Do You Need Religion to Have Freedom?
From a piece in Salon online today - "We can begin with Romney's speech Thursday, in which he declared, as Joan Walsh noted with alarm, that there can be no liberty without faith. "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom ... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."
Wow, that's a pretty amazing statement, given that religion has been one of the most intolerant practices ever devised by human beings - think Inquistion, radical Islam, Holocaust(s), the subjugation of Native Americans by Spanish missionaries and on and on - all designed to deprive groups of people of liberty and freedom.
Personally, as an atheist/agnostic, I feel pretty free (especially from the dogmatic thinking of religion), thank you very much.
This whole conversation is really worrisome, that somehow we can't make public or political policy in this country without it being informed or guided by some kind of supreme being? That we can't promote liberty and freedom without the context of some tie to religion? And then, whos religion? The implication and underlying context of this discussion, of course, is that freedom doesn't exist without Christianity, which is ludicrous on its face.
One can only hope that this whole pandering to the Christian evangelical right by Romney, Huckabee, McCain, etc., completely backfires and that this narrow thinking leaves whomever the Repubs decide to put up for election with some very hard questions about their beliefs in freedom and the proper role of separation of church and state.
It's time to fight back in this war against rationality and secularism in public life.
Wow, that's a pretty amazing statement, given that religion has been one of the most intolerant practices ever devised by human beings - think Inquistion, radical Islam, Holocaust(s), the subjugation of Native Americans by Spanish missionaries and on and on - all designed to deprive groups of people of liberty and freedom.
Personally, as an atheist/agnostic, I feel pretty free (especially from the dogmatic thinking of religion), thank you very much.
This whole conversation is really worrisome, that somehow we can't make public or political policy in this country without it being informed or guided by some kind of supreme being? That we can't promote liberty and freedom without the context of some tie to religion? And then, whos religion? The implication and underlying context of this discussion, of course, is that freedom doesn't exist without Christianity, which is ludicrous on its face.
One can only hope that this whole pandering to the Christian evangelical right by Romney, Huckabee, McCain, etc., completely backfires and that this narrow thinking leaves whomever the Repubs decide to put up for election with some very hard questions about their beliefs in freedom and the proper role of separation of church and state.
It's time to fight back in this war against rationality and secularism in public life.
posted by Paul Salinger at 4:01 PM
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