Got distracted on a lark today. Kos has an interesting back and forth between Kos and Jim Wallis on matters of Faith and Politics. It's winding down now, but interesting.

Decided to test the waters some and was surprised by the results:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/22/161210/342

That link above leads to a short statment on where I stand, and a poll. Divisive, but the comments are as interesting.

It seems that nearly everybody is threatened by the idea that their truth is in question at this moment! The responses on both the Theist and Athiest sides of the asile were enlightening. Both sides, so far have asserted their methodology is the right one.

But, the notion of Atheism and faith being intertwined threw some sparks!

Well, it ended up interesting. Got sucked into more than one, "but my belief is better than..." conversation. This was not the point, but was not to be avoided it seems.

So, we all really lean toward a strong non-acceptance of our beliefs being valid, but not necessarily true. (I myself do not like this idea.)

Do you feel the legislation of faith adds credence to it?
Yes! I've got the truth and we all should live by it
5% 1 votes
Yes, but we need to be careful
5% 1 votes
Maybe, but only if the majority is happy with it
0% 0 votes
No, because my faith might be diminished
17% 3 votes
No. We all are equally ignorant
70% 12 votes

I was quite surprised that the maybe selection got no votes at all. The strong skew toward the no, part is in part because of the venue, in part because people seem to grok the idea that legislating these things can force them into situations where law conflicts with belief.

The lesser of two evils seems to be avoidance of this.

The coupla yes votes clearly show the need for some difinitive endorsement in these things is out there.

One other thing: I posted the contraversial text (this was written that way on purpose) on both Kos and the Wallis blog. The extreme responses in the discussion were often similar on both the with faith and without faith sides of the issue.

Also interesting was the fairly high number of people finger pointing about finger pointing! Hmmm...

That's it, just a lark I found interesting.

Still getting heated e-mails over the text though! It seems NOBODY likes the idea of shared ignorance! hehe... let 'em stew on that for a while, no matter what high ground they claim!

Yet, that got the most votes! Bizzare.

Thanks edsnler for that little device! I'll be using it again! I know you didn't say it, but your posts did help me to craft it.

Well, I was among the "We all are equally ignorant" votes and I found the whole thing very interesting. Thanks Missing -- and Edsel -- for the invite.

I was torn between "We are all equally ignorant" and "No, because my faith might be diminished." I think the latter answer is badly worded.

In a nutshell, not only is it bad form for us to appear to be too wise about God's will, but faith takes ... faith. If you have to legislate it (ie, force it on people), you've eff'ed up your faith.

Yep. A lot of people took the ignorant part hard. There is a part of us, that takes it on faith, that needs to believe we are smart enough.

Well, we are, but not so smart as to possess, but for rare and insightful cases, any solid justification for legislating our beliefs on others. In this, we are equally ignorant!

And should be equally humble too, but most of us just aren't, for whatever reason.

And I agree with you completely. I would add that, living by your faith really should be all the advocacy anyone needs.

These things combined, form the basis for a sound justification for freedom in this regard that really should be obvious to everyone, but isn't because we all seem to have a hard time accepting core ignorance!

Wha? Huh? Sorry, I was down the hall taking a leak...

I missed your essay and poll on kos, Missing (aka potatohead), but just went to read it.

I can see why people would respond so aggressively to your contention that the most we can ever hope to achieve in this area is faith, but that truth is elusive, and almost certainly unachievable.

I think this is because for everyone, faith is not an end unto itself, but a path to the truth (about God, the nature of existence) that everyone seeks. To say that truth is unachievable is to undermine the purpose of religion for most people. As I think I stated earlier, I believe that religion, belief and faith become the "lens" or "framework" for the world we experience. This alone makes belief/faith an essential part of how we cope with the world.

As long as that belief/faith provides one with a set of morals/values that allow for the natural rights of all humans, then people of all beliefs (and even those who believe that there is no god) should be able to "get along" Rodney King style.

Back to your survey results: I think you got 0% on the "Maybe" response because of your phrasing. The first two responses implicitly connect Faith to Truth, and who can argue with legislation based on Truth? But the "Maybe" response implies that majorities can divine what the Truth is; I'm sure the Pro Life crowd would look at the majority of Americans that support abortion choice and conclude that the majority can be wrong about such issues.

I also wonder what the 70% group was thinking: that we are 1)all equally ignorant about how to have faith/worship God, or 2) all equally ignorant about the existence of God? I would assume the former.

Edsel, as a member of the 70% I can speak for my reasoning, but I will preface my answer with a healthy dose of "IMHO" before elaborating.

As I have mentioned before, I was raised in a church. I found that -- like any set of ideas -- much of the details of faith were debated endlessly with little result or conclusion. However, the basic tenets, the "golden rule" and "love thy neighbor" and whatnot were universally embraced.

I may be the only person who liked the "equally ignorant" answer, but I thought it was well said. If were are imperfect creatures, in an imperfect time, that is was the only answer, to me, that was true.

It seemed to encompass not only a believer who felt like he or she should, "humble thyself in the sight of the Lord," but also the skeptic or agnostic who believes in something, but refuses to name it. Of course, some of the most orthodox folks of some sects would not even utter the Lord's name. I believe they too would agree that we, as a "we" collectively, are equally ignorant.

Does that makes sense?

(quick add)

Rereading the discussion, KSKD in his veggie disguise said, "The larger point being that none of us should really care where the others are at, given others beliefs are not actually causing harm."

In a nutshell, this is why any legislation of faith -- the middle ground of soup kitchens, ancient rituals and folks singing together -- is silly. This is also why science ought to be taught without any interjection of facts not supported by scientific method. Faith is personal.

"[my] contention that the most we can ever hope to achieve in this area is faith."

That's not what I wrote.

Really, the point was that we are stuck at faith right now. That's the shared ignorance part. All of us simply must take some things for granted, or realize an incomplete belief system. Neither choice is that big of a deal, but acceptance of that condition seems to be.

The follow on point is that our only way out of that mess, happens to be through freedom of discourse. Eventually, shared understanding will bring us that which we need, but do not have now.

And that's really where faith and politics comes into play. In order for the necessary discussions to actually happen, we need an environment free enough for them to exist. That means acceptance of where we are, and concentrated efforts toward not limiting the debate prematurely.

So, believer, unbeliever, realist, theist, whatever does not matter. None of us, has any inherent entitlement that can justify legislating these things, or we deny each other the means by which the questions may eventually be answered.

And that sums up the shared ignorance part too. I wrote it that way specifically because nobody can justify a law of ignorance. We all seem to agree that laws need to be justfied by some authority right?

Well, lacking facts, there really is no such authority. Frankly, that pisses all sides off, but that happens to be reality when all is said and done.

I've given this area of reasoning considerable thought, and the whole thing is not pretty. Interestingly, our founders engaged in this same exercise and their core disagreements, combined with their failure to identify some core authority resulted in many of the core ideas that formed this free society.

For an excellent summation of how this all plays out, read Thomas Paine - "The age of reason". I don't agree with all he wrote in that work, but the reasoning is solid.

If you reason from the position that we are equal, under the law, then you must also grapple with where authority actually comes from. This is where Paine is brilliant in his justification for our system of government.

Having government be secular is a direct artifact of that, and it's actually a great show of respect for all parties in that it's a statement at the highest level regarding freedom of thought and what it means to all of us.

It is not an attack on faith of any kind, despite the claims to the contrary, in that we all at some level either deny ourselves a complete belief system, or must support some portion of it on matters of faith period. BTW: I am extremely interested in any effort to show this is not true!

It's complex, and perhaps I worded it poorly. In fact, I think I worded it horribly. Was trying to use as few words as possible and that clearly tanked! Oh well, maybe next time.

Yea, it's deep. Thanks for the clarification. I guess I didn't fully get the point of your DKos post, but it makes some more sense now.

I'm struggling to get my head around the tie-in you introduce between faith/belief and political discourse. It's like one of those optical illusion puzzles - the one with the page full of dots. When you look at the center, in your fringe vision you clearly see a square around the periphery of the dots. But when you shift your gaze to look at the square, it disappears.

When I think about faith, I see faith embedded in religion as well as faith embedded in political opinion. But when I look at religion, or look at politics, that common thread seems to evaporate away.

Clearly there are historical and present day connections between church and state, but that really isn't your point. It's about the beliefs we hold, and the faith that rises from those beliefs. Those beliefs can be theological or political. Are you saying that the tools of political discourse can be used to discover theological truth? Perhaps...but it seems there are a lot of roadblocks, too numerous to try to discern and list at 10pm on a Sunday night.

Let me know of you think I'm beginning to "get it" yet.

Yep.

Don't feel bad, not a one of them got it either.

I think you are getting there. It's late for me too, but I'm gonna put forward the following as a foundation:

We have a coupla problems as a race. One is that we clearly do not know our origins. Maybe we didn't evolve quick enough to have the tools to write it down, or pass it along. Perhaps we were created, perhaps we knew and natural disasters or some other powerful thing stripped it from us. It does not matter. We just don't know, but it bothers us for a lot of reasons.

(This BTW, is one of the absolutely true things in this world --there are not many. If you have something to break this truth, I'm very interested in hearing it.)

IMHO, that makes us equal in that we share this ignorance. We've all got our own ideas, or some rational justification for not being concerned with it, but that's it.

The other one is that we are born knowing nothing and must depend on the work of others to leverage whatever understanding might be at hand.

In this too, we are all equal.

These aspects of our condition make discourse mandatory period. Without it, we are left to our own devices and these won't get us much past hunting, gathering and killing for elementary survival.

Therefore, any truth we have managed to establish as a race, came about through insight combined with discourse.

This is not to say we all learn nothing on our own, clearly we do. Most of it is redundant, but every once in a while, one of us comes to know something unique and that is precious, only if it can be shared; otherwise, it is lost and essentially meaningless as it's not possible to put that something into context without some greater understanding.

It follows then, it is in our mutual best interest to foster an environment where we allow the maximum discourse possible, while also keeping ourselves alive as a race.

This is where it gets interesting!

Limiting discourse with law, or maybe just with social norms, can then limit the scope of possible discoveries! This is self-limiting and harmful in that we do not fully realize that gift of insight and that weakens us as a race, generally speaking.

(It could be argued that some insight is better left unshared as well.)

I'm gonna stop there for now.

Ahhh! I see it now! Law by nature limits actions and restrict rights, so any laws in this area would limit discourse, and therefore limit the only real path to any chance of knowing truth. That's the kernel of your idea - I was stuck on the introductory points. Yes, this is a meaty topic.

But it is late, so I'll leave you with this and return to this thread later (after I read some Paine):

Laws, even laws that affect the free exercise of discourse, are an essential part of societal living. Remove all laws from society and you have anarchy. So it makes sense to think that if you remove all laws that restrict discourse, you would have communicative anarchy. Is there a balance point of laws that limits/regulates discourse in such a way as to most fully maximize it's potential to reveal truth?

With that I bid you good night.

There absolutely is a balance and it varies somewhat. Two things come into play here:

tolerance and harm.

Essentially, the justification for tolerance comes from our equality, as detailed above. However, too much tolerance is as bad as too much discourse is. Like discourse is checked by our own need to survive and prosper, tolerance is checked by harm.

Harm is muddied by it's dual nature. There is physical harm and mental, or moral harm.

Physical harm is where the person is diminished in some fashion. Mental, or moral harm is essentially becoming offended somehow. Some mental harm crosses into the physical because our minds are actually physical things.

Harm is somewhat complex and really should get it's own thread. IMHO, for this one, I think the definitions above are adequate, but we shall see.

In a nutshell, we have a fairly low tolerance for physical harm. This is easily justified by our need to be capable, and for overall well being. Also, physical harm is easily proven true. It is backed by physical realities and those are easy truths from which to work from.

Our tolerance for mental harm varies widely, and I'm not sure where the line is. This is something we do not fully understand at this time. In general, mental harm is arbitrary. One is as offended as they think they are.

Unlike physical harm, which can be tied to known truths, defining mental harm is circular, given our current level of understanding. This fallacy justifies a high degree of tolerance.

I'm also going to lay out what prompted this whole thought process. Two things really: one surrounds legislating morality. Where does the authority for this action come from? How is it justified?

The other core idea is that of our system of government in general. It came into being with lines of reasoning similar to the one I'm currently following. In a very general sense, our founders came to the idea that authority comes from known truth. If that is absent, then it comes from the reasoned deliberations of the people.

I'm sorry if I'm hijacking your thread here Missing, but I couldn't help but think about both mental and moral harm after reading Steve Duin's column today regarding Rolling Hills mega-church's message from the pulpit last week, while thinking of a previous poster here whom is in agreement with (and I believe susceptable to) their "message"...did anyone else read it?

His whole column today addresses the issues you've raised above. here is Steve's column, for those who haven't read it:

Motivated by curses, not blessings

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

In the first, uplifting, love-is-the-heart-of-the-message half-hour of Sunday's 11 a.m. service at Rolling Hills Community Church, song leader Grady Guy told the story of stopping at a Beaverton gas station 10 days ago. Struck by how discouraged the attendant seemed, Guy struck up a conversation with the man, who was upset he was working an extended shift and not getting paid for the overtime.

When the attendant returned with his change, 11 bucks, Guy said, "If they won't pay you, I will," and handed him one of the bills. Only as he was driving off did Guy glance at the $10 bill left in his hand and realize he'd short-changed God's healing power.

"In that moment when the Lord wants us to be a blessing to people," Guy said, "do we give them the $1 bill or the $10 bill?"

That simple, understated anecdote will stay with me for a while. So will the lecture that followed it, by Mat Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law.

I was drawn to Rolling Hills on the weekend it played host to the Restore America conference, which encouraged evangelicals to "vote their values." Restore America is particularly galvanized by abortion and same-sex marriage, and believes Christians should vote "for those who acknowledge our Christian heritage and respect God's authority over all mankind, including civil government."

Given that, I wanted to hear the Sunday sermon. Staver -- who sits at the right hand of Jerry Falwell -- didn't disappoint.

Before the backdrop of the flag, Staver saluted the Gospel, then downshifted into Deuteronomy. He wanted to explain the blessings waiting for those countries that "fully obey the Lord" -- including, curiously enough, "a strong military" -- and the curses awaiting those that don't.

There was a time, Staver reminisced, when we could leave our doors and cars unlocked. We were a Christian nation, balanced on the pillars of morality and religion. We were securely tied to the principles of our God-fearing founding fathers, the ones who considered blacks fit for slavery and women unfit to vote.

By "booting God out of the government" and organized prayer and Christian teachings from the public schools, Staver continued, this nation has earned the "inevitable consequences" of disobedience.

A weak military. Sexually transmitted diseases. An excess of imports, not exports. Population growth that owes to immigration, not reproduction.

It would be several hours before I could check the numbers. For what it's worth, the United States has had a negative trade balance since 1976, one that has more than doubled since George Bush took office. According to the U.S. Census, this country's population jumped 32.7 million between 1990 and 2000, 11.3 million of which owed to immigration.

But as I sat in that sanctuary, listening to this montage of facts and fictions, Christian principles and conservative canards, and, worse, Staver's casual blending of pornography, pedophilia and same-sex marriage, I marveled at the disconnect with the worship service. How did we get here? What happened to the heart of the message? Why is the congregation listening with muted respect or, each time Staver rakes the ACLU, fevered applause?

I asked Dale Ebel, Rolling Hills' senior pastor, about that later. "I give all kinds of people freedom to speak," said Ebel, who was in California on Sunday, celebrating the birth of his eighth grandchild. He thinks it's important to discuss both the easy lessons and the hard lessons in the Bible, but believes everything must be presented with love and grace.

In their absence, you end up as I did, walking out of a $10 church with a tattered dollar bill in your hand.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com http://steveduin.blogs.oregonlive.com

Here is dissenting comment from a blogger:

"Is attending Sunday services with the express purpose of critiquing the sermon a sin? Is it a sin to go to church for the express purpose of rallying a radical base against the very churchgoers who let you attend services in the first place? Is deception and cynicism a sin, or just journalistically unethical?

The Oregonian, failing to consider any of those questions, gladly published today’s Steve Duin column, where Steve trashes the conservative message of the sermon delivered by Mat Staver, Dean of the Liberty University School of Law, at the Rolling Hills Community Church this past weekend..."

I don't want to blow my own horn, but part of the reason we are here is that people no longer take the time to consider some of the things I am here on this (and other) threads.

After the election of 2000, us being here hit home. For a brief time after 9/11, it seemed we might once again solidify around our common ground as people.

I'm confident that I don't have ir right, but I am also equally confident I am better for having worked on it!

No worries on the thread. I imagine it will pick up again after Edselenr chews through some Paine. Maybe it won't either. Heavy topic. Maybe too heavy!

My first thought, in response to that column, is of Chris and how his message would differ. My own would be humility. Nearly all of us need to exhibit more of it than we normally do.

We think we know a lot of stuff, but we really don't.

Missing, you're really struggling with my name. Here, I'll show you how it works:

Edsel - the car I drive

Lehr - my name (see profile)

Slam them together - Edselehr! Now you try it.


(or you can call me Edsel, or you can call me Ed, or you can call me Lehr, or you can call me...)

Crap! Maybe I'll just got with Ed...

I've the same problem with kpoj too. 8 outta 10 times, it comes out kopj...

Go figure!

But ya doesn't has to call him Johnson!

Skybill, wonder if anyone else caught that? Only us midlifers would remember Ray Jay.

midlifer here. also, i read the duin piece too when it came out. i'm thinking that if one is exposed to too many of Rev. Ebel's guests, one will have a meltdown (as we have seen).

The congregation is hearing what they want to hear. If they found the message unacceptable they would let the church and pastor know. Unfortunately, it is the basic nature of all of us to seek affirmation of who we are, not enlightenment of what we could be. Breaking the mold of the comfortable, familiar and acceptable is probably the most difficult task of all.