That's a bizarre argument, and one that I can't recall having run into before. If the supreme being has limited omniscience, then how can religious people give god credit for those who "miraculously" survive a disaster?

There is a better (but, IMO, still pretty lame) argument that there were no disasters, diseases, or carnivores in the world until Adam and Eve's fall, and that all of these things were introduced as punishment for that original sin. Sounds kind of harsh to me.

I agree with you that the specifics of what is right and what is wrong will vary within societies. However, I believe that the process for deciding what is right and wrong should be independent of society, even if it includes reference to the prevailing morality of the society in which it is being applied. For an overly simplistic example, one might say that it is immoral to eat dogs in a society in which dogs are treated as companion animals.

What bugs me is when people say that they define "good" in terms of a deity, and then by their words and deeds demonstrate that they obviously have a definition of "good" that has nothing to do with their religion. This leads to semi-meaningless statements like, "Good is obeying God, and God would never ask you to do anything bad."

It also makes me frustrated when people define "good" in terms of the ten commandments, and then can't define them for me (e.g., what does "Thou shalt not kill" entail?)

I agree with you about not harming others who are themselves doing no harm. The only sticky point here is defining "harm." For example, I once was told by an atheist that banishment from a religious community didn't harm the banished since the religion was false in the first place and taking away something that doesn't exist isn't harmful. Since, to the banished person, the religion (and the community that went along with it) was real, I would define this as harm. This is why in addition to not harming others I would add that people should in general be treated as they would like to be treated. That's still over simplistic, but it's another step in the right direction.

Thank you for the thoughtful note.

Reacting to your final paragraph, I tend to be very accepting of other people's beliefs, but I also have no use for those who try to use legal or other means to impose their religious beliefs on others. Religion is a personal thing, and it needs to remain a personal thing. If it does not, then we get into the frightening area of legislating religious morality, and given the variety of religious moralities out there, I think it best to avoid that situation completely.

I hope you don't mind an enormous response to your note. These are excellent points and very worth discussion!

Let me begin (as I often do in this type of conversation) with my two rules for acceptable philosophy. For a philosophy to be viable, I think we can agree that it must 1) not contradict itself, and 2) not condemn those who reason similarly. It's that second rule – that you can't condemn people for thinking the way you do – that is largely behind my feelings on religion and the law.

As you point out, people can use either reason or religion to come up with a legal rule. If people who think both ways come up with the same rule (in your example, the rule is to not do murder) then effectively it doesn't matter where the rule came from. You are right that some people will think that this means they are legislating their religion, and I agree that is a problem. However, I think that people – even religious people – should be against legislating religion, if only for selfish reasons.

Let me go into a little more detail on that. By my second rule, I cannot say someone is wrong for thinking the way that I do. If I think that my religious principles should be enacted into law, then I can't condemn someone with a different religious philosophy for thinking that their principles should be enacted into law. So if I live in a democracy, I'm saying that the religion of the majority should dictate the rule of law.

There are some Christians who, believing the United States a Christian nation, might say that this would be fine. What they forget is that even Christians do not all agree on what is morally allowed. There is disagreement on birth control, evolution, baptism, medical issues, and even on how many chapters are in the Bible. They don't even agree on who should be considered a Christian. And if your group is still in the majority, are you confident that it will always be so? What if immigration brings with it a Catholic majority? What if changes in thought bring lead to an anti-religion majority? And even if you are confident that this country's makeup won't change, do you agree that the majority's religion should rule in every country? Even if you move there? Even if they want to make practicing your particular beliefs illegal?

It is for all these reasons that I think that the influence of religious philosophy should be solely over how a religious person behaves. Rules of law should be created in a more objective manner. In many cases, these religious and objective rules would be the same, indicating that there needs to be no religious justification for passing them.

As an exercise, let's take a look at the ten commandments and see which ones should be enacted into law. I'll use the Protestant version of the commandments, as they are probably the most familiar.

1) "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Legislating this commandment would mean flat-out legislating religion. People who think that "all religions worship the same god" aside, there is just no way to legislatively define god with enough vigor to make this commandment both meaningful and enforceable as law.

2) "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." The second commandment is very open to interpretation. Should the law say that no images of real things be made? Does this include paintings? Photographs? And if we agree that the commandment just means that no idols should be made, then do statues of saints count as idols in that they are not images of god? Does a statue of Jesus that doesn't look like you think Jesus should look count as an idol? What about people who "worship" money? There is just too much room for abuse and arbitrary enforcement here.

3) "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Limits on free speech are always dangerous. Should saying, "That piece of fish was good enough for Jehovah" be actionable? Is speaking against god or misrepresenting him misusing his name? What about cussing in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? Or cussing in the name of non-Christian gods? If we just want to outlaw cussing without going overboard, then why only outlaw cussing that mentions god? A more general no-foul-language law is probably what people would prefer (even though I'd argue that it's probably a bad idea), so there's no need to invoke religion.

4) "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." There have been attempts to legislate this law, but they are, of necessity, full of exceptions. You don't want to tell firefighters, for example, that there is a day they can't work. What Sabbath do we enact into law? Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are all used by one religion or another. And how do we define work? Driving a car? Mowing the lawn? Building a model ship? Taking a shower? Enacting a strict no-working law, even with exceptions for emergency services, could also put the country at an economic disadvantage. Again, best to keep the government out of deciding these issues.

5) "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." This is a nice rule for personal behavior in an ideal world, but it would probably be horribly abused as law. First of all, what does "honor" mean? Obey? Agree with? Just not talk back to? Second, who counts as your father and mother? Your birth parents? Adoptive parents? Estranged parents? Deadbeat dad? And finally, what if your parents do not deserve respect? How long should a child have to remain respectful to an abusive family? Is calling Social Services or reporting abuse to a teacher disrespecting your parents? No, far too many dangers in a law like this.

6) "Thou shalt not kill." This is the first of the commandments that pretty much everyone thinks should also be a law. But because even non-religious people think it should be a law, the commandment is not necessary to justify it. There is also the problem that the commandment as stated doesn't define "kill" very well. Does this just mean murder, or does it include killing in self defense? What about capital punishment? Or killing animals for food?

7) "Thou shalt not commit adultery." There is not enough agreement on what constitutes adultery for people to agree that this should be a law. Is all sex outside of marriage adultery? Is it adultery if someone divorces and remarries? Are married couples who "swing" adulterers?

8) "Thou shalt not steal." This is one of two commandments that work best as a law. There are still some grey areas concerning what is stealing, but they tend to be problematic for legal as opposed to religious reasons.

9) "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Taken as a prohibition against making false accusations, this is the second commandment that generally works well as a law.

10) "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." This is legally completely impossible to enforce and could cause intense social problems if enacted into law. It's possible that, under a law such as this, watching a commercial could be a crime.

That was fun, and I hope that it highlights some of the reasons that government needs to stay out of the religion business.

If this means that certain subjects in public school science classes conflict with some religious beliefs, that's okay so long as the reason those subjects are being taught has nothing to do with religion. True, this is inconvenient or upsetting to some religious people, but they should be able to explain the truth as they see it to their children, as well as explain how their criteria for truth differs from that of people with conflicting beliefs.

When we come right down to it, not basing law on religion helps guarantee the freedom to practice religion because it helps ensure that nobody else's religion (or non-religion) will take priority over your own.

I am very tolerant of religion, but I agree with you that there should be little tolerance for those who try and use law to force their religious beliefs on others.

Wow – another batch of excellent questions. You really must enjoy getting lengthy replies to your e-mails <G>.

At best, I can give you my opinion on these subjects. I hope that by doing so and giving you insight into my thinking, it might help you work through your own feelings on this matter.

To start off with, you ask how tolerant a tolerant atheist should be. I think this is a "your right to swing your fist ends at my face" situation. Someone who is convinced that there must be a deity is, by that criteria alone, at worst wrong. I’m wrong at times myself, so I can’t condemn someone for being, in my opinion, incorrect.

Past this, whether or not I am intolerant of someone has nothing to do with whether they are religious. For example, I don’t want my child’s teacher to promote religion. Then again, I don’t want my child’s teacher to promote a political party, either. This isn’t an issue of religion or politics, it’s an issue of proper education. Another example would be that I don’t think anyone should have to be a certain religion to hold public office. I also think they should not have to be a certain gender or of a specific ancestry. This is because I’m against bigotry, not because of religion, feminism, and anti-racism as separate issues.

The U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee separation of church and state. However, this is a sticky subject that needs to be looked at very carefully. As I understand it, the Constitution works like this:

• The government cannot promote or discourage any religion. Where we get into difficulty in the U.S. is that some people would add to this, "so long as you have some kind of religion." I feel that this is why our money still mentions God on it. There is also a difficulty in separating public funding for religious items from public funding for historical items. I’d say that the government should not pay for a statue of the ten commandments outside of a courthouse. On the other hand, the Supreme Court building has a mural which includes the ten commandments in the context of important historical documents, and this is fine with me because the mural is historical and plays no religious favorites.
• The government may not fund religious organizations so far as they are doing religious work. A church may not receive government funds (although they are exempt from taxes) unless those funds are for a specific secular purpose, such as aiding disaster victims. I disagree about taxation, but have no problem with funding charitable efforts so long as religion is not a qualification for receiving either funding or charity and there is no religious component to the charity (e.g., prosthelatizing to people in a soup kitchen).
• There should be no religious test to qualify for use of public facilities. Some people say that a school classroom should not be allowed to be used after hours for Bible study. I disagree with this – so long as there is equal access, I don’t see a problem. Where we get a problem is when a Bible study class is allowed but an atheist philosophy club is not. I also think that students should be allowed to express their religious views, read religious books on school property, pray before a test, etc., so long as the rights of others are not being infringed upon. Again, some would disagree with me on this, but in general the law tends to swing this way.
• Public education must  not favor one religion over another. Theoretically, this means that a high school-level comparative religion or Bible as literature class would be fine. The problem is that if such a class is taught with academic honesty and neutrality, some religious people protest that their faith is being attacked, so such classes tend to have short lives. I find this sad.
• Laws cannot be passed that have no secular purpose. You can’t legislate prayer, for example. Fine with me.

Teaching of creationism should not be done in public schools, but in my opinion the reason it shouldn’t be taught is that it’s bad science. The religious origin of the theory is irrelevant. Creationism should be out for the same reason that dowsing, for example, should be out.

So at this point what I’m saying is that as an atheist you should probably be very tolerant of religion, but very intolerant of certain kinds of bad or damaging social behavior, some of which happens to be an outgrowth of religion.

You mention James Randi, and that is a great excuse for me to talk about one of my largest philosophical goals. To me, the biggest danger in religious thinking is that it can be a doorway to magical (or otherwise non-skeptical) thinking in a variety of areas. If someone thinks miracles happen, then mightn’t that person be more likely to believe that a fraudulent faith healer is real? Or that a curse needs to be removed by a gypsy? And how can a religious person tell a true religion from a false one if faith is good and reason is bad.

This is why I encourage all people, religious or not, to examine their beliefs and their system of evaluating evidence very carefully. Anyone with a personal philosophy should be able to at least explain their reason for preferring that philosophy – even if that reason is "because I feel in my heart that this is true." Looking at your own beliefs in this way can help you see how compelling those beliefs should be to others, and how much you can judge others for not sharing your beliefs.

For example, if someone believes in the Christian God because they feel in their heart that He exists, that’s fine. But they can’t condemn someone who believes in the God of Islam for the same reason, because then they would be condemning their own way of thinking. And if someone is religious for scientific reasons, they should be willing to say that, as a scientific person, they will give up their belief in God if given sufficient evidence. If they are not willing, then they need to admit that they have emotional reasons for belief. There’s no shame in that, but there should be shame in being intellectually dishonest about what has to be one of the most important concepts in life.

Now, about coming out of your grumpy corner and fighting untruth. I say that you should fight untruth and promote logical thinking everywhere. You only need to draw the line when you find yourself fighting not untruth but difference of opinion. You can fight against dowsing or homeopathy or astrology or the medical efficacy of prayer because science provides you with ample evidence that such things are incorrect. You cannot fight against the belief in a creator because there is no way to prove that such a thing doesn’t exist, no matter how unlikely. You can argue that religion should not be put into law, but not that anything is bad if it is religious.

I am pleased to hear that your children are doing well philosophically despite their public education. I am curious why you say that your vegetarian child isn’t perfect – my son decided to become vegetarian at age 5 because he didn’t want to harm animals, has stuck with it, and does not condemn those who do not share his practices (I’m not a vegetarian myself). I would put vegetarianism in the realm of things that are matters of opinion and should not be condemned. Of course, the behavior of some vegetarians should be condemned, but in that case it’s not their eating habits that are the problem.