Excepted from a Recent Conversation
I'd actually very much like to see ethics taught in schools. After all, it is not a religious topic, it is a philosophical one. The notion that ethics cannot exist apart from God basically boils down to semantics -- if God is definitive to ethics, then we need another term to describe "correct behaviour". The notion that correct behaviour cannot exist apart from God is flatly stupid, and I cite the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman as my first example. Because I prefer to keep language useful, I maintain "ethics" as a secular term, and call proper religious behaviour by another term (usually "righteousness"*).
As for the separation of church and state that is fundamental to the whole public/private school voucher non-debate**: I very much support the strengthening of the wall between religion and government. Not for the government's sake (because, really, why should I care), but for the sake of religion. Theocrats make poor Christians. The history of the papacy is an easy example, but John Calvin's rulership of Geneva led to the execution of "heretics" (Michael Servetus was executed for preaching against infant baptism***). John Calvin's insistence that he should govern by religious doctrine led him at last to murder; I should hardly need to point out that this is a practice nowhere condoned in the New Testament.
* The exact inflection of "righteousness" may be sincere, polite, or sarcastic, however.
** It's a non-debate because people are just yelling at each other, and nobody is actually listening at all… not even to themselves.
*** This conversation is taking place with a modern Protestant who regards infant baptism with unalloyed horror.
As for the separation of church and state that is fundamental to the whole public/private school voucher non-debate**: I very much support the strengthening of the wall between religion and government. Not for the government's sake (because, really, why should I care), but for the sake of religion. Theocrats make poor Christians. The history of the papacy is an easy example, but John Calvin's rulership of Geneva led to the execution of "heretics" (Michael Servetus was executed for preaching against infant baptism***). John Calvin's insistence that he should govern by religious doctrine led him at last to murder; I should hardly need to point out that this is a practice nowhere condoned in the New Testament.
* The exact inflection of "righteousness" may be sincere, polite, or sarcastic, however.
** It's a non-debate because people are just yelling at each other, and nobody is actually listening at all… not even to themselves.
*** This conversation is taking place with a modern Protestant who regards infant baptism with unalloyed horror.