Can Atheists Be Good Citizens?

[Foster Zygote]

Nice: guilt by association.

Like atheists and child molesters?

 

[JoeEllison]

Stone Island, can atheists be good citizens?

Can he answer ANY question head on, without the assistance of a anti-atheist bigot to quote in his defense?

 

[six7s]

Birds of a feather?

Google: Results 1 - 10 of about 400,000 for Neuhaus Bush.

Nice: guilt by association.

Ummm... have you actually read ANYTHING other than woo-affirming-woo?

Your man Neuhaus isn't just guilty of associating with morons, he is guilty of using puppets to promote his own moronic worldview


Right Web » Profile » Richard John Neuhaus

"Father Richard," as he is known to President George W. Bush and many others, is a Catholic priest and... <snip/>
...a leading figure for decades in what some observers view as a conservative, Catholic-driven culture war against progressive and mainstream Protestant churches. Neuhaus has also been a close, if unofficial, adviser to the George W. Bush administration. Described by an administration official in a 2005 Time magazine article as having "a fair amount of under-the-radar influence" on policies ranging from stem cell research to cloning, Neuhaus has apparently had a significant impact on Bush's thinking. The president once said that the priest "helps me articulate these [religious] things" (Time, February 7, 2005; Andrew Weaver, "Neocon Catholics Target Mainline Protestants," MediaTransparency, August 11, 2006).

www.lewrockwell.com » Second Thoughts and Moral Culpability
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

December 6, 2005
<snip/>

That politicians would be buffeted by the winds of public opinion – well over half the public believes that the whole war has been a mistake – is hardly surprising. Far more problematic are the intellectuals, particularly religious intellectuals such as Michael Novak, Jerry "God-is-pro-war" Falwell, and the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus.

<snip/>

As the blood lust of the Bush administration increased, many religious Catholics were getting nervous, since there was no sense in which an attack on Iraq could be reconciled with Just War teaching. It was not a defensive war, not a last-resort war, <snip/>

Fr. Neuhaus played a very important role in urging people to mute their consciences, ignore the Vatican, and march in lockstep with the Bush administration.

In 2003, Fr. Neuhaus, who lives and moves within the Bush intellectual camp, was asked about Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War. He said "Whether that cause [Just War] can be vindicated without resort to military force, and whether it would be wiser to wait and see what Iraq might do over a period of months or years, are matters of prudential judgment beyond the competence of religious authority."

In other words, what does the Pope know about war and peace?

But in the same interview, sent out to millions of Catholics the world over, Fr. Neuhaus didn’t apply this standard to himself. He said that war was just and that Catholicism bound us to embrace it.

"War, if it is just, is not an option chosen but a duty imposed," he said. "To wait until the worst happens is to wait too long, and leaders guilty of such negligence would rightly be held morally accountable…. Religious leaders should bring more to the public discussion than their fears. Nervous hand-wringing is not a moral argument…. In sum, military action in order to disarm Iraq can be morally justified in terms of just-war doctrine."

<snip/>
But we need to remember that this is not a philosophical parlor game. This isn’t about editorial strategy. Real people die in war. Families are shattered, men are tortured, lives are ruined, enemies are made for generations, governments become more corrupt through their war lies and spending, whole regions are pushed to loathe the occupier, and society and culture become imbued with a tolerance for spilling blood.

So...

No...

Not just 'guilt by association'

Also guilt by ass action

 

[Belz...]

Still no answer ?

 

[KingMerv00]

Do still have to actually type the question anymore? At least one more time I guess...

Stone, can atheists be good citizens?

 

[Shalamar]

Stone, can atheists be good citizens?

 

[six7s]

Still no answer ?

Ask not for whom the troll's balls, for it's balls for thee

 

[godless dave]

A nice summation of why, according to Neuhaus, an atheist cannot be a good citizen.

Then it applies to theists too. What god a theist believes in is a matter of personal preference. What the theist believes that god wants is a matter of personal preference.

 

[calebprime]

@ Mr. Stone Island

What's your view? Can these "atheists" of which you speak be good citizens?

 

[Ysidro]

Just popping in to find out if Stone Island ever told us if atheists can be good citizens.

Well, can they?

 

[Mister Earl]

Stone, I submit to you that I, as an atheist, make a better citizen than some theological types. Here's my list of why that is:

I do good things because I *want* to, not because I *have* to. It doesn't take an irrational fear of a nonexistant torture site to make me shovel snow from my elderly neighbors' sidewalks. I do it because I like helping.

I don't force my views on others. I don't walk behind you down a sidewalk and scream "Convert! Convert! You'll go to HELL!" I have three such churches in my own home city that employs such tactics.

I don't try to get fiction supporting my views taught in public schools. Look at the Creationist push to have their doggerel included in public schools, wrapped up as "Science". First, there's nothing scientific about it. Creationism is a matter of faith, not science. They are mutually exclusive. Second, that's tantamount to state endorsed religion, which goes against the constitution. A good citizen doesn't go out of their way trying to corrupt the constitution in order to push their particular faith.

Churches as a whole aren't tolerant people. They tend to polarize populations. The United States was intended to become a "Melting Pot", where people of all religions and nationalities can live in peace. Instead, I see religious extremists damning whole populations of this nation, based off of whatever isn't being tolerated at this point in time. Too often I see one religious leader or another saying this group of people are immoral, that group deserves to burn in hell, et cetera. The cloak of "Religious freedom" far too often is being used to cover up bigotry,
fraud, and
abuse. Do you still maintain that theologists make better citizens than atheists? Granted, the above examples are a tiny minority of the theologicals out there. But it demands consideration.

I guess what I'm saying here, is the yardstick you use to measure whether or not atheists make good citizens or not shows theologicals are a bit short on that measure, too.

 

[Stone Island]

President Abraham Lincoln once wrote,

All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, and the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times (Jaffa, 2000, 73).

The question isn’t whether someone who doesn’t believe in the truth of the Declaration of Independence can be a citizen, that is up to whether they meet the minimum legal qualifications. Rather, it’s whether they can be a good citizen, so there is an aspect of moral judgment implicit in the statement. After all, one may meet the strict letter of the law while violating its spirit.

Now, to see this sort of argument in action, please see the following quotes from “Originalism, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution: A Unique Role in Constitutional Interpretation?” by Lee J. Strang, Penn State Law Review (Fall, 2006). He writes,

…we trace our independence to the Declaration and not to the Treaty of Paris. The Declaration… precipitated the creation of permanent governmental apparatuses to oversee the newly-independent states’ pursuit of the common good.

And,

…the rights phrase is hortatory… However, if we treat another in a manner contrary to the rights phrase we would not characterize our actions as illegal; instead, we would characterize them as immoral. Consequently, while the rights phrase may offer sound moral guidance, it is not a legal command and hence does not play a role in constitutional interpretation because of its own legal authority.

Now, forgive me if I unfairly state your position, but I think that it’s fair to say that you would agree with Carl Becker who wrote,

To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question (Jaffa, 2000, 73).

If so, according to Neuhaus, you cannot then be a good citizen.

Leo Strauss once asked,

Does this nation in its maturity still cherish the faith in which it was conceived and raised? Does it still hold those “truths to be self-evident? (Jaffa, 2000, 74)”

Neuhaus does not, near as I can tell, at any point call for a system where men are challenged as to their truth beliefs regarding the moral justification for the United States.

 

[joobz]

President Abraham Lincoln once wrote,
The question isn’t whether someone who doesn’t believe in the truth of the Declaration of Independence can be a citizen, that is up to whether they meet the minimum legal qualifications. Rather, it’s whether they can be a good citizen, so there is an aspect of moral judgment implicit in the statement. After all, one may meet the strict letter of the law while violating its spirit.

Now, to see this sort of argument in action, please see the following quotes from “Originalism, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution: A Unique Role in Constitutional Interpretation?” by Lee J. Strang, Penn State Law Review (Fall, 2006). He writes,
And,
Now, forgive me if I unfairly state your position, but I think that it’s fair to say that you would agree with Carl Becker who wrote,
If so, according to Neuhaus, you cannot then be a good citizen.

Leo Strauss once asked,
Neuhaus does not, near as I can tell, at any point call for a system where men are challenged as to their truth beliefs regarding the moral justification for the United States.

Repeating logical errors doesn't make them any less illogical.

Any attempt to redefine the terms atheist and citizen to such a degree that it would make the statement "Atheists can't be good citizens" true would be so different from common usage as to render the statement unitelligible in english. These new definitions (which make that sentence true) do not by proxy make the original definitions hold true in that sentence. Yet, it appears that this is the whole goal of this exercise. That is the reason for the continual question, Do you believe that atheists can't be good citizens?

This proof by proxy is intellectually dishonest and meaningless

 

[Foster Zygote]

The question isn’t whether someone who doesn’t believe in the truth of the Declaration of Independence can be a citizen, that is up to whether they meet the minimum legal qualifications. Rather, it’s whether they can be a good citizen, so there is an aspect of moral judgment implicit in the statement. After all, one may meet the strict letter of the law while violating its spirit.

Stone Island, would you be so kind as to point out what laws are contained within the Declaration of Independence? Or just demonstrate that you have an original thought within your own head. Based on the available evidence I expect to see further refusal to directly address relevant questions, special pleading and appeals to authority.

Neuhaus does not, near as I can tell, at any point call for a system where men are challenged as to their truth beliefs regarding the moral justification for the United States.

And? The fact is that Neuhaus wants to define others of a generic group as inferior to himself. He does this by forcing definitions of "atheism" and "good citizen" and pretending that citizenship is somehow based on the Declaration of Independence rather than the United States Constitution. This is arrogant bigotry and couching his bigotry in academic language makes it no less so.

 

[bokonon]

Grinspittle flatly states that anyone who considers duty to god more important than duty to country cannot be a good citizen.

 

[Stone Island]

Stone Island, would you be so kind as to point out what laws are contained within the Declaration of Independence?

Whether atheists can be good citizens is not a legal question. Neuhaus made that clear from the beginning.

Whether atheists can be a good citizens is a moral question. What is the moral basis for the Constitution? The Declaration of Independence is one possibility, perhaps the best.

Can atheists provide an objective moral grounding for the Constitution consistent with the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy of natural law?

Harry Jaffa writes in A New Birth of Freedom (2000),

So far as I know, for example, no historian who has written about the Civil War has seriously asked whether Lincoln's belief in the truth of the Declaration can be accepted, not merely as emotionally evocative and persuasive, but as philosophically sound. Neither has anyone inquired as to whether it was intrinsically reasonable to believe, as Lincoln did, that the principles of the Declaration form the ground for distinguishing the healthy from the pathological in the body politic. But if the question as to whether the philosophy of the Declaration is true or false is essentially meaningless, then questions as to whether slavery is right or wrong or whether freedom is better than despotism are equally meaningless (Jaffa, 2000, 75).

 

[JoeEllison]

So, only people who believe in imaginary beings can be good citizens? That's the criteria?

 

[Ateius]

Mmf. The old "Atheists are not moral" canard, nicely repackaged for today's discerning bigot.

Pass.

 

[KingMerv00]

I've had it with you, Stone Island. The question in the title was obviously a type-o. You clearly meant to say "Do random people of my choosing think atheists can be good citizens?"

Consider the disrespect you are showing everyone here:

1) You asked a controversial question and HEAVILY insinuated an answer that casts aspersions upon the majority of people in the forum. You (by proxy of course) suggest that atheists are bad citizens.

2) You do not have the guts, dignity, or apparently the competence to voice your own opinion.

3) You ignore all calls to answer your own friggin' question and excuse yourself under the guise of "scientific inquiry", ostensibly to avoid expressing bias. This is puzzling to me since you feel completely comfortable expressing the biases of every other human being who ever lived and probably of those yet to be born.

I held out some hope for you since you were at least somewhat respectful last time we discussed atheism. Ever the skeptic, I have to admit I was wrong to do so.

You see? I had on opinion...voiced it...changed it...and voiced it again. So easy, even a caveman can do it.

Stone, can atheists be good citizens?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Whether atheists can be good citizens is not a legal question. Neuhaus made that clear from the beginning.

Whether atheists can be a good citizens is a moral question. What is the moral basis for the Constitution? The Declaration of Independence is one possibility, perhaps the best.

Can atheists provide an objective moral grounding for the Constitution consistent with the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy of natural law?

Sorry, but the United States as it is today is defined by the United States Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence. Citizenship requires only that one abide by the Constitution. Why did the authors of the Constitution write Article VI section 3?

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States

.
If what you claim about the importance of the Declaration of Independence is true then why is there no mention of this concept in the Constitution? Why are atheists not mentioned specifically?


Your style of apologetics is worthy of a major organized religious institution.