In a pluralistic society of different beliefs, does the Christian have the right to impose their religious beliefs on those who do not believe?

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Andy235 said:
To say that the American government functions from a Christian worldview is an insult to Christianity. Most of our elected officials left their morality at the door a looooong time ago.
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Where did I say that?

Again, I’m not saying that the individuals that are in society or government are christian. I’m saying that the entire foundation for all western countries is Christian and that they can be called christian in that sense.
 
can you give an example of a christian beliefs forced upon others that if they were not christian would be an imposition? The only laws I can think of is anti polygamy.
 
In many respects, I agree, in that Christianity shaped the culture and the thinking of the US and many other parts of the world and religious faith has influenced the decisions of many leaders. Much of the world was shaped by Judeo-Christian tradition, whether implicitly or explicitly.
 
Annie said:
Just to clarify, by kill I mean to take a direct action or to neglect an action which has as its intention the death of the other human being.
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All good questions. I posted this scenario a few weeks ago to someone I was discussing these issues with just as food for thought. Not meant to have a right/wrong answer just to consider things from another perspective to help clarify how we feel.

Imagine a mother who’s recently given birth to a premature child. Sadly within a few hours it’s clear the child is not thriving. The doctors run tests and find the child’s liver didn’t form correctly and toxins are building up in their bloodstream.

The only feasible fix is to transplant part of a working healthy liver into the child. There’s no guarantees, the child may not survive the surgery, or may fail to adopt the new liver. The donor carries a lower risk, but every surgery has a complication rate and there’s certainly a chance the will never wake up from the procedure. If successful this could lead to a lifetime of expensive antirejection drugs. Finally the only feasible donor they’ll be able to find in time realistically is the mother.

Now, I realize most mothers would at this point throw themselves on the operating table and reach for a scalpel to begin the procedure, mothers are amazing like that. But, suppose the mother here has a few second thoughts. Perhaps she’s a single mom who has a child or two at home and the idea of not waking up from surgery and leaving them alone terrifies her. Perhaps she’s the only wage earner in her home and can’t afford the anti-rejection drugs. Maybe there isn’t a good reason, maybe she just doesn’t want to risk dying.

The child slowly succumbs to their condition and passes away.

The mother declined to give a piece of herself, she neglected to take an action she knew would result in the death of that child. Is she a killer? Should she go to jail? Should she somehow have been forced to undergo the surgery?

You’re in an operating room at the same hospital for an unrelated reason, unconscious and sedated. The doctors realize you’d be a compatible match. Can the doctors take a piece of you and let you deal with the consequences later? If not are you the killer? What if it’s not to save a tiny premature baby but a wealthy elderly man who’s donated millions to the hospital? Can they take it for him, if you say no are you a killer?
 
I gave the example of local laws prohibiting businesses from opening on Sundays. They’re mostly gone but still around in some places. You’re right, there aren’t a lot.
 
LOL yeah I did get that…took a while…just finished that first cup and waiting for the crow to come out of the oven…🤣🤣🤣

I get so used to people saying how great our overall healthcare system is I completely misread it.
 
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You are correct, I did not clarify that aspect well enough. This is where the issue of ordinary care comes in.

If a mother “neglects” to donate part of her liver, is she killing the child? No.

If she “neglects” to feed the child or give him water, is she killing him? Yes.
 
Dan123 said:
You’re in an operating room at the same hospital for an unrelated reason, unconscious and sedated. The doctors realize you’d be a compatible match. Can the doctors take a piece of you and let you deal with the consequences later? If not are you the killer? What if it’s not to save a tiny premature baby but a wealthy elderly man who’s donated millions to the hospital? Can they take it for him, if you say no are you a killer?
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That’s not even plausible, however - because they can’t do that without consent.

You couldn’t say anything if you were sedated and unconscious. We have laws that say you can’t do procedures on the unconsented.

They’d be the ones in the wrong regardless, because that’s illegal from the start. That’s not really a good hypothetical, because there’s another issue there.
 
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IWantGod said:
It’s not so much that i don’t want abortion to be outlawed, it just that i don’t see how we could without forcing our religious beliefs about what constitutes a person on the rest of society. Also if abortion was illegal we would have the duty of forcing women to full-term, who were at risk of committing abortion, in-order to protect what we believe to be a person. And i don’t see how we could practically and morally achieve that end without undermining other human rights that women have.

Policing women’s wombs just sounds a bit disturbing to me, and not any less so just because abortion is wrong.
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So, coming closer to the subject of the thread, what things, in your opinion, can be “imposed” on people by the government?

What are the requirements for something being of the kind that can be “imposed”, in your opinion?

Just the consent of all the people?
 
He’s asking a different question in order to get me to clarify my initially unclear statement.
 
No. I gu
“IWantGod said:
The point is, those laws are adopted for their practicalities in governing society, not because they are Christian in nature. Is a Buddhist a Christian because he agrees with the concept of compassion? No. There is just an agreement, and we might come to that agreement for fundamentally different reasons. Do you see English people walking around with holstered weapons. No. So you don’t get all your laws from England.

Isn’t that just commonsense?
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No. I guess for you it is not common sense.

It is common sense for anyone who has ever cracked a book about the American Legal System.

Our entire civil law system comes directly from England.

Where do you think the “precedence” for the “precedence” came from?

And where do you think the English got their legal system from?

With the exception of Louisiana, who follows the Napoleonic Code, our entire legal system is based on the precedence from England.

All of it arises from Judeo-Christian principles.
 
This is why the Church has clarified the issue. I first learned about it in the Terry Schaivo case, which you may not have heard of. She had been fine in her condition, but her husband asked that nutrition (via feeding tube) and hydration (via IV) be withdrawn. She died of dehydration as a result.

As you pointed out elsewhere, Alfie died as a result of the ventilator being withdrawn, not of dehydration. However, his condition was already deteriorating, and he would have died even with ventilation eventually. The two situations (his and Terry Schaivo’s) were very different in that regard.
 
I think Dan123 said it best.
Dan123 said:
Might be fair to summarize it as laws that have a religious origin or source can and often should be civil laws, but ideas that ONLY have a religious reason to them probably not.
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So religious beliefs that only have a religious context and no observable connection to practical reality. We should not impose those beliefs onto other people through rule of law.
 
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I believe that society has the right at local levels to determine behavior if it doesnt interfer with natural rights. For example dry counties are acceptable if the county votes to have it dry. If they apply that law to all business so they cant sell alcohol.
 
HolySpirit said:
What on earth are you talking about?
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Common Law started out as pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon law, which they brought to Britain with them when they migrated their from their homelands on the continent.

Actually, Christianity hasn’t made much of an impact on Common Law.
 
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