Religion and Americans

Assignment 4 – Religion and Americans: Moral Implications.
One of the more common arguments I hear when discussing ethics, morals, and values is that in the United States we were founded on religious, primarily Christian, teachings. If this is true are we discounting the teachings of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and the Baha’i faith? If we profess to be a moral civilization and derive our ethics from the teachings of the Christian faith are these teachings valid and reliable concepts from which ethics are derived, or are ethics relative to the religious teachings of a that religion?

Building on the previous assignment related to religion and morality, in a 2-3 page paper compare and contrast the two articles for this assignment. Specifically, identify where you stand in regard to these two competing points of view. In addition, include an opinion of how these competing points of view might impact “the haves” and the “have nots” and their access to health care.

Read Article 1 – America Is not a Christian Nation

Read Article 2 – America Is a Christian Nation but Does Religion Make us a Moral Nation?

This is Artical

https://blackboard.wku.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-5165508-dt-content-rid-29573302_2/courses/201830PH44744251/America%20is%20not%20a%20Christian%20nation.pdf

Article #1

Does religion make us moral?

June 12, 2012 by Connor Wood The scriptures of the world’s great religious traditions are chock-full of moral teachings. Believers are encouraged to treat each other as neighbors, to be kind to strangers, and to help the poor. But religious people aren’t always more moral or righteous than nonbelievers – indeed, religions have inspired wars, inquisitions, and seemingly endless prejudice. So is religion morally good or bad? Yale psychologist Paul Bloom thinks the answer is both. And the moral effects of religion stem from what religious people do together…not necessarily what they believe. Paul Bloom is a noted cognitive scientist whose work has focused on morality, the development of social abilities in children, and the evolution of religion. In 2005 he published a well-received article in The Atlantic that suggested that belief in God and other supernatural spirits was the accidental by-product of cognitive predispositions to see order and purpose in the world. Bloom asserts that people basically come hardwired to sense invisible presences and spirits in their environment. So he’s not exactly a raging Bible-thumper – in fact, he’s a self-described atheist. It might seem surprising, then, that Bloom has recently published a paper in the Annual Review of Psychology detailing, in part, all the good that religion can do. Religion, Bloom points out, does actually seem to make people more altruistic and generous. Religious people give more to charities than non-religious people, including secular charities. And IRS tax receipts show that states where people are more religious have much higher rates of charitable giving than less religious states. Meanwhile, lab experiments show that participating in religious rituals primes people to be more generous and caring toward one another. The benefits of religion don’t stop there. Actively religious people are much more likely to say they are “very happy” with their lives than their secular counterparts, according to a 2004 study cited by Bloom. And non-religious people are proportionately more like to express that they feel like failures. But as always – at least when it comes to religion – the positives are balanced nearly evenly by the negatives, and this is Bloom’s point. For example, religious participation also often inspires people to be prejudiced against outsiders and minorities. In a 1950s study, the psychologist Gordon Allport showed that religious people were much more prejudiced against minority groups and foreigners than non-religious people. And in perhaps the most disconcerting study cited by Bloom, a research team recently found that exposing subjects to religiously themed words actually increased their levels of prejudice against African-Americans. So is religion good for us or not? As an atheistic scientist, Bloom’s answer is a deliciously ambiguous “yes and no.” Religion, he believes, is simply a tool. It evolved to help humans solve the “free rider” problem of communal social life. When a social group depends on the efforts of all its members for success, free riders – people who accept help and resources from the group, but don’t give much back in return – can pose a serious threat to the entire collective. This threat is especially dire for human beings, since we depend almost entirely on our social abilities to survive. According to Bloom, that’s where religion comes in. By demanding that people participate in costly, often painful rituals, religious groups ensure that their members have a strong motivation to stay involved and contribute economic and social resources to the group. It’s a bit like investing with friends – the more money you’ve put into the shared investment, the more motivated you are to make sure that investment pays off. This evolutionary perspective on religion helps explain one of the most perplexing findings Bloom highlights: the moral effects of religion, both good and bad, are predicted by what sorts of religious behaviors people partake in, not whether or not they believe in God or an afterlife. In fact, private religious behaviors of all kinds don’t seem to make much difference when it comes to people’s ethical actions. For instance, among Palestinian Muslims attending mosque services often was associated with support of suicide bombings against Israelis, while individual prayer had no such association. These findings back up a growing chorus of scholars in the religious studies world who insist that religion is essentially about action, not abstract beliefs and propositions. If Bloom is right, then participating regularly in group-oriented religious activities ought to make most people more generous, happy, and altruistic…as well as more suspicious of outsiders, prejudiced, and defensive of their in-groups. Like a cancer treatment with profoundly unpleasant side effects, religion inspires the best in human nature even while it trots out the worst. But, Bloom points out, there’s reason to be optimistic. First, the association between religion and racial prejudice has declined – at least in America – since the mid-1960s. Secondly, Allport’s research also showed that only certain kinds of religiosity seemed to inspire prejudice. Religiosity that emphasized external rewards and social acceptance was associated with negative feelings toward members of other races, while religiousness that was focused on internal, subjective goals wasn’t. The relationship between morality and religion is a difficult one. Calvinist Christian theologians like Karl Barth have argued that human morality has nothing to do with God’s sense of right and wrong, and that salvation can only come from God’s inscrutable decision. And, as other writers have pointed out, profound religious or mystical experiences often seem to blur the lines between good and evil, making the basic nature of the universe seem neither good nor bad. Meanwhile, figures such as the 16th-century Spanish nun Teresa of Avila make the opposite claim: A single [religious experience] may be sufficient to abolish at a stroke certain imperfections of which the soul during its whole life had vainly tried to rid itself, and to leave it adorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural gifts. A single one of these intoxicating consolations may reward it for all the labors undergone in its life. One thing is for sure: religions certainly play a major role in how people think about morality. In fact, religion undergirds such a vast portion of human society that it’s difficult to even imagine how we’d formulate our questions about ethics outside of religious frameworks. (Even modern secular cultures are still deeply informed by Christian language and themes.) Thorny questions like the relationship of religion and morality do accomplish one thing, though: they show that we need to understand religion if we want to understand ourselves, including our moral behavior. Bloom’s most important message, then, is not that religion is good, bad, or deluded. It’s that it would be, in Bloom’s words, “impossible to make sense of most of human existence, including law, morality, war, and culture, without some appreciation of religion and how it works.

Articl#2

America is not a Christian nation By: Michael Lind Religious conservatives argue the Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a JudeoChristian country. But President Obama is right when he says it isn’t. Is America a Christian nation, as many conservatives claim it is? One American doesn’t think so. In his press conference on April 6 in Turkey, President Obama explained: “One of the great strengths of the United States is … we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” Predictably, Obama’s remarks have enraged conservative talking heads. But Obama’s observations have ample precedent in American diplomacy and constitutional thought. The most striking is the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797. Article 11 states: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility [sic], of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and, as the said States never have entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” Conservatives who claim that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” sometimes dismiss the Treaty of Tripoli because it was authored by the U.S. diplomat Joel Barlow, an Enlightenment freethinker. Well, then, how about the tenth president, John Tyler, in an 1843 letter: “The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent — that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma, if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions.” Was Tyler too minor a president to be considered an authority on whether the U.S. is a Christian republic or not? Here’s George Washington in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790: “The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support … May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Eloquent as he is, Barack Obama could not have put it better. Contrast this with John McCain’s interview with Beliefnet during the 2008 presidential campaign: “But I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’” Asked whether this would rule out a Muslim candidate for the presidency, McCain answered, “But, no, I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is a Muslim would not make a good president. I don’t say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would — I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.” Conservatives who, like McCain, assert that the U.S. is in some sense a Christian or JudeoChristian nation tend to make one of four arguments. The first is anthropological: The majority of Americans describe themselves as Christians, even though the number of voters who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated has grown from 5.3 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008. But the ratio of Christians to non-Christians in American society as a whole is irrelevant to the question of whether American government is Christian. The second argument is that the constitution itself is somehow Christian in character. On that point, candidate McCain said: “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation.” Is McCain right? Is the U.S. a Christian republic in the sense that according to their constitutions Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan are all now officially Islamic republics? What does the Constitution say? Article VI states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in the United States.” Then there is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof .” True, over the years since the founding, Christian nationalists have won a few victories — inserting “In God We Trust” on our money during the Civil War in 1863, adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War in 1954. And there are legislative and military chaplains and ceremonial days of thanksgiving. But these are pretty feeble foundations on which to claim that the U.S. is a Christian republic. (“Judeo-Christian” is a weaselly term used by Christian nationalists to avoid offending Jews; it should be translated as “Christian.”) The third argument holds that while the U.S. government itself may not be formally Christian, the Lockean natural rights theory on which American republicanism rests is supported, in its turn, by Christian theology. Jefferson summarized Lockean natural rights liberalism in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …” Many conservatives assert that to be a good Lockean natural nights liberal, one must believe that the Creator who is endowing these rights is the personal God of the Abrahamic religions. This conflation of Christianity and natural rights liberalism helps to explain one of John McCain’s more muddled answers in his Beliefnet interview: “[The] United States of America was founded on the values of Judeo-Christian values [sic], which were translated by our founding fathers which is basically the rights of human dignity and human rights.” The same idea lies behind then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s statement to religious broadcasters: “Civilized individuals, Christians, Jews and Muslims” — sorry, Hindus and Buddhists! — “all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.” In reality, neither Jewish nor Christian traditions know anything of the ideas of natural rights and social contract found in Hobbes, Gassendi and Locke. That’s because those ideas were inspired by themes found in non-Christian Greek and Roman philosophy. Ideas of the social contract were anticipated in the fourth and fifth centuries BC by the sophists Glaucon and Lycophron, according to Plato and Aristotle, and by Epicurus, who banished divine activity from a universe explained by natural forces and taught that justice is an agreement among people neither to harm nor be harmed. The idea that all human beings are equal by nature also comes from the Greek sophists and was planted by the Roman jurist Ulpian in Roman law: “quod ad ius naturale attinet, omnes homines aequales sunt” — according to the law of nature, all human beings are equal. Desperate to obscure the actual intellectual roots of the Declaration of Independence in Greek philosophy and Roman law, Christian apologists have sought to identify the “Creator” who endows everyone with unalienable rights with the revealed, personal God of Moses and Jesus. But a few sentences earlier, the Declaration refers to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Adherents of natural rights liberalism often have dropped “Nature’s God” and relied solely on “Nature” as the source of natural rights. In any event, in order to be a good American citizen one need not subscribe to Lockean liberalism. Jefferson, a Lockean liberal himself, did not impose any philosophical or religious test on good citizenship. In his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he wrote: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” The fourth and final argument made in favor of a “Christian America” by religious conservatives is the best-grounded in history but also the weakest. They point out that American leaders from the founders to the present have seen a role for otherwise privatized and personal religion in turning out moral, law-abiding citizens. As George Washington wrote in his 1796 Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.” In Washington’s day, it may have been reasonable for the elite to worry that only fear of hellfire kept the masses from running amok, but in the 21st century it is clear that democracy as a form of government does not require citizens who believe in supernatural religion. Most of the world’s stable democracies are in Europe, where the population is largely post-Christian and secular, and in East Asian countries like Japan where the “Judeo-Christian tradition” has never been part of the majority culture. The idea that religion is important because it educates democratic citizens in morality is actually quite demeaning to religion. It imposes a political test on religion, as it were — religions are not true or false, but merely useful or dangerous, when it comes to encouraging the civic virtues that are desirable in citizens of a constitutional, democratic republic. Washington’s instrumental view of religion as a kind of prop was agreeable to another two-term American president more than a century and a half later. “[O]ur form of government has no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith,” said Dwight Eisenhower, “and I don’t care what it is.” And it’s indistinguishable from Edward Gibbon’s description of Roman religion in his famous multivolume “Decline and Fall”: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.” President Obama, then, is right. The American republic, as distinct from the American population, is not post-Christian because it was never Christian. In the president’s words: “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” And for that we should thank the gods. All 20 of them. Michael Lind Michael Lind is the author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States and co-founder of the New America Foundation.