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“The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To”

Sep 4th, 2012 by

Apparently, according to Democrats, government should be the center of American life. Especially since the Democrats dropped God from their platform.

Oh, my.

Posted in Culture

14 Responses to ““The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To””

  1. John E. says:
    September 5, 2012 at 7:23 am

    Some Americans don’t believe the existence of a Supreme Being has been proven.

    Other Americans believe the god you believe in doesn’t exist.

    • John E. says:
      September 5, 2012 at 7:25 am

      And still other Americans believe in a god that you don’t believe exists.

      So, quite frankly, ‘god’ is not a unifying concept here in the United States.

      • DADvocate says:
        September 5, 2012 at 9:55 am

        And, no god is? The Pope and the Dalia Lama get along famously.

        • John E says:
          September 5, 2012 at 10:00 am

          I’m not really sure I see your point.

          Neither the Pope nor the Dalai Lama are citizens of the United States.

          • DADvocate says:
            September 5, 2012 at 10:33 am

            Are you really that dense or just playing dumb? The Pope and the Dalia Lama are unified in a belief in the supernatural, gods, and the other commonalities of their religions, as are many in the U.S. That is why you have the ecumenical movement. Of course, you can find an obscure church in Isreal where some people don’t get along. As usual, you specialize in finding largely irrevelant tidbits that go against the overwhelming majority of evidence. The majority of Christians and Muslims get along fine and claim to worship the same god.

            Of course, none of this addresses how the party of diversity, the Democrats, choose to be incredibly undiverse and intolerant and exclusive.

          • John E says:
            September 5, 2012 at 10:52 am

            You know, I really don’t know why you choose to get so upset with me and my replies – but it is a choice that you are making.

            Your reaction is your own and I take no responsibility for it.

        • John E says:
          September 5, 2012 at 10:14 am

          Furthermore, all that really shows is the people of good will get along well – especially when they have no conflicting interests.

          There is a Christian Holy Site in Israel – the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – that is shared by Catholic and Orthodox monks. They do not get along famously even though the putatively worship the same God.

          However, the history of ethnic and inter-sect conflict poisons their working relationship to such a degree that the Holy Site has fallen into disrepair because the two groups cannot work together to carry out basic maintenance.

          http://blog.adw.org/2011/12/orthodox-priests-fighting-in-church-of-the-nativity-a-personal-reflection/

  2. John E says:
    September 5, 2012 at 11:02 am

    The majority of Christians and Muslims get along fine and claim to worship the same god.

    Actually, they don’t claim to worship the same god.

    Christians claim to worship a Trinity where God is composed of three Persons – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    Muslims worship Allah who is explicitly One Person and they deny the Divinity of Jesus.

    • DADvocate says:
      September 5, 2012 at 7:25 pm

      Ha! The spineless Dems put God back in their platform. Guess they’re fine with divisiveness.

      I was taught in Catholic grade school that Muslims and Catholics worship the same God. God, the Father, and Allah are the same in what I was taught. Maybe Muslims think of it differently.

      • John E. says:
        September 5, 2012 at 8:39 pm

        Here’s what the Koran has to say:

        They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them. Quran [005.073]

        “Say He is God, the One and Only God, the, Eternal, Absolute. He begets not, nor is He begotten. And there is none like unto Him!” Qur’an [112:1-4]

        They said, “The Most Gracious has begotten a son”! You have uttered a gross blasphemy. The heavens are about to shatter, the earth is about to tear asunder, and the mountains are about to crumble. Because they claim that the Most Gracious has begotten a son. It is not befitting the Most Gracious that He should beget a son. Every single one in the heavens and the earth is a servant of the Most Gracious. He has encompassed them, and has counted them one by one. All of them will come before Him on the Day of Resurrection as individuals. Quran: [19:88-95]

        In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary. Say: “Who then hath the least power against Allah, if His will were to destroy Christ the son of Mary, his mother, and all every – one that is on the earth? For to Allah belongeth the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between. He createth what He pleaseth. For Allah hath power over all things.” Quran [005.017]

        They do blaspheme who say: “Allah is Christ the son of Mary.” But said Christ: “O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.” Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help. Quran [005.072]

        It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, “Be”, and it is. Quran [019.035]

        Maybe a case could be made that the Jews and the Muslims worship the same God, but orthodox Christianity teaches a very different understanding of God from either of those those other two faiths.

        In Christianity, God is a member of a Trinity. Judaism and Islam view that idea as blasphemous.

  3. Turmarion says:
    September 5, 2012 at 6:41 pm

    The entire U.S. Constitution makes not one reference to God, faith, religion, or the supernatural. This is appropriate–a constitution is essentially a user’s manual for running a country. There no more needs to be discussion of God or faith in a constitution–or party platform–than there needs to be in the car manual in your glove compartment or a calculus textbook or the baking instructions on the side of a box of cake mix. I mean, really: “The Lord gave us the intelligence to build engines, therefore cleanse ye this filter?” “We honor God by taking the second derivative of this function?” “Our Christian faith and culture inform our understanding of cake baking?” That would be absurd–and so is trying to put religion in a political document. And please note–I say this as a believer.

    Also, I have to take issue with the DADvocate’s conflation of Buddhism and Catholicism. I’m a Catholic who has studied Buddhism as a hobby for thirty plus years, who used to meditate at a Tibetan Buddhist center, and who am married to a Buddhist; and I can definitely say that aside from the correct statement that Buddhists believe in the supernatural, DADvocate’s statement is one of the most ill-informed and ignorant about Buddhism that I’ve ever read. Heck, even the idea that Buddhists “also believe in the supernatural” isn’t quite right, either, since from the point of view of Vajrayana metaphysics, there isn’t really a distinction between what we call “natural” and “supernatural”. Interreligious dialogue or mutual respect has nothing whatsoever to do with dogmatic similarities.

    • DADvocate says:
      September 5, 2012 at 7:29 pm

      What is it Buddhism says to do when you meet Buddha on the road? Or, how to tell if a man is enlightened or not? I don’t pretend to be an expert, or a snot, on any religion, even the one I practice. Your comments are irrelevant to the point I was making, but never pass up an opportunity to show off.

      You might enjoy this story.

      • Turmarion says:
        September 5, 2012 at 10:05 pm

        You said, “The Pope and the Dalia Lama are unified in a belief in the supernatural, gods, and the other commonalities of their religions, as are many in the U.S.” That the Catholic Church and Tibetan Buddhism share what you imply is a large number of commonalities is demonstrably false.

        Catholicism is monotheistic; while Tibetan Buddhism has deity-like beings (bodhisattvas, yidams, dakinis, etc.), they are more nearly equivalent to what we’d call angels. There is no concept of a creator God.

        Catholicism believes in one life only, after which is Heaven or Hell; Buddhism believes in reincarnation.

        The goal of Catholicism is Heaven; of Buddhism, nirvana (which is a very different state from the many Buddhist heavens).

        Catholics believe we must take care that our souls are saved; one of the key Buddhist doctrines, anitya actually denies that souls even exist. I could go on.

        Yes, there are similarities on a deep level–one might compare the Three Bodies of the Buddha, the Dharmakaya, the Nirmanakaya, and the Sambhogakaya to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively, or the Adi Buddha to the apophatic conception of the essence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy. A Tibetan mala is similar, in some respects, to a rosary. However, these are more similarities on a deep level (some of which are debated) or in a mere exterior fashion (lots of religions count prayers on beads). Now, I can’t read your mind, so I could be wrong; but what you said sounded an awful lot like Revered Lovejoy on The Simpsons in the episode where Apu got married. When asked if it was OK that he was marrying Hindu Apu, he said, “As long as they’re Christians.” Maybe you weren’t intending such a simplistic conflation along the lines of “Well, we all believe kinda the same stuff.” If I so misread you, my mistake; but that’s what it sounded like.

        I think most of us tend to show off or be snotty at times, or we wouldn’t be blogging! Of all us on this thread, John–with whom you’re taking issue–is the least snotty and show-offy–I can say that confidently after reading his posts for years here and elsewhere! As for me, guilty as charged, but that’s not relevant to the point here.

        As to your original point, I re-read that particular post several times, and I’m not actually sure what it is. My best stab is something like this: “Insisting that the U.S. be secular, or not having it explicitly stated that God (however conceived) is central to our identity is wrong because it denies a unifying element of our national character; since everybody of importance pretty much believes the same thing, or close enough to it.” Now if that’s not fair, then I’d appreciate a precise statement of what you did mean.

        Really, the only fair thing to do is either invoke every belief of every religion from Zoroastrianism to Apache folk religion; or proportionately invoke religions (80% of the time for Christians, 4% for Jews, and so on); or don’t invoke anything. The rhetorical tactic that a lot on the right like to use is to say that not mentioning faith or God is tantamount to opposing them. That is not true. If the convention had, say, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris up on stage haranguing organized religion and religious belief; or if they were pushing for anti-religious platform planks, then yes, I’d agree that they were attacking religion. That’s not what’s happening. Look, if I had a party for my daughter and she and all her friends were getting into a fight over what music to play, and they couldn’t agree, so I said, “All right–we won’t play anyone’s favorite, so it’ll be peaceful here!” does that mean I’m rejecting music? Or saying they can’t listen to their own CD’s or iPods when they get home? Or that I’m saying music should be banned? It would be a really bizarre interpretation to say that!

        Finally: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, of course. Criteria of enlightenment vary by school, from standards such as entering various jhanas (meditative states) in some Theravada Buddhism to dharma transmission in Zen. There doesn’t seem to be agreement. Finally, the koan to which you link is familiar–not quite sure how it’s relevant, but it’s an oldie but goodie. Here’s another: “When the many are reduced to one, to what is the one reduced?”