As Stripe said below, I don't know of any nation, past or current, that aside from having God guide them in some clear way, ever thought, "hey, we should implement this law against [insert crime here] because it's moral truth."
Then you can imagine how relieved I am to have never said or written something like that.
In fact, just about every nation that has ever existed has eventually broken down morally, including the US.
The problem with that is in failing to recognize this nation is a new thing, a government with peaceful revolution and a tendency toward protecting the individual and reacting to its failures in applying principle. Social orders tend to be less stable and we've seen that in our own history. The roaring 20s were a lot like the 60s. We go through cycles and we have responses built into them. Most nations declined and died because of corruption among the ruling classes, or from a failure to establish a balanced power structure, with protections against abuse by the majority. We have the mechanism to avoid those failures, if we use them.
For the record, my question did not end after laws, it continued on, because I was contrasting the first part of my question with what you suggested we do.
I wasn't entirely sure about that, as it seemed to me that when you have laws of a kind at some point they will inform the kind of system, or can.
Here it is again:
Why not model our laws after the Lawgiver's laws, instead of trying to model them after fallible man's laws?
I then went on to clarify that I was not talking about religious laws, such as "do not eat certain foods," and "do not wear certain fabrics together", etc.
I understood you. It's why I responded as I did and have in clarifying my point above.
So first of all, I agree, history does answer my question. It answers it by showing that man is wicked, and doesn't like morality, thus nations have eschewed God's laws in favor of their own, because it puffs them up. History does not say, "because they (the Lawgiver's laws) do not work."
I don't think that's true, but I understand your perspective on the point.
Second, You went on to say the following:... as if I did not just state, EXPLICITLY, that I'm not talking about religion, but about laws that apply to EVERYONE, regardless of religion.
Well, your point wasn't completely clear in relation to law/governmental form at that point. So, when you talk about the Lawgiver, I understand you to be talking about God. I also know you're speaking from a Christian perspective. When those things start coming together at what point isn't it and how can it be anything other than a religious state? Waiving a hand at "religious laws" doesn't negate where you're aiming or what that must inevitably constitute.
If you want to take the Christian Lawgiver foundation of law to its necessary end that end will be a religious system of law and consequence. Otherwise, you're just saying we should have laws that reflect God's intent, but then those laws had rules associated with them and a system built around those and we're right back to a religious state.
So tell me, Town, Why did you make a strawman that you could easily beat down, instead of responding to what I said, which was about morality, not religion?
I didn't and saying I did isn't illustrating it, no matter how certain you are. Feel free to distinguish what you're looking for, with sufficient particularity that I can see the gears moving, taking a very generally stated idea and setting it out in a particular way. I'd be happy to look at it and how it is or then isn't that very thing (a state religion empowered).
Third, what you just said regarding religion, "It draws the corrupt to use it as a means to power," equally applies to secular governments, especially democracy, in fact, even more so, because it then becomes possible for someone who is corrupt to lord it over his neighbor.
I think that's one reason we built in peaceful revolution, cycles of power and, eventually, limitations on who could participate and for how long. We should consider doing for Congress what we did for the president too, limiting terms.
Yes, power draws the corrupt to it, but nothing is as dispiriting or destructive to man as corruption in a religious power, guarding as it must his hopes and aspirations far beyond the moment, beyond even the lives of the people invested in it. It's hard enough to maintain churches without that same corruption. Look at the problems of hierarchy and power within the Catholic Church and what they're having to fight as a result. Protestants, with that same degree of organization and authority, would do no better.
No, let the church stay separate from the state and with that some real hope it may avoid the pitfalls of power.
Which brings me, once again, back to my worldview, which asks, "Why not model our laws after the Lawgiver's (God's) laws, instead of trying to model them after fallible man's laws,"
And that brings me back to, "Give me the particulars of how that would look and we can talk about what's underneath a fairly unspecific thing.
"why not use the kind of government God chose for His people, rather than what man came up with that God rejected?"
See, that's the very thing I speculated you were after and addressed, so cut out the straw man nonsense. That looks a lot like I had your aim pegged.
(again, nothing about religion, only laws and government)
God's system was religion and government combined and I was right on point then. Saying it's not religion doesn't negate that God didn't establish a secular government for his people.
What makes you think that having a Christian nation (ie, one founded on principles found in the Bible) would take away the freedom to worship and believe and thing as one will"?
We are a nation of Christians already. So you're just being rhetorically coy when you reverse the order and, again, the answer to that is simple: history. Even our own. Early, before the Constitution we had colonies that prescribed religious conduct. We largely fled Europe to repeat the behavior here in smaller doses. Better to have a nation of Christians who protect everyone's right to worship or not as their conscience moves them, with no man standing between God and man to tell you your business in that way, let alone give their understanding the force of law.
Why would having such a nation take away the rights granted by God, the right to Life and Liberty; to Worship, to Free Speech, to Purchase and Use Property; to Purchase, Own, and Carry Individual Defensive Weapons including Firearms; to Protect the Innocent; to Corporally Punish his Children; to Due Process of Law; and to Fail?
We have those and have them without risking the corruption of religion by making it a means to wordly power.
Our nation was founded on Biblical principles (not as many as it should have been, but biblical nonetheless), and religious freedom is (was?) one of the biggest reasons for people to come here from other countries.
Right, freedom from the state prescribing your religious view. We'd had enough wars over exegesis.
Right, and Christians, let alone the world, can JUSTLY condemn such actions as immoral. That doesn't make morality immoral.
Who said morality was immoral? What that history does illustrate is that where the state and religion are mingled you find the sort of lamentable nonsense you found in the ravaging of Europe by Catholic and Protestant disputes over exegesis, again. We condemn that now, from a perspective within which that is no longer possible. It's easier to see it. But install a religious form and you invite the disputes over those issues to assume power as well. Best to not.
And they are being eroded away because of secular government.
I can accept you see it that way, but I don't know how or why without your setting that out in particular.
Moral truth is that murder, adultery, theft, perjury, are all wicked, and should be punished by the government. As Stripe said, our current government has all but legalized all of those crimes.
Oh, well if he said that he's wrong and if you believe it so are you. But if you do believe that you should be able to make the case for it in particular. What I know is that with the exception of adultery none of those have been decriminalized and still stand as laws with consequence.
No, but I've addressed this with Stripe and set out the particulars as to his mistake. You can read that there and if you want to address any part of my answer I'm happy to go over it with you.
"If we do this, we'll have this result, OR we keep doing what we're doing, and we'll have that result."
Well, shoot. Okay, short form. Either we continue as we are or we do something different is logically necessary. The same actions, the status quo, will yield the same result. Now, if we do something else there are a number of models that are available and differing, though uniform in that they do a better job than our status quo.
That's a false dichotomy, because we can do "something else" and have "the other" result.
It isn't. A false dichotomy says there are only two things we can do when there are other options. It is not a false dichotomy to say a light switch can be turned to the on position or the off position (that would be the different or same part of my proffer) and it is not presenting a this or that to note that we have numerous options to produce a desired result, which I also did.
Namely, "if we implement Godly laws, and a Godly government, instead of trying to make up more laws based on man's wisdom, we won't have the problems we have now."
That would be under the "doing something different" approach. And I've addressed this more than once, along with a couple of other impractical to the point of improbable suggestions (see: changing man's nature) that in sum are a bit like that boulder blocking the tunnel.
Would it have been a meaningful option for Christians in Germany during WWII to oppose the killing of millions of Jews by the Germans?
It was a moral imperative, I'd think. How does that apply to your current proffer?
Was it a meaningful option for Christians to oppose slavery in the 18th and 19th century, to bring an end to it?
Supra.
How much more so for Christians to want a nation that follows God's laws for man? To want a Godly government?
Which laws in what way? Because, frankly, we have a lot of disagreement about what men are subject to today and what they aren't and I'm betting that you think your understanding is the one that should be in play. And we're right back to the beginnings of what we instituted a secular government to guard against--men literally fighting for the best of reasons, to the cost of everyone.
With that attitude, it never will happen.
With any attitude it's extraordinarily unlikely to come close to happening and for a number of easily understood reasons, many of which you can glean from watching Christians arguing with one another, let alone the rest.
So, if the idea is to stop a horrible, needless thing from happening (and that's my and most people speaking to mass shootings these days) I'm going to consider things that don't involve changing human nature or our essential form of government first. And luckily, it happens that there are a number of models not requiring that sort of near miraculous upheaval at hand. We've even done some of it before and the principle is in play legally, as things sit.
Maybe you've heard the expression, "where there's a will, there's a way"?
And there isn't anything like that will in anything like the numbers you'd need to alter our system of laws fundamentally. There isn't even a will to reconstitute the 2nd Amendment, as moved to change its expression as many Americans are today.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ― Edmund Burke
"Most of the evil in the world is done by people with good intentions." T.S. Eliot
In rhetorical parlance, when someone says, "By way of example, you may feel that..." the you is being used generally and it isn't being suggested that the person being spoken to holds the opinion, only that an example is being given illustrating a weakness or problem in the other person's proffer and principle.
Was ending slavery "unrealistic"?
No, it was inevitable given the coming industrial revolution and the impracticality of slavery as an institution when it arrived in full, along with the moral precept we'd established as a people and then ignored in application, one that caused a growing (and inherent) dissonance within the culture, held together as acceptable by bigotry and financial necessity or profit (by both the user/owner of slaves and the free man who profited directly and indirectly without owning slaves--see: Molasses to Rum, to Slaves).
Was stopping the Germans from murdering more Jews "unrealistic"?
That wasn't really the proposition. And given the bigotry that attached to Jews at that time as a singular issue the answer would probably have been, "Yes."
Should objectives that are desirable, but "unrealistic" be abandoned because they are so?
Of course not, but they shouldn't be proffered as solutions to immediate problems either. Because when they are they remain de facto endorsements for the unacceptable status quo.
So, your house is on fire. You may have a great idea for instituting any number of changes, some of which are for the foreseeable future beyond your economic means, that in sum would address and greatly impact the likelihood of that problem recurring. And more power to you in saving the coins and making the spending changes necessary, if you can manage it. In the meantime, your house is on fire. I have a couple of quick ways that have been demonstrated as being effective at putting that out.
The situation we're in is that our system, a mineshaft of laws and government, is on the brink of collapse, and has already flooded in some places, killing millions, and collapsed in other places, imprisoning millions more under all the legal rubble. Better to save the people trapped inside and abandon it and find a new site, and to start mining using better laws and a better system.
I know you believe that, but that's all it really is, your belief. I don't believe that people are dying due to assault rifles, I know they are. And I don't believe we can make them safer, I can demonstrate that we can.
Our government and legal system are old garments. Let's not try to patch them with new fabric, but let's rather put on new garments that don't ever wear down.
We have the newest garments in town, tailored by observing the old mistakes of weavers over generations. And we built into the weaving process a ready way to alter it, to adjust it when necessary to improve it. Pretending that old garments, those that failed us sufficiently that they led us to seek new ones, is the answer is nostalgic, but mistaken. God gave us kings when kings were the best means to move primitive societies and establish what could be established in justice. And He gave us republics too.
You don't build bridges over mountains. On them, sure, but over them?
Kind of the point. Nearly it.
