> What does that matter?

It matters because we have a secular government, so we don’t make laws based on people’s religious beliefs, no matter how popular those beliefs may be.

Religious people are welcome to live by whatever set of rules their books dictate, as long as doing so doesn’t infringe on other people’s rights. But they are not welcome to apply their religious restrictions to everyone else.

John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It's now the Year of our Lord 2023, we can (and should) move on from the outdated premise that morality requires a belief in God (as nonreligious people are no more or less moral than religious people) and that government presupposes it, just as we moved on from the premise that black people are property.

“Religion” doesn’t “require a belief in God.” Lots of religions don’t have a god or gods per se.

I also think that “nonreligious” people tend to retain much of the non-falsifiable moral philosophy they grew up with, and that for purposes of politics, it doesn’t make a difference whether you call that “religion” or not. As a foreigner, I find the phenomenon of white people who start fights with their family for saying racist things fascinating. In my culture you wouldn’t do that because preserving harmony within families is highly prized. It’s very Christian, though. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Similarly, American political debate about LGBT “human rights” is deeply Christian. People can’t come out and say “God created everyone in his image.” But they would flip out if you proposed a utilitarian calculus that couples who can naturally create more taxpayers are more socially valuable than couples who cannot. These people think of themselves as atheists but coming from a non-Christian country it’s easy to see the through-line in their beliefs.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I agree people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But I think that anyone who is moral has a framework of non-falsifiable moral beliefs that, for purposes of politics, isn’t materially distinguishable from religion. Certainly, there is nothing about our Constitution that prioritizes moral systems that arise from university departments over those that arise from organized religion.

Everyone has some sort of moral philosophy that influences their political choices. Do you vote for giving food stamps to poor people? That’s based on a moral judgment. “Secular government” doesn’t mean that policies based on secular philosophies somehow are given preference over those based on religious moral philosophies. If the regulation itself is otherwise within the government’s power, you don’t look behind to people’s motivations and decide that one policy is acceptable because it’s based on socialism and another policy is unacceptable because it’s based on Christian social gospel.

For political purposes, Christianity is just another “ism” that motivates people’s political choices. If the government has the power to restrict access to porn under the first amendment, then it doesn’t matter whether people support such restrictions because they are Christian and think that porn creates social harm or because they read Andrea Dworkin and think that porn creates social harm: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/sex-positivity-fe....

I suspect we agree and are saying different things. Yes, people are fully justified in voting their conscience, based on whatever informs that conscience, religious (even supernatural or doctrinal or otherwise).

What is not ok is for a bill to be drafted that starts out with “Whereas the Christian Bible contains teachings implying pornography is against God, and Whereas we seek to glorify God…”. (This is just an example to illustrate the point. I’m not implying you or anyone who understands our constitution would think laws should be written this way, but this is what a non-secular law might look like.)

Bills must be based on evidence. “Whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that exposure to pornography is harmful to children,…”

Again, I think we were arguing related but distinctly different points about the original “most of the opposition to pornography is religious-based” and “What does that matter?” statements.

I disagree that “bills must be based on evidence” and in practice they are not. The Civil Rights Act doesn’t say “whereas scientific studies by competent and qualified scientists and researchers have recently concluded that human races, despite obvious, outward differences, are genetically all similar…” We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief. Likewise, there is no scientific basis for saying that the rich should take care of the poor, of that young people should support old people. These are all moral judgments. Why don’t we just let old people die when they can’t work anymore? It would be much more efficient after all.

It’s impossible to avoid basing laws on moral beliefs, because fundamentally, moral beliefs are directed to notions of what will make a better society. Your version of “secularism” doesn’t take non-falsifiable moral judgments out of lawmaking. It just gives preference to one set of non-falsifiable beliefs over another. For example, acceptance of pornography or sex work is heavily based on the idea that people should be able to do what they want sexually so long as there is consent. What is the scientific evidence behind that belief? There isn’t. It’s based on a moral belief about sexual satisfaction being an important part of the human experience, it’s based on a moral belief about individual freedom and the limits on it, etc. Ultimately, it’s a moral belief about what kind of society is better.

> We had a moral belief in the equality of the races, rooted in Christianity, long before we had the scientific evidence to support that belief.

Some Christians might have had that belief, but many racist (and, years earlier, slave-owning) Christians believed the opposite to be true, and used the Bible to justify slavery [1]. Jefferson Davis was quite explicit about it [2]:

> [Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.

When I say "based on evidence" I mean that bills must have some basis that everyone can agree on. People may not agree with the conclusions, but there is a firm basis there nonetheless.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to consider the consequences of religiously based laws. Imagine you're a Christian in a small town, and for whatever reason, your town becomes a popular place for immigrants/refugees from the Middle East to settle, and all of a sudden your town has a slight Muslim majority. Would it be ok for them to vote to require all women in the town to wear hijabs in public because they believe God demands it? To such a proposal, you might say "that's absurd! God doesn't want us to wear hijabs!" There's no way to settle the argument, because there's no evidence for the claim one way or the other.

That's the problem with laws based on religion, and that's why our constitution protects against them.

[1] https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery#Opp...

This is pretty absurd position, it effectively pushes for disenfranchisement of religious people. Under your theory of the government, religious people are unable to use democratic means to to further their policy goals, if these in any way stem from their religious beliefs. This is, of course, not how our legal and political system works. The “secular government” doesnt work this way.

Imagine if Christians had a strong belief in tending the garden given to them by God, and it entailed a strong wish to fight climate change. It would be absurd to say that they cannot do anything in that direction, just because their reasons for this are religious in nature.

If you don’t like majority imposing restrictions on minorities based on their moral theories, your problem is not with religion, but rather with democracy.

I have no desire to disenfranchise religious people, and I have no problem with democracy. People should be able to vote how they want and seek government policies they want, based on their convictions, religious or otherwise. My point is that the government (in the U.S. at least) cannot make laws based on religion.

If Christians want to fight climate change because they believe that's what God wants, great! They should seek policies to do just that. But what the lawmakers cannot do is write laws that say "the EPA must impose greenhouse gas limits because God commands it."

The lawmakers can have their reasons for the bills they write (they can believe it's what God wants, or they can know it's what their voters believe it's what God wants), but the laws themselves cannot be based on religion.

Ok, if your point is that laws can very much be religiously motivated, as long as they simply don’t mention God in the text of the bill, then yeah, I’m fine with that. This is not a very consequential point.

There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.

If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. On the other hand, if you can act appropriately as a legislator, then I have no problem with a person who is personally deeply religious from holding elected office.

If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.

> There must be sufficient secular reason to have a given law. There are people in this country who believe that this is a "Christian" nation, and even some deep in the bible belt who believe that it should be illegal to be "not Christian". You run the risk of handing the country to people like that, when you allow too much religion in your government.

So yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about: this is disenfranchising people based on their religion.

> If you can't make secular decisions in your job representing all people in your constituency, if you can't separate your religious belief and personal morals from what is legislatively appropriate, then just maybe, you shouldn't be a politician. (...) If you are a Senator or Representative in the US, you also represent the atheists in your constituency, as well of those of all other religious beliefs than your own. You don't just represent the ones who align with your religious belief.

This is just an isolated demand of rigor, it's a standard that you would not apply in other circumstance. Try making the same argument, but replacing religion with political party. "Sure, you are personally deeply aligned with Democratic policy, but you also represent Republicans in your constituency, so you should separate your personal beliefs and morals from your politics, and don't push for policy that your Republican constituents would not agree with". This is of course ridiculous.

You need to understand that what you proposing here is plainly disadvantaging (some) religious beliefs compared to other philosophies, and holding them to a different, higher standards. Why do majority of voters have to give "sufficient secular reason" for a given law? Constitution doesn't demand this sort of "parallel construction".

The vast majority of Christians that I've spoken to don't seem to understand one basic fact:

If you allow religious belief to be the sole factor behind legislative action, then you also open the door to a different religion coming in and democratically taking the reins of that action.

They also will heavily vocalize their opinion that no other religion should be able to come in and do exactly that. In the years after 9/11, they would harp about "Sharia law" and how it was allegedly "taking over parts of the US".

It is very clear in the Constitution that the government may not favor one religion over another. Ergo, to open legislative action to religious motivation allows any religion to do the same, no matter what. The US is pretty open about what it considers to be a "religion" as well, we're one of the few countries that allow Scientology to be considered a religion.

In the interest of identifying bias, I live in Tennessee, right in the middle of the bible belt. Thus, my opinion is indeed biased by experience in this area. I've seen how nasty and bigoted this neck of the woods can be, and these are the people that the region's politicians tend to pander to.