The state is based upon religion; therefore, church and state are inter-connected rather than separated. If you think of the many morals and ethics of the constitutional laws of the United States, you will notice the Bible has set the standard way of living and governing our lives. An example includes a few of the Ten Commandments from the Bible that demonstrate the connection between church and state: commandments that insinuate one should not kill, steal, commit adultery, or dishonor parents. These religious ethics have predetermined the rules of life far before most humans were even born. Most of the United States’ laws are justified by the Bible and based upon its religious morality; thus, having negative reinforcements and punishments for breaking the United States’ laws are declared justifiable by the government because of the morals of the church. Most laws derived from religious beliefs, anyhow.
If someone kills, steals, or even commits adultery or polygamy in the United States, they are justifiably punished based upon the morals of the Bible that suggests these things are wrong or sinful. For an American society to infer that the church and state are separated is unethical in my opinion. This would suggest that a religion really does not exist in the American government, and being that religion is imperative and prevalent throughout the world, it plays a huge role in government and the way people perceive it. America will never be separated from religion entirely because they are intertwined. For example, the Bible mentions Adam and Eve rather than Jacob and Steve as the first humans of the pre-lapsarian period. Why is it that the government wants to continuously have a quandary over the issue of homosexuality? Perhaps it’s because there isn’t anywhere in the Bible that infers that two people of the same sex should be together or marry. Hence, the church helps to determine what’s moral and ethical in the state; thus, making the church and state inter-connected rather than separated.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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Humans don't derive their morality from religion. Morality, or the normalization of behaviors which are productive to societal cohesion, came way before Judaism and certainly before Christianity. Humans knew that killing should be avoided before the ten commandments were authored.Also since your thesis is essentially that U.S law is predicated upon biblical law how do you account for the wide divergence and blatant contradiction between U.S law and biblical law? Also why is there no mention of god in the constitution, why are there provisions in the first amendment which specifically separate church and state? The bulk of the founding fathers were not even Christians! The Bible is not a moral book, in fact it is patently immoral and littered with endorsed genocide,rape, incest,slavery, and innumerable practices which are shunned in today's society. You cant pick and choose. Either it is the perfect word of God and sets the moral standard which would mean that it is OK to murder gay people. Or it is an Iron Age mythology with an outdated understanding of what is good for a society.
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