{"id":41,"date":"2006-03-28T16:43:23","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T21:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2006-03-28T16:43:23","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T21:43:23","slug":"in-god-we-disagree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"In God We Disagree"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reading <\/span>Divided by God<\/a>, by Noah Feldman. I just started it, so this post isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really a review or discussion about his book, but he did make me think about a few things right from the get-go. He’s trying to come up with a compromise between people (like me) who would have no overtly religious symbols or devices in governement, and those would like to see religion throughout government.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From reading a bit about the book, I gather that his compromise is more or less to allow religious symbols (the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, Christmas trees on city property), but not allow big stuff, like state-run religious education. Again, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just now reading the introduction, so I may have him wrong, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s literally harmful to allow the Ten Commandments to hang in a courtroom. And I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s literally harmful to allow Christmas trees in a public elementary school. But I do think that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be willing to allow those kinds of things in order to keep the bigger things religion-free. Like, allow the tree to avoid a fight about whether they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll actually teach the Bible as literal truth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What I worry about is the short memories. Specifically, I mean that in the separation debates of the future, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m worried that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153more religion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d side will say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but why argue that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not a religious people? Just look, we have Christmas trees in schools! We have the Ten Commandments in courtrooms! America is Christian, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no point arguing otherwise, so of course the government should pay for religious school.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I worry about this because I already hear it about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In God We Trust\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pledge allegiance under God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rather than be happy that God has snuck in there (rather recently, in fact), they point to those things and use them to deny the claim that American government should be free of religion.<\/p>\n

So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure that this compromise will work very well. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be willing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reading Divided by God, by Noah Feldman. I just started it, so this post isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really a review or discussion about his book, but he did make me think about a few things right from the get-go. He’s trying to come up with a compromise between people (like me) who would have no overtly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-languagelit","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}