Tuesday, April 17, 2007

today's quote

...the minute you evoke God as a guarantor of political equality, you immediately turn what might be political disputes about the practical here and now into epic struggles about the meaning of the universe itself.
...
Bringing "God" into the arguement merely runs the risk of dissolving a polity into factions that differ with each other on the most profound issues imaginable, and must insist on the inequality of various truths and therefore of various people who hold such truths.

Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul

3 comments:

United We Lay said...

That's a great quote. I think that it's very true. There is no way to discuss an issue rationally when you bring in the irrational. People have very personal feelings about god that need to stay out of the political forum.

Anonymous said...

Over the last year, my mom entered the cult of tongue-talkin, give a quarter of your money to a Gaww-DAH hustler in a tent, and tell the rest of your family they are going to drown it a pit of flaming sulfur a-less-in you walk that narrow path of an angry white God. I'm still struggling with how exactly to deal with it. Really been enjoying these posts. So far the only way I've come close (and when I say close I mean like the proximity of Earth to Mars) is to send her husband links to the science of mind control and it's techniques. At lest she's stopped calling in the middle of the night to tell me that I'm going to hell...

Omnipotent Poobah said...

I don't think they even get to the "profound issues". They're arguing over which prophet is more charismatic or whose book makes a great read.

We'd be so lucky that they'd actually discuss something profound.