Reclaiming the Center

GaryD, If you can, please define what you mean by 'public square/arena'. I'm a little confused on that one.

Yes, GaryD, please do offer us a catalog of the human rights abuses against the religious perpetrated by the non-religious in this country. Not being allowed to legislate your religious beliefs and impose them on the rest of us doesn't count. The religious persecution complex is tiresome and utterly absurd.

GaryD:

You said "The thing that never ceases to amaze me is just how blind the irreligious and anti-religious are to the gross human rights abuses they have been inflicting on the religious since Madelyn Murray O'Hare first set about removing every trace of religious thought from the Public arena." Abuses? Name one.

I am sorry, that it too harsh an analogy.

Of course--you tie up the lunatic, or continually hold him down, not throw him overboard to the sharks to die.
That would be anti-human (Christian, Atheist—any human).

And I guess I do not mean a compromise that requires a person to give up their beliefs, but rather one that allows other beliefs as well as their own.

That laws are based on human reason, sensibility, fairness, all of which can, or cannot be anchored in our beliefs, yet not laws taken strictly from one belief without a foundation of reason, sensibility, or fairness that can be defended.

It cannot be allowed in America, the land of the free--not the land of a particular belief.

Jeff

I have been impressed by the many people in political life who are able to acknowledge their faith while not seeking to impose it on others.
What do you think about the intraparty nastiness going on in the Democratic primary? The two candidates don't seem to have any major philosophical differences. They are both mainline Protestants and both see a major role for government in everyday life. Yet the two groups of supporters act like they hate each other. I happen to think that one particular campaign is drilling away in the bottom of the boat, but how does it come across in general?
This -- the Democrats performing their habitual self destruction -- is probably good for McCain, but is it good for the country?

For most it depends on the subject at hand Jeff.

There are certain ideas on which I will not or cannot compromise.

The main reason politics have gotten so partisan and nasty of late isn't that politicians are worse than they've ever been but rather because the two major political parties have very different ideas about the direction in which the country ought to move.
Let me put it this way, you find yourself in a life boat that has a leak. There are sharks all around. Just below the horizon is an Island. You can't make it there before the boat sinks unless you take some sort of action. Most of you figure that if some bail out the water while others row towards the island they should make it without much difficulty. However one lunatic insists on drilling holes in the bottom of the boat to let the water out. Do you compromise with the lunatic or throw him and his drill overboard the minute he even starts to put the drill to the boats bottom?

Well written and concise, but you haven't answered my previous questions about Islam, i.e., essentially, how can we agree to disagree and stop all the killing?

You ennumberated a number of religions, but of course there are far more, albeit lesser. Many aboriginal American Indians have returned to their ancient religions. Maybe they have some answers, but I doubt anyone ever asks them. They sure had a better relationship with nature.

GaryD,
I understand.
There are those however in both areas of belief that are blindly obstinate, refusing to budge even the slightest from their positions.

For now, we must simply make sure we are not one of them.
Jeff

Jeff I would whole heartedly concur in that. If one goes however and reads the posts in here one finds quite that it isn't the Christians who aren't willing to live and let live -with of course some exceptions - but the atheists who seem whole heartedly to categorically refuse even the possibility of any sort of halfway house or acommonaiity at all with the religious.

Sorry,
"I feel it is important".
Jeff

I was concerned that others may.

Many ideals considered religious are reasonable. Many ideals not considered religious are reasonable.

We need to come up with a compromise, agreement--whatever we wish to call it. We need to come to an understanding of one another.

Or this goes on until we kill ourselves, and never leave this Earth.

I would not think it approved in any plan, Godly or not.

It feel it is important.
Jeff

Jeff I never considered that you might be addressing me.

TJ lot of luck ignoring that 700lb gorilla standing in the middle of the Room.

The thing that never ceases to amaze me is just how blind the irreligious and anti-religious are to the gross human rights abuses they have been inflicting on the religious since Madelyn Murray O'Hare first set about removing every trace of religious thought from the Public arena.

To clarify:

To John Esposito:
Very well, and I believe, very correctly written.
Jeff

Good luck slaying those windmills GaryD.

Very well, and I believe, very correctly written.
Jeff

It sees that sir largely because since Madeleine Murray O'Hare in the fifties Atheistic fundamentalists such as she have sought to strip all of public discourse of any possible taint of religious thought or worse practice.

Even you sir are guilty of defaming Christians and Christianity by trying to roll people who merely wish to be able to express their religious opinions in Public in with those who like you think there should only be one public religious view. That Madeline Murray O'Hare's crowd thinks it should be only atheism while Osama's crowd thinks it should be only Islam does not make either one whit less fascist.

Time to ask the question.

Do you have anything to counter http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul that one can get a little faith in--besides the big religious guru says it was God? Did Moses really talk to God and not Lucifer or some Devil? When we look at all the distress in the world caused by the religious it doesn't look much like God to me. I've seen friendlier Gods guarding the gates to the luau.

As Truth and Reality replace the religious mumbo jumbo of the last 6000 years, religions will converge into something like the Bill of Rights. The "pew sitters" and "bowers" of old are on the march to said secularism as they "deflaw" the founders and foundations of religions and find nothing of godly and "angelic" substance remains.