razib
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08:46:01 pm on August 17, 2008 | # | |
…just emailing with ali e., and he asked why i didn’t mention the interrogation of the candidates by rick warren. ali made an allusion to the religious tests, etc.
first, this is a nation which is 80% christian. both candidates are avowed christians. so i think it’s not that weird that they’d be questioned by a christian minister on religious questions. i’m opposed to candidates using their position to push forward their own religious sect, though this often happens. but, i am pretty sure that it is impossible to disentangle people’s views on a host of issues from their religious viewpoints and what not.
second, i’m no longer much of a “naked public square” person. religion is important to people. in fact, anti-religion is important to people. many irreligious people talk about how religion should be a hobby, like knitting. well, that’s never gonna happen. in fact, most “irreligious” people have their own passions which are in many ways rather religious in form, though they might not have a god or supernaturalism tacked on to them.
as someone with a very thin/spare metaphysical and supernatural set of beliefs i’m among 2.5% of americans, and a tiny minority in the world. i’m enough of a communitarian now that i just believe religion has to be treated differently because most people conceive of it differently. i treat religion as another material/phenomenological condition of existence. nothing more, nothing less.
if i was god things would be different of course….
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Muse 12:13 am on August 18, 2008 | #
interesting post.
i was just having a conversation where it was asserted that muslims (and presumably others) should not object to the description of America as a “judeo-christian” nation, because the founding fathers were religious men and the constitution is infused with such ideas (i.e. the establishment clause was originally enacted for federalist reasons rather than separating church from state). sounds like you might agree, considering that you think its impossible to disentangle people’s views from their religious viewpoints.
aziz 10:03 am on August 18, 2008 | #
presumably God, who is by definition supernatural from our perspective, would also have a very spare (and in fact non-existent) set of beliefs. why do you need to believe in god if you ARE god? So if we are gonn aanthromorpize God for the sake of a fun internet speculative debate, let’s go full bore and posit that Razib might have a lot more in common with God than one might initially assume
alternatively, one could assert that if Razib were god, things might not be that different after all.