Is "slowing growth" really a concern, as opposed to membership loss?

[clarkgoble]

7 hours ago, california boy said:

Have you not heard of the concept of the tyrant of the masses over the rights of the minorities?  Of course laws are based on basic beliefs. But that is different than imposing religious beliefs on others such as gay marriage.  Even though Prop 8 was passed by a majority of voters, because it violated rights guaranteed by the constitution it was overturned. 

First, there's absolutely zero in either the constitution nor even controversial mainstream jurisprudence that says people can not vote on their religious beliefs. There is a church/state separation both from jurisprudence on the first amendment but also explicit laws like LBJ's Johnson Amendment. (Ironically passed to stop people working against his Senate reelection and with apparently no intent to stop religious activism) The founders obviously were very worried about the tyrrany of the majority. But that does't mean we have in any way shape or form a prevention to keep religious belief from law. Indeed one needn't look terribly far to see lots of laws passed with religious intent.

Now some of these with changing jurisprudence of the constitution have blocked particular religiously inspired laws. So for example the Defense of Marriage Act that Clinton signed and supported was explicitly religious legislation. At the time few people saw it as problematic constitutionally. However with Obergefell v. Hodges enough on the court thought it violated the 14th amendment that it and all relevant state laws were struck down. But that's not evidence of the point you are arguing but again a very narrow application of due process and equal protection. It can't be seen as a general "no laws based upon religious belief." 

Quote

Deciding for others when a fetus becomes a person is another example.  Just because a group, even a majority has a belief, if that belief infringes on a guaranteed right of another doesn't mean that majority belief can be law  

But of course it was law for most of the country's history. Again it was a change in legal jurisprudence under the Warren Court that changed it. I think many still think that (as well as Obergefell) were improperly decided. But the reality is as a practical matter that the constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means.

Again though, nothing in Roe v. Wade has the principle that religious beliefs can't be imposed. It just says that in this case there is a hard to change law limiting particular beliefs. (After all just as liberals could remove the 2cd amendment rights with their own amendment, the right could do the same to Roe vs. Wade)

Quote

When Ronald Regan was president,he was able to pack  the majority of Supreme Court justices with conservative justices  That majority may very well have been personally against abortion  Regan thought they would overturn Row vs wade  but they didn't.

I'd say that several of Reagan's appointments were moderates (Kennedy and O'Connor). Had Reagan been able to appoint strict constructionists I think the decisions would have been much different. Ditto with Bush's appointment of Souter. But again this doesn't mean that your point is right. The reason O'Connor and Kennedy decided things differently was because of their particular jurisprudence rather than some universally recognized meaning of the constitution.

Quote

So yes indeed, protected constitutional rights does indeed protect a persons rights from even strongly held religious beliefs of others  I have shown you two examples of that  

Again, as I originally said, all laws are expressions of belief, there's no limit on what causes those beliefs (religious vs. secular), but the constitution is a hard to change set of laws that trump other laws. I've never argued that there aren't laws that were religious that weren't unconstitutional. That'd be a silly thing to argue. I'm merely saying there are no general protections from religious beliefs being passed as law as you originally claimed.

Quote

The fact that the church disregards other people's rights guaranteed them by the California constitution in order to impose their religious beliefs is a major source of contention for me and many others.

I found the Prop-8 opposition pointless since one could quickly see from demographic changes in the 90's that gay marriage would have become quite popular. Even Prop-8 barely passed. Had SCOTUS ruled Obergefell at best it would have only delayed things a few years. All the church got out of its Prop-8 activism was a bad reputation and people like you getting upset at them. (I've no idea if there was revelation behind the actions - if there was I'm not sure of the point but I'll acknowledge as a theological possibility that there was)

But again the issue with Obergfell wasn't imposing religious beliefs but due process and equal protection. As I mentioned as little as 10 years earlier DOMA was uncontroversial and few saw it as constitutionally questionable.

Quote

I personally believe in the irights of others to decide for themselves when life begins even though I am against abortion

I'm willing to bet you don't believe that since you probably agree that once the baby is born it is alive. So you clearly have constraints. The baby clearly is viable in the same way for much of the 3rd trimester. We even now have artificial wombs in testing for humans to deal with premature babies. (They've been successfully tested with animals) Most people oppose 3rd trimester abortion and I bet that a constitutional challenge on a total 3rd trimester ban would be unsuccessful. Congress almost passed one a couple of years ago and many states have one. The constitutional challenges are working their way to SCOTUS so I suspect we'll have a ruling before too many years. (This was even an issue in Gorsuch's hearings)

Edited May 22, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Gray]

On 5/19/2017 at 1:44 PM, clarkgoble said:

To a degree. However many of the elements you characterize as doctrinal disputes are important. Life isn't just about being good but developing a relationship with God. And ultimately the later is pretty important. 

I would argue that we develop our relationship with God by the way we treat each other.  To paraphrase Spong, if God is the source of Love, then we worship God by loving. If God is the source of being, we then worship God by being our greatest potential selves. 

 

Quote

I'd also say that secular humanism because of disputes on the petty doctrine can come up with very different conclusions regarding actions. Abortion is the obvious example. Of course one can be an atheist and be opposed to abortion. I know many who are. However secular humanists typically have been extremely pro-choice with that mentioned in most of their manifestos.

I think you can be pro-choice and still be opposed to abortion in most cases. I am. 

Edited May 22, 2017 by Gray

[clarkgoble]

3 minutes ago, Gray said:

I think you can be pro-choice and still be opposed to abortion in most cases. I am. 

I certainly agree. I wish this was still the dominant view on the left. It used to be you'd at least get lip service to "legal and rare." Of late though you are seeing more and more pushing abortion as a positive good that shouldn't be opposed or even ameliorated. 

In the same way one can be strongly pro-life yet not think life begins at conception.

Edited May 22, 2017 by clarkgoble

[thesometimesaint]

That is not a dominate view on the left.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, Atheist Mormon said:

I don't see how you can't see the glaring apathy for supernatural. But your kids surely will see it.

Nah...my kids are far more likely to see the supernatural confirmed.

Time is ticking.

[Kenngo1969]

12 hours ago, california boy said:

The secular assault you refer to is really religion coming to grips with the reality that they can no longer impose their religious beliefs on others.

Hmmm.  Before you read my mind and told me so, I wasn't aware that that was what I was referring to.  Thank you for clearing that up!  

[Kenngo1969]

On 5/21/2017 at 0:10 PM, Kenngo1969 said:

By no means am I suggesting that anyone, or that any organization to which s/he might belong, compromise on what are considered core beliefs or doctrines, nor am I suggesting (as difficult as it is for me, as a person of faith, to conceptualize a workable system of ethics without some sort of higher power at its center) that atheists and agnostics are, ipso facto, immoral.  Whatever your religious (or irreligious) leanings, if you believe in doing good to and for your fellow human beings, in making life as good as you can make it for you and for others within your sphere of influence for as long as you can before (from your perspective) succumbing to the void, in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and so on, more power to you.  

However, one good thing I see coming out of the continuing secularist assault on religion is that faiths and their adherents will have to decide really quickly what genuinely matters: Doctrinal differences notwithstanding, if the secularist assault on religion threatens the way of life of all believers, of whatever religious stripe, perhaps people of faith will finally start coming together (or at least, doing so more than we hitherto have done) over what we have in common with one another rather than continuing to allow ourselves to be divided over relatively insignificant differences.

 

8 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

I want my religion sectarian and my government secular.

I'm not sure how that's responsive to what I wrote, but ... Thanks for chiming in?  

[Hamba Tuhan]

On 5/22/2017 at 4:10 AM, Kenngo1969 said:

Doctrinal differences notwithstanding, if the secularist assault on religion threatens the way of life of all believers, of whatever religious stripe, perhaps people of faith will finally start coming together (or at least, doing so more than we hitherto have done) over what we have in common with one another rather than continuing to allow ourselves to be divided over relatively insignificant differences.

Our stake held an open house this past Saturday and invited the community and community leaders. The local leader of the opposition (and a man I much admire) was outside having some refreshments after his tour, so I took the opportunity to introduce him to a Muslim friend whom I had brought to the event. As this good man pointed out, where we live it is already not an issue of differences amongst people of faith but blatant attacks on the faithful by those who are not.

For example, one of our national senators recently publicly called for opposition to gay 'marriage' to be banned because religious views have no right of access to the public sphere. Which of course is just a dressed-up way of saying that her personal beliefs are superior to ours because, well, she holds them... <sigh>

Edited May 23, 2017 by Hamba Tuhan

[Storm Rider]

14 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm willing to bet you don't believe that since you probably agree that once the baby is born it is alive. So you clearly have constraints. The baby clearly is viable in the same way for much of the 3rd trimester. We even now have artificial wombs in testing for humans to deal with premature babies. (They've been successfully tested with animals) Most people oppose 3rd trimester abortion and I bet that a constitutional challenge on a total 3rd trimester ban would be unsuccessful. Congress almost passed one a couple of years ago and many states have one. The constitutional challenges are working their way to SCOTUS so I suspect we'll have a ruling before too many years. (This was even an issue in Gorsuch's hearings)

Our daughter delivered a little baby girl at 24 weeks gestation - a very common time period where babies are aborted.  Ella Kate, Kate is after my mother, was 11 1/2 inches long and 1.4 pounds.  She was on vent for two days and then was switched to a cannula type-thing.  By the end of the first week her oxygen content was 22% (we breathe 21% in the air).  The point is that she was doing incredibly well for how young she was.  She is now one month old - she had to go back on the vent, but is off of it again - and has doubled her weight.  

Our daughter was born ten weeks early when she was born.  I guess these early births run in our family for some reason.  Regardless, these early births stand as evidence that most people who talk about late term abortions don't have a clue about the topic or subject.  It is an emotional issue and emotion often rules the day.  The definition of viable is difficult to define completely.  Are we viable when we need medication?  Are we viable if we need oxygen?  Are we viable if we depend on anything else to facilitate life?  If so, what is the different between me as an adult that must take medication in order to live and my granddaughter that needs the assistance of a cannula?  

If it is just to have an abortion at a time when the baby is viable i.e. she can live with medical assistance then it is just to kill any individual of any age if they need medical assistance for anything - children with physical impairments, adults with mental impairments, teenagers in wheelchairs, and almost every cancer patient.  

It is for this reason that the vast majority of reasoning for having abortions is logic built on a slippery, very steep slope.  If a society can become so calloused as to kill innocent life it can very quickly become so calloused as to kill any inconvenient life.  

[Hamba Tuhan]

32 minutes ago, Storm Rider said:

If it is just to have an abortion at a time when the baby is viable i.e. she can live with medical assistance then it is just to kill any individual of any age if they need medical assistance for anything - children with physical impairments, adults with mental impairments, teenagers in wheelchairs, and almost every cancer patient.

Where I live, our left-most political party not only celebrates abortion but also pushes 'assisted suicide' for the elderly and terminally ill, 'postnatal abortion' for parents who didn't realise before birth that they didn't really want a child, and 'euthansia' for disabled children whose parents feel burdened. It really all is a package deal: kill the inconvenience. One of my abortion-loving Facebook friends from my PhD days even posted recently that the obvious solution to the aged-care crisis is sending a gang of strong men with cricket bats into the rest homes. 

Edited May 23, 2017 by Hamba Tuhan

[california boy]

10 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Hmmm.  Before you read my mind and told me so, I wasn't aware that that was what I was referring to.  Thank you for clearing that up!  

Good to know that secular assault on religion does not mean secular assault on religion.  Thanks for clearing that up.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Where I live, our left-most political party not only celebrates abortion but also pushes 'assisted suicide' for the elderly and terminally ill, 'postnatal abortion' for parents who didn't realise before birth that they didn't really want a child, and 'euthansia' for disabled children whose parents feel burdened. It really all is a package deal: kill the inconvenience. One of my abortion-loving Facebook friends from my PhD days even posted recently that the obvious solution to the aged-care crisis is sending a gang of strong men with cricket bats into the rest homes. 

This is all very appalling indeed.

But by "post-natal abortion," do you mean to say this political party advocates the right to kill a baby if the parents decide they don't want a child?

How seriously do people take this political party?

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 minute ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But by "post-natal abortion," do you mean to say this political party advocates the right to kill a baby if the parents decide they don't want a child?

It has certainly been discussed, yes. Along with killing disabled children. (Quality of life issues being the usual excuse, for both the children and the parent.)

Quote

How seriously do people take this political party?

Well, they currently hold the balance of power in our local parliament...

[Scott Lloyd]

8 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

It has certainly been discussed, yes. Along with killing disabled children. (Quality of life issues being the usual excuse, for both the children and the parent.)

Well, they currently hold the balance of power in our local parliament...

This is the most disturbing thing I've heard of pertaining to government since Nazi Germany. Reminds me of one of the prophecies of the last days that the love of many shall wax cold.

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

7 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

This is the most disturbing thing I've heard of pertaining to government since Nazi Germany. Reminds me of one of the prophecies of the last days that the love of many shall wax cold.

I don't think it's anything really new. A number of US states had eugenics programs in the 20th century. Assisted suicide has really taken off in a number of European nations. Etc. I suspect you're already familiar with the role abortion has played in significantly reducing the number of people with Down syndrome?

[Scott Lloyd]

7 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I don't think it's anything really new. A number of US states had eugenics programs in the 20th century. Assisted suicide has really taken off in a number of European nations. Etc. I suspect you're already familiar with the role abortion has played in significantly reducing the number of people with Down syndrome?

I had not heard of that, but it stands to reason, I guess. 

I knew things had gotten bad, but not quite to the point of butchering babies after birth because the parents decided they didn't want a child, or killing disabled children. I don't think I could respect someone who harbored such positions, much less sustain him in office. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I knew things had gotten bad, but not quite to the point of butchering babies after birth because the parents decided they didn't want a child, or killing disabled children.

No one here actually is doing these things ... yet. Just floating them as thought bubbles, experimenting with what language gets the best response, etc.

I've found it can be useful to keep my eye on the Netherlands if I want to have a sense of what society's next 'progressive' detours might look like.

[clarkgoble]

23 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

That is not a dominate view on the left.

Right, but at one time there was at least the feeling that leaders on the left had to portray it as the dominant view. The past few years that's apparently ended with few pro-choice people expressing dismay at abortion but thinking it should be legal.

[Storm Rider]

As the philosophy that the desires of the individual progresses and takes dominance all things are possible to the "other".  The unborn cannot speak so it is extremely easy to discount their value. Whereas now it is acceptable for the seriously ill to kill themselves it does not take too much to push that acceptance to an acceptance of those whose quality of life is deemed "bad" - those in a coma, those who are mute, mentally impaired, etc.  

Society has elevated the demands of the individual to untouched heights - a person who thinks they are a particular gender must be respected because of their thoughts; thus society must bow.  The concept of the family unit is almost meaningless in society today.  It is not mother, father, and children - a unit that grows, functions, etc.  Today the family unit is anything you want it to be:  two women, two men, or a whole lot of anything in between.  

We have done an poor job of philosophically addressing the motivations of the Left for casting aside society values and morals in favor of satiating the desires of the individual.  It is evident the Left does not comprehend what they are doing or the meaning of their actions.  Worse, the Right has sat on their hands and the best defenses were developed is the Bible "says" or it is immoral - we have not addressed what is actually happening or the slippery slope these actions imperil society.

[thesometimesaint]

17 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

 

I'm not sure how that's responsive to what I wrote, but ... Thanks for chiming in?  

Pretty simple. To keep them both alive and healthy we must keep them separate.

[Kenngo1969]

36 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Pretty simple. To keep them both alive and healthy we must keep them separate.

Okey-doke.  Uhhh ... what are "they," and who is arguing that "they" should be allowed to sicken and die?
 

[thesometimesaint]

We must keep religions sectarian and governments secular. History has more than adequately demonstrated what happens when they try to mix. IE; Iran

[JLHPROF]

2 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

We must keep religions sectarian and governments secular. History has more than adequately demonstrated what happens when they try to mix. IE; Iran

Until Christ returns.

So should we be trying to live as perfect a society now or not even attempt it until he gets here?

[Kenngo1969]

2 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

We must keep religions sectarian and governments secular. History has more than adequately demonstrated what happens when they try to mix. IE; Iran

I don't know who here is arguing for the commingling of religion and government. (Hint: While co-opting government and its institutions in the service of a secularizing assault on faith and on its adherents certainly doesn't hurt that cause, it is not a sin qua non for conducting that assault.)  And if you truly think that the United States of America is a heartbeat away from becoming another Iran, you're welcome to that opinion, but I don't know too many people (even among those who are of a decidedly secular bent or who are antipathetic toward religion) who would agree with you ... none, actually. That sort of argument seems, to me, to be the rough equivalent of a Godwin's Law Violation.  And you didn't answer my question: Who are "they," and who is arguing that "they" should be allowed to sicken and die?

Edited May 23, 2017 by Kenngo1969

[thesometimesaint]

20 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Until Christ returns.

So should we be trying to live as perfect a society now or not even attempt it until he gets here?

I'm as Christian as they come. Christianity has a long history of torturing and murdering other Christians. Heck they do it to any that disagree with their brand of Christianity.