tecoyah

Due to the slow start of this debate.....it will stay open for round two, And the winner will debate me.

Ivan The Terrible

Sorry for the delay...


I think it depends on what you mean by stable... Are you talking about personal freedom within a given society?

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"Miss quote? It's an outright fabrication!" Myself in response to Iriemon's post.

galenrox

I agree it depends on what you mean by stability. For this I'll take "stability" as an ability to resist change.
In this I feel it all depends from one religion to another, and issue to issue. For example, the catholic church hurts stability on the topic of abortion, but it helps stability on issues on homosexuality where the homosexuals get the short end of the stick.

By and large I think that at the deepest level churches hurt stability, because I feel by and large they argue that as long as people are hurting, then change needs to happen, and as long as stability is synonymous with stagnation, then the church is opposed to it.

But I need to reiterate, this is in general, and on an individual basis is less true. There are all sorts of religions which believe in all sorts of different things, and some might teach "Don't question the government", others might teach "Burn the government down", and others teach everything in between, but speaking in generalities, the church is opposed to stability.

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tecoyah

Moderator Question:

If 50% of a given population of a hypothetical state, is of one religion, and the rest spread over a spectrum of differing faiths, Does the majority have the right to impose doctrine through legislation, regardless of the effects it may have on the Minorities? Please explain your reasoning.

Galen Goes First

galenrox

I'd say no. It would depend on the hypothetical state though. Hypothetically we could have a situation where a bunch of people who believe very fervently that church and state cannot be seperate, and they moved off and formed their own nation, and then a bunch of followers of different faiths move there, it wouldn't really be fair to ask them to change the concept the nation is based around.

But in an average state, no, it's wrong, from a religious and a political viewpoint. Religiously it's wrong because, at least in most major religions, it's not what you do that matters, but what you think and feel (and what you do is a byproduct of that). You simply cannot legislate what people can think (not morally speaking, but it's actually impossible), so what you would inevitably be doing is just legislating actions. This would pretty much mean that laws have been set up requiring people to feign religion, which is in many people's eyes (including my own) worse than not practicing at all.
And politically it's wrong because when it comes down to pure religion (that is, what you actually believe), it is a matter of choice, while if you are living in a country (which you inevitably must), then you are not given the choice to not follow their laws. Thus the standard for creating religious doctrine and the standard for creating legislation should be in their very nature different.

tecoyah

Debate remains open for one more week. Winner gets a mug.