A Secular Government?

Tim Dean, a journalist and PhD philosophy student, wrote a piece defending something call secular liberalism. It was published on the ABC’s The Drum and was titled was Secular Liberalism Misunderstood. The first two are my replies to the piece. The rest are some of my replies to others comments. I got a little angry with my atheists.

Tim,

I agree with most of what you say. My difference is terminology. You call it secular liberalism. I would say it is the only Christian example of government. Indeed, when the United States was established they could not decide between the Anglicanism of the South or the New English congregationalism. So they compromised and settled on the middle states of Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island’s view that belief in this or that should not be considered essential to citizenship. These views arose, in part, from religious persecution. Roger Williams, a Baptist preacher, was literally excommunicated from congregational Massachusetts. Williams then bought land from the local Indians to found the city of Providence, Rhode Island. Williams ensured that citizenship had no religious or philosophical test. In your terms, this was the first secular liberal government. Providence is not only the home of America’s first Baptist Church but is also the home of that nation’s first Synagogue. Some Baptist still defend the liberty of conscious. If you doubt it please look at the Baptist Joint Committee’s website - http://www.bjconline.org/

Regrettably, our nation did not follow this aspect of American life more closely.

Further, I must disagree with Greg Sheridan. If I cannot defend my faith from Richard Dawkins et al it is not worth believing. Though, I must agree, Dawkins is a lousy philosopher.
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Tim,

I forgot to disagree with you about democracy. Democracy is a socialist idea, not a liberal. It is about collective decision making. It has not interest in preserving individual liberty. In the days following the totalitarian nightmare of the ‘socialist’ Soviet Union, we have forgotten the non-Marxian socialists. The Fabians and the Christian socialists with their views of peaceful transition and collectivisation seem to have been forgotten. Their legacy of credit and trade unions are still with us, even though commercial collectives like Wesfarmers have been ‘corporatized’.

You can still hear how democracy is a threat to individual liberty. The self appointed guardians of the people, the gutter press bail up some defenceless crook insisting that the people have a right what his person looks like or feels. The people do not have a right to know about another misery!
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If we are going to be hypo precise in language, one does not believe in God either
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To all the illiberal atheists out there - the UN treaty on the Rights of the Child gives parents the right to educate their child in their religion!
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What are you going to teach the children instead of their parent's religion? Some form of the so-called logical atheism. Atheism is about as logical as the fly spaghetti monster!
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Dan,
You do not support freedom of the individual conscious. How can you deny parents the right to bring up their children in their beliefs? And if a parent should not bring up their children in their beliefs, how should they bring their children up. What is a belief free environment look like? Can one exist?
Or does everyone have values derived from ones beliefs? If that is the case, do you not want to impose your religious belief on someone else?
I cannot and will not seek to speak for others, but I am a Christian. I defend others right to be wrong. I do so because Christ told me to love my neighbour, the prophets of old told me to defend the poor and the aliens and the doctrines of salvation tell me that every human being is capable of accepting Christ as saviour. They must accept Christ freely without any coercion.
Finally, the first governments to accept all regardless of religious belief were founded by Christians. William Penn (1644 – 1718) (founded Pennsylvania) and Roger William (c.1603-1683) (found Rhode Island) were committed Christians. The Baptist Thomas Helwys (c.1575-c.1616) wrote the first call for religious liberty in English. Religious people have been defending liberty for an awful long time!
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To all the illiberal atheists out there - the UN treaty on the Rights of the Child gives parents the right to educate their child in their religion!
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What are you going to teach the children instead of their parent's religion? Some form of the so-called logical atheism. Atheism is about as logical as the fly spaghetti monster! In other words parents are free to indoctrinate their children in our religion. This is called totalitarianism.
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Article 14.2 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child states:-States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.

The rights of the parents to teach their child their religion!
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Further Dan, teaching a religion is not indoctrination. I look forward to your apology for using inflammatory language! Your rudeness is typical of many of the modern atheist!
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Actually, atheism is a positive statement about the existence of god or gods. Hence, it fails to prove a case in the same way theism does. Agnosticism makes no statement about the existence or non-existence of god or gods.
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P Smith,

What crap! Atheism is a religion. One of the definitions of a religion is that it functions like a religion. This definition evolved to include religions without a deity, like Buddhism. Given the diatribes here, there is plenty of proof that atheism is functioning like a religion.

Even worst, given the diatribes here atheism is an extremist ideology. It wishes to reach into the parent child relationship to prevent a parent tell a child what they believe if that is parent believes in a non-approved religion. It labels this child abuse. It wants the parent to teach children only approved things. The only approved religion is atheism because it pretends that religion is based on reason. Yet it is blind to its own totalitarian tendencies.

Penultimately, I have posted here historical proof that the first governments which respected the freedom of thought and speech were established by deeply religious people. No-one has contested my argument. If anyone wants me too, I go into their theological justification of such. It is an undeniable fact that both liberty of thought and speech thought of by the ‘third’ wave of the Reformation: the Anabaptist, the Baptist, the Quakers and so on. Only later was such ideas adopted by the so called enlightenment thinkers.

Finally, you equate religious thought with extreme ideologies like communism. Communism is the first political ideology to base itself on atheism. It managed to kill more people last century than any other belief, religious or philosophical. Maybe that is why atheism has taken so long to establish itself in human thought. The ancients realise it was completely bankrupt!