to send their thoughts and ideas. This is an inclusive endeavor.

If you have suggestions as to the possible make-up of new rituals – baptism, marriage, burial, holidays – please send them. Let’s inspire each other.

Dex@DexterVanDango.com

Here’s something to chew on: George Carlin’s take on the 10 Commandments.

http://www.georgecarlin.com/mp3/George%20Carlin%20-%20When%20Will%20Jesus%20Bring%20the%20Pork%20Chops%20-%20The%20Ten%20Commandments.mp3

Gratitude

One of the jokes that believers in the traditional god like to make about us doubters of a traditional god, is that one day, when we’re lying in our coffins, “We’ll be all dressed up and no place to go.”

(Buddhists might spring to our defense and say although there are no heavens or hells we’ll be reincarnated – we’ll just come back here.. and that’s a place, isn’t it?)

But believers have a problem with us. They assume because we are none believers that we lead less moral lives than they – and that we are ingrates.

They are sure that we are not grateful for having been given a life, that we are using our lives without acknowleging a debt.

I understand believers’ feelings on this subject. It is a more natural, stronger feeling to feel grateful to someone instead of something. But they ought to be capable of understanding that we can be and are grateful to nature - and perhaps dumb luck - that we are here and we are capable of wonder and gratitude.

Should we wish to be ungenerous, I believe we might just as easily make the charge that believers are ungrateful. After all, it is they who are dissatisfied with just one life, and require an extra first class one – nay, not just first class.. perfect! Beverly Hills for all eternity!

http://www.dextervandango.com/view.do?contentId=128&menuId=128

Gated Communities of the Mind

Is religion a condom?

We all live in gated communities of the mind. Places where we feel safe and comfortable. Relaxed and secure. But there are conditions for inclusion in the community. Just as the residents of Palm Springs or Palm Beach must adhere to the prevailing world view or risk ostracism or exclusion, so too must the residents of Marin County. (Hippies may have had their minds expanded but there is little evidence they are more open minded than others.)

But with the advent of the Internet these gated communities are no longer solely defined or encapsulated by geographic or even economic boundaries.

What defines these thought communities is commonality – an us versus them instinct. Our street is better than their street. Our village or town is better than theirs. Our country is better than theirs. Our religion, our skin color, our sex or sexual preference. Our economic class or political party is better. Macs are better than PCs. Linux better than Windows.

This division into us and them is nearly always translated into good and bad. Mankind has survived because we have learned though painful experience what and what not to put in our mouths, where to hunt or flee, who to trust. What is beneficial. What is damaging.

While the familiar is quickly recognized as safe or unsafe, the new or the unknown is automatically put into the question-able/unsafe category until proven safe. Generally a wise precaution, we’d all admit.

In order to survive we try to inoculate ourselves from dangerous microbes and dangerous ideas. Religion to a great degree arose from the desire to protect us from destruction. Demons, death, unsafe foods, unsafe thoughts, dangerous sexual practices, rape, the danger arriving from outside the group, foreign ideas, foreign ways. Religion’s main function, in many cases is that of a prophylactic. A spiritual condom pulled over our heads to protect our thoughts and souls (..strange and illogical that Bush administration refuses to allow its agencies to promote the use of condoms!)

The religious might point out with tongue in cheek that we non-religious promote unsafe sex and unsafe practices in general - as we reject the need for spiritual condoms!

But cast iron, non-penetrable condoms, if worn 24 hours a day, eventually smother the soul. Nourishment of any kind is always more effective and pleasureable when it is varied.

When we rely on firewalls, whether in our computers or in our hearts and minds - we should always be aware why we need them, and how to fine tune them so they do not control, impoverish or make slaves of us.

Windows are always preferable to walls. And the ultimate danger arises when we, out of laziness or the longing to belong, allow others to define or keep the gates to our souls.

Divine Plans or Coincidences?

One major reason many people believe in a god - or some form of divine intervention – are events that seem too spooky to be mere coincidences.

One example that has been floating around for decades is the Lincoln-Kennedy list below.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln 's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
(Booth was actually born in 1838)

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called ' Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a
warehouse. (It was actually a tobacco curing shed.)
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a
theater.

Booth and Oswald were shot before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe.

(This last has been added to the list by some deceitful and juvenile jokester. Marilyn had died a year before Kennedy, and there is no Monroe, Maryland.)

None the less an amazing list. Taken at face value the Lincoln-Kennedy similarities might incline one to believe in some kind of divine intervention. A joke by God. If so it’s a rather sick one involving multiple murders and infant deaths!

Maybe the Devil set it up? (Would and does God allow the prince of darkness to do these things? If so, that would indeed be sad.)

Why would the Devil do it To what purpose? Some religions hint at figures and demons who are not really devilish but merely mischievous or sarcastic. The Norse god, Loki, has been called the Eddie Haskell of the gods (..from Leave it to Beaver.. remember? If you don’t remember Eddie, think of Rush or O´Reilly.)

Yes, perhaps the Devil doesn’t actually make trouble, but instead just laughs when God’s creations make fools of themselves - which might naturally have ticked God off eons ago and gotten Lucifer expelled from Heaven. (Would you enjoy having someone around who ridicules your mistakes? How long would you hold on to such an underling?)

Perhaps Hell is like a comedy club where the saintly (..or powerful) are eternally mocked, like we mock rich people? Maybe the Devil is just a bitter and envious ingrate – the Don Rickles of Eternity?)

At any rate, if one is to ascribe supernatural intervention to weird coincidences, one is forced to wonder who was responsible and what were their motives for stringing events together.

On the other hand, if one knows anything about psychology and odds, one realizes that human beings tend to notice similarities and ignore differences.

Perhaps on another planet in the universe a King Belso experienced a surprising number of experiences also experienced by a King Nervo a thousand years later. So what? In a universe of a trillion planets it has to happen occasionally. Just like flipping a coin will come up heads a thousand times in a row if you do it long enough.

But when it comes to similarities we tend to notice them more when they are about people than things. And we notice and care about similarities concerning kings and presidents more than postal workers – for we need to see some sort of significance in order to become interested or to care.

One illustration: More than 30 years ago I personally experienced, not only a spooky coincidence, but one with religious overtones.

I had been in a shop, came out and got into my car. I put the key in the ignition, and turned it. As I turned it I glanced up at the car parked in front of me and at its bumper sticker. As I read the bumper sticker my car radio came on.

I read “Mount Saint Mary’s College” and an announcer on the radio said at the exact instant I read it, “Mount Saint Mary’s College is having their annual..” something or another.

Weird.. yes! I looked up to the heavens and crossed myself. But still couldn’t begin to believe I was so important that God was pasting on bumper stickers, parking cars and arranging radio commercials in order to wake me up or change my own personal spiritual path.

I’m not that important. Are you?

(..or do you believe that God is like Ashton Kutcher and hides around corners to Punk people?)

Hey Boris,

When the POTUS swears to uphold the Constitution of the USA, what book is it that he is swearing on? Think a little MORE.

Ha! Ha!

i couldn't resist!

Boris,

At Presidential Inaguations, what does the President sweat to do? The answer is "uphold the Constitution of the United States of America." They do not swear to uphold the Bible! Think a little.

Much of this thread (and most often any discussion on this topic) misses the main point. First and foremost, the First Amendment is not about the origins of our government or our laws or democracy. So all discussion regarding whether or not belief and or religion is valid, or good or evil or indifferent, is simply irrelevant. The more atheists scream at "religionists" and vice versa, the more the need and brilliance of the first amendment becomes apparent to anyone who truly believes in this country and the real ideals upon which it is based. Arguments seeking to find the "original intent of the founders" in the fact that they used the word God or that they were members of some religion simply are conclusory statement made by zealots. It takes an extreme amount of intellectual hubris to think that we today can actually know how the Founders actually felt then and then to extrapolate the same to today's facts.

Here is the issue in a nutshell:

The first amendment, if anything, provides that the government shall not establish a religion nor discriminate against same. That's the easy part.
Theoretical discussion about the religious origins of the founders or of the thoughts of that day, again are irrelevant.

Yes, the bible is an important book and the ten commandments are part of legal history, but there are no footnotes in the Constitution, which happens to be the law of this country, which state that our laws are to be made in conformance with the bible or that that is the source for the constitution or any other similar ideas.

It really is simple: Laws are made by our elected representative. When those laws contradict the text and intent of the constitution then those laws may be invalidated by the courts. But the purpose of the consitution was precisely to limit the power of government and to keep religion out of the government, pure and simple. Anything else is simply mideval expression of the divine right of kings, and that is one thing that the founders expressly were against.

I personally think that the pledge of allegiance should have the words "under God" removed, precisely because the founders would not have approved. And until the '50s so did the United States.

If humanists settled America and were faced with creating a government does anyone really think we would be any worse off for the fact that they were not Christians? I'm a humanist. I think that the prophet Jesus had some very good ideas about how to treat one another. I believe it is wrong to kill another human not because it is against a religious doctrine but because it is doing to another what we don't want done to ourselves. It is not right to take anothers belongings or his wife. Why? Not because it is bad from a religious point of view but because in a society where we survive as a group it would weaken the group and it would hurt another human. Empathy is not a Christian concept. It comes with being human. If humanists had settled America there would still be greed and violence. People are flawed in many ways and whether you are a Christain or a Humanist the same behaviors exist. Democracy makes sense. It is not good because some people who had varying degrees of belief in Christianity wrote a document to guide the us in living together. It is good because it it gives to most of us the maximum freedom possible in a collection of dissimilar people.

if your president and other elected representant started to swear on the constitution instead of the bible it would look better, at least if you want to promote the idea of a separation of state and church.

Patrick,

You miss the point. Legistators are all inspired to bring ideas to the floor by something be it religion, humanism, experience, etc. This is 100% necessary. The problem is during the decisioning process. A religious inspired idea is not "the best" idea just because it is religiously inspired (remember there are many, many different religions and sources of inspiration that all believe they are best). All ideas must be vetted logically as to their impact on all of our lives (not afterlives) and the nation today.

Any legislator that says X is the best policy because it is in any religious book such as the Bible is wrong. Instead, policy X, while inspired by a religious idea must have a supportive logical argument that is better than all other arguments in today's real, material world.

Has anyone of you pious Christian guys really read the bible (not the selected excerpts you are served with by the Haggards (!), Myerses, Robertsons et al.)? Almost nobody has ever read it. I, an atheist, a fervent humanist, have read it thoroughly, and I have never read any book so appallingly full of blood, genocide, murder, sadism, revenge, greed, fraud, theft, injustice, aggression, war, superstition, exorcism, hate of anything resembling reason, let alone science, blatant antisemitism ("satan is their father"), hate against women (they are the "entrance to hell"), praise of slavery (Thurmond comes to mind). You really believe this to be the eternally valid and obliging word a "God"? And what about Luther? He recommended to kill all the Jews. (Look for it in Google).

Religion - all religions - is the greatest millstone around the neck of humanity. Anybody in the possession of "truth" must forcibly kill anybody else who doubts this particular brand of "truth" - and that's what we have seen through all of history as well as what we see today. The bible demands this killing of "infidels" explicitly in dozens of places, the Quran also, though, to my surprise, less frequently and apodictically than the bible.

Anybody who doubts this tooth fairy stuff will burn in hell eternally, that is the divine promise of the "God of love and mercy" we encounter on every other page (little hope for me!). Just read for yourselves! On and on the bible, Old and New testaments, ramble about this sort of revenge.

All wars were and are caused or at least camouflaged by religion. (Hitler strongly believed in "Providence" ("Vorsehung"), Bush is "born again" and talks to God, like Abraham, who was about to cut the throat of his son Isaac for an offering, in obedience to his "god", etc.)

"In God we trust"? Every German soldier, every German boy had "Gott mit uns" (God with us) written on his belt buckle - and they all believed it before they died, most of them anyway.
(Btw.: As a boy, I strongly believed in God, when I still was intellectually completely brainwashed and defenseless. So I do know what it feels like to be religious!)

I must refrain here from the creationist humbug - that is too far below the intellectual beltline.

Gerry

This is why the source of privately held inspiration must be separated from the political process. To allow the state to administer what works today from the largest pool of ideas possible.
The choice is this, either allow the state to pick what works from all sources of inspiration or the situation will force all sources of inspiration to assimilate into one.
In that case, we would in fact fall behind and the American Experiment would fail.

Matt in Aberdeen,

Alieviating poverty is a very good example of a religiously inspired humanist policy that has been proven to lead to stability accross the state in line with the basic concept of the Social Contract (read some John Locke). Religious inspired concepts very often a statistically and logically proven to be "Good" for society, but they are all not "Good" just because they are religious dictates.
The Bible clearly states that eating shell-fish is an abomination, yet logic says that this is B/S, so it is not law.
Remember, the Bible was written about 1,700 years ago, times change. This means that as our condition changes, the parts of the bible that are relavant also must change or we will become stagnant and weak.
Some early religious focus on Marriage as being relavant for propagation may have made sense 2,000 years ago with short life-spans, constant wars and the relatively unpopulated Earth. Now, the Earth is very over-populated to the point that it is unsustainable and war over resources is on the Horizon. In this environment, Marriage for companionship and not necessarily procreation, is a more logical "Good". So, who knows married couples who do not have any children weather strait or gay could end up preventing a massive, extinction level war (with nukes).
Times change, those that do not change with them die off.

Subhanallah to George Crupper!

I love your comments!!!!

Thank you.

The United States has for too long looked outside the nation and found fault with the manner in which other societies have behaved, ignoring those faults only when it was convenient to do so to protect domestic political and U.S economic needs, often at the expese of democracy and the Earth's physical environment.

Instead of starting at home, caring and providing for Americans in need, they have concentrated on growing the wealth of the few at the expense of the many.. both inside and outside the United States.

A Christian country takes care of its poor, its aged and infirm. The forty million Americans who live without health insurance are the startling proof that the United States has no claim to being a Christian country.

Many countries scoffed at by American pundits ( take France for instance) do a much better job at day to day Christian brotherhood, and have always been more interested in equality, especially racial equality than their off-spring U.S.A.

I see this - and I love America - the one I grew up with and learned to love as the real example to set the rest of the world - not the one we are experiencing that forces its people to rely on charity, and exposes itself to justified criticism, because of the arrogant self serving foreign policies that created what it claims to be a war against terror. Try elminating terror through eliminating the damage you are doing to the rest of the earths people.

Be assured - these problems are not caused by the american people, but by a political system that is not based on Christian principles.

Accessing the world's cheap labour did little of significance for the poor working American.,
Paying a lttle more for somethhing manufactured by American hands would help people to pay for their Health insurance. Reducing the profit of a mining combine through better air pollution controls would still leave them rich and happy.

It is excess amid the ignorance in which the American people are left by their government that
creates the other than Christian manner in which the U.S government behaves towards the rest of the world.

I am amazed by the number of posts the question of God and the State gets in response to this article and the one from yesterday. It demonstrates how deeply embedded religion is in the US. Yesterday I wrote that this scares the other western secular democracies. Nobody seemed to get it. When the President of the US calls for the blessing of God on America this is unremarkable in the US. In Australia and Europe a leader calling for the blessing of God would be seen as unstable and dangerous. Frankly, they would be ridiculed not because they beleive in God but because they believe God will fix the nation's problems. We prefer good government by humans rather than wishful thining. God will not pay for new hospitals or build new industires. God will not balance our budgets or bring down corporate governance legislation from on high. God will not provide universal healthcare.

The US has much to offer the world without doubt. But look at the other western democracies that function. The US model is not the only one that works. We don't call for the blessing of God and we have our failures but is there nothing the US can't learn from from other western democracies? Its not that we hate the notion that people can have their God. Its just that we see this as very personal, too personal to steer the State.

I agree with Disputatio:

I've noticed that the people who claim to be "God-Fearing" are more about fearfulness than anything else. My supicion-- though this is a gross generalization-- is that those people who cling to the fear, the anger, and vitriol fear liberalism and the freedom others, because they are so acutely aware of their own tendencies towards sinful behavior. This is the only explanation I can offer that would approach anything describing this as a reasonable reaction. The evidence of this lies in the numerable scandals involving the so-called evangelist preachers. They don't have me fooled. I wonder sometimes if these guys have ever opened that part of their favorite book labeled "The New Testament" for anything other than to invoke the name of Je-sus. In the 18 years I spent attending church religiously (ha, a pun), I always felt like the New Testament was the one that was all about forgiveness, acceptance, tolerance of others.
I never felt a strong tie to any church.. decided I didn't believe in Jesus when I was young.. Decided I didn't believe in God sometime later.. but that's beside the point. What the Bible really offers to people should be positive. A guide to morality, an authority that people can defer to, a hope for that scary abyss that follows our existence and consciousness. That's what I took away from the church.
The other thing I think about is ... if these people who profess their faith so loudly, if they really need the government to adopt their particular religion's faith-- to act as an enforcer for the laws and morals-- What does that really say about their faith? Besides, integration of the church and state will disparage both institutions. If you're faithful, particularly if you're Christian, I should think that the best demonstration of your faith should be in the way you live your life. Do as you profess and defer the authority of morality to God. Please, leave those of us alone who want to be left alone and do not foist your insecurities about your own religion on the rest of the society.

"Also, atheism in my humble opinion is a religion and belief not different from what I practice."

Alas, Mr. Webster in his humble opinion differs:

religion, noun:
(1) The expression of man's belief in and reverance for a superhuman power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe.
(2) The spiritual or emotional attitude of one who recognizes the existence of a superhuman power or powers.

I think the fact that we are able to have this conversation without being arrested and thrown in prison makes Dr. Dennett's point. I am grateful every day to our ancestors for making this possible, and hope we have the wisdom to keep their gift intact.

As a cradle Episcopalian, I try to follow the teachings of Jesus as I conduct my life. I also think much of organized Christianity in this country has gone seriously off the tracks.

I find it interesting that people do not see that belief and religion are one in the same. And to ask people to suspend their beliefs (or religion, it's all semantics) when dealing with the affairs of this country is foolish and wishful thinking.

When the forefathers of this country developed the making of this democracy. They did so with an understanding outlined in the Declaration of Independence (2nd paragraph, first sentence), that the basis for the establishment of this country were truths endowed by the Creator (I might note that this is antithetical to the ahtiestic view). So it is clear that the founding fathers took into account their faith and beliefs when developing this country.

The "separation of church and state" ironically was stated by Thomas Jefferson to support Baptists in the need to ensure that one religion could not be oppressed by another because one had support from the government and the other did not. In other words, the government could not sponsor any particular religion or prevent any religion from expressing that faith via any laws enacted by Congress. The purpose was to ensure that people could practice their faith without concern for anyone attempting to supress that practice.

Now I understand people wanting to ensure that the state doesn't sponsor any religious view, such as England with the Anglican church or Iran or even Turkey (who despite being a stated secular nation still has incorporated in it's constitution that it is an Islamic country). But I see a clear assault on the "Free expression clause" of the 1st amendment, which is a clear byproduct of the mishandling of the "separation of church and state" issue by those who profess to defend it. How is children being removed from public schools because they pray or read the Bible in public free expression of religion. How this is no different than the persecution in Egland that caused the very creation of this nation. I do not know. Also, atheism in my humble opinion is a religion and belief not different from what I practice. The only difference is I believe in a higher being and atheists do not believe in the higher being. Their belief is in secular humanism. It's all belief and religion.

With that being said, the statement more or less from the professor is that this country in order to maintain the 1st amendment must practice an atheistic form of government. We must ensure that a person's beliefs must be subordinate to the decision's he makes related to the office he holds. I believe this is folly. The person I would fear is the one who believes in something, but is willing to suspend it in order to hold office. When our country gets to the point that we achieve that ominous distinction it will be a sad day indeed.

In response to all those who believe that not espousing a religion means that you have no moral guidelines:

I was born to a Christian household. I rejected the idea of belief in an invisible force/being when I was about seven, when I learned about evaporation and water vapor and clouds. If the lovely cloud formations at sunset weren't the "heaven" pictured in religious publications, (and the resemblance is astonishing), then I wasn't about to fall for the "god is everywhere" and "he (he?) can see everything you're doing" schtick.

I have never distanced myself from religion. As a teenager, I made the effort to attend religious ceremonies of various Christian sects and was employed by an Orthodox Jewish couple. I have never found anything as convincing as "be true to yourself." That may sound like a selfish point of view, but in my case being true to oneself has caused me to stand up for my beliefs and to lead by example. I rescue animals, feed homeless people, give to charities, house the homeless (sometimes for years at a time), and in general feel good about myself. I do not, however, ever feel the need to submit to a mythical presence in order to be a good person.

Anyone raised in a family with a healthy respect for the rights, property and feelings of others has the opportunity to live a "moral" life. There is no need to call upon a faith in some religion that tells you that you must behave in such-and-such a fashion in order to "go to heaven" or "ascend to paradise" to justify behaving in a socially acceptable manner.

Society sets the mores; religion corrupts them for its own purpose.

Although the founders of this great country embraced the teachings of Jesus, this is not a sect of Christianity. There were no judgements involved except of truth and openness onwhich our government is based

Robb

The ideal of separation of church and state is somewhat unique in the US experiment with democracy. To ask (or suggest) folks in another part of the world to choose country over religion, may be an assumption on the part of a 'true believer' in idealistic democracy. Multiculturalism teaches us to listen to other viewpoints without moral judgement (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism).

Prof. Dennett makes no attempt to understand religion and therefore does not understand its role in civil society and more tellingly does not understand its role in fostering civil society in Iraq.

The U.S. is not asking Iraqis to place the Iraqi state or its democratically elected government ahead of their commitments to either Sunni or Shiite Islam. It is asking them to find political and legal settlements that recognize and honor their religious differences. Many of the greivances between Iraqi factions are not particularly religious, but get talked about as Sunni vs. Shia because religion is part of the cultural topography that distinguishes the aggreived parties. Where religion either is the cause of conflict in Iraq or aggravates conflict, this is a failure of religion on its own terms, and therefore is a intra-Islam issue. Asking Iraqis to put the state before religion is another example of the sort of insensitivity to other cultures that got the U.S. into such a mess in Iraq in the first place.

Getting back to the U.S., democracy works best when it is understood pragmatically and is framed in law as a "social contract." Intrinsic to the idea of 'contract' is that the participating parties are motivated by prior, more fundamental interests but they find the contract a good way to achieve those interests (or least a compromise that is not inconsistent with those interests). In this sense, democracy should not try to elevate itself as equal to religion (ala Prof. Dennett) but as in Iraq should seek a consensual, law-governed civic order that makes its citizens free to pursue their prior, more fundamental commitments to things like religion or atheism.

The founding fathers clearly understood religion as prior to democracy and an important constraint on human behavior that makes self-government possible. But humans are capable of corrupting both democracy and religion to the discredit of both.

Finally, the religious commitment of citizens should be a check on the overreaching of government. In Los Angeles, Cardinal Mahoney asked clergy to disobey any immigration legislation that made it illegal for American citizens to offer material assistance to hungry or suffering immigrants. And good for him!

Anericans United for Separation of Church and State, with a web site at www.au.org, has long labored in this important field. Readers who are not familiar with it should give it a read.

Why is it that so many people appeal to what Jesus taught about morality, but ignore what Jesus taught about Himself? (And vice versa.) Let us take Christ in His entirety, or not at all!

"But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:44-45a

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - John 14:6

has anyone else noticed how venomous the "Christians" are when we discuss someone else's religious rights?

The constitution is a pretty good read. It's not the country one supports, but the principles of that country, assuming that the country hoves to those principles.
We are straying. Religion and it's anti-science, anti-humanity is creeping in: eg, creationism: pure garbage, but gets treated with respect. Yuck.
Spiritualism, morality, community, civil societies: these need to be strong, and they can be without requiring a formal church to instruct people.
This country has lots of people who worship Christ. That doesn't seem to be such a good thing. Yeah, it could be worse. And it can be better.

I am glad that the Black (Protestant) Church democratically imposed its religious creed on America during the 1960s.

Anericans United for Separation of Church and State, with a web site at www.au.org, has long labored in this important field. Readers who are not familiar with it should give it a read.

Chuck. I'm puzzeled that you see "Liberalism" as so anger producing. Why are you so angry? I would like to know what the liberal values are that upset you so much. In my experience the "narrowness", extremism", "fantasy" and "hyperbole" seem to be spread pretty evenly across the ranks of ignorant throughout the world. Are you against education? Against thinking? Against looking at the other person's point of view? If what you believe is working for you why is it you seem so intolerant?

Fundamentalists of all stripes are Evil people hiding behind a sick, counterfeit version of "faith".

This is a fact, not an opinion--Unless you are a fundamentalist yourself, or a moral relativist.

There is real faith, but
fundamentalism ain't it.

KEEPERS OF THE TRUTH or FUNDAMENTALISM IN AMERICA

What religious people have forgotten is that the diversity of protestant sects in America is astounding. And that those same sects and the Roman Catholic church fought for centuries in Europe over which was to be the state religion.

There is no difference today. Once a sect got in "power" is would go about purging all the other sects from power just like 100 or 1000 years ago.

Oliver Cromwell anyone? Perhaps the War of the Roses? Henry VIII. Vermont v Maine. Utah?

The best policy is to keep religion out of politics. Have a non-secular government. Then all can live according to their beliefs and not interfere with the beliefs with others. Unless you think YOUR religion will prevail then your will have every assurance to go on fighting year after year, enacting law after law, until everyone who disagrees with you is either in jail or dead.

And that's the kind of democracy most religious people want (except presbyterians -- some of whom are kooky, but not kooky enough to try to rule a country based on their religious principles when they know that to run a country a diverse country takes an education far beyond that of religious training -- something Bush 43 did not know when he took the presidency and appointed all theose rank amatures to office) one where they can enforce their beliefs at the point of a gun.

Althouth to their credit they have given Cheney blanks in his shotgun. And remember Democracy enforced at the point of a gun is the cruleist form of tyrrany, esp when you have not built the educational, legal, and mechanical social structures to support it.

It seems the American people in the last election had greater sense than most of the Republican politicians after Geo W Bush was elected.

Idiots.

Mainstream Evangelical Christianity has become
"transactionally immoral".

As long as you go to church and don't have sex - you can do any crime you want agains mother nature, consumers, other nations.. Even to the point of invading and killing them on the basis of cherry picked intelligence as our President and Vice President did... And still "go to heaven".

I cite the developer, the politician, the gun-show dealer, the corporate lobbiest... if you hold yourself out as "Christian" and are yet engaged in these professionas you are likely immoral to the core... you just don't have sex or drink, and I know where to find you on sunday... Impatiently waiting for the service to end.

You are a moron. Separation of Church and State is not mentioned in the First Ammendment, or he Second, or anywhere in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. The First Ammendment states that Congress shall not interfere with religion. That's it. It was meant to keep the state out of religion, not the religion out of the state.

How an incompetent like yourself is a professor of anything baffles me.

History has rarely recorded a religion that believes in freedom of religion. Freedom of thought, belief and worship, is heresy and anathema to most religions; especially the monotheistic ones. Religon is not about freedom, it's about adherance to a particular dogma. The first amendment seeks to protect freedom of belief from the tyranny of dogmatic religions. Which is why we must all support freedom above our own beliefs.

The same old Liberal cant,from an atheistic philosophy professor. Hyperbole and fantasy, extremism and narrowness; without the windmills where would this Don Quiote be? Fears of a religous take over of America? Get serious. The poor hypochrisy of Liberalism: freedom to spread our beliefs but not yours. How sad.

"In many places it's OK to show a menorah or a Crescent Moon for Islam during the holiday season in a public place, but NOT a cross!"

Doug, I agree that such religious discrimination wrong and against the principle of government neutrality.

However, I have read those stories and usually they turn out to be benign misunderstandings and misinterpretations, not sinister attempts to quash any one religion. But as I've learned from reading Snopes and other sources, people with agendas on all sides often pass along such stories without crucial details that contradict their agendas.

If you were REALLY open minded, in addition to looking at the religious right's attempt to impose their views, you would look seriously at MANY Christian's objections to what they see as discrimination against their particular faith.

In many places it's OK to show a menorah or a Crescent Moon for Islam during the holiday season in a public place, but NOT a cross!

The response from those imposing the restrictions usually have them trying to say that the Xmas tree is enough for the "Christian" Symbol...funny thing the Xmas tree has NOTHING to do with the religious aspect of Christmas.

Myself...I'm a Zen Buddhist. So maybe I'm able to see what each side cannot. Which is an unwillingness to listen honestly to the concerns their opposites have.

1. Let's clarify the argument about the founding fathers. First, the Declaration of Independence's writer (Jefferson) and its primary editor (Franklin) are arguably the most pro-science people in history for their era. Second, the late eighteenth century was not a time when opposition to organized religion could be discussed freely and openly.

2. Any belief stated to be based on faith alone, the next words out of your mouth better be "but I may be completely wrong." Where's the humility people?

"the carnage wrought in society by violent criminals released from prison in accordance with Christian doctrines of 'hope' and 'redemption' and 'rehabilitation,' the "separation of church and state" contingent falls strangely silent."

Matt, I've never heard of those Christian doctrines ever used to justify parole or sentencing guidelines. I believe firmly in the principle of separation of church and state, and I advocate lifetime sentences for capital crimes, including lifetime isolation for first-degree murder.

You people are all beautiful. I care less about what Dennett says than about the passionate conversation his words spurred. Each of us our own little insignificant speck, yet each of us a universe unto ourselves. How do we reconcile the inherent confusion of our existence with the premise of some Master Plan?

Dennett, Mark and a few others have pointed out the practical need to put democracy before religion. Neither seems to be saying put the US government before religion. Democracy is the wonderful principle that allows us to choose people to represent us in the governing of our country. Religious or humanist beliefs have a place in assisting the individual citizens in making their choices as to whom they vote for. Your religion or humanist beliefs guide your choices. Your family, your experience and your religious beliefs influence the ideas you value. They are personal. They should stay personal. When you or the group you belong to decides your ideas are better than mine or should be imposed on the rest of society you have crossed the line and would be then advocating a form of dictatorship. If a religious group feels it should get public money to run a school to propagate it's views it is asking for money from people who may not want their taxes going for that type of indoctrination. If a religious group want public money to conduct a prison program that demands adherence to a particular faith then the group has chosen to put it's beliefs above the country and the people who pay taxes for the support thereof. Areas where religious groups can do the most good and be consistent with the principles of their prophets is in the lobbying for help for the poor, working to stop killing in wars and taking care of the young and the elderly. When a person or group asserts that their beliefs are better than mine or better than those of my neighbor then they are stepping outside the healthy bounds of religion into the political arena of the dictator. Religious and humanist values are best practiced in our own life as a model for others rather than imposing them on those who may not share your views but who may live a healthy and valuable life of their own. Democracy supports your right to practice your person beliefs. That is the great value of Democracy. It wouldn't be Democracy if it were twisted to reflect the views of a few. Fighting to keep the principles underlying democracy strong and visible to each generation is what may keep us viable as a society and as and nation.

An old adage is that we are known by the company we keep. George Bush proclaims his conservative religious beliefs at every opportunity. Yet he surrounded himself in the White House by a group who rarely visit any house of worship. Maybe they are more religious than I see evidence of, but they seem to prefer to spend their Sunday mornings on TV talk shows. At least they are preventing the president from imposing a theocracy.

The answer is we are an immorally Christian nation. Christianity in the US has been hijacked for immoral political agendas including the war in Iraq, attacks on gays and racist plans against immigrants. Jesus' message of unconditional love has been perverted by our so called Christian political leaders and the religious demagogues who stir up the hate and exclusion. Christianity in the US is now synonymous with immorality. What a shame.

Freedom of religion never meant freedom from religion. This being said our author is correct in his beliefs that we must support the system that allows us to worship in freedom.

What happens when the catholics gain a majority and make birth control illegal based on religious belief.

What happens when the southern baptist gain a majority and make dancing, card playing and drinking illegal based on religious belief.

What happens when the mormons gain a majority and ban caffeine based on religious belief.

What happens when islam gains a majority and makes women cover thier faces based on religious beliefs.

What happens when the jews gain a majority and force the destruction of all crosses based on religious beliefs.

What happens when the hindus gain a majority and do away with eating beef based on religious beliefs.

The author is correct, we can all believe in a God, and worship in our own way, without legistlating our own personal views because one group has more followers than another. Anyone who tolerates legislation of religion is a bad american.

Dear God,

Please go away. Take your followers, in whatever form they come, with you.

Thank you,

Reality

Is the writer of this article serious? Clearly he is an atheist because he has no idea what it means to be religious. How can you put anything ahead of God and think that you still respect or love God enough? If you are religious, God is the ultimate truth. Why would I put a political system above ultimate truth?

Liberals always forget or re-write history. To them, their values are the apex of humankind. Which of course is the same way every society feels, until their ideas are overshadowed by a new "thought revolution." Democracy is not the fulfillment of 6 Billion years of evolution. I'm sorry, get over it and get over yourself. You are boring me.

His hyperbole is comical. If this is the best that Tufts can put out, our "philosophers" are in real trouble. Not much time to write. I am actually working, unlike others. There are many foolish old men in existence that claim wisdom. It always amuses me how they justify their radicalism at that advanced age. I almost pity him. I am, by the way, not religious.

Marks writes:

"Religious choices are private choices. What I believe for myself, I believe 95%, but I cannot force others to believe that through the power of the state. That is the difference between public and private relhms."

You cannot force others to believe in your religious choices, but if you can convince a majority that those choices are right, then the majority can enact your choices into law and thus force others to *act* in accordance with your religious choices, even though they do not believe in them. That's how Christian beliefs in "charity for the poor" get turned into compulsory tax payments that support welfare and other social programs. They don't have to believe, but they do have to pay.

Marks continues:

"What creates the problem, are those religious figures that use the absolutist, dictums of religion to control others."

It strikes me that those who object to the imposition of religious beliefs by law seem to confine their concern to infringements on sexual freedom or to publicly-funded displays of Christian symbolism. When it comes to the imposition of Christian charity on unbelievers, or to the carnage wrought in society by violent criminals released from prison in accordance with Christian doctrines of "hope" and "redemption" and "rehabilitation," the "separation of church and state" contingent falls strangely silent.

Mr. Dennett is right on the mark. Adherents of many different faiths -- and some who adhered to none -- founded this nation. There is probably even greater diversity of belief today. We must all freely practice our beliefs in private, but we must also commit ourselves to allowing no faith to predominate in the public square; otherwise, we undermine not only a fundamental American freedom, but a philosophy that has allowed the United States to avoid the ugly persecution in the name of religion that even today bloodies streets in other parts of the world.

Excuse me but the different religious people of America are not blowing each other up!! Like the Sunnis or Shiites.

Also, PLEASE read the U.S. constitution, there is no reference to a so-called "separation of church and state". There is to be no state sponsored denomination such as the Church of England.

Religious choices are private choices. What I believe for myself, I believe 95%, but I cannot force others to believe that through the power of the state. That is the difference between public and private relhms.
What creates the problem, are those religious figures that use the absolutist, dictums of religion to control others. In many cases, I believe that they are actually trying to use the state to control themselves as they lack to ability to do so. Therefore, they want to create an environment in which they will not acceed to their own temptations. Look at the example of Ted Haggard, he was obviously so much against gay marriage because he is gay and would in fact marry a man if he could. Therefore, he wants the state to step in and regulate him for him.
They just do not understand that there are other people who do not want to have their private lives dictated by the state.
Without the separation of church and state, we would soon have a low-grade civil war within this country, the only way to preserve freedom of religious practice and freedom of the mind, is for the authoritarian religious types to consign their control impetus to themselves.

Prof. Dennett writes:

". . . we must each ask ourselves: do we put the welfare of the nation above the welfare of our particular religion? If you cannot answer Yes to that question, you should consider that you are not a good American, but a part of the problem:. . ."

Which comes first, religion or country? If you are a Yale graduate, you can find the answer at the following Web site:

http://www.yale.edu/yaleband/ypmb/music/yale.htm

There, you will learn that

"O let us strive that ever we
May let these words our watch cry be
Where e'er upon life's sea we sail:
'For God, for country, and for Yale!'"

Would we elect a Yale graduate to any government position in the United States? Would we choose someone like George H. W. Bush (Yale College 1948) or William Jefferson Clinton (Yale Law 1973) or George W. Bush (Yale College 1968) or Hillary Clinton (Yale Law 1973) to run America?

If so, don't be surprised if he (or she) puts religion first, country second, and Yale third.

Alexander's comparison of utilitarians and Christians rings pretty true, but consider: act-utilitarians, as opposed to rule-utilitarians, would probably be unable to obtain office in America if their views became known. Mostly because they'd sound insane.

The office holder would be expected to fulfill the obligations of their office and obey the laws of the land even during the rare times in which those laws and obligations fail to maximize the consequential utility. For example, it would not be acceptable to have a healthy, innocent person killed so that their organs could be save a number of lives, even if that increases total happiness--because consistently following the rule that innocent people shall not be harmed itself produces more happiness than any deviation from it is likely to produce.

Likewise, we would expect any Christian office holder to be a "rule Christian", in that they recognize that the peace and cooperation facilitated by freedom of conscience benefits the nation (and it's soul) more than enough to offset any benefit gained by deviating from these principles. The conflict then is not between atheists and Christians; or between Americans who happen to be Christian and Christians who happen to be American--the conflict is between act-Christians and rule-Christians. Over eager promotion of church-state alliances may signal that you're in the first group rather than the latter. Given that there doesn't seem to be anything consequentialist about Christian doctrine whatsoever, it doesn't really make sense to be an act-Christian, so that might be a fight secularists are more likely to win.

To Dexter VanDango:

Bravo.

Hey, Jaxas!

Your first and third paragraphs are a lesson in comparative fiction.

The second paragraph seems to be the least fantastic of the three ideas. We are the starbaby endowed with the ability to question our own origins.

The moment of self-awareness brought with it fear, paranoia, doubt, and befuddlement. It also brought the ability to create. In good form, we promptly used our newfound creativity to fabricate an alternate reality that's a little less scary.

God is what you come up with when you react - willy nilly - to the combened forces of self-awareness, fear, paranoia, doubt, and befuddlement.

Dave writes:

"Dennet does not raise a candle. Atheism has nothing to offer except bleakness."

The fallacy in this statement is exposed by every non-believer who lives a rich and full life, of which I am one. But, even if it were a true statement, I would rather live in the bleakness of "what is," than the happiest of fantasies.

There is no danger in this country of a "takeover" by religion. What people seem to object to is that someone's beliefs may be informed by their religion and that they exercise their 1st amendment right to articulate a position, to advance it, and to vote for it. That is the essence of our democracy and anyone who wants to exclude someone from participating because their opinion is informed by religion is the danger to our democracy. You don't like their approach to governing, don't vote for it.

It's not god that bothers me, it's his fan club...

Thanks for an important discussion, Dr. Dennett. As a new and fearful atheist (recovering Catholic), I've been reading Richard Dawkins. I will add you to my list. As a parent, I am concerned for the world that I/we will leave to our children. But, evolution suggests that, hopefully, current circumstances are just another phase as we mutate toward whatever our species will become. The concern lies in the point you and others make regarding the "danger" of politicians, et. al., professing a lack of faith in the supernatural. I find simply considering atheism to be a liberating experience that provides me a more parsimonious cosmology. I'd like to suggest that theists and deists remember it's "a"_theism not "anti"_theism.

The God You Don’t Want

Some people shop for gods, most others have gods thrust upon them from birth, gods to whom they feel obliged to remain loyal, mainly and sadly due to peer pressure.

But whenever one is reflecting on whether the god one currently worships is the best, the most beneficial, the most deserving of worship – or when considering whether there are, in fact, better alternatives, one can use a kind of check list for surveying the qualities of the god one is currently saddled with – or the god one is considering adopting (..can one adopt a parent figure?)

One suggested check list is humbly supplied below, but it would perhaps be better for each of us to make our own list – or at least come up with supplements or substitutions. (Mose’s laws were chiseled in stone – but that was back when stone was cheaper than papyrus.)

1. Ask yourself “Is your current god similar in disposition to someone you know? A rich or powerful uncle or grandfather who is usually generous, humorous, but can turn spiteful or vindictive when he doesn’t get his way? Your own father – or the father you wished you had?”

Logically if you can’t admire your god, who can you admire? Your god ought to be the most patient, kind and generous imaginable – and not just an affable alpha-male who turns nasty when his children continue to misbehave. Drowning the world for its sins is the act of pique, to say the least! The Bible is full of stories of when God became angry. But how can you get mad unless you are unpleasantly surprised? A perfect all-knowing god surprised and enraged? A logical impossibility. The Bible’s god is Donald Trump, cool and all-knowing, always in control, but all too often forced to punish the disappointing when their shortcomings appear!

2. Do you require your god to have a face? A nose? A mouth? Two eyes? Would three eyes eliminate this god from consideration? Tentacles instead of arms? Egyptians once happily worshipped ram-headed and crocodile-headed gods. Why can’t we in the West today? Hindus continue to love Ganeesh, not despite, but perhaps because of his trunk! If God can create a creature a strange-looking as an octopus – think of it! Eight arms! Suction cups! Squirts ink! Changes colors! Can slip through a bottle neck! Poisonous! If God can create something so bizarre and alien to us, what shape and appearance would God choose for himself? Surely a w.a.s.p.-like Charleton Heston-type would be insufficient and highly unlikely???

3. Must your god have a gender? Is a beard really necessary? Must your god resemble a patriarchal male in order to hold your respect – or a wise earth mother? What about Elvis sideburns? (When you picture Jesus do you imagine him as far more physically attractive and far less sarcastic than the average Jewish male?) Does your god just happen to have your skin color?

4. During the English War of the Roses (1455-1487), which side was God on? Which side were you rooting for? Does it matter? Is it enough to suppose that God is always on the side of the underdog or at least the side that didn’t start it? Do you require your god to take sides in all wars – or remain neutral? (If God chooses to take an interest in some wars but not others, is it a sign of attention deficit?) Can you live with the notion that there may be a creator who doesn’t care a whit who amongst his creations lives or dies, or how they live or die, and has no interest in punishing or rewarding behavior? A god that is impartial and indifferent, regarding us as no more special or necessary than cockroaches? Can we in fact be more interested in morality than God is?

5. Do you require your god to have motives and plans that we can not only glimpse and understand, but approve of? For example, would you love and respect a god who created the earth and mankind – and has been patiently waiting for us to reach 20 billion – so that He can then feed us to His true favorites on the planet Belso?

6. Do you require your god to perform magic tricks occasionally? Walk on water? Turn water to wine? Raise white tigers and train them to jump through fiery hoops in Las Vegas? Must your god be flamboyant? Ballsy? Donald Rumsfeld or Alan Alda? Martha Stewart or Madonna? The sweetness of Teller combined with the sadism of Penn?

7. Do you want or need a god simply because you can’t wrap your mind around the possibility that the universe is the result of something and not someone? That there has never been a conscious plan for you or anyone else? Do you require a Man With a Plan?

8. Do you find it impossible to believe that human beings are capable of behaving kindly and decently in a universe without a conscious god who punishes and rewards? He knows when you’ve been sleeping – he knows when you’re awake. Would you behave much worse than you already do if you began to believe there are no cosmic eyes watching you? Do you really want a god like Judge Judy?

9. Do you require a god to take credit for the good stuff - and a devil to take the blame for the bad? If God created Satan, surely God can uncreate or change his nature? Unless of course God needs a fall guy to take the blame. An enforcer? If you’ve been bad God “renders” you to hell just as Rumsfeld boxes and ships off the despised to Syria and Bulgaria for waterboarding?

10. If you are a woman, is your perfect god a nearly - but not completely sexless male figure, a Richard Chamberlain? A male figure who never thinks of sex but just wants to cuddle? For 2,000 years millions of frustrated Catholic women have lusted after the parish priest simply because they wish to believe he is incapable of lusting back or any other heinous form of male deceit. Is your god the one-of-a-kind male – the pure and shining ideal - the only man that can be trusted?

11. Do you absolutely require life after death? Heaven or Hell? Disneyland or Auschwitz? Do you imagine that Heaven is some kind of gated community – and do you secretly fear that God may be letting in riff-raff - if He hasn’t had the sense to set up some kind of platinum card system to keep the good but poor and boring people from trying to mingle with or stalk the better, richer more interesting, more important residents? And if you do require eternal life, what do you hope to do with your time – when you are unable to find anything interesting to do now on a rainy Sunday afternoon? Aren’t you already sick of repeating your jokes and stories? How much will you be repeating during the next trillion trillion trillion millennium? Especially when there are no more fresh and juicy murders or sins to gossip about?

12. Admittedly we are often told by clergy that the pleasures of Heaven will be different than earthly pleasures, pure pleasures, superior pleasures. But if you have been purified to such a degree that you no longer long for - nor appreciate sex, chili dogs, heavy metal music, muscle cars, Terminator movies – or any other cheap but delicious pleasures – just who is being admitted to Heaven? Certainly not you, as you are the sum of your pleasures. The new purified you will be as different to the present you as a total stranger would be. God may as well as make a robot copy of you without a personality and usher the –yes, soulless – copy through the Pearly gates in your place. If Heaven is to be without familiar pleasures, familiar faces or a familiar feeling of time, then it will be an alien place indeed, built perhaps only for Newtons and Einsteins who could possibly thrive on pure thought – though I imagine that even Einstein appreciated a beer or a good steak once in a while. If God is a foe of earthly pleasures He had better have some mighty interesting substitutes waiting for us. But I suspect that the equivalent of one endless eternal mental orgasm might begin to seem trivial and tiresome after just a few millennia.

Matt:

Morality existed LONG before Judaism, Christianity or Islam were created. Morality is not the creation of religion. Morality is the set of rules that must be followed for civilization to exist. Read the code of Hammurabai and tell me it isn't so.

I am all for the first amendment. I think religion and God is a personal issue not a national issue. Personal religious beliefs influence how one envisions God, although "God" in any religion is "Perfect". That perfection is bent to suit personal gains, ultimately affecting the very perfection we all try to believe in! The reason given by so many for their religious beliefs, "becuase it is written in the Book and is God's Word", avoids thinking that the possibility exists that whoever actually wrote the "word" down after hearing it from "God" first, may have inserted his/her own interpretation of the "Word of God". Over time this may acquire additional layers of different interpretations, like a story changing slowly over time, having passed though a few people since each one adds a bit of spice to make it more tantalizing or more suited to personal gain! So it follows that there is a distinct possibilty that the "word" itself may have changed from the very "original" one and has been used over time to fight and kill and hurt others. Unfortunately the fact that these actions thus violate the very basis of "God" as being the "perfect one" is lost. People of all religions throughout world history have proven through far too many sectarian and interreligious conflicts that no people have been above this flaw. Since a nation is a mixture of people of different faiths, keeping a nation secular is important since we then do not hurt anyone's faith and in reality honor everyone's "God". It is therefore essential and absolutely necessary that the First amendment be not corrupted by a few for personal power for national good.

Christians should be very careful what precedence they set. Their religion may be dominant in the US today, but lots can happen in a hundred years. If you break down Thomas Jefferson's "wall" between church and state you open the path for other religions to hold sway as they become more prevalent and, it's possible, dominant.

I am a conservative in that I say we should conserve our Constitution exactly like it is today. Christians need to internalize their morals and live by them without making changes to our Constitution to legislate their particular set of rules.

Matt...Your "if God doesn't exist,then every thing is permissible"statement implies that non-theists have no basis for morality.I disagree.How about this,"for a person of faith everything is permissible (no matter how aweful)as long as it's done in the name of God".Take a look at the history books for an infinite number of horrifying examples.People are good or bad regardless of whether they are theists or non-theists.Good people find reasons in the Bible for being good ,and bad people find support in the Bible for doing terrible things. Goodness is totally independent of religion.

Which is more believable: That a supernatural entity we call "God" created all of the cosmos and all life and that he somehow had a son--presumably in some immaculate supernatural way--and that having created Man at the fulness of all of his creations suffered remorse at the vileness of his cration, thus offering up one last hope--to send his son on a mission of mercy to save mankind from the awful fate of being plunged into the depths of Hell--a place he had already sent one of his more rebellious angels and his foillowers.

Or, that life arose on earth just as the cosmos itself arose: out of the chaos and flux of all of the unimaginably complex reactions, interactions and unfoldments of elements, chemicals, gases, molecules and other "starstuff" and that part of the evolution of life resulted in a complex creature called man who ultimately reached a level of intellect that allowed him to question his own origins?

Which is more believable: That Jesus is a supernatural being whose father sent him to earth on a mission to save mankind from some predetermined fate, or that he was a member of an advanced alien race who somehow impregnated a human female for their own obsure purposes, maybe as part of some plan to control man's progression on this planet--to speed up their development from time to time.

Who Knows? Both propositions are somewhat fantastic. Yet believing Christians easily laugh at the fantastic nature of the alien hypothesis without once thinking about how fantastic their own theory sounds.

The first and last rule of Nietzsche scholarship is, if you're trying to prove a point, find at least three instances where he contradicts himself. And his philosophizing goes much deeper and soars much higher than any one cherry-picked passage.

http://members.aol.com/lrdetrigan/private/philxian.txt

The bleakness that accompanies atheism is the recognition that those who murder in the name of some supernatural are eternally benighted--no one god will prevail. Other than that, though, life is rosy when you don't need fear of eternal damnation in order to live a just and moral life.

Christians have been here since the inception of this country. Infact all of the founding Fathers believed in God. The struggle of church in state has only come about recently - when all the athiests (like yourself) decided to destroy what was already in place and works. There was a comprimise, there was an understanding, until people like you born in a modern society already established are bent on destroying your own freedom by dividing your country men. You (daniel c dennett) are a missionary for the fragmentation of this country, you expouse your fables as certanties and do it with with as much zeal as any missionary of any denomination or religion. You contradict yourself - "if ain't broke don't fix it", well it seems like everyone like you wants to fix something that isn't or ever has been broken - like taking the 10 commandments from the supreme court, no prayer, etc. It is people like you that want to convert everyone to your religion - nihilism.

Let others beleive. Truly serve your country by doing something - not only by typing something.

Matt Williams:
DCD,

For all of your credentials, you still don't get it! Why should any-one care if our democratic society succeeds or not if they are atheists? Democratic society has a meaningful foundation only upon a transcendent and theistic tradition. If God doesn't exist,
anything is permissible. Therefore, you've got it backwards. The ONLY way a democratic society can work is upon a society with a sufficient philosophical foundation for morality, virtue, and truth. Anything less is wishful thinking.

Matt Williams

Ha! Bwaahahahaahahahaha!

Don't get it? Got it backwards? Wishful thinking?

Brother, you need to wipe the film from your eyes (and the mind they inform), stand up, walk to your bathroom mirror, and take a long honest look into your own eyes.

Your entire statement is laughable in the extreme.

Point by point, here's what I see:

"...Democratic society has a meaningful foundation only upon a transcendent and theistic tradition.."

Huh? Many despots in completely non-democratic societies have relied on the same argument. Transcendant, theistic traditions are exactly what led Europe into the dark ages (and the associated crimes, ignorance, filth, brutality, treachery, torture and slaughter of that period). Transcendant, theistic traditions are what the Taliban is based on. Democratic society owes its existence to the Enlightenment, which is grounded, in no small part, on the rejection of the concept of an influential deity.

"...Why should any-one care if our democratic society succeeds or not if they are atheists..?"

Why would they NOT care?

"...If God doesn't exist, anything is permissible..."

This one's a hoot! Well, if god does exist (and I'm assuming you believe he does), it seems like just about anything goes, any damned way. Murder? Yup. Genocide? Yup. Cursin', gamblin' and fornicatin'? Check. We've got it all, and its firmly rooted in our glorious "Judeo/Christian" value system and our firm belief that if god wasn't there, things would be even worse (don't get me started on THAT). If anything, pulling out the "God" card allows one to justify one's actions as extensions of a higher, more moral being, and sets the stage for more harm than good to be done for/to one's fellow man.

And the kicker:

"...The ONLY way a democratic society can work is upon a society with a sufficient philosophical foundation for morality, virtue, and truth...."

Please, show me the basis for and examples of a "foundation for morality, virtue, and truth" in any theistic religion or ideology. Morality, Virtue, and Truth are burned at the stake of religious belief.

Oy.

The only problem I have with people putting their religion before the democratic process is that they invariably beleive that their religion is right, and all others are wrong.

Our government is predicated on the proposition that all religions may be wrong, therefore we should not place any one over the other.

People choose their religions based on their, or their parent's, personal values. Different religions promote different value sets; and many are in opposition to each other. This religious divisiveness is such a strong barrier to people living peaceably together that our founding fathers deliberately chose to remove religion as a control of our government. Which is one of the reasons we've gotten along with one another as well as we have as a nation-empire. One need only look to the Middle-East of today, or European countries of the recent past to see how allowing religious beleif to rule the government causes violent disintegration of that government and the country.

I hold, like many of our founding fathers, a fear and dread of those who would impose their FAITH by the force of government. They were not ignorant of the role religion had played in many wars that decimated as many of the European population as any plague. I emphasized FAITH because much of the problem stems from the fervently religious of any ilk who take that FAITH and assume it to be KNOWLEDGE. Therein lies the biggest problem. What you believe, what you have FAITH in is not my KNOWLEDGE. If your FAITH inspires you to witness to others, fine. But if you cannot by the persuasion of your FAITH and the life you live under that, sway others, you have no right to impose your FAITH on others, simply because you have failed in your efforts at persuasion. This must remain a tenet of our form of democracy. All may harbor the FAITH of their choice, believe in what is best for them, but when you find that FAITH is turning into KNOWLEDGE, you have placed yourself above all others, as though you are the arbitor of the ultimate TRUTH, and that, last time I looked, is a sin. So to the fervently religious who insist on bring their brand of religion to government, go find a dark closet, pray to your God, and listen for that still, small voice of forgiveness for your assuming that you know what is right and best for all.

Matt writes:

"Democratic society has a meaningful foundation only upon a transcendent and theistic tradition. If God doesn't exist,
anything is permissible."

This is based on the absurd premise that morality is a creation of religion. As an atheist, I consider it my moral responsibility to point this out.

Thank you, Mr. Dennett, for articulating so well my own beliefs and opinions. I couldn't get through most of the posts, but your common sense and purposeful thought is appreciated.

Yes, the US is a Christian country. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with both and eye on that fact and an eye on preventing the types of religious conflicts that existed in the England from which they had separated. While no law was to be made favoring one religion, it never appeared to be their intent to disallow the public practice of religion. Chaplins in legislatures and bibles in courtrooms attest to that. Laws legislating Christian morality were allowed to stay on the books for years. A few still stand.
But over time, a new group of people have come to interprete the Constitution differently. The drift from there being no law to establish a religion to there being no law to establish a religious principle (like "Blue" laws) has been a probably positive change for American mores. But each such change comes at a price. I am very wary of any attempt to legislate morality. This is the strongest argument aganist those in the Middle East who wish to set up Islamist Republics. The effect of the previous government on the people of Afghanistan is a documented example. At the same time this example should be understood by those American evangelicalist who advocate similar control of morality by our government.

As Dr. Dennett points out, "Atheism is one of the live rails of American politics--touch it and you're toast." Well, it's even worse than that. In 1908, William Howard Taft was elected President. According to Wikipedia, "In religious beliefs, Taft was a Unitarian. He once remarked, 'I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.'" Imagine a national political figure making such a statement today: an otherwise moral, upright, and religious person who dared to disbelieve in Jesus as God! Anathema! How far we've come (or, rather, regressed) in only a century.

Here is the problem I have with Christianity: The notion that Jesus Christ is a supernatural entity who came to earth 2000 years ago on a mission from his Father to provide salvation, eternal life and a passport to Paradise for all mankind seems to me a ludicrous proposition. If Jesus were such an entity on such a mission, why at that particular point in human history. It seems to me that such information should have been made clear to us from the beginning. Why was the Son of God not present in the Garden of Eden? Why was Adam and Eve, and the subsequent prophets not informed of such a shattering reality so central to mankind's future?

Why were all of those civilizations before the advent of the Hebrew race not paid a visit by the Son of God to inform them of this good news so that they may have been given a pathway to this salvation? Think of all of the passionate devotions of those ancient cultures and peoples to their repective Divinities who had no concept that there was only one God and he had a Son and that the only possible way to avoid the yawning maw of Hell was to accept him and all of his teachings. If such a thing were true, it seems to me that such a shattering piece of information would have been given to the confused peoples of the earth at the earliest possible date.

Look. This is all nonsense folks. I appreciate the value of religion in our lives as a priceless tool for educating us on how to live good, decent lives. But all of this mysticism we invest in Jesus is little differnt than the imagined mystical powers the earliest aborigines invested in the sticking of a bone through one's nose to keep out evil spirits. It derives from the same ignorance and superstition.

Joshua:

We're not afraid of the unicorns, we're afraid of the people who beleive in them and think everyone else should. YOU are real, aren't you?

Insightful viewpoint, and this compliment comes from a rightward-leaning Christian. We all need accept the fact that we live in a pluralist world and learn to deal with each other humanely. I fear that the most zealous adherents of any belief system (whether atheists, Christians, Muslims, or Hindus) often forget the common good.

….In the new beginning is the word….

Until the Jews admit they are not the only Chosen People…

Until the Christians admit that Jesus is but a Prophet…

Until the Muslims admit there are no Virgins in Heaven…

Until President Bush admits that war on Iraq was Revenge for his father…

There Will be no Peace on Earth

Dennet does not raise a candle. Atheism has nothing to offer except bleakness.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?

— Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann

I am often given to wonder what would happen if our present civilization were completely obliterated in some sort of cosmic cataclysm that left only most well constructed edifices as traces that we actually existed. I wonder if the next civilization that develops over the millenia would follow a similar trajectory. I wonder if religions would be once again organized in the varying cultures of that civilization as they struggle to make sense out of the existence in which they find themselves.

Or on the contrary would they develop in a completely different way, devoting themselves to a more rational scientific culture with the goal of tryying to avoid the fate of that civilization that they are finding traces of and evidence of the way that civilization ended.

This is all speculation of course. And that is the point. Religious belief seems to discourage healthy speculation or the origins of our existence preferring instead to deliver unprovable certitudes and harsh judgements on those who do not invest in those certitudes.

It seems increasingly likely that pluralistic democracy will not survive the continued onslaught of our superstitious and irrational origins. Technologically we're advanced, but
today's incarnation of the Shaman and Witch Doctor still hold sway over the uncritical masses.

The Christian Bible states quite plainly: "God is love." I Jn 4:16. This message is repeated in various forms over and over throughout the New Testament. Anyone speaking for or against Christianity should realize that this is the central tenet of the faith, and in acknowledging this fact, and making it the primary focus of one's life, most of our worldly problems would be solved. Idle discussions about the actions of purported believers should not distract from this fact.

Mr. Dennett, a well thought and insightful comment. There are many out here in the wilds of America that perceive religion in politics as the most dire threat to democracy today. Our founding fathers wanted secular government for a reason -- humans have a long and brutal history of committing violence and stupidity in the name of belief. ANY belief. A fundamental problem no one wants to address is that both Islam and Christianity, the two most practiced religions in the world are exclusionary at their cores. Judaism is to an extent exclusionary too in that all these system claim exclusivity to understanding the mind of a god. That is extreme anthropomorphic arrogance. A god by definition would be incomprehensible to a human. Both claim that it is their duty to convert and history has shown both religious persuasions will resort to violence to do so. Arrogance and hypocrisy if you buy that God by any name is love and is seen in the angels of our better natures. Law needs to be rational and secular if humanity is to have any chance at long term survival. A zealot in the White House has brought us disaster and to the brink of global thermonuclear war. Time to keep religion at home and at the church-mosque-temple where it belongs and away from the principles and practice of secular democracy and worry about good governance for all, not just the few. History tells many stories of radical minorities trying to impose their belief and wills upon unwilling peoples. The outcomes run the gamut from anarchy to revolution but the outcome is always paid in blood.

I heartily agree that the country needs to remember the First Amendment and that we are (supposed to be) a nation of different, coexisting faiths. (It wasn't in the original Constitition; thus "Amendment.") Yes, this country was founded on religious freedom...but for a defined few. The Native Americans were not part of that elite group. An invasion and slaughter AND coercion were used to convert the savages...hmm, very much like Iraq. The colonists wanted a new world and land. Oil is the desired commodity in the Iraq war. Before you get upset, I DO support the troops. I am a Vietnam era vet. I support the war in Afghanistan as the "War on Terror;" that's where Bin Laden was and probably still is. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The administration has turned a falsely-initiated invasion for WMDs into a paternalistic helping hand to destroy the despot and save the people (after leveling the housing and infrastructure). Along the way, the idea of converting Iraq to democracy became the reason for the continued military presence. Let's see - forced democracy after bombing the people who already lived in fragile existence of religious and ethnic discord. War to force political and religious views on another group - is this what the tenets of faith in God (Allah, Jehovah, etc.) are about?

The Great Paradox: Freedom of religion can only prevail in a secular state.

Candide, I think the principle of evangelism does not respect people's personal boundaries. But whatever your own opinions of other people's religious beliefs, I think it's rude to tell other people that their beliefs are mere superstition. You have a right to do so, but what purpose does it serve, other than to provoke people unnecessarily? I have my own opinions about different religious doctrines, but I don't expect anyone to care about those opinions.

Phil,

Why this attachment to European Christian roots? Are we not a new people? Why such longing looks back to a time and place that no longer exist? Can we not invent ourselves anew, as a conscientious but not overtly religious people? I'm sure The Good Lord would appreciate our efforts in this more inclusive effort than using his kindly name to oppress and impose.

I'll take a secular government giving me the benefit of the doubt any day over a European Christian theocracy. We had one back in the day, remember - the one run by the Puritans, which proudly presented us with the Salem witch trials, shunnings, and the State of Rhode Island.

Besides, I don't understand how offering the shiny oasis of democracy to the Iraqis will magically get them to be as middle-class, tolerant, and self-interested as a society needs to be for such a form of government to work. In a poverty-stricken environment newly released from dictator-induced secret police, where you have nothing left but your religion to fight for and your life to give, democracy cannot find a foothold. Their country was mostly destroyed; their utilities bombed out of commission, their public services never fully restored, their educated public servants fled. As a result they are have reverted to a tribal survival mode, with ancient allegiances to kin and sect that our people opted OUT of by moving here. Democracy requires a group of equals, or at least people who long to be equal. The ancient Greek democrats only let their property-owning men vote and contribute to their discussions, but they were all equals among themselves...

Oh, and A. Thorsten P., LOVE your use of subjunctive. ; )

Religion is just a set of rules based on a belief. Christians believe that everyone sins, and that the only God's grace rescues us from it's yoke. ALL major religions believe in "do onto others as you would have done to you." Don't judge any religion on a few fanatics. Religion is not driven by fear, that is done by a the few who want to control. Athiests and agnostics think religious people are weak, but actually it't the exact opposite. I don't expect others to be honest and moral with me because it is against man's nature. What I do expect is for God to take care of me NO MATTER what anyone does to me. Those that worry about terrorists and security are those that are driven by fear.

Mr. Dennett

Thank you for raising an eloquent candle in these times of great darkness.

God did not create religion, man did. God created the church, he did not say it was Catholic or Muslum, or anything else. Religious denominations are simply groupings of people who believe basically the same thing. Over 90% of those who claim a religious affiliation, do so because of the family and neighborhood they were born into, not because a concious decision. Brain washing at its worst. Any one of us could have just as easily been born Muslum as Christian or Jewish or a Budist.

Understanding the above leads me to one conclusion, the laws our country should be put before an single religion. On a personal level, religion has its place as a vessel of faith to God for an individual, but as an overriding determination of law of the land, it sucks.

Faith loses its legitimacy when it is counterproductive to the best interests of society. The prevailing attitude that places one’s stated religious beliefs “above the fray” is misguided. It is time for religious views to be placed under the same scrutiny we reserve for other domains.

Fear of upsetting “persons of faith” is placing a handicap on scientific and medical advances, as well as interfering with the basic freedoms we have come to enjoy as Americans.

Ideology increasingly displaces legitimate scientific research. People making far-reaching decisions, at the highest levels, are chosen for their ideological purity rather than their professional qualifications. All too often, decisions appear to be made to appease a vocal minority.

On September 27, 2006 the newly formed Scientists and Engineers for America (SEFORA) launched the website, www.sefora.org.

Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research. (SEOFA website)

We close the door on the results of legitimate scientific inquiry at our own peril.

My hat is off to Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. It is time for the rest of us to “come out of the closet” and bring the United States in line with the secular views of most other western democracies. We avoid critiquing religious fate at our own peril.

Nicole, have some apple juice and a Chips Ahoy.

Nicole:

..."Just because you haven't seen it, does that mean it doesn't exist?...

No. But, the fact that you claim to have seen something that isn't there is certainly cause for us to doubt your sanity. Your statement presupposes that those who haven't "seen" (found) god haven't taken the numerous opportunities offered to them by the various religions to take a look - we have looked, diligently, but we do not see that which the "faithful" claim is obviously there.

Honesty is a virtue. Honesty to one's self is key to honesty in all matters. Who is more honest - the person who claims to see, but does not, or the person who can't bring themselves to participate in the self/group-delusion/lie (under the threat of exile or worse)?

"...those who believe in God and are Christians, which is not a religion by the way..."

You're joking, right? In a sense, you're correct. Christianity is not a religion, it's a political device reliant on a false pretext/premise to prey on the inherent need for the individual to belong to a tribe (either believe and belong, or disbelie and be shunned). This tendency towards tribalism is brought to the forefront by your next statement:

"...Next, you claim: "...morality began with religion..."

Bunk. Morality, like religion, is an inherent tendency of man. In most cases, morality is culture/situation specific. Religion may be many things, but morally correct is seldom one of those things. Now, I ask you to take a look at the history of the world as it relates to religion (including Christianity), and tell me if you see what I see.

And finally, to answer your question, "...but if you have nothing higher than the self to believe in, then what is to keep the self in check?...",

Earlier in your diatribe, you point out that it's fear - not love of god - that keeps the "moral" person in line. Religion is driven by fear, not love.

The answer to your question: Personal integrity and honesty to one's self in all things will keep the truly observant person on the correct side of the moral divide. If I am so weak in my personal conviction and integrity that I let the threat of possible personal harm (in the "afterlife", no less) by and unseen and apparently confused and incoherent deity, should I not conform to that alleged deity's need to be worshiped blindly, I have placed myself in an environment that allows the commission of every type and degree of immorality. In short, I have been intelectually dishonest with myself, and no man should expect honesty, morality, or just treatment from me.

Dr. Dennett,

Thanks for this article, again promoting the rational over the supernatural. THAT's what our nation was founded on. That and a belief that all people are equal and can live together no matter what their faith. The argument that Dr. Dennett is using is that faith should not trump humanity. The destruction caused by people who band together in the name of their dieties to exterminate/subjugate/convert their enemies is quite real.

As for religion being the only basis for morality, I would suggest that people read a little. Humans were moral long before they had established religions --that was the only way that the hunter/gatherers could cooperate. Morality is hard-wired into our genes.

About the unicorns: it's certainly true that unicorns can't hurt you, but a nation filled with true belieivers can be truly threatening.

Promoting Faith: when I see something about a Missionary Society, doesn't matter which one, I laugh. Missionaries are those who think they can convert people happier than they are to their own ridiciulous set of superstitions. Just imagine, converting happy pagans to the stupidities of the Baptists or Catholics or Mormons!

I think it's wonderful so many intelligent people are throwing their two cents into this discussion. I got only a penny so I'll keep it short. Instead of all bickering about what the awesome Dennett wrote.. WHY does this "On Faith" section even exist? How annoying is this? Who cares? People still actually BELIEVE this stuff? I didn't know. I mean, I remember in college, there'd be the Christian Fellowship.. the Korean Christian Crusade for Christ.. but they all struck me as cookie parties, ice cream socials and chances to watch "The Passion of da Christ". My only point is, it's annoying to see a huge section called "On Faith" and then tease us intellectuals by having Dennett in there. Now we HAVE to click in and read!! Why couldn't you just keep it with religious people, saving us a few clicks. Thank you.

If you not a Chiristan, you don't belong in the USA. America is for Christians!

Nicole:

I believe that people can have "good" morals without resorting to a divine source. There is something called the "conscience" which is not exclusive to only those who believe in an omnipotent creator. The conscience involves empathy, compassion, and love. Those things are awakened by the love of parents and siblings, the relationship with animals, with friends, and one day with a lover. Is there a divine source for all of this? Perhaps. I don't have a problem with people believing that. However, i think that your "fear that something will happen to (you) if (you) don't act in a fashion that is morally acceptable", is not much different from the fears instilled by any society that imposes a code of behavior of on it's members- true since the beginning of culture. The rulers of societies have always had a wonderful knack of associating themselves with God, so as to get people to tow the line. I do think there is valuable knowledge and valuable models within religious schools of thought. I personally think there is a great deal of wisdom in Zen Buddhism. It's a religion of sorts, more of a philsosophy I guess.
I have a nice quote here:
"We can’t expect to realize God with our thoughts or by unquestioned belief. But when we can become empty of self, the question of God disappears altogether. We call this Divine Union or Samadhi."
That's my kind of divine knowledge!

Can you put your religion before your country and still be a good citizen? I would say, "Yes." There are Christians who are motivated by their faith to be law-abiding, tax-paying, honest citizens, yet they choose not to go to war . . . for ANY country. They have often been imprisoned by nations on both sides of a war for that reason. Their successful arguments in the Supreme Court have strengthened the rights of free speech for all Americans. They are Jehovah's Witnesses, and if everyone gave "Caesar's things to Caesar, but God's things to God," as they try to do, you could call a war for which no one would show up.

Matt,
"If God doesn't exist, anything is permissible"? Where did you pull that from? How did you get to decide that a god is the default and only source of morality.

For Mary...

I recently left the reserve because I don't agree with our being in Iraq, and don't want to go off to fight for ever-changing reasons. I'm not sure how your husband ties the US Invasion of Iraq to religious freedom. I never found my ability to worship (or not worship) threatened...has he? By Saddam Hussein? By the Iraqis? By Osama bin Laden even? The answer is no.

I think your husband is just grasping for reasons to justify our country's actions in Iraq and this mythical threat to religious freedom is one of the cheapest ways to make people feel passionately about staying in Iraq. Tie it to religious freedom and few will have the guts to speak out against it.

DCD,

For all of your credentials, you still don't get it! Why should any-one care if our democratic society succeeds or not if they are atheists? Democratic society has a meaningful foundation only upon a transcendent and theistic tradition. If God doesn't exist,
anything is permissible. Therefore, you've got it backwards. The ONLY way a democratic society can work is upon a society with a sufficient philosophical foundation for morality, virtue, and truth. Anything less is wishful thinking.

Matt Williams

I want to state right off the bat that I respect your opinion. Everyone is entitled to one. However, I find it interesting that you are almost scared of the Christians in this nation because you are an atheist. I just wonder why you are scared of someone, be it Christ or God, that you do not believe. It would be like me being scared of unicorns which makes no sense because I belief that there never was nor will be a unicorn. I think it is about time we drop the debate of faith and politics. The seperation of church and state has nothing to do with the seperation of God (or faith) and state. It is about time Christians, Atheists, People of all sexual orientations and beliefs join together to fight for what is right. What is right? A fight for the reestablishment of morals. Our country is crumbling under promisquity and weak parenting. I have been living in Washington D.C. this fall and have seen how the AIDS epidemic is 12 times greater here than it is anywhere else in the country. It is about time we stand together, all of us, no matter what faith, and struggle for those who are hurting and dying. God, through Christ, not only came to show his love to the world, but to leave an example of how to live. Jesus was just as concerned with the salvation of souls as he was the helping of the poor and the widow. Whether you believe he was a prophet or God, he is an example of how we should work together to better the lives of those less fortunate than we are.

I've questioned the fundamental ideas of religious faith for as long as I can remember. As a child I would sit in church with my family and wonder what the big fuss was about. The idea of a supreme being "God" and Jesus as Messiah/Savior/Son of God/etc didn't make sense to me then, and after years of thinking on the topic, still seems kinda' silly. I think religion is a crutch for people who feel small by themselves and need to feel a part of something larger to bring more "meaning" to their lives.

That said, I don't agree with those who say the world would be a better place without religion. I think things would be pretty much the same but with lines drawn between groups for different so-called reasons.

Dear Santa,

I want an xbox and a pony and a race car, and a box of coal for my little brother. Thanks Santa, see you soon.

My husband is a military reservist. He has served in most of the recent military conflicts in one way or another, including Iraqi Freedom. He could have retired from the military a number of years ago, which I wish he had. When asked why he continues to serve, one of the reasons he gives is, "because I believe in fighting to preserve the right to worship or not to worship, to believe or not to believe (in God)." My husband and I are Christians, but we fervently believe that the right to choose not to subscribe to any religion must be protected. We have in the Middle East perfect examples of why you must protect everyone's right to worship or not worship as they please.

First of all the US government is a religion you can prove it to yourselves if you want there are many good books that will help you. Second for some of you who would say or think that God is a mystery then I say go out side and take a look. The world spins in perfect harmony. The sun rises and sets every day. The stars shine everything is explainable the only thing that is not is the word mystery. God creates everything so if he wants to just leave it alone then it is his right.

Give to Caesar the things that are Caesars' and to God the things that are God's. For many religion and politics go hand in hand. I believe Jesus got it right. The separation of church and state is a natural evolution of true christianity. By all means make informed moral choices, but start with oneself.

We are all of that which IS, has no name and cannot be known. All IS. Only infantile carbon based life forms believe themselves to be special, embued with talents far exceeding their place in the universe. These forms are no more than nutrient for other entities. A mere pebble has more meaning in the universe than any identifiable life form.

Daniell Dennet writes:

". . . we must each ask ourselves: do we put the welfare of the nation above the welfare of our particular religion? If you cannot answer Yes to that question, you should consider that you are not a good American, but a part of the problem: you are taking advantage of American religious freedom without being prepared to pledge your support to the principle that secures it."

Fair enough. What happens when religious believers manage to convince a majority of Americans to use the power of government to impose religiously prescribed practices on everyone, believers and unbelievers alike? Here are two examples.

A libertarian may believe that each of us is entitled to the fruits of his labor. If he feels like donating some of his wealth or income to the poor, the widows, the fatherless -- that's fine. But he is within his rights to keep it all for himself.

The Bible tells us otherwise. Is what the libertarian possesses really "the fruits of his labor" alone? "Beware . . . lest when thou hast eaten and art satisfied, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord . . . and thou say in thy heart: 'My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth.' But thou shalt remember the Lord . . for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth." (Deuteronomy 8:11-14, 17, 18)

Since it's not really all the fruits of your labor, it turns out that "If there be among you a needy man, one of thy brethren, which are in thy gates . . . thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from thy needy brother; but thou shalt surely open they hand unto him . . ." (Deuteronomy 15:7,8). And you'd better not afflict the widow, or the fatherless child: "If thou afflict them in any wise -- for if they cry at all unto Me, I will surely hear their cry -- My wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. (Exodus 22:22-23).

Once the Bible-believers can convince the democratically-elected legislature that everyone owes a duty to the widows and orphans, to the poor, to the aged and infirm and the crippled and disabled and the deaf, dumb and blind, the government can use force to take some of the fruits of the libertarian's labor away from him and spend it on welfare, old-age and disability payments, and the like. It's too bad if the libertarian doesn't believe in all those Bible quotes above. He has to pay, anyway.

A second example is our criminal justice system. Sometimes, killers get locked up for life. Sometimes, they get put to death. But nothing we can do to a killer, not even the death penalty, can ever bring his victim back to life. The way to save lives is to lock up as many potential killers as we can *before* they kill anyone.

Maryland has a "Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services." Now, "correction" is a concept based on such Christian values as "redemption" and "hope" and "rehabilitation." It's a fine concept as applied to shoplifters and petty drug dealers and the like. If one of these people is let out of prison after having been "redeemed" and "rehabilitated," and goes back to shoplifting or petty drug dealing -- well, that's a risk we ought to be willing to take. They don't really endanger the public safety.

Criminals who threaten death as part of their crimes are another story. They point a gun or a knife at someone and say, "Give me your money, or the keys to your car, or your body -- or else I'll kill you." And let's say they the victim of such armed robbery or armed carjacking or armed rape complies, and the criminal is caught and convicted. Public safety, based on common sense and experience with recidivism rates, tells us that if we let him out of prison while he is still young enough, strong enough, fast enough and rash enough to repeat his crime, it is quite likely that he will do so. And his next victim may not comply, or may comply too slowly with his demands, and he may use his deadly weapon to kill such a victim.

But we set him free anyway when his term is up, even though he may be in his twenties or thirties and fully capable of endangering the public again. To anyone who is not religious, this is as unimaginably preposterous as the idea of Zombies! If we're going to set him free while he still has his weapons of youth, speed, and strength, why not give him back his gun or knife as well when he goes out the prison gate?

Clearly, the Department ought to run two kinds of prisons. Experienced trial judges, elected and periodically re-elected by the people, ought to have the option of sentencing criminals either to a "corrections" prison which will try to rehabilitate them, or to a "public safety" prison which will keep him locked up until they are too old and feeble to repeat their crimes.

But as long as Christians can keep lawmakers believing that "hope" and "redemption" are more important than public safety, we will continue to see innocent victims killed by repeat violent offenders. And all of this because religious dogma has been ratified by a majority of voters and imposed on everyone, just as in the case of welfare programs for the poor, the widows and the fatherless.

Alexander, above, raises a good argument about politicking for the principles of one's religion being both valid and unavoidable. I don't feel Dennett was arguing that people should refrain from that. Promoting a gay-marriage ban, justifed by either social results or Biblical imperative, is fair game.
I took the lesson that, in order to support the right to politic on religious grounds we have to maintain a complete institutional indifference to a particular religion. The "putting religion first" move that worries him is more in the nature of Ten Commandments monuments or official prayer. It is the assumed "natural" presence of Christian features in official process that should worry Christians, since if one religion can dominate, another can replace it as dominator.
Only if no religion dominates are all religions protected.
I agree with many here that religion is logically weak (or plain nuts), but it's not going away. An evolutionary sociologist would note that to analyse religion's selective value we should look first at its effects on the individual, not on the group. It is clear that for the vast majority of life choices--Is it safe to cross the street? Should I buy that house? Does she like me?--religion is harmless, at worst. It is also clear that by sweeping away doubt and mandating a simple program of "work hard, make babies" it will replicate effectively.
It is at the level of very deep or fraught social issues, such as innovations in family structure or advances in medical intervention, that religion's effects may be dangerous, to the extent that they short-circuit the search for improvevents in life for all.
If we spot an incoming comet and my President feels it's God's Will that Earth should be hit, I will take it very personally.

Professor Dennett's essay is almost on target. His mistake is in equating American denominationalism with the role of Islam in an Middle Eastern state. Islam recognizes that final authority is God's and places this authority in the hands of a council of scholars, the elders and legal scholars of the community. The idea that the people are the final authority, the basic tenet of all Western democracy, is antithetical to Islam, where the people can't do anything that the council does not approve. To the extent that Islamic democracy is not an oxymoron, Iran is as good a case of an Islamic democracy as one could ask for: they have free elections, but the candidates must all be approved by the Iranian equivalent of the umma. Their parliament can pass laws, but those laws are subject to review by the religious council and can be overturned by the chief ayatollah.

The fact that the Bush White House lacks this fundamental understanding of Islamic political theory means that their Middle Eastern policies can only be ill-conceived or worse.

Herb Stahlke

The point of Jefferson's reference to a wall separating church and state in his letter to the Baptist organization was that the First Amendment establishment clause would guarantee freedom of religious belief. The "wall" metaphor was his interpretation of the establishment clause, and he had considerable hermeneutic authority. He, and most of the founders, had no interest in imposing a state religion. If they preferred a "constitutional faith," as Sanford Levinson put it, they meant essentially what Dennett means when he descries putting faith above allegiance to our liberal constitutional democracy. As Levinson has also pointed out, toleration may also be dangerous to democracy, as we see in the authoritarian, theocratic pressures coming from the religious right.

Dennett was making a political point, and not a metaphysical point about the connectedness of everything or the importance of religion to our commitment to liberty and equality. It is true that an element of our modern notions of liberty and equality is rooted in the reformation's insistence on the right of every individual to interpret the "text" (e.g. bible), and Jefferson's letter makes a similar point. But it does not follow that religion is necessary to our current understanding of those values.

I would like to note also that "atheist" (and I am one) just means literally "not a theist." So in a sense, the deist founders were atheists, as are people who have a general sense of our place in a cosmic spiritualism. None of these non-theistic views, in contrast to certain versions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have as an aim the securing of a theocratic state that would eliminate open expressions of other faiths as well as atheism (or agnosticism, whatever that is).

Americans will never go for this. The 1st amendment is paramount to everything else in this nation.
Terrorsts want war? They started it....

Very good advice but meaningless when it comes from those that not just pulverized an entire society but did so by emphasizing the ethnic and religious divides.

I have not read all the posts, although what I have read is sincerely interesting. I would like people to know that believing in God is an act of faith, but it is not always an act that comes from nothing. Just because you haven't seen it, does that mean it doesn't exist? There are many things scientists have yet to see, like dark matter, but they still believe in it. So just because you have been so unfortunate not to experience the presence of God, does not mean everyone who has is a wack job. Secondly, I believe the purpose of the article was to ask about those who put their religion before their country, not whether or not those who believe in God are insane. And yeah, I agree, that if your religion is asking for something potentially harmful to a good many people then no, it should not come first. However, if those who believe in God and are Christians, which is not a religion by the way, want to do something to help their fellow man, like running for president, then should they not be allowed to? Secularly, an atheist, or someone who is devoid of religious value, also lack the upbringing in morals. I am not saying they have no morals. But morality began with religion. So I find their morals questionable if they do not believe in God and have the fear that something will happen to them if they do not act in a fashion that is moraly acceptable. I am not saying follow a certain religion, but if you have nothing higher than the self to believe in, then what is to keep the self in check?

Israel's mad grab for land? If I recall, the lands they have occupied (and returned in some cases)came to them after armies from several Arab nations attacked them with the intent of destroying their nation. A nation that was recognized first by the Soviet Union.

The Palestinian diaspora came about because of the rejection of the UN plan for Palestine and an ill-placed confidence in the might of the Arab warrior. Those that left felt they would shortly be able to return. Even with that the Muslims still had Jerusalem,today's ultimate prize, until 1967

Maybe the Islamofascists should take a moment and think about Jerusalem being taken from them as a sanction for their choosing the violent side of Islam.

Why is it we tend to give great credence to an editorial just because the author has initials behind his name? I find a lot of postulating in this editorial but not a lot of deep thinking.

Reading this thread convinces me more than ever that organized religion -- all of it -- is a cultural parasite that is very very bad for its host. (I do not claim that this is not an original idea).

One of the things I find especially annoying is the idea that religious ideas are deserving of "respect" even if they suggest things like "our troubles emerge from the fact that a woman once ate an apple on the advice of a talking snake"; a concise rendering of the Christian concept of Original Sin. People are willing to kill each other over this kind of nonsense.

Reading these threads..gives me a headache. I can't believe some of the misquoted, non-understanding, lack of facts ever in response to ONE individuals idea. No wonder we're in the shape we're in!

Folks, you need to get back to basics. Some of you need to get a life. You will need it. If your wrong..your in deep trouble and if your right..I'm in deep trouble.

Wake up America!!!! We will never let "the chosen people" be attacked. Never..never and never. My last thought is..enjoy life..it's too precious to just let it hang in limbo with no meaning.

I applaud Prof. Dennett and those of like mind who seek to elevate the volume of discourse that stands to counterbalance the traditionally loudest philosophical camp touching on religion and government, the conservative evangelical Christians. This is not to say that I believe religion should be washed from public life or we, as Americans, should be publicly pressured to hide our religious proclivities, but rather to say that it is high time that those who recognize the hypocrisy of our nation demonizing those who follow fundamental concepts of Islam -- women wearing headscarves, belief in a particular version of an afterlife, a sense of religious duty -- or any other religion while simultaneously defending uniquely Christian fundamental concepts -- gays are evil, contraception is a sin, etc. -- not only in their personal lives but in our government (which would impose those beliefs by force of law on all Americans) gained some degree of political and intellectual respect. If more people had stood up to Hitler's "philosophy" despite the public pressure of Nationalism and the threat of real recrimination, the extremes of Nazism -- e.g., the Holocaust -- might have been averted. It is Prof. Dennett's intellectual courage that encourages me that, while his own complete worldview may not precisely align with my own, at least we may be able to avert the potential disastrous extremes of our nation's own charismatic fundamentalists. FINALLY, on the subject of Iraq and Islamofascism in particular, I do not see religion as the real cause, but, as it has always historically been, simply a useful means of motivation and rhetorical justification for more ingrained bigotry, revenge for perceived historical wrongs, and simple human exasperation that results from long-standing failure of economic, social, political, and even familial systems with no perceivable positive change in fortune in the near term. To seize on mere religious differences and to define these dangerous extremists by these theological differences is to only serve their very cause and to add fuel to the fire. Rather, we should be looking past the facade they themselves seek to use to draw a vivid line between them and us to focus instead on the very real "broken" systems that have led to their exasperation and susceptibility to recruitment by charismatic extremists who, individually, are driven by a personal sense of needing a "place in history" -- also called megalomania.

I believe that the article in question overlooks the complexity that is religion in its relation to the state. Dr. Dennett has simplified the manner in which one may relegate his/her faith into a particular space in his/her life, while holding a higher allegiance to the state in which he/she lives. This may be possible with a tradition that has been domesticated or one that shows no distinction between religion and state, but it has been my experience that most faiths hold a vision of what it means to be a nation. Further, it has been my experience that most people (at least in spoken word) hold their faith and the mores that have derived from this faith above all else. Now, I do not mean for this to devolve into a theocracy because that would only address one specific deity and one specific tradition of worshiping that deity. Rather, I believe it is imperative that every religious tradition acknowledge and affirm the other in a pluralistic view. Thus, the necessity becomes community and the recognition and honor of every person's voice and thought.

This is not the compartmentalization of faith and it is not the domestication of faith; this is the epitome of faith governed by love. And as the Apostle Paul wrote,

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

There is a point in one's faith development when the need to express one's conviction for conversion fades and is replaced by the desire to express one's conviction in love for the other with no other agenda. That is why I respectfully disagree with the professor, and would instead suggest that what our religious leaders must do is not designate a boundary in which religion may prosper for the individual, but lead us onward in thought, reflection, and contemplation, in love, justice, and hope, and perhaps most, in peace and humility. In doing so, our religious faiths may find rest not in regulating themselves, but in regulating our own self-interest. That, in my mind, is the ethos necessary for a proper democracy - the moment when shalom becomes not just a vision for the self, but for everyone.

Jan:

"A person who puts his or her religious values before the practice of democracy, however, should at the very least be respected for his or her courage and strength of will--not be banned from or in any way discriminated against in governmental elections."

Jan believes Osama bin Laden deserves our respect for his courage and strength of will.

The reason we are losing this war is because too many people use faith and religion as a political tool. If our Government really knew anything about how faith works, either here or in Iraq, we wouldn't be in this mess. Democracy is an important concept, but let us not kid ourselves, we do not live in a very democratic country. There is so much polarization that our government is in a state of gridlock. Our primary problem is not separation of church and state - its that politicians and media people think of themselves as Gods!

This is the most depressing comment thread I have ever labored through. Our country is riddled with half-wits.

Secularism is nothing but anti-Christian hate cloaked in silk. This has nothing to do with separation of church and state. The motivation of the “secularists” is simply not the protection of civil rights but the denial and removal of any hint that this nation was founded on European Christian values. You need not do anything except turn on the TV and you’ll see the anti-Christian propaganda spew forth.
Separation of Church and State does not mean the promotion of anti-Christian hate.
The first amendment applies not just to Atheists and Jews but to Christians as well.
The so-called majority have equals rights to display or promote their faith as any other believer or non-believer.

"By their fruits you shall know them." The fruits of Christo- and Islamofascists and Zionists is/are death and destruction. The problem in the Middle East/Northern Africa is Zionism and the US support of same. If it weren't for US support of Israel and their mad grab for land, 9/11 would never have happened. Americans bemoan the fact that Muslims call the US the great evil, yet the US policies in their part of the world proves them to be right.

Well, if only Philippines can separate the Church and the State (as it should be)then maybe we can move forward. If faith means goodworks and honesty, then what is happening now with Philippine politics - a Roman Catholic-dominated politics. Maybe, it's time for some deep reckoning, huh?

Michael:

You just succinctly espoused the position of jihadis everywhere.

THE ONLY PROBLEM IN THIS WORLD IS THE M/EAST

To place your country before your religion is really something no one should consider. The word " religion" comes from the Latin root meaning " to connect" so asking someone to put their country before their "connection" to the universe is absurd. So the question really is one of "how do you conceive of God" If your God encompasses all things it's impossible to place this before your country. It's like putting the cart before the horse. Alas, there are many who have a narrow view of their connection and there the problem arises that perception precedes the truth and a narrow view is imposed on all. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Doug, your claim that our democracy is based on protestantism is commonly used by evangelicals, and is completely false. The roots of our democracy (Democritus, 460 BC) influenced early protestants, as they influenced the Founding Fathers. But even the most casual reader of American History knows that those Fathers feared the influence of religion on the new American Democracy (“They (preachers) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live” - Thomas Jefferson). Professor Dennett's point in this article was that church and state ought to be separate; yet most of the comments posted here are religious rants that cloud the waters and obscure his very point.

Im 16 jay how about you????????? I dont believe in god but i believe that people need hope derived from other people - NOT PEOPLE LIKE YOU

Government should remain secular. Religion is an opiate of the masses. Poor people (people from the south) cling to it because it gives meaning and validation to their otherwise bleak and worthless lives. What a bunch of losers.

Mabey the problem is that you guys have a constitution that people in sharp suits can argue over rather than a no less codified but more gradual idea of what it means to be American.

Things will be ok - America is still a very young country - none of you guys ever think about that because of how BIG things are over there.

Many of the social constructs employed in the formation of The United States of America's democratic system were born out of the Reformation. The fact that synods, presbyteries, and essentially the empowerment of the layman of the congregation, was inherent in the creation of Prostestant churches (Lutheran and Reformed)led thereby to much of what became this representative Republican form of government. This is simply the nature of the roots of the people who created the legal framework of this country.

To think that all Faiths will blend neatly into this construct is to confuse Faith with Government. Not all Faiths are so cultivating of the worth of the Individual as is the Protestant Faith, either in the individual's relationship to their God or to each other. As a result, it is more incumbent on the respective Faith to adapt to this Republic than vice versa.

Given the chasms that exist between Faiths it does seem unrealistic that a multiplicity of all Faiths can exist in any democratic framework without erupting into physical conflict at some point. Lebanon is an excellent case in point. Even countries with long democratic histories such as France will likely be riven apart in the coming 50 years as natural Christian and Muslim divides grow more political with the rising percentage of the French Muslim population imposing its religious views through the ballot box.

The United States must remain true to its roots to retain continuity. That these roots are heavily predicated on Protestant Individualism has been the country's strength and should not be shorn for some confused concept of greater brotherhood that we wish existed but evidently does not.

I'd prefer to judge people by their observable actions, not by their invisible internal belief system. I care where they end up, not where they start or what label they use. I'd prefer someone with tolerance, honesty, integrity, humility, who was trustworthy, respectful of others, not paranoid and not quick to assign blame. I 'd like someone who believed in consequences and transparency and accountability, who didn't let their authority block their ability to listen well. These are generally the traits listed in FM 22-100, the US Army Leadership Field Manual, as well as in most religious creeds, as well as in the safety culture which is key to any high-stakes, high reliability organization. I believe that most Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, Democrats, and Republicans who have those traits, and each group has some fringe that does not share those traits, including those that want to use violence to impose their belief system on everyone else. There are even those who have let "Science" or "Freedom" or "Democracy" become religions. It may be best to keep our eyes open and brains engaged and judge each case on its merits, not on blind stereotypes.

Actually, I remember now, the line is from Jethro Tull.

Well if Jesus saves
He better save himself
From the gory glory-seekers
Who use His name in death.
(line from Uriah Heep song)

First, Professor Dennett: Thank you for bringing good writing and clear thought to this odd feature of WaPo. You've got the SBC guy beat by a country mile. Central to my civic education was the statement by my high-school poli-sci teacher: Democracy is our secular religion, the Constitution our Bible. And that's why i'm in law school now, though--considering the current administration--my course of study seems quaint.

Then to Ms. Wyffels: You, like many, are under the assumption that the pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution. No, they left England for Holland due to some persecution, then left Holland because they refused to assimilate and abhorred the plurality of the Dutch (thanks for New York, guys!). This is part of my heritage as the descendant of a Maflower Compact signatory, but the pilgrims wanted to be able to persecute others, otherwise they wouldn't have held the natives--and the Dutch--in such contempt. Religious freedom, my foot!

Finally to JP and others who think secularism both recent and extrinsic to democracy: The founders of this sometimes great nation were, by and large, hardcore deists. They weren't atheists in the modern sense, true, but when it came to religion and state, Federalist #51 put it best: "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Those subjunctives really put it into perspective, don't they?

Amen to that!

I'd also like to read author's comments , thoughts on the democracy? in israel. why people keep ignoring that country which is the root of all terrorism and wars.

It seems worth mentioning (since Mr. Dennett did not) that nowhere in the 1st amendment, the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence is the phrase "separation of church and state" used. It is a phrase spun by Thomas Jefferson in a personal letter to a Baptist organization quite a few years after the ratification of all those good documents mentioned previously.

It is also worth noting that secularism, as Mr. Dennett would define it, is its own political movement, and a modern movement at that. Secularism is not a founding principle of this country. It is not a founding principle neither of "democracy" (in its truest, idealistic definition) nor of American republican democracy in it is actual form. Further, it is not a condition precedent for either ideology.

I mention this not to disagree with Mr. Dennett's overall thesis about where the country is best off going. I am conflicted on that subject. But I do feel that a certain amount of revisionist history has permeated this debate. At no time in our past has the wall between church and state been absolute. Quite the contrary, the "adrift" separation he speaks of has never been stronger. The greatest proof of this is the fact that the status quo has shifted, causing those who used to be the status quo to go on the offensive (and fail, in most cases).

Dear Prof. Dennet

I am not an Atheist, at best (or worst?) a waffling Agnostic. For years I have been flabbergasted by the absence of thoughts such as you express in the public discourse. Your comments seem so obvious to me in the context of our Constitution that I can only assume that it has been fear that has prevented more people, especially those in the public eye, from expressing themeselves in similar ways as you have. That in itself is a rather ominous sign for our Democracy.
On one point however, I have a somewhat different point of view. When you demand that people put the interests of our nation above the interests of their particular religion, I think you are falling into the same trap as the religionists. By definition a religion's interests are independent of a democratic nation's interests. If I am indeed a devoted follower of a religion in the USA and as such am subjected to ridicule or attacks from those who hold different views, it may make me feel uncomfortable or even despondent but it doesn't change anything in my beliefs. It is not the interests of my faith that have to be defended but rather the interests of an organization, in this case, organized groups of followers of a religion. Charles Wilson was not concerned about the welfare of the GM assembly line worker, he was concerned with GM as an organisation that, if protected, could continue to provide him with privileges others did not enjoy. He was attempting to put the interests of the GM Organization above those of the nation in placing them on at least equal basis. I don't think teh Falwells, Robertsons, Ahmadinejads etc. of the world are concerned that their own personal faiths could be threatened by disagreements, but the power they exercise through their organizations certainly could. It comes back to politics, the politics of power, not those of morality and here we join up again, the separation of Church and State. I don't feel threatened by any faith, but I definitely feel there is a great threat, on many levels, from religious movements that adopt the mechanisms of politics to gain strenght.

I thank you for your opening comments to this discussion.

There is an excellent article on the corrosion of religious freedom in the US armed forces in Salon yesterday: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/13/weinstein/

I'm not sure I share Prof. Dennett's view that the US is the main beacon of democracy in the world anymore --- many people are holding it up as an example of how things can go wrong! There are other countries with older (e.g. the UK) and more contemporary (much of the world) versions of democracy. However, I do think it would be both a great shame and very dangerous if America became more totalitarian, which is certainly what the current administration has been trying to do. Hopefully the new congress can find a way to reverse such events and block them from happening again.

Interestingly, (also in Salon) Sydney Blumenthal claimed last week that the southern evangelicals Nixon stole from the Democrats are now driving every other proletariat group out of the Republican party --- the libertarians and moderate protestants and a good chunk of catholics all switched to Democrat this election, out of disgust for big centralized government and evangelical values. It would be interesting if the institutionalized two-party system of the US resulted in one party for a single state religion and the other against it --- is this really the most important issue in US politics?

what most don't understand is that there is no such thing as an "Iraqi Nation." never has been, never will be. that's at the heart of the problem and until successive American administrations get that through their head (i know it's a hard sell), there will always be violence in iraq. unless of course a new dictator/authoritarian regime is installed, like what the iraq study group is implying.

One question for Mary: how many times does the word 'God' appear in the Constituion?

Exactly - think about that number before you speak about this topic again.

You Christofascists are no better than the Islamofascists you keep complaining about. In fact there's a persuasive argument to be made that you are more dangerous - how many civilians have Christofascists killed versus Islamofascists? By my counting Christofascists are winning that battle by a score of something like hundreds of thousands for the former to thousands for the latter.

unlike christianity (and this is in no way a criticism of christianity), islam provides day to day instructions on how you should live your life; such instructions include but are not limited to: how to divide inherited wealth, how you should dress, how you should make yourself clean before prayer, etc...

add to that the 'sharia law' which is the islamic version of civil law, and you can't help but have a region that puts religion before country. so, when you ask iraqi's to put the well being of their nation before that of their religion, you are asking them to go against their religion, even though that is not what is being asked; the arabs, even after the introduction of islam to the arabian penninsula, were a nomadic people, religion is more ingrained in their minds than borders... every arab leader starts a speach by citing the name of god; where else in the world does that happen?

the first step to solving a problem, is in understanding the motivation behind the antagonists, seeing it through their eyes and values, not yours. bad planning (or total lack there of) isn't the main reason why the u.s. is having a difficult time in iraq; not understanding what effect your actions have in another part of the world is sure to lead to more problems than solutions.

i know i'm stating the obvious here, but it seems that common sense has become the refuge of last resort rather than that which dictates policy.

Dennet's premise is that Islamo Fascists don't really exist, they are just a few banded together...did he read the next article?? Islamofacism IS a political bent that that predetermined all nonmuslims to be the now familiar, "infidels." Dennett claims to be an atheist, but is really a cheerleader for Isamofascists who welcome his vacuous objections. American was founded by our forefathers and the women who bore them ( ok our foremothers, too: ))who came here and established this nation to escape religious tyranny. The point that Dennet is missing is that they came to American to escape from the state founded religion, not to escape a state that disbanded, regulated, or forbade religions. Dennet apparently doesn't realize that Jefferson and all of those silly guys who came over here referred to God b/c they believed in Him and their governmental inspirations and policies evolved from these beliefs. We hold these truths to be self evident... etc. It's not a secret that some of Dennet's cohorts want to sand off the word God from every piece of marble they could dream of getting their hands on. It's ironic that a nation founded on principles of faith is being attacked from within by those like Dennet who want to pry off the armor that shields us from takeovers that are currently in progress in Europe. Time to stop the quasi spiritual rhetoric. You've got a Trojan Horse already in this country and its occupants are spilling out and occupying . Dennert's vacuum is fertile ground for the spread of Islamofascism. More subversive than Al Qaida?
Let's see how that works. If this wasn't a Christian nation to begin with, let's see, could it have then been PreMuslim? It's just a matter of time and semantics unless those of sound mind object strongly and soon!

Although Prof. Dennett is one of the great geniuses of our time (read his books on philosophy of evolution and philosophy of mind if you doubt it), he misses the point on this one.

There are not many Americans eager to put the interests of their religion above the interests of their country. There are, on the other hand, many Americans whose understanding of what is right and good for the Republic is defined according to values rooted in their religion.

When you ask a former executive to state unequivocally that he will put the interests of the Republic ahead of those of his corporation, you are starting from the assumption that he has an idea of what's good for the corporation and an idea of what's good for the country, and that these are /in principle/ independent. He may believe that as a general rule, whatever benefits one benefits the other, but our concern is that there might be a case where what benefits one does not benefit the other. If that happens, he'll know as well as we do--and we want to be sure that he'll protect the national interest even at the expense of the corporate interest.

A parallel question could arise in the case of religion if, for example, the question were the national interest vs. the interest of a church as an institution: for example, the Roman Catholic Church. Or a parallel question could arise in the case of a religious community, which is a group of people including some but not all Americans and some but not all foreigners: for example, the Jews.

But the issue in national politics is not the Republic vs. the Church or the American people vs. the Jewish people; it's various secular philosophies and ideologies vs. various religious philosophies and ideologies. And all these philosophies and ideologies, religious and secular, have their own takes on what is good for the Republic. If an evangelical Christian says on religious grounds, ban gay marriage (a position I do not share, incidentally), he is not saying: The national interest would be served if we allowed gay marriage, but it would harm my religion, therefore let us ban gay marriage. He is saying something quite different, to wit: My religion tells me that gay marriage is bad for this or any other country, therefore let us ban it. This is exactly comparable to the position of a utilitarian. The utilitarian does not say: The national interest would be served if we ban gay marriage, but gay marriage promotes utilitarianism, therefore let us allow it. He says: Permitting gay marriage will produce a great gain in happiness for gay people, especially those who wish to marry, and for those who care about them, and it will do so at little or no significant cost to anyone else's happiness; therefore, utilitarianism tells me gay marriage should be permitted--and this is what is good for the country.

Now, there are several responses that can be made to such an argument. One can argue, following Rawls, that arguments from religious premises or from other "comprehensive doctrines" have no place in a religiously diverse society's political discourse. But if you make such an argument, you ought to admit that you are telling certain of your fellow citizens that they are not allowed to bring their deepest beliefs into public debate. And you ought not to be surprised that they take offense at this--and that it spurs them to fight harder for the place they think religion should have in public discourse. For the tiny minority of Americans--of which I am a member--who reject revealed religion to tell the overwhelming majority who accept it in some form that they may enter public debate only if they subordinate their values to ours is nothing but chutzpah.

Another response, which I prefer, is to accept that in the short term, religionists can vote their religions, and focus on, in the short term, building coalitions on particular issues and, in the long term, moving the country toward a better view of the world. This has the advantage of treating our fellow citizens with respect and engaging them in just the sort of discussion they ought to be eager to have: a discussion about the fundamental truths of morality.

But what if the state itself is your religion?

It's not clear at all why belief in ethereal supernatural entities is an important qualitative distinction in a doctrinal framework. Surely, once we have allowed that these spirits do not actually violate the laws of physics, we are 9/10 of the way to atheism. How much can the other tenth matter?

Confucians and Buddhists do not worship any God or gods. But members of both faiths can be quite devout. Nazism does not fit the Dennettian definition of religion. But it surely inspired a religious level of ecstasy - and would the actual horror of the Third Reich have been any different if Nazis had acclaimed Hitler as divine or divinely inspired, or resurrected the veneration of Odin? Would it require us to "tolerate" a Nazi church today?

In fact, the strand of nationalist "democratism" that Dennett is endorsing was hardly born yesterday. It is just Reformation 2.0. It is least as Christian as any television preacher. It goes back to the transcendentalism of Emerson, to Unitarians like Channing, and ultimately to the Puritans and Calvin. Its denial that it is itself a Christian sect need not be taken at face value - it is essential to the primacy that this essentially Northeastern creed attained after the Civil War. Surely the worship of humanity and equality is an essential element of Christianity, as old as the Gospels themselves.

The fact that this branch of Unitarianism is universally revered as the basis of our system of government, and that it is universally taught in our educational system, does not make it logical or scientific. It simply makes it a very successful organized religion - much as Catholicism was in its day. The word "catholic" simply means "universal," and there is no better description of the position that this faith claims for itself.

"Liz, I think you're a crazy person. You're a wacko. I don't owe you a stitch of respect; you can think that you're a good person, but your flaming is stupid and annoying. You're a nut case and you should be institutionalised."

Quit proclaiming that your opinion on everything is supreme (you'd probably say no but your post implies you're better than all Christians). It makes you sound like an intolerant jerk.

What a great perspective from Professor Dennett. Unfortunately, I didn't find much use for all of the succeeding comments (several of which were obviously not proof-read).
The single greatest problem facing humanity is religion. This notion that there is a supernatural being observing our actions and our thoughts, how has it persisted? Folks, this is the 21st century. Do you believe in magic? elves? the tooth fairy? Of course not! so why are so many of us bound to the notion of a fatherly being? If "he" existed, he'd have to be awfully callous to let us get to this point!

Jane wrote
"There is a fine line to be drawn between someone who is devoted to his or her religion and someone who is devoted to the welfare of his or her religious institution. The former is someone to be respected for holding fast to his or her personal values and ideals, however erroneous those ideals may be."

Why? Why should I respect someone for holding tight to what might just be an insane worldview? Believing in a religion is not always a matter of principles - and I dont owe respect to crazy people, whether they believe in a God or whether they believe that all should be annnihilated a la Hitler.

I don't owe the present wackos in government a stitch of respect as they strip away people's human rights and dignities and wages. For one, I think they hide behind this "holy" thing cynically, as they steal their way through life making it miserable for the rest of us. Not only do they believe in their one true faith, but they believe that monetary rewards signal their correctness. I recognise that it simply signals their greed and their corruption.

Basically, Jan, you're completely contradicting Dennet's basic point, but since you're all nicey-nice, you can think that you're being a good guy, rather than the kind of "good soldier" rat Nazi that did the actual carrying out of Hitler's final solution.

People who are insane should not hold public office. People who believe in Apocolyptic Christianity are nut cases and should be institutionalised.

Patrick, you're a salmon swinning up stream. The echos of history are the taking over of government by religion, not to be confused with God. God's role is instrument alright, the almithty in the words of our president. God authenticates religion and religion takes over and destroys. The Roman empire, a pack of crooks collapsed in the face of all that Christian faith. Did Constantine see a juicier prize than all emperors before him, renderings to both him and God. He collected the taxes with both hands. Of course tithes are taxes paid to God's representative, him.

You seem to understand the futility of attempting to NOT render to Caesar. But you left out the rendering to God. It's the renderings that makes religion what it is and it's pure greed that makes religion take over countries, in the name of doing the divine will of course. Have you noticed who's making all the trouble in Iraq? Could cause our president to change his opinion of religion and all the good it does for people. Maybe he'll invite al Sadr, a holy man, one of great faith to give the blessing at the next white house prayer breakfast. Don't you think?

I think the greatest blasphemy of one's God in any monotheistic religion is the claim that puts him, her or otherwise to work as an instrument for dictating the parameters of human government. In fact it is a paradox. For how can that which is less than God claim to put God to work in any body politic? Consequently, understanding my limitations as human being, I leave off trying to influence the body politic to adopt my religious beliefs. That is God's work and I am simply not up to the task! On the other hand I do try to influence the body politic to address those fears and concerns that affect me as a human being. Following my God, I vote my personal fears, preach my conscience, give unto CAesar that which is CAesar's, and wipe the dust off my feet as I leave in peace those households that will not listen to the Good News. In fact, I separate my religious beliefs from my activities in government based on the explicit instructions given by my God for the spreading of his word. Unless I am mistaken, I don't believe he added, "and when you have the power to make my word the law for all, stop wiping your feet of dust and make instead a Christian Nation." Indeed, either my Bible errs or those who preach such an undertaking usurp the power and authority of he who died by crucifiction at the hands of the body poitic in order to carry my sins and provide me the opportunity for eternal salvation. I believe he was crucified in a GOD FEARING NATION.

Jan, I don't think people love God. They say they do but the head shrinker says we can only love ourselves. The only reason for me to love you is I get something in return, usually your love of me which is a manifestation of your love of yourself. We have all that in common.

What do we have in common with God. God loves me so I will love God. I love God so God will love me. And if I don't love God then God will not love me and I'm in a heap of trouble? Isn't that the essence of all faith? Love God or else hell? Has more in common with rape than love.

God's love's one of them thought twisters like con men use on their victims, a little old bridge or a family estate in south FLA. Trust me! Why he was such a fine Christian man officer...

Faith and democracy are not interchangeable terms, unless the faith you are talking about belongs to a religion that has a divine intervention in the political life. Democracy is a concept, that no nation on earth has applied correctly. In the western world in general, the media determines what's democratic and what's not. People are driven like a herd. Let me give an example. Recently, the media has started promoting a new name in the 2008 presidential election. The media is simply preparing the nation for the "new subject"! Everything will revolve around that subject for the forseable future. If you don't know what I mean, look up the list of US presidents in the past 25 years, all democratically elected and all showed very little competency. Some emotionally driven, some lack basic intellectuals to run an apartment building (let alone a country), and some purly driven by their personal urges! Yet all were democratically elected. Democracy is a tool used to sedate people who think they have it and scare governments with people who think they need it.

What people really need is "knowledge"; and the "time" to apply that knowledge. Only then democracy would mean something. Faith also got abused by people. It is also used to sedate people by giving them a reason to believe that they have some tangible set of beliefs in their lives. However, the fact that people never visit what their moral beliefs are, right or wrong, distorted or not and so on, makes you wonder if the purpose of one's faith is being taken out of context.

As a religion, christianity really has no political legs or meaningfull influence on the basic day to day life. The evangilical movement in US is nothing but an extreme attempt to create (not take) a stand in life. Christianity offers no new law except that of the old testament. Evangilicals cannot apply that law in US because it is too conservative even for the most conservatives in this country. The fabric and the developments of the US society will delegate the conservative base into a weaker position, regardless how they presented themselves. At the end, too much emotions would lead to a breakdown (Iraq kinda rings a bell here)!

"Protecting Democracy Comes Before Promoting Faith" is a nice title but an under statement, given the lack of basic understanding of the concepts involved and the realities of life today. Perhaps the author agrees with me in some way, but how would I know. I am not a philosopher!

There is a fine line to be drawn between someone who is devoted to his or her religion and someone who is devoted to the welfare of his or her religious institution. The former is someone to be respected for holding fast to his or her personal values and ideals, however erroneous those ideals may be.
The latter, however, is to be chastised for his or her severe lapse of logic: if this God you worship is all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. (which is the only kind of being worth worshiping), and this God's will shall be carried out, then why is it up to you to rescue the institution that this God has omnisciently set in place? A believer in any religion who behaves as though the welfare of the religion depends solely on his/her support or on the support of the government is not a true believer; cowardice and human insecurity are driving this person, however well-intentioned the efforts may be.
This distinction is an important one to make, because, just as the latter type of person lacks confidence in the religion to which s/he has devoted a lifetime and so may lose confidence in democracy, the former type of person is just the kind of person who ought to be elected to a position of authority. Government officials should be people who have integrity, something that only comes with a personal, unwavering commitment to certain values and ideals. This is exactly the kind of commitment and personal strength necessary to handle a position of authority in a responsible manner.
So the distinction is key: A person who puts the welfare of his religious institution before the practice of democracy is an insecure coward, and should not hold elected office. A person who puts his or her religious values before the practice of democracy, however, should at the very least be respected for his or her courage and strength of will--not be banned from or in any way discriminated against in governmental elections.

Iraqi fundamentalists can't separate God and religion. Where did you pull this hogwash out of? And let me just guess on the academic definition of equality: the value of one not being greater than another. Try writing a comment with rational thought instead of just stroking your God-fearing, poetic-rambling ego.

Dinah:

The Static on a TV screen has a REAL source. The rigor of your rhetoric leaves me wondering what you are actually saying. So I suppose this is an extreme condition where the problem is the conveying what the REAL thoughts one has in a manner others can understand. I'm left to wonder if you've conveyed them to yourself.

You seem to be headed in the right direction, the separation of God and religion. Religion is a business like any other while God is a supernatural being mystery that includes a man for some. A man is always involved be he himself God or just God's messenger. Ministers are God's messengers are they not?

Praying to God as you suggest can be counterproductive. Case in point is the Reverand John Wayne "punkin" Brown who's rattle snake bit him while worshipping, as perscribed by the Bible. In spite of fervant calls by him and his congregation for divine intervention he died. That's counterproductive unless one can take it as a sign from God, don't worship with live rattlers, a really hard way to find out what God wants. Less extreme examples are numerous. Those who thought God would see them through Katrina for instance. They failed to understand that Katrina was an act of God, the real "Big Mamma" God known as Nature's God.

The most devistating thing one might do is pray to the Devil. Maybe God will forgive them but then that's a bet the more intelligent will decline to make. The Devil does deliver the goods to some but not always. Those who lead others to hell reap the bounty anticipated by those who sell their souls. Perhaps the Reverand Brown was simply "called home" by the God worshipped. Notice that all supernatural beings are gods of one kind or the other, the bad ones being known as Devils.

You mentioned Iraq. I can't help but notice there's an awfully lot of folks getting called home there and they're praying hard according to news services. Maybe praying isn't all it's touted to be. Well, there is the possibility of praying to the wrong God and above all the Devil. Maybe the Iraqi should be more careful about which God they pray to. Don't you think?

I believe we should ask the Iraqis to place God over their religion; and the same here! Religions all have primitive roots. Our ascent in esence is escape from a synthetic reality;-an erroneous mind;-one formed by physical perceptions;-replaced by truths, which were buried; but entered from, and are realized deep in personal thought.
The frontier our American ancestors penetrated was not linear. Within each invisible person can be found a place of love, peace, truth, freedom, equality, a personal talent and everlasting life. A GOLDEN RULE guided us to this common meeting place;-and moved the behavioral principles into our social world. Happiness, or justice is dependent on satisfaction of these social needs.
Esentialy it involves personal escapes from an oppressive mentality. Where religions guided us to this place; the religious establishment perpetuates an Old World structure formed by a very oppressive social system.
Religious freedom allowed personal proximity to God. "In God We Trust" was a sound investment! As words as love, equality, freedom or justice are not acquired through the physical senses; defy academic definition;-can't be communicated in the usual maner of physical instruction;-the increasing reliance on human authority over the past 50 years could prove our demise!
Everything in the human mind has a REAL source. Realization of these ideals is clearly relative to social encouragement of personal character development through prayer to a God of love!