Keep the Merry, Dump the Myth billboard

[ArcticFox]

There'd be no point to. If anything, offending religious people would buy them publicity.
If it helps to clarify, I'm not saying it wasn't deliberately made offensive. I'm just saying wasn't done purely to offend (aka trolling).

It's probably also worth noting that it wasn't a one-man operation, and motive probably covered a spectrum of reasons.

When the president says that religion is just a huge con, and all religious leaders knows it's a lie and continues to swindle the population, I'm not so sure. He said this in the interview with Bill O'Reilly. Facepalm worthy, the both of them.

Troll on troll action.

No. Forced service should be address in the context of equal opportunity and other such thing. The "potentiality" of a violation of one right shouldn't be reason to completely deny another. And yes, I heard you say you don't recognize gay marriage as a right, but the only case it'll be an issue for you is if the refusal of service on sexual orientation is not recognized as a right. For the sake of argument, I'm willing to call both "rights."
And frankly, it's irrelevant. Regardless whether government accepts gay marriage or not, they certainly can perform the gay wedding ceremonies all they want and the should be able to invoke the same equality laws to get the services regardless.
But, and this I'm not sure of, I don't know if it is illegal to refuse service on the basis of sexual orientation. States have equal opportunity for employment, but that's not even guaranteed on the federal level. And that's just employment. If this is a non issue, do you still have an issue with gay marriage being allowed?
Ugh... maybe we should revive that old thread...

Let's leave that horse corpse to rot.

That caveat is not necessary, but I'm still going to disagree with it.
First, law is all about control. Anybody seeking to make a law is seeking to control. There's a lot of negative connotations with it, but some control is necessary. Controlling people to prevent murder, theft, etc. Important. I find it's important to understand this nature about laws to give a somber note to legislation. If you want to make another law, you want to add more control. Period.
And this is why I disagree with your caveat, well, at least what I'm inferring by how you worded it. I don't believe in legislating morality (of by conscience) because it's controlling others based on your beliefs. A law or control should be set in place only if necessary. Simply believing something is wrong isn't enough, you need to show how it protects life, rights, property, etc. Otherwise, it's best to leave that as a matter of discussion and not laws, and I should be forced to follow the conscience of another man.

Every single law on the books is a matter of conscience. You're drawing an arbitrary line between the idea of laws enacted because of conscience and the magical fairytale of an objective right and wrong which is the wellspring of all good laws/controls. We all agree that murder is bad. We all agree that it is rightly illegal. Why do we agree on this? Because it happens that almost everyone has a moral problem with it. Heck, it's so commonly viewed as wrong that we classify people who disagree that murder is morally wrong as insane. You start to see some disparity only when you split the hairs more fine. Is self-defense murder? Is capital punishment murder? Is killing in war murder? Is an act of terrorism murder? People disagree on those questions on both sides because of conscience. It's illegal to take your stuff without permission because of a shared perspective on our conscience. It's illegal to play music so loud it keeps your neighbors up because we all agree, morally, that it's wrong to do so. The list goes on and on.

(I'll make an exception in the case of some traffic laws. Most traffic laws are about generating revenue, and not public safety, but that's another discussion.)

There are plenty who will argue that Mormonism is far from pragmatic. I certainly don't find it as such.

One of us knows a lot more about Mormonism than the other.

Then perhaps you and I are reading two different things from the same sentence. From where I'm standing, it is. I'm saying that where dogma places a blockade of understanding, where it becomes the final say on a subject, learning becomes hampered, especially those who accept it.

I'll agree with that, with the caveat that there are areas that rightly fall under religion and not science, such as spirituality.

It's when someone is teaching that they hold the final answers and the search is over, that's when learning and the continuation of understanding is stifled.

Not unique to religion, that. Al Gore said the same thing regarding the question of Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Change.

When it doesn't stand in the way, learning can progress, but that starts requiring people wondering if religious teaching is wrong.

That can be a side effect, yes.

Don't you dare question Evolutionism. The prophet Dawkins has spoken. We must condemn the Lamarckian infidels, for their way is the way of devolution. May their lies end in a catastrophic extinction event.

Nice

[Truthseeker]

Every single law on the books is a matter of conscience. You're drawing an arbitrary line between the idea of laws enacted because of conscience and the magical fairytale of an objective right and wrong which is the wellspring of all good laws/controls. We all agree that murder is bad. We all agree that it is rightly illegal. Why do we agree on this? Because it happens that almost everyone has a moral problem with it. Heck, it's so commonly viewed as wrong that we classify people who disagree that murder is morally wrong as insane. You start to see some disparity only when you split the hairs more fine. Is self-defense murder? Is capital punishment murder? Is killing in war murder? Is an act of terrorism murder? People disagree on those questions on both sides because of conscience. It's illegal to take your stuff without permission because of a shared perspective on our conscience. It's illegal to play music so loud it keeps your neighbors up because we all agree, morally, that it's wrong to do so. The list goes on and on.

(I'll make an exception in the case of some traffic laws. Most traffic laws are about generating revenue, and not public safety, but that's another discussion.)

What if someone claimed that it is possible to rationalize the illegality of every one of the actions you named (murder, stealing, playing loud music at night) without relying on any moral judgment? For example, one could say that these actions are illegal simply because for the majority of people, their desire to do those things is outweighed by their aversion to having those things done to them. So they voluntarily empower the state to prevent anyone from doing those things. I don't have to say loud music at night is morally wrong to say that it bothers me, and it prevents me from being a rested, productive person, and for that reason I would want the state to prevent it from happening. If we conceptualize it like that, couldn't we dispute the claim that "Every single law on the books is a matter of conscience"?

[ArcticFox]

What if someone claimed that it is possible to rationalize the illegality of every one of the actions you named (murder, stealing, playing loud music at night) without relying on any moral judgment? For example, one could say that these actions are illegal simply because for the majority of people, their desire to do those things is outweighed by their aversion to having those things done to them. So they voluntarily empower the state to prevent anyone from doing those things. I don't have to say loud music at night is morally wrong to say that it bothers me, and it prevents me from being a rested, productive person, and for that reason I would want the state to prevent it from happening. If we conceptualize it like that, couldn't we dispute the claim that "Every single law on the books is a matter of conscience"?

Because conscience is always used to justify legislation in order to gather support for it. Even a deaf person might be in favor of such a law on the basis that it is ethically or morally right.

[Truthseeker]

I agree that conscience is a powerful motivator when gathering support for legislation. And if a person is primarily motivated by conscience to support a law that is in fact also independently justifiable by a purpose to protect life, liberty, or property, then I do not think anyone here would say that person is doing something wrong.

But how I'm interpreting ArchAngel is that he's saying it is wrong to support legislation that can only be justified through morality. It isn't the supporter's actual motivation that counts; it's whether someone could justify the law under a need to protect life, liberty, and property. In other words, a person who votes to end slavery because they believe it is morally wrong is not doing anything wrong because a vote to end slavery could be justified as necessary to protect liberty. However, a person who believes that wearing pink socks is immoral and votes to outlaw it is doing something wrong because no one could rationally argue that such a law has a relationship to protecting life, liberty, or property. It's the character of the law, not what actually motivates the support of it, that makes the act of supporting it right or wrong.

If you believe in social contract theory, then you believe that the authority of government comes from the consent of the governed, and the reason rational people give consent is because they are more free and more secure with government than they are without it. Any law that restricts freedom AND does not increase security is beyond the government's authority, it undermines the government's reason for existing in the first place. That is why I find the argument that it is wrong to support laws that have no relationship to freedom or security (aka life, liberty, and property) so compelling.

Saying people should vote according to their consciences is almost a synonym of people should do what they think is right. I would say people will do what they think is right, and whether they should do it depends on whether what they think is right matches what is actually right. A person who votes according to his conscience; and votes in favor of a law with no relationship to protecting life, liberty, or property; has a malfunctioning conscience.

A deaf person might vote for a law against loud noises at night because he recognizes that a community full of poorly rested and therefore unproductive people is unlikely to be prosperous. It really seems like if a law is rational, then morality is never necessary to justify it.

[ArchAngel]

It's probably also worth noting that it wasn't a one-man operation, and motive probably covered a spectrum of reasons.

Even so, the organization has their own specified reasons for conducting a campaign.

Not unique to religion, that.

Completely true.

[ArcticFox]

A person who votes according to his conscience; and votes in favor of a law with no relationship to protecting life, liberty, or property; has a malfunctioning conscience.

I think that's a disservice to people of conscience who don't spend their life meditating on these matters. A representative democracy is supposed to be one in which common people vote their conscience and leave the constitutional and legal questions to the lawmakers and the courts. In your scenario, every single person is aware of issues of the law's relationships on the same level and perspective as you, which is not only unrealistic, it's not the way things work.

I think any person who does what they believe is right, and doesn't suppress their own conscience in order to appease others, has a conscience that is functioning just fine.

[ArchAngel]

I very much disagree. Our republic isn't built on the idea everybody votes according to their conscience and we'll see who's turns up on top. The very purpose of avoiding a democracy, a by word during the time, was to keep that sort of mob rule at bay. The purpose of was to allow people to preserve their freedoms.

Would you tell the atheists who view religion as a blight on the world to start voting on their conscience? What if they vote to repeal freedom of religion and have it removed from the country all together? I don't trust people's conscience, no matter how long they spent meditating on it. People's consciences are blowing up schools in the middle east.

It doesn't take a law degree to know that we should vote to protect life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe just a little education. This country was built on principles on freedom and as soon as that's lost on the people, the democracy falters and fails. Voting isn't a poll on opinion, belief, or conscience. It's how the ordinary man determines the governance of all the other ordinary men.

[Truthseeker]

Using legislation to control people's actions is forcing them to conform to your will with a gun to their head, using the state as your agent to do this on your behalf. This is true for even the smallest law. If I don't pay my parking ticket, men come to put me in a cage. If I refuse to go into the cage, the guns come out.

The making of every law, every law, is a drastic, violent act. So yes, if people are going to take the step of imposing their will onto others under threat of violence, then I do expect them to spend their lives meditating on these matters. I would say they have a duty to understand the principles underlying liberal government institutions before they start using them to hold guns to people's heads. Why don't you?

And why is it not realistic to expect this minimum standard of acceptable citizenship from all people? Are you saying most people aren't smart enough? Or that they are too preoccupied with other matters? Or what?

I think any person who does what they believe is right, and doesn't suppress their own conscience in order to appease others, has a conscience that is functioning just fine.

Do you believe that right and wrong exist? Your criteria for a functioning conscience does not include a requirement that what they believe is right is actually right. Wouldn't the 9/11 hijackers have functioning consciences according to the standard set in this quote (they believed they were doing the right thing, and they didn't suppress themselves to appease anyone)?

[ArcticFox]

Would you tell the atheists who view religion as a blight on the world to start voting on their conscience? .

Yes, I would.

Your view of voting your conscience is very narrow, Arch. Your example atheist's conscience is just as likely to impel him to vote for religious freedom on the grounds that freedom is a good thing as it is to impel him to vote against it on the grounds that the badness of religion outweighs the benefits of freedom.

People do not all think the same way. That's the point.

The making of every law, every law, is a drastic, violent act. So yes, if people are going to take the step of imposing their will onto others under threat of violence, then I do expect them to spend their lives meditating on these matters. I would say they have a duty to understand the principles underlying liberal government institutions before they start using them to hold guns to people's heads. Why don't you?

Because we live in a country of 300,000,000 people and they're not going to adhere to Truthseeker's lofty standard of philosophical awareness. You're talking about an ideal. I'm talking about the real world that we have to live with. People DON'T think the way you want them to, and they DON'T all value the same things you do, and you have to live with that reality. Governments are run by people who fall short of that ideal, either as elected officials or the people that vote them in. That means Government has to account for that as best it can. The Constitution is as much about protecting people against that very corruption as it is about providing the framework for running things. The Founding Fathers understood this, which is why there's a Bill of Rights and a mechanism for amendments.

At the end of the day yes, I agree that it would be nice if every single voter (or even the majority of voters) were motivated by civic virtue, a genuine understanding of the issues, and a truly objective mind... But that isn't how things really are.

And why is it not realistic to expect this minimum standard of acceptable citizenship from all people? Are you saying most people aren't smart enough? Or that they are too preoccupied with other matters? Or what?

Look around and you tell me. How many people have we seen who proudly brag that they voted for Obama because he's black? How many people voted for Bush because they were afraid of terrorists and didn't think Kerry could protect them? People are primarily motivated by self-interest and that's how they vote. One look at the current political landscape should tell you that.

Is there a solution? Maybe. I rather like Robert Heinlein's ideas in the Starship Troopers novel (NOT THE MOVE)... Where voting is a privilege that has to be earned by doing some sort of service to the state, because only those individuals have the awareness to use that power responsibly.

Do you believe that right and wrong exist? Your criteria for a functioning conscience does not include a requirement that what they believe is right is actually right. Wouldn't the 9/11 hijackers have functioning consciences according to the standard set in this quote (they believed they were doing the right thing, and they didn't suppress themselves to appease anyone)?

Of course I believe right and wrong exist, and yes, people screw it up sometimes, even when they think they're doing right. So what? I think if everybody actually behaved according to their conscience, they'd get it wright far more often than they'd get it wrong. That's the faith I have. I think people will do much more good than harm if they simply try to do what's right. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be genuine.

[ArchAngel]

No, he deeply believes that religion is terrible and the world would be better without it.

[ArcticFox]

No, he deeply believes that religion is terrible and the world would be better without it.

Then he should vote his conscience.

[ArchAngel]

He even that will violate your religious freedoms?

[ArcticFox]

He even that will violate your religious freedoms?

That's what the Bill of Rights is for.

[ArchAngel]

An amendment is being voted on the first amendment, and right now, Atheists are the majority population.

[ArcticFox]

If you're trying to get me to retract my statement you're barking up the wrong tree. In your highly hypothetical scenario I would still want people to vote their conscience because I have faith that the bottom line will always be to the good if everyone does so. If that scenario came to pass and religious freedom were lost, well... Others have had to live under such repressive circumstances and religion still survived. I have faith.