Secular law verses religious law and your future

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Democracy is the beginning of secular law, science is to democracy, what religion is to autocracy. To simplify things, lets define autocracy as a hierarchy of authority over the people. Religion, industry and the military are autocratic. In 1776, the US was the only democratic country in the world, and Europe expected this democratic nation to fail.

Now Tentative argued

Democracy, does attempt to define universal laws, and Cicero believed this would result in the whole civilized world sharing the same laws. A universal law, is a law of nature, and things go well when we correctly identify these laws of nature, and govern ourselves with knowledge of them.

Fascism requires too things, knowledge of democracy and knowledge of industry. It is a democracy up to a point. The really important decisions are not made by the people, but those who govern. Fascism, socialism and communism are all democracies, and what separates them is the degree of government control over industry. During the Great Depression, Germany made great progress and for awhile many thought fascism was the answer to economic problems. Roosevelt and Hoover adopted the German model of bureaucracy, and gave government powers it did not have before. Many warned it was dangerous to give government these new powers, and those who understanding the ramifications of the reorganization of the US government could argue the US is fascist.

What do you think? Is the US fascist? Keep in mind, fascism began in Itally as a labor movement, and the response of industry was overpowering the labor with laws favoring industry. Also consider what happened at Waco, and how the bureaucracy responsible for the terrorifing deaths of men, women and children, investegated what happened, and said because everything was done correctly, the bureaucrats were not to blame for what happened when the feds turned their military force on citizens, and no one was held accountable. Here the issue is who had the power and who investegated the tragedy were the same people- this goes with the information in 1984.

The future is in your hands. Do you think something needs to change or should we continue moving in the direction we have been moving, the direction of increasing government control of our lives, and does secular law necessarily lead to fascism? Would religious law be better? Is secular law based on reason that is democratically determined, the same route as religious control over our lives?

2

I don’t believe “law” is different from “law”.

I don’t believe that the dictates of one man or a group of man constitues “law.” (pardon me if I don’t use the phrase -group of men-)

I believe that Law is a tautology between reality and language.

And I certainly do not believe that man is yet linguistic, proto-linguistic, pre-linguistic, but hardly linguistic or rational.

3

Athena,

You toss these terms around as if everyone already knows what these “laws of nature” are, and you seem sure that you’ve correctly identified them. Really? Are you sure?

This country, as well as all of Europe, is a pluralistic society made up of many cultural traditions. I’ve never seen a universal law as it might apply to human interaction. The only so-called universal laws come from scientific exploration which is constantly trying to disprove those laws if possible.

You continue to try to reduce the complexity of human social interaction into neat contained categories. It can’t be done, Athena. If it could it would have been done thousands of years ago. Cicero expressed an ideal, not a reality.

4

The will to reproduce seems pretty “universal” to me.

I wonder if there any “laws” that center around that… :-k

5

Oh, all kinds of laws about reproduction. The biological imperative. All of those laws are culturally defined. We WILL reproduce. The hows, wheres, and whats depends on the culture in which you are born.

6

That human body system which must aquire DNA, process that DNA, such that the product sustains and promotes the life of the human body.

God, I wish I had taken a biology class.

7

Democracy is pluralistic. Our notions of reality and what “should be” change with better arguements and new information. Science is to democracy what religion is to autocracy. However, science without philosophy is amoral and dangerous, therefore, we must attempt some degree of rationale that is not purely scientific. What is delighful about secular law, verses religions law, is it can change with the better argument and new information.

8

The family unite is universal isn’t it? In at least one culture the mother’s brother holds the social responsibility of the father, and the child’s genetic father is not acknowledged as the father, and some families are polygomious, and some are headed by a homosexual pair, but is there any place in the world that does not have some notion of family? The idea that certain individuals are more important to us, because of their relationship to us, is universal isn’t it? What is certainly unversal is the capacity of our brains which restricts the number of people we can know intimately, and then number we know only as associates, and the number we can know only by name and perhaps one other important factor, such as he is the boss’s son. The US is doing a marvelous job of destroying family, and the result is moral break down and social chaos, so I think we can say family order is universally important to social order?

9

law comes from the end of a gun.

if the person holding the trigger claims to be a priest, you have religious law

if the person holding the trigger claims to be a democratically elected politician, you have democratic law

if the person holding the trigger says he got more votes, who are you to question him?

your future? get a gun.

-Imp

10

By definition, a human body life system can abstract either a things form or that things material difference. When we eat, we abstract material and discard form. This means we never know the thing in itself–we always know of a thing.

The human mind, when it functions, abstracts form.

How that applies to your statement, you probably don’t understand.

11

Athena,

Our society isn’t destroying what is family, it is simply re-defining in ways that more naturally match contingency. The single parent home is still a family even though vastly different than the Cleaver land image of the fifties. Is all of this good? No. Is all of it bad? No. There are ideals and then there is the reality on the ground.

Like you, I think we could do a hell of a lot better in supporting whatever sort of family unit is involved in raising the children of the next generation, but apart from a few generalized ideals, we need to let families become whatever they need to be to survive and prosper.

At this time, most of the hurdles and stumbling blocks placed in front of family come from religious precepts that no longer match our daily reality.

12

I have this friend, he is a chimpanzee somewhere in a forest, and he is letting mankind become whatever it is to become. He is still waiting in the forest for someone to crown him for this wisdom.

And I don’t think anyone is re-defining anything, I don’t think people know what a definition is. But one thing I am sure of, it is the lack of speech itself which keeps my friend from spitting out a train of words that do not comply with the principles of grammar.

13

by definition if you are shot in the head, you don’t matter.

tell me something else I don’t understand

-Imp

14

Really? Tell that to Christ. Euclid, Plato, and all the dead you walk upon now. How puerile.

15

and do you think you are christ, euclid, plato, kant, derrida or anyone else?

-Imp

16

I thought it was the man with a gun who thought he was something that he is not. :laughing:

17

Laws whether they are religious or secular is much like the blind leading the blind.

We have become creatures lost in the very abstracts and projects of our own making.