Comments about ‘Secularists seek to keep religious arguments out of public square’

A secular world view is based on objective, testable reality. You can be skeptical about the world being round or about a heliocentric solar system or a 4.6 billion year old Earth, but if you are objective in your thinking and intellectually honest about replicable and relevant evidence that disproves your beliefs then you'll acknowldge a need to reject ideas that have been proven false, begin looking for better answers to the puzzles that the universe presents you with and get on with your life.

"Faith" based world views are neither objective nor are they testable. If preserving a belief is more important than honestly evaluating evidence, then you are beyond the reach of reason.

Mr. Cannon is arguing for intellectual equality between reason and un-reason, and that just plain wrong - unless you don't understand the real differences between fact and fantasy.

Aren't the worlds myriad and wildly contradicory "faiths" sufficient reason to be suspicious of faith-based world views?

Please read the first 10 words of the bill of rights.

At least secular proponents don't try to use the ultimate in childishness, God as referee who is of course on the reliegious side, if you bring your religion into the public square expect it to be exposed to light. If you think you will win in the end you are not paying attention to history or the ever expanding horizons of consiousness. But please, go ahead and think otherwise, any argument the religious use can be used by anyone to defend anything.

As a strong believer in God, and also someone who is appalled by abortion, I somehow fit into the category you call "secularists" (with not so subtle disdain).

The only thing more appalling to me than abortion itself is the idea that theological suppositions have any place in a political discussion. If something is true and right, then it can be proven true and right without any regard to theology. If this is not the case, if one must resort to the illogical, then it is only as an act of desperation because what they are doing only serves their own selfish needs and not the good of the republic.

At fertility clinics throughout the country, embryos sit in freezers.

We cant perform stem cell research on them (certainly a Republican view) but it is fine to "destroy" them.

Who among the right is willing to force those who have frozen embryos to insure they are born? If not, isn't that abortion?

Hmmm. What a dilemma.

Anyone want to explain this logic?

What in the world was your point! Is the article about abortion rights or the rights of the Bishops (catholic) to lobby congress? Next time you right a commentary, make a point.

Religion passes, with flying colors, "tests" on a daily basis. Example: When a person prays for divine assistance, and the prayer is answered in the affirmative. The person then has the objective experience of affirmation of the divine's power, and willingness to intervene on behalf of that individual. Applying secular "rules" to religion may not be that far from what religionists proselyte.

Cannon is spot on. All points of view concerning the crucial issues of our time should be encouraged in the public square. If we are confident that OUR ideas are superior, we should not be afraid to allow them to compete with others.

Another great column Mr. Cannon.

What is religion?

God does not promote "religion", He promotes eternal laws. Because we on earth are in an infantile state with almost no comprehension of those eternal laws, many of those laws are given to us in a dumbed-down form that we can understand. (How many parents expect their toddlers to understand calculus and physics? Instead, they show experiments with magnets and iron-filings to show that there are unseen forces at work.)

Those close-minded secularists, who believe that their version of "knowledge" encompasses ALL knowledge, have no idea of how very ignorant they are of the knowledge that exists. They think that because they can't see, feel, touch or comprehend "something", that that "something" can't possibly exist.

The secularists, who demand to see and touch everything before they "believe" have limited themselves to living in a tactile world. They choose to blind themselves to evidence of the unseen and to bind themselves to the ideas of other like-minded secularists who have chosen to live in an infantile state where ideas are rejected and truth ignored because it differs from their (very) limited understanding.

"For Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and devine nature-have been clearly seen,being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse".(Romans 1:20)
No one-not even one who has not heard of the Bible or of Christ has an excuse for not honoring God,because the whole created world reveals him.

@Mr. Cannon

"George counters, 'Why does the value of women's equality override the value of fetal life?" It is because the value of women's equality is axiomatic and widely accepted (including by me). But the offsetting "right" at issue, the life of the unborn, is dismissed out of hand simply as a "moral and metaphysical' question."

"I'm not trying here to resolve this difficult issue, though I am strongly pro-life. Rather, I am demonstrating the unfairness of the secularist denial of the legitimacy of religious claims and how that hampers discussion in the public square."

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I'll resolve this, Mr. Cannon. Exodus 21:22 - 23 is a clear valuation between the life of an adult and the life of a fetus.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

"...this...current received wisdom of the secularists...reverses centuries of American history and millennia of Western history." True, perhaps - and for the better. This irrational un-argument is the very one that denies gay couples, as committed as they may be to a life together, the benefits of marriage. Now, I will give Joe Cannon's argument this much: My consience (vs. reason) tells me the "history" argument is just plain wrong.

Granting religious arguments validity in the public square only ensures we will continue to live in an unjust world. For good people to do bad things, it takes religion.

Religion is the cause of most of humane suffering. It has no place in politics or government. It speaks good and does evil.

I also wondered what the point was, Dave K.
But I will say to "I'll take reason, please 12:55 AM":
Your "reason" is not objective, it is philosophical. You are just so steeped in it that you don't see it.
If Religion cannot be part of the public discourse, then I do not know how it is fair to have philosophy there either.
And, by the way, there have been just as many wars fought over the supremacy of one certain philosophy over another as there ever has been with religion.

Do you really think science involves no faith? Wow, you really are ignorant...

when the prayer is not answered in the affirmative. Example - missing child, everyone prays, and the child is found dead.

The religious answer is that "God had other plans, etc etc etc".

There is no proof that prayers are answered, however, the religious can find religious justification for any outcome.

If a prayer is answered in the affirmative, is it an objective experience of the affirmation of the divine's power to intervene? What if it's just chance, or happenstance? People can claim it is proof but I'm not as convinced. A child dies every six seconds on this planet of malnutrition. One billion of us live with life threatening hunger. I honestly cannot wrap my mind around the almighty swaying a football game, or being responsible for some celebrity winning an award.

Religion passes objective tests with "flying colors"?

Really?

Someone prays for "A," and "A" happens then that's proof prayer works, right?

Someone else prays for "A" and instead "B" happens, then it's "The Lord moves in mysterious ways... Subtle are the ways of the Lord... God's plans are not knowable to us..." Etc.

Under what possible circumstances would it be possible for a religious believer to _ever_ suspect that prayers don't work - if regardless of a prayer's outcome, no matter how far that outcome is from what they were praying for, they find reason to believe in prayer?

For the 9/11 hijackers and those who celebrate their evil deeds, these people who were shouting "God is great!" at the tops of their lungs as thousands of innocent people were murdered, this "success" was iron-clad proof that their prayers worked and that they were merely "servants of God."

Is there ANYTHING that can happen to people on Earth that could NOT be interpreted by someone as an answered prayer?

What arrogance!

"No one-not even one who has not heard of the Bible or of Christ has an excuse for not honoring God,because the whole created world reveals him."

That is, of course, complete and easily proven nonsense.

Any honest appraisal of the natural world and human history makes it crystal clear that religious beliefs _never_ accurately account for what we experience in our lives.

Or do you really believe that "evil spirits" and "divine punishment" explain disease and earthquakes? What's your interpretation of lightning and thunder these days?

This is the essence of the issue - do we as a nation embrace or reject using irrational, evidence-free and consistently refuted beliefs as a basis for formulating public policy?