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John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

krapp 3y ago
It's now the Year of our Lord 2023, we can (and should) move on from the outdated premise that morality requires a belief in God (as nonreligious people are no more or less moral than religious people) and that government presupposes it, just as we moved on from the premise that black people are property.
- rayiner 3y ago
  “Religion” doesn’t “require a belief in God.” Lots of religions don’t have a god or gods per se. I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs. This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.

krapp 3y ago

It's now the Year of our Lord 2023, we can (and should) move on from the outdated premise that morality requires a belief in God (as nonreligious people are no more or less moral than religious people) and that government presupposes it, just as we moved on from the premise that black people are property.

rayiner 3y ago
“Religion” doesn’t “require a belief in God.” Lots of religions don’t have a god or gods per se. I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs. This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.