Is the US headed towards a socialist government?

[kandrathe]

So why do you find it OK that a priest tells you what to do?

"And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules." It is more of a suggestion than an order. If I sin, the priest doesn't have me arrested.

Well and that is exactly the behavior organized religion feeds on. If you find that organized religion has all the right answers this might be fine.....but I think that anyone (also religious people) can say it hasn't.

Here is an eastern philosophy answer for you; There are many paths up the mountain, some are shorter and difficult, others are much easier but take a lifetime (or many perhaps). When you read something that tells you something you know cannot be true, you doubt it, and if based on the weight of evidence you might throw it away entirely. So, back to the example of gender equality, or egalitarianism and complementarianism; Considering the nature of a "God" that is sexless, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, would men and women be much different in his/her eyes? Those people that persist in setting men above women, do so because they are reading the texts (and mostly very old ones) literally. Which is the same fault that we have with fundamentalist muslims, that they are trying to fit a twentieth first century world into a 5th century sensibility. It can be done... as it was done back in the those days... by the sword.

Well and how do you find that out? I guess it still needs some government rules. Otherwise you are looking at anarchism.

How do I know that what the government is telling me is right? A society either needs people to be on autopilot and following a known safe path, or they need people to be skilled in critical thinking. Not everyone that I have met has the skill or interest in being discerning. Some were born to be sheep.

Exactly, this paragraph almost literally states my opinion. I don't mind people reading a holy book (contrary to Geert Wilders in Holland who wants to ban the Koran it just like Mein Kampf). It was organised religion that I was talking about. And as you say, it is all about interpretation, and dependent on who is in power at the moment. And this is exactly why I made my first comment about religion doing much more against our freedom than the US government.

Just because there is not "one truth" does not mean that all the gathered theological philosophy of humanity is trash. In physics parlance, Newton was wrong, so we move on and try out Einstein, who may also be wrong. But, was Newton moving us in the right direction? Yes. Similarly, we can look to the work of rational intelligent people, who often were as smart (or smarter) than Newton, who worked and wrote in the fields of philosophy, and in this case theology. I'm not claiming that Christianity has a lock on the truth, because I find just as much inspiration from Mo Tzu, Lau Tzu, and the Dalai Lama, or the Vedas and the Upanishads. I think what many Europeans rail against is that you have had much religious interference in your government and politics, while yes, religion does play a role in politics in the USA, it is more of a moral litmus test. Notice President Obama even had to pass through that screen of legitimacy in embracing his faith, and thereby expressing his morality.

Of course but the point here is that all those rich rappers and profesional athletes that openly show their religion in public, make many people really think that their talent was given to them because they are religious......and that the rest doesn't really matter.

But, as I said, there are more who do not live a gangsta lifestyle that draws the attention of the paparazzi. What we see in the media is the slimy underbelly of our culture, which for some reason seems to sell TV time, magazines, and newspapers. Watching a person live a boring normal life isn't exciting, but watching some fallen star puke their guts out, then commit assault and get arrested is titillating to enough people to keep the tabloids in business.

You can live like a criminal but as long as you pray you will be fine. To me this doesn't seem to be a good thing.

We know that is not true, at least in the secular sense, justice will eventually prevail and the gansta will fall down. Praying (especially in public) is not a promise of goodness, earnestness, or even a faith in God. The *real* religious people I know are never ostentatious, glamor seeking, and agonize over even pampering themselves once in awhile. They are the kinds of people who fund and volunteer their time for helping people who need help. Again, what most people see are the slimy underbelly of "religiousness" where people use it to slake their greed for money or power. In my opinion, Christianity is not the football player praising God for the touchdown, it's the person who went to visit a stranger in a nursing home who has no relatives or friends, the person who volunteers to serve food to homeless people at the shelter, or the people who travel around the world to build needy people clean drinking water and efficient sewage systems. If you think about it, this guy Jesus was a social activist who tried to get people involved in each others lives rather than tied down to legalism or pursuing greedy, unfulfilled lives. It was a radical philosophy for the time, and so the powers in charge, both Jewish and Roman, killed him for it.