Hey Cy ,
I think this one is going to fizzle out for me. Look religion is too entrenched in our society and our debating counter parts have dug their heels in as well.At least they don’t deny that dinosaurs existed anymore and they can tolerate the word evolution. Maybe in 25 more years they will admit we are primates at least animals. We will be long dead before any real progress is made on this. I don’t think I want to push JG into a discussion about homosexuality.He will probably bash for a page or two of posts and then say his best friend is homosexual,can and does practice christianity just fine but will never get to heaven. Hopefully this whole religious thing backfires on them some day. Not so that they get hurt but so that the insanity unwinds a little bit. This conversation has made me want to do a new survey on Christians, who are they and what do they believe, I think I have made too many assumptions based on mostly having had these conversation with blue collar Christians who mainly seemed to be that way by default or “born again” types. Just a nice ace in the hole to be Christian, something to fall back on after years of careless, ignorant living. I have met some good living “progressive” christians who were still kind of establishement types. My wife’s childhood friend is one . She is a professor of theology.I am looking forward to meeting her soon for the first time.Having had my chat with ST.Thomas Aquinas ( progressive catholic in his day)here on the blog(JG in modern times), has opened my eyes a bit.I also want to study the seperation of church and state history further. I don’t accept JG’s answer that it is practically an accident that it was ever mentioned.I think it had something to do with ridding the new world of the Anglican church’s power. I also think many of the founding fathers were Deists. I don’t really have much hope we can change anything on a large scale CY. Like I said in a much earlier post, people above 30 don’t change much and those people are brain washing the children.I ahve already told my kids they can choose to believe what they want( They will likely be great philosophers like their dad). I think it is a good idea not to be a strong Atheist or promote it. It causes too big of a knee jerk reaction in many Christians. I am not an atheist,deist or agnostic anyway. My take on it is that it is not my problem to define myself in terms of a response to the possiblity of the supernatural, especially to people who have decided that they know that some passed down mythology is closer to the truth than saying I don’t know is. My problem is to live that is all. I think the human race has less to fear and more hope of peace without the quazi- government branch called religion. I just can’t imagine JG or pretty much anyone in his shoes going home and saying. “Hey family, I have had a different kind of enlightenment and we are not going to be Catholics anymore.” Or “I am going to help Russ and CY with their goal of seperating church and state because the whole thing is blasphemous to my wonderful “GOD” who is personal to me and some of my friends but not for every body.” He knows the value of being religious and the government and his many of his peers being affected by it. Changing ones religious views does happen of course in young people, but it is pretty rare later, unless some other trigger is involved like Alcoholism recovery, a mistress,a divorice ,a mid life crisis, coming out of the closet or something like that.
Anyway he has been a pretty good sport as always.
Best wishes
