Originally Posted by
discojoe
Ugh, this is a tangled quagmire of a topic, but whatever.
Religion is generally seen by liberals to promote and perpetuate religiosity, irrationality, and fear-driven tyranny. The irony of this is that liberalism itself -- or at least many of the various movements within it -- possesses these same qualities, especially anthropomorphic global warming activists, who bought in to all kinds of political propaganda and science so unsound that it bordered on comical. This movement was entirely irrational and overly reactive, an emotional response brought on by half-baked horror stories told by politicians who realized the marketability of the topic and how it could help them further their political careers. It engendered in liberals what they claim to reject: a belief founded in self-deceptive religiosity.
Moving on. I would argue that religious people, Christians in particular, are happier, more emotionally stable, and ironically, more grounded in reality that the overzealous hordes of atheistic liberals. The Christians I have known, especially the friends (lots of them) of my friend Tam, have all seemed happier, acted more kindly, and been all-around more pleasant than those non-religious people with whom I associate.
Part of this is that humans need to have a moral foundation, of which Christianity is a spectacular source. I think also that western civilization has been so stunningly successful because of its widespread adherence to the moral code of a loving, forgiving God, who brings order and stability to the universe, providing man with the confidence to generate endless productivity. This is in contrast with Islam, whose god is one of chaos and unpredictability who stifles innovation and snuffs out ambition. Look at all the contributions of Christian civilization versus those of Islamic. The vastness of their difference cannot be overstated.
So I believe that religion is already incorporated within our society. The idea of natural law (i.e., natural rights to property, etc) arose from the minds of Christian scholastics during the middle ages, many of whom were the first to expound basic economic principles of supply and demand, scarcity, wants, etcetera. The legal system we adopted from English common law was itself the ancestor of Roman law that had been canonized during the first millennium and passed on through the Renaissance and following centuries. The idea that Christianity need be separate from the operations of government via the beliefs and actions of its bureaucrats is essentially a lost cause, and I think that's a good thing, because Christianity is the foundation of modern day ethics, the notions of natural rights, personal freedom, and so on.
Liberals are too quick to discard the wisdom of the past on no more than a whim and replacing it with some untested new policy that they believe everyone must follow. That is the quintessence of arrogance and foolishness. Like Edmund Burke said, you should replace an existing system only if the new one is sustainable. That's why he supported the American revolution, but not the French.