{"id":8368,"date":"2013-11-12T15:54:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T15:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/12\/theism-is-not-a-religion\/"},"modified":"2013-11-12T15:54:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T15:54:27","slug":"theism-is-not-a-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/11\/12\/theism-is-not-a-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Theism is not a Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday<\/a> I argued that atheism<\/em> is not a religion.  Well, theism<\/em> is not a religion either, but for different reasons.  Atheism is not a religion because it amounts to the rejection of the central commitment of anything that could legitimately be called a religion.  (So if atheism were a religion, it would amount to a rejection of itself.)  This core commitment is the affirmation of the  existence of a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum<\/em> and the ultimate purpose of human existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Theism is not a religion for at least two reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, there is no religion in general, only particular religions, and  theism is not a particular religion.  Theism is merely a proposition common to many different (monotheistic and polytheistic) religions.  It is the proposition that God or gods exist.  As such, it is simply the negation of the characteristic atheist proposition.  No extant religion consists of the theist's  bare metaphysical asseveration, and no possible religion could consist of it alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, both doctrine and practice are essential to a religion, but a theist needn't engage in any specifically theistic practice to be a theist.  He need only uphold the theoretical proposition that there is such a being or such beings as God or gods.<\/span><\/p>\n

If theism is not a religion, then, as Tully Borland suggested to me, it is difficult to see how a reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance could be construed as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  The clause reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."<\/span><\/p>\n

"One nation under God" from the Pledge is at most an affirmation of theism.  But theism is not a religion.  So the occurrence of the word 'God' in the pledge does nothing to establsh any religion as the state religion.  Understandably, atheists don't like that word in the Pledge, but the Establishment Clause gives them no ground for removing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly with "In God We Trust" on our currency.  This is more than a bare affirmation (or  presupposition) of the existence of God; it brings in the further notion of trusting God, a notion that is admittedly religious.  But which<\/em> religion is established by "In God We Trust"? Judaism? Christianity?  Islam?  All three Abrahamic religions have monotheism in common.  Obviously, if Congress were to establish a state religion it would have to be some one particular religion.  But no particular religion has proprietary rights in "In God We Trust."  So why should we think that the phrase violates the Establishment Clause.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the same goes for the Ten Commandments as I maintained years ago when I first took to the 'sphere.  The Decalogue is common to the three Abrahamic religions.  So if a judge posts them in his chambers, which religion  is he establishing by so doing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again we see what extremists<\/em> contemporary iberals are.  The plain sense of the Establishment Clause is that there shall be no state religion.  One has to torture the Clause to extract from it justification to remove all references to God and every last vestige of religion from the public sphere, a sphere that ever expands under liberal fascism while the private sphere contracts.<\/span><\/p>\n

A pox be upon the shysters of the ACLU and the leftist totalitarians who support them.  I have written many posts against the sophistical shysters of the ACLU ('shyster' is from Gr. scheissen<\/em>, to shit<\/a>).  See for example: Liberal Fascism: The Floral Variation<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Related:  No Chamber Pot in General, Danish Philosopher Maintains<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I argued that atheism is not a religion.  Well, theism is not a religion either, but for different reasons.  Atheism is not a religion because it amounts to the rejection of the central commitment of anything that could legitimately be called a religion.  (So if atheism were a religion, it would amount to a … Continue reading “Theism is not a Religion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,139,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-and-theism","category-religion","category-u-s-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}