CerinCerin wrote:I wonder how you would react to a statement like this directed toward a lack of religious belief? For example, 'It is the corrupting and prideful nature of atheism when joined with power that creates the backlashes with the most inspiration'?Democritus wrote:It is the corrupting and illiberal nature of religion when joined with power that creates the backlashes with the most inspiration.
Is there a double standard operating here? You seem to feel that atheists should be free to sweepingly condemn religion, but people who believe in God shouldn't be free to sweepingly condemn atheism? Is that correct?
As to the substance of the above quote, it is people who are corrupting and illiberal, and therefore responsible for the corruption of spiritual truth, not the other way around.
Edited to quote complete sentence, rather than just the part I was intending to focus on, so as not to be accused of deliberately trying to distort another person's statement.
My point is that I have long held the view that when power and religion are combined in the same institution it usually corrupts both. History largely bears me out on this and shows the great value of the framers of the constitution seperating church and state. It has often been said that what guarantees religion remaining popular in the US is that it is not state mandated and it is limited in the public and political domain. The backlash currently building against the evangelicals on this matter bears me out. In the UK the Church of England has been declining for a very long time now, a lot of which has to do with it been a state institution and the combination of conservatism, inertia and unearned privilege this inevitably lead to, and which continues to hurt it.
That is the crux of the point I was trying to make.