From: wolves!wolfe@duke.cs.duke.edu (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal/New Age Religion (Was: Santeria and animal-sacrifice)
Date: 16 Nov 92 03:17:30 GMT
Organization: Red Wolfe @ The Wolves Den

ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com (Eric) writes:
>altheimm@nextnet.ccs.csus.edu (Murray Altheim) writes:
>
>Plus the fact that already this society is becoming increasingly hostile to
>Christian morality.  Abstinence is not just not taught, it is forbidden.

	And who's responsibility is it to teach abstinence?  The
government?  Nope, the parents have the responsibility, and the duty to
teach their religious values to their children.  It is not the
responsibility of the government to teach religion, and the fact that it
was teaching religion has been corrected.

	Several of the health programs in the schools that I have
participated in teaching and observing have, in fact, pointed out that
the most certain method of avoiding STDs and pregnancy is to not have
sex.  Would you have them stop at that?  Are you willing to risk your
child's life on prohibitions?  It is much better for them to be informed
that if they are going to experiment and have sex (which has always
occurred, even if it wasn't admitted or talked about) that condoms offer
a greater margin of safety than unprotected sex.

>Christians are forbidden to meet in public areas.  Christian symbols are
>removed from public view (even if on private property).  Homosexuals are given
>rights to prosletyze that no Christians are ever given.

	Where are you getting these ideas?   What incidents or policy's
are you referring to?   There are a few incidents where some
over-zealous officials have erred on the side of caution, but they have
been overruled in court several times.

>Murray Altheim wrote:
>> I hope everyone reading this understands that while Christian fundamentalists
>> have every right to practice their religion, as protected by the US
>> constitution, they have NO right to exclude others from practicing theirs.
>
>The question is not religion, but morality.  The traditional American standard
>of morality is being etched away -- or I should say, is collapsing rapidly.
>Most fundamentalists would be quite happy with a return to the morals this
>nation has had for the first 180 years of its existence.

	Morality is, by definition, related to religion.  Moral codes
are based by reference to religious doctrine and belief.  If you are
talking about morality, you are talking about religion.

	Since you are talking about religion, you come up against the
restriction that the US Constitution has that prohibits the government
from promoting the establishment of religion.

	If you want morality taught to your children, then you are the
one who has to do it.  Don't abdicate your own responsibility by failing
to do so.

>Oh, there is no question that the New Age isn't "New".  It's all paganism and
>witchcraft from ancient times.  Yes, it predates Christianity.  Unfortunately,
>societies based on these religions tended to be much nastier than anything
>we've seen today.

	You have a sadly lacking view of history.  Some of these "pagan"
cultures were around for much longer than the 200+ years that the USA
has been an organized nation, and they complained about the same things
you are complaining about.  This issue has really very little to do with
what the dominant religious beief patterns are or were.  It has
everything to do with abdication of personal responsibility.

>>  To assume that the predominance of any belief is acceptable or
>> even disirable is to allow the establishment of a theocratic state.
>
>Again, the issue is not so much religious belief, as morality.  The U.S. has
>never had a standard religion, but until recently we _did_ have a standard
>set of morals.

	As pointed out above, morality *is* religion.

>You are quite, quite incorrect.  It was this year that the official
>condemnation of Galileo was removed.  (This was, by the way, concerning
>HELIOCENTRISM, that the earth revolves around a stationary sun, not concerning
>the shape of the earth.  As we know today, Galileo was in fact wrong anyway.)
>The condemnation was against the man, not against his belief; after all,
>heliocentrism was around long before Galileo.  The church has acknowledged that
>the earth is round for quite a long time.  If you examine the Galileo
>situation, you will see that Galileo was not condemned because the church
>taught authoritatively that the earth was the center of the universe.  He was
>condemned because he was obnoxious, rebellious, and troublemaking.

	Where do you get some of this?  Aristarchus of Samos proposed
heliocentrism around 270bce, but in the 2nd century C.E. Ptolemy
proposed is geocentric model and that held sway until Copernicus really
got all the data and evidence together in 1543.  Galileo's trial in 1633
by the Inquisition was for "having held and taught" the Copernican theory.
Actually, the trial was the church fighting against the rising method of
science, and Galileo was quite a rigorous advocate of the scientific
method.

>If you think that the Catholic Church has done society a bad turn, then just
>take a look at the societies of the Babylonians, Assyrians, Muslims, Druids,
>Aztecs, Romans, Nazis, Hindus, and Communists.

	The Babylonian society gave rise to all of western civilization
as we know it.  Writing was first developed there, the very clock we use
to measure time can be recognized.  The underpinnings of the moral code
you boast of are found in their works.  The Moslem cultures preserved
mathematics and medicine between the fall of Byzantium and the
Renaissance.  The Druids (or rather the Celts) provided the basis of the
Anglo-Saxon culture which America adapted. etc.

>Paganism does society far more harm than Christianity.

	And, at last, your purpose is shown.  Naked fear of that
which you don't understand.  You have thrown all the "pagan" cultures
into one pot and condemned them all without regard to the things that
they created (millenia before Christianity appeared on the scene) that
have endured to this day.  You throw in two political movements that
have created distorted regimes, you neglect to mention others (classical
Greece, China, Japan, the Mayans) all in an effort to distort the
picture.

	Certainly, every culture and society has its problems, and the
Catholic Church of Rome has had its problems too.  I didn't see anyone
say that everything the RCC produced was bad or evil, the way that you
are attempting to label everything "pagan" as harmful.  I find it
especially amusing to see you throw the Romans into that mish-mosh
above, since the Roman church adopted (practically in toto) the style
and ceremonial of the devotion that surrounded the Roman Emperors,
substituting Jesus for the Emperor.

	I would dare to say that there is very little that exists in
what you value that cannot be found in those "pagan" cultures that you
are condemning.
-- 
G. Wolfe Woodbury @ The Wolves Den, Durham NC	[This site is NOT affiliated  ]
wolfe@wolves.durham.nc.us			[with Duke University! Idiots!]
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