And The Bill of Rights is a fine example of...
Civil Law!
Try again.
We both know you weren't thinking in that vein at all. The construct of inalinable rights is predicted on divine and natural law. The Bill of Rights are merely a number of the most obvious formally expressed in the Republic's social construct. They are not, strictly speaking, civil laws in any statutory sense, which is the context in which you were opining in your first post. Isn't that right, Joe? And I obviously wasn't speaking in terms of mere statutory law. Isn't that right, Joe?
Absolutely not!
I'm thinking that the best laws to be FORCED to live under are the simplest set of Civil Laws that a majority of us can agree on, in example, The Bill of Rights. If you happen to believe that you should restrict your existence further to appease some Deity described in a story either ancient or modern, knock yourself out. Just don't ask me to do the same just because YOU believe.
Not making me or any other non-muslim follow Sharia Law happens to be the best modern example of this because The West has been abandoning attempts to force everyone to comply with Christian Law since the Liberal revolutions of Europe and The Americas.
It is WRONG for anyone to force their religion on everyone via the government.
Remember - any rights or responsibilities that you feel are "God given" is your opinion and NOTHING more.
Does this mean that Civil Law and Religious Law will never cross paths? Hell no! Thou Shall Not Kill is a time tested rule that is NOT copyrighted by any religion.
The secret to success for a pluralistic and diverse society such as ours is Civil Laws with an emphasis on LIBERTY and the freedom to practice whatever religion floats your boat.
False on all counts. You're deeply confused, historically and philosophically illiterate. The classical liberalism of the Anglo-American tradition of limited republican government on which this nation was founded was extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought, and the preeminent imperative of those ramifications is that the inalienable rights of humanity cannot be violated without dire consequences resulting in the subjugation of the people. Hence, the arbitrary rule of man under the banner of the divine rule of kings, theocracy or collectivism is anathema to divinely endowed free will and, thus, to liberty.
You are utterly clueless as to what Judeo-Christianity is in sociopolitical terms. It does not advocate theocracy in any way, shape or form, let alone advocate any form of statism.
The only one unwittingly advocating the divine rule of kings (in terms of strong man rule) theocracy (in terms of institutionalized normative relativism) or the collectivism of unchecked majoritarianism is you.
What you're advocating, ultimately, is the statism of oligarchic or mobocratic rule of the Platonic-Rousseauian-Hegelian-Maxist-Fascist line of sociopolitical theory, that of Continental Europe, not that of the English and American Enlightenment, not that of this nation's founding ethos; and prior to the rise progressivism, alternately expressed as fascist corporatism or Marxist corporatism in the capitalist West, Americans understood the difference. You're no liberal in the classical sense at all.
Those of us who actually know the history of ideas and events, subverted/suppressed by leftist academicians and repackaged for sheep like you, understand that the Protestant Reformation, for example, was the second breakout of biblical Christianity against the tyranny of theocracy and made the Enlightenment possible, that it spearheaded the overthrow of monarchy and the democratization of the West.
The classical liberals of history have always understood this. PoliticalChic submitted a post earlier today that illustrates this truth:
Although Christianity in its many varieties was the religion of the original colonies,
Christianity does not preach operational dominance over the body politic in America.
Tocqueville compared this aspect to Islam:
Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The Gospel, on the contrary, speaks only of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, while the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods (Tocqueville, "Democracy in America," vol.2, p. 23.).
All radical Muslims and their children!
