Religion as a Private Matter.

Vic Biorseth, Monday, March 16, 2009
http://www.Thinking-Catholic-Strategic-Center.com

Holding one’s religion as a private matter marks a person as one not prepared, for whatever reason, to articulate or defend his deepest held religious convictions. Which is not a bad thing, in and of itself. We are not all the best theologians, or the best apologists, or the best public exponents or explainers of our personally held religion. No one should be expected to be able to explain in any elaborate detail the whys and wherefores of their religion to anyone else.

However, in my not so humble opinion, when one begins to elevate himself to any sort of political or other office from which he will have the power to make and or enforce rules of behavior on others, things begin to change a bit. (We’ll save the office of teaching and educating and the topic of journalism for future discussions.) When the Legislator, or the Executive, or the Justice or Judge, publicly claims his religion as a private matter and indicates that he chooses not to discuss it, we the people should wonder why, and demand an explanation. And then listen very carefully.

There something about his religion that cannot stand the light of day.

We have already argued, in Legislate Morality, that,

1. we (Americans) are a religious people;
2. all morality is religion-based;
3. Judao-Christian morality is the historical basis for Western Civilization common law;
4. Judao-Christian morality forms the foundation of our civil law;
5. that morality is precisely what always has been and always should be legislated, adjudicated and enforced by any truly representative government.

If something other than Judao-Christian morality is to serve as the foundation for any new law, rule, executive order or regulation, we the Judao-Christian American people have every right to know exactly what that foreign and alien foundation is, and to know it in elaborate detail.

Most particularly anyone who aspires to or occupies the Presidency of the Unite States should be not only willing, but required to explain in elaborate detail his personal religion. There can be no valid reason for him to refuse to do it. Hiding behind the thin but politically-expedient religion as a private matter argument, for anyone anywhere near that high office, should sound alarm bells everywhere in America.

We have no legal religious litmus test for any Presidential candidate, or any other candidate. A Hindu is perfectly free to run, if he thinks he can win. But note well that none of our Founders was the least bit bashful about holding forth on religious topics, or about discussing his most deeply held religious beliefs. There can be no honorable reason for any candidate or holder of high office to be secretive or deceptive about his own religious beliefs, or about his lack of them.

Maintain your sense of right and wrong. Keep your eye on the ball.

Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life.

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Date: Mon Apr 20 11:16:23 2009
From: John
Email:
Location: Montana
Comment:

The closing line of Article VI of the Constitution: " ... but no religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Your argument violates this constitutional principle.

Date: Tue Apr 21 08:40:06 2009
From: Vic Biorseth
Comment:

John:

I humbly disagree. No religious test is required for anyone to run for any office, and I would oppose that. The only thing that I am saying is that a religious test, among others, is required to get my vote. None of our founders, and few of our high officials, historically, have had any difficulty speaking publicly about their personal religion. All of the signers of the Declaration and of the ratified Constitution were raised in Christian or Jewish traditions, and none had any concerns about hiding their personal faith from public view. In fact, it drove their lives. It gave them direction and meaning and purpose. It provided their common sense of knowing right from wrong.

I submit that few of us would vote for a man whose tradition came out of a religion that included, say, child sacrifice as one of its sacraments or traditions. And, I submit that we the voters would have a right to know the sort of thing this candidate might do or favor based on his religion, and to know it before Election Day.

Now, President Obama has said “I believe in prayer” to one of his followers who said she prayed for him. I believe it would be a good thing for us to know to what god he prays, if he prays at all. Perhaps he has found a god that favors abortion. Perhaps he has turned to one of the gods of Sodom and Gomorrah that favors sexual perversions and licentiousness. Perhaps he prays to one of the Baals to which ancient peoples once sacrificed children. Perhaps he bows to the newest recreation of Gaia, the Earth goddess, favored by the UN as a world-wide replacement for the Judao-Christianity that the UN so despises. (If they can’t convince the world of materialist-atheism, Gaia worship and vague, general religiosity is the next best thing.)

In the absence of any faith statement by President Obama, I judge him by his actions, and I find no real religion in him. I believe he is an atheist who will lie about it for purely political reasons. As a Marxist, he is and must be a MEJTML. He will say anything at all to magnify himself and increase his personal power.

At the personal level, I am quite proud of my Roman Catholicism, and have no difficulty at all discussing it in detail in public. I am prepared to describe it, defend it, debate it, or argue the finer points of it. If you are not just as proud of your own personal religion as I am of mine, then you might ask yourself why you continue to hold it.

Personal religion should be a primary topic candidates expound upon in public; instead, it has grown into a sort of forbidden topic, particularly (I suspect) among candidates who are in truth un-believers.

Regards,

Vic

Date: Fri May 29 18:44:56 2009
From: Say what?
Email:
Location: USA
Comment:

You have got to be kidding me. If we followed this logic, political contests would all be religion based rather than issue based. Religion has always been and should remain a side issue in politics. You should stick to your theology and leave politics alone.

Date: Sat May 30 08:08:02 2009
From: Vic Biorseth
Comment:

Say What:

That’s exactly the point. Religion should not be a side issue; it should be the main issue, relating to any issue under political contention.

What, exactly, is the basis for the Pro-Choice political position? Why should religion be sidelined on that issue? What is the basis for the pro-sodomy political position? Why should religion be sidelined on that issue?

Every available demographic shows that we are overwhelmingly a Judao-Christian people, and the moral rules of the Judao-Christian Ethos are what we guide our lives by, however imperfectly. It is also the basis for our Constitution and our civil law, which all office holders must swear or affirm to uphold.

Is our government still representative of the people and restrained by our Constitution, or not? What branch of Judaism or denomination of Christianity teaches the goodness of sodomy, and the goodness of the killing of babies on a massive scale?

Are we really pagans? Or is the very principle of representative government now dead?

Regards,

Vic

Date: Wed Jul 21 19:01:56 2010
From: Freedom
Email: rycrowell@aol.com
Location:
Comment:

Utter nonsense, this website promotes theocracy. You say, "We Americans are religious people". Well, I'm an American, and I'm not a religious person. I think religion is for dim witted gullible fools. Should the government force religion down my throat when I don’t want it? This website says it should. Freedom of religion means also having the freedom to not have a religion.

Date: Thu Jul 22 05:57:26 2010
From: Vic Biorseth
Comment:

Freedom:

Ho hum, heavy sigh and here we go again.

This is getting boring. First thing this morning, you were crying at the Masturbation Industry page. Then, I found you whining at the Argument Refuting Darwinism page, and now I find you blubbering and slobbering all over yourself here.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that your statement that this Website promotes theocracy is just a flagrant categorical lie, and thus, that you are a flagrant categorical liar.

The exact opposite of what you charge is happening in America. The government is forcing atheism down the throats of all Americans, even despite the “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” restriction on government from Amendment I of the US Constitution says about it.

Wipe the drool off your chin. I think you have been masturbating too much and all the blood has left your brain.

Regards,

Vic

Date: Fri Jul 23 11:21:23 2010
From: John
Email:
Location: Montana
Comment:

Vic, your argument is not intellectually sound if you insist that religion drives law, because that is a near definition of theocracy. Where is the separation between religion and government?

Date: Sat Jul 24 06:33:53 2010
From: Vic Biorseth
Comment:

John:

I do not say that religion drives law, but that religion drives morality. Morality drives law. Morality provides the common or community sense of right versus wrong. In our case, the first few Commandments describe man’s proper relationship with God, or, our theology. The remaining Commandments – prohibiting murder, theft, adultery, covetousness, dishonesty, etc. – describe man’s proper relationship with his fellow man, or, our morality. Morality drives civil law, avoiding all topics of worship while not prohibiting or hindering in any way the first few Commandments of our most common national theology.

I have defined this again and again, beginning with the Judao-Christian Ethos page, also the Separation of Church and State page, the Christian Nation page and many other places in this Website.

I have argued that morality comes out of religion and nowhere else. A common sense of morality is required for civil law to make any sense at all and not be random and incoherent. If we abandon our Judao-Christian ethos, what would you base our representative civil law upon? Godless Marxism, which brought us death camps, legally established covetousness, massive theft, liquidation of the bourgeois, labor camps, etc., etc., etc.?

I submit that Judao-Christian morality, properly adhered to, represents the highest form of morality the world has ever known, and it has under-girded the most free, uplifting, successful and wealthy societies in all of world history.

Ours is not a Catholic or Mormon or Methodist or Jewish, etc., government; it is, rather, a representative government of a people who are predominantly of one of the faiths such as Catholic, Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, etc. who will tend to automatically see the sense of civil law that coincides with and does not oppose God’s law.

What exactly would you replace that with?

Regards,

Vic

Date: Tue Aug 03 11:33:23 2010
From: John
Email:
Location:
Comment:

So you are saying that it’s the government who is violating the second amendment by restricting religion through civil law.

Date: Wed Aug 04 06:29:13 2010
From: Vic Biorseth
Comment:

John:

It’s worse than that; our government is imposing the religion of atheism upon the people in direct violation of the second Amendment. We are forced by civil law to be, pretend to be or appear to be atheist in public.

Now, atheism claims there is no god, and cannot prove there is no god, and so atheism’s belief that there is no god is based upon faith alone, and not on any other evidences. Atheism is a strictly and purely faith-based belief system. You may call that anything you want to call it, but I call it a religion. It is the official religion of the theocratic government of the USA at the moment.

Regards,

Vic

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