poligion: Can a Person be Moral without being religious?

where religion and politics meet

Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is what you believe about life: what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what are the rules, are there any rules, what is the meaning of life, what is important, what is not.

If a worldview includes a god/God, it is called a religion. If a bunch of people have the same religion, they give it a name.

Nations have worldviews too, a prevailing way of looking at life that directs government policies and laws and that contributes significantly to the culture. Politics is the outworking of that worldview in public life.

We are being told today that the United States is and has always been a secular nation, which is practical atheism.

But our country could not have been founded as a secular nation, because a secular country could not guarantee freedom of religion. Secular values would be higher than religious ones, and they would supersede them when there was a conflict. Secularism sees religion only as your personal preferences, like your taste in food, music, or movies. It does not see religion, any religion, as being true.

But even more basic, our country was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings. But what God, and how did the Founders know that He had? Islam, for example, does not believe in unalienable rights. It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights, and it was the Bible that informed the Founders of that. The courts would call that a religious opinion; the Founders would call that a fact.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’ have the United States of America.

A secular nation cannot give or even recognize unalienable rights, because there is no higher power in a secular nation than the government.

Unalienable rights are the basis for the American concept of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty require a high moral code that restrains bad behavior among its people; otherwise the government will need to make countless laws and spend increasingly larger amounts of money on law enforcement.

God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments were always important parts of our public life, including our public schools, until 1963, when the court called supreme ruled them unconstitutional, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding.

As a secular nation, the government now becomes responsible to take care of its people. It no longer talks about unalienable rights, because then they would have to talk about God, so it creates its own rights. Government-given rights are things that the government is required to provide for its people, which creates an enormous expense which is why our federal government is now $22 trillion in debt.

Our country also did not envision a multitude of different religions co-existing in one place, because the people, and the government, would then be divided on the basic questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our Constitution, which we fought a war to be able to enact, states, among other things, that our government exists for us to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It could not do this unless it had a clear vision of what it considers to be true, a vision shared with the vast majority of the people in this country.

I want to engage the government, the culture, and the people who live here to see life again from a Christian perspective and to show how secularism is both inadequate and just plain wrong.

Because religion deals with things like God, much of its contents is not subject to the scientific method, though the reasons why one chooses to believe in God or a particular religion certainly demand serious investigation, critical thinking, and a hunger for what is true.

Science and education used to be valuable tools in the search for truth, but science has chosen to answer the foundational questions of life without accepting the possibility of any supernatural causes, and education generally no longer considers the search to be necessary, possible, or worthwhile.

poligion: 1) the proper synthesis of religion and politics 2) the realization, belief, or position that politics and religion cannot be separated or compartmentalized, that a person’s religion invariably affects one’s political decisions and that political decisions invariably stem from one’s worldview, which is what a religion is.

If you are new to this site, I would encourage you to browse through the older articles. They deal with a lot of the more basic issues. Many of the newer articles are shorter responses to particular problems.

Visit my other websites theimportanceofhealing blogspot.com where I talk about healing and my book of the same name and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com where I am posting all my other Bible studies. Follow this link to my videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-RztuRKdCEQzgbhp52dCw

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Larry Craig

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Can a Person be Moral without being religious?

Can a Person be Moral without being religious?

Yes, though morality is a lot more than just being a nice person who doesn't kill people when he's angry. Our society doesn't regard marriage as being too important anymore. Children don't need two natural parents anymore. Homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality. Killing unborn babies is a desirable way to keep from being hindered in one's pursuit of a career. We used to be taught to love our neighbor. Now we must just tolerate him. Which is another way of saying ignore him. People used to help each other. Now we rely on the government to do it. Our form of government depends on the integrity of those in office. The phrase corrupt politician is redundant. I would submit that people who believe in an afterlife with rewards and punishment are more likely to sacrifice their lives for others and a cause. They would also be more likely to accept delayed gratification over immediate fulfillment, as in saving for the future rather than buy it now even if I have to borrow the money to do it. I think religious people are more likely to recognize evil and resist it. Religious people are more loving. Everyone can love the lovely, but few can love their enemies, the undesirables.

The non-religious can do all of this, but there is less likelihood that they will. Religious people believe that God has told them what is right and wrong and to do the one and resist the other. If God hadn't told them to love their neighbor, few would.

They say that character is what you do when no one is watching. A religious person knows that someone is always watching. If no one is watching or even cares what you do, what guides your behavior?

A religious person believes in a standard higher than himself, so there is always room for improvement. A non-religious person has no standard above himself. He is more likely to accept things the way they are.

A non-religious person can be moral, but why? Why should he sacrifice for others, be totally honest even when it hurts himself? If life ends at the grave, isn't a person more likely to be self-centered and self-focused? A religious person is taught that to die to self is the way to find life. Who would think that up on their own? Why would one believe that without a God standing outside the system providing the information?

A religious person believes that humans are created in the image of God, worthy of respect and love. A non-religious person sees people as just intelligent apes whose existence is an accident of nature. What is the meaning of life? What should I life for? How should I live? There is no rule book, no instruction manual. Everybody can make his own rules, and who is to say they are wrong, good or bad. Religious people believe there are rules, that there are laws that transcend life, that reflect the way things really are, things we would never know without Someone explaining it all to us.

So can a person be moral without being religious? Yes, in that anything is possible. Just don't be surprised if they're not. Just don't be surprised by some of their answers. And don't be surprised when they reject the wisdom of the ages, tradition, to make up new things.