This fatuous attitude would have relegated Arthur ("The God Who Failed") Koestler, Alexander ("The Gulag Archipelago") Solzhenitsyn and Viktor I. ("From Death Camp To Existentialism") Frankl to irrelevance as well.

Each were 'apostates' to a similar intolerant Imperialistic ideology.

Maybe this is why the Western intelligence services are doing such an amazingly inept job (WMD's? What WMD's? Osama Bin WHO? Zarqawi? No forwarding address known.)

Use it or lose it.

Posted by: BigSleep at May 28, 2005 11:18 AM

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Secularism are two different things.

I am not sure but I think that you can keep the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and still not be secular.

Don't be fooled by those wishing to promote Atheism in the public domain by removing religion from it.

There are some who go around trying to scare and trick us by saying that we should all remove our peaceful and loving and tolerant Christian religion out of public domain because if we don't then we would have to allow other so-called "religions" (death cults) in as well. Basically saying get all religion out so that we can get death cults out as well. That's just silly. We need only to take the cults out and leave our religion of peace.

It is our democratic right not to seperate church and state if we don't want to as long as basic rights are respected. Some christians and atheists make too much out of "render to Caesar what's Caesar's" passage.

I like this quote. This will keep trolls away.

" They then proceed to some truly creative re-interpretation of the embarrassing, intolerant and misogynist verses of the Koran. But intellectual honesty demands that we reject just such dishonest tinkering with the Koran’s text, which, while it may be open to some re-interpretation, is not infinitely elastic. The truth is there is no real difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism"

Posted by: Informed Christian at May 28, 2005 11:53 AM

Sigh.

I won't bother deriving the concept of "rights" here; it subsumes information that the government-run schools have deliberately deprived us of for generations, and it would take too much time and space. Suffice it to say that it is the most important, yet the most ignored, concept of all time.

Now, a few points; first, the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is seriously flawed, precisely because the concept of "rights" is unknown or ignored by its developers. Because of its flaws, if it is ever implemented,it will inevitably lead to totalitarianism. Anyone who reads this statement and gasps is a victim of the deliberate concealment of the nature of "rights" that has been carried out by all power-lusters of all descriptions. Good grief, what would happen if the "little people" knew what "rights" were?

Second, atheism, like religion, is a function of personal, not government, choice. Because it is not a function of government, you are free to choose either, but neither may be forcibly imposed on you.

Informed Christian, democracy unrestrained by a Constitution such as ours (not all constitutions are the same--constitutions are merely documents which spell out the relationship between an organization and its membership, after all) is the most dangerous threat to rights in the world. Simply stated, a democracy is majority rule. Simple, unrestrained majority rule can lead to hideous violations of rights; for example, if 51% of religious people wanted to kill the 4% (or thereabouts) of atheists such as myself, that could be accomplished with a vote, and I'd be dead or in some gulag somewhere. In order to prevent this, we have our Constitution, which describes what the government may not do to us. Look particularly at "Article the Ninth," which is often called "The forgotten Amendment." It goes like this: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE" (emphasis mine).

The reason the government is restrained from forcing you to become an atheist, or from forcing me to adopt your religion, comes from the work of a pre-Revolutionary writer named Robert Molesworth. He studied totalitarianism and wrote about it extensively. From his studies, he concluded that government and religion must be completely separated because for them to be fused in any way would cripple the ability of the people to criticise government.

The validity of his observations are illustrated in Islam, where the fusion between government and religion is total, complete, and seamless. Molesworth understood that by fusing them, any criticism of the state/religion complex could be regarded as a sin, not as honest intellectual disagreement. After all, since religious people regard their beliefs as derived from the divine, then so would the state with which they were fused.

In order to have the freedom to criticise the government without fear, it MUST be separated from religion. The separation is also a victory for the freedom of each of us to believe (or not) without government intervention--and that is a victory for the concept of "rights" we have so sadly been kept in the dark about.

There are many among us who, for a variety of reasons, feel so strongly that any who do not believe as they do, constitute a threat to them, to morality, to goodness, and would therefore support government compulsion into the arena of personal belief.

If this ever happens, we will have lost the very war we now fight against the state/religion complex represented by Islam.

I support the right of anyone to believe anything he wishes, and to endow it with divine characteristics, not because I think what they believe is correct, or good, or divine, or moral, but because I RESPECT RIGHTS.

It is because of my respect for human life, and for my passionate respect for the rights which are derived from our nature as human beings that I join everyone, beliefs notwithstanding, in this battle against the most anti-life, anti-rights organization ever to walk the face of the earth--Islam.

Posted by: Cubed at May 28, 2005 2:59 PM

cubed-

Freedom of thought is the essence.

When a creed refuses to allow that, it needs to be restrained from gaining governmental power, no matter what it calls itself. The faith based on the 'Prince of Peace' was used to beat people over the head -often fatally- for almost 1700 years. The Imperialistic Islamic 'Religion of Peace' is now causing mass-murder worldwide.

"By their fruits..." (as well as their nuts...) is the way to judge them.

I'll take human-made laws over any theological judicial system because the former can be changed as we mature (Amendments), but the latter is eternally frozen (in the perfect dogma), -and may thereby be used to allow any kind of vicious inhumanities -as long as a cunning interpreter can find the 'divine sanction' (in a metaphor or ancient custom) to commit horrific crimes in the name of the Deity (as the Blacks- "sons of Ham"- were made slaves in the pre-Civil War U.S. by the expedient use of a Biblical verse).

Islam knows no such form of restraint.

So we'll need to do it for them.

Posted by: BigSleep at May 28, 2005 3:37 PM

P.S.

Even though the derivation of "rights" is not appropriate for this space, one thing I can add that can be helpful in thinking about them is to mention that rights refer to how someone may ACT, and NOT to what someone may THINK.

Your ACTIONS are restricted under the concept of rights, not your THOUGHTS, which remain unrestricted. For example, you may THINK about boiling your spouse in oil when you're angry at him/her, but you may not actually carry out the ACT of boiling him/her in oil.

Here are some other "rules of thumb" re: rights.

1) "Your rights stop at my skin."

2) Rights cannot be granted or taken away, they can only be respected or violated.

3) Rights are violated with the INITIATION of physical force, or with the use of the intellectual equivalent of physical force, which is fraud/deceit.

4) When someone violates the rights of another, he waives his own rights.

Can't you just see Islam adopting the concept of rights?

Posted by: Cubed at May 28, 2005 3:45 PM

BigSleep,

I shake your hand in agreement!

Posted by: Cubed at May 28, 2005 3:48 PM

Cubed:

'you may THINK about boiling your spouse in oil when you're angry at him/her, but you may not actually carry out the ACT of boiling him/her in oil.'

Bugger!

Posted by: Interested at May 28, 2005 6:55 PM

Cubed,

What you said made me think of an experience I had:

I was on a Greyhound bus travelling cross-country. Looking out of the window I saw a group of Hell's Angels on motorcycles trailing the bus, and occassionally overtaking it. Typical counter-culture - long hair, bandannas, tatoos, denim vests, leather jackets, torn jeans, metal accessories, the works. They looked like a pack of wolves trailing a bison running for its life.

Then it occured to me that they are a positive sign. They are a barometer of freedom in the country, indicating how much freedom there is in the country. Being so different from the mainstream, in looks, philosophy, lifestyle, if they are free to be, then we are free to be as well, however different we may be from the establishment. Then instead of looking at them with revulsion, I just felt lifted. Sign of Freedom.

Islam won't allow such a scene to exist. The muslims are circulating a book in the Netherlands that calls for throwing gays off the tops of buildings. These people are anti-life, anti-rights, anti-human. They need to be opposed everywhere by everyone. You said it best here:

"It is because of my respect for human life, and for my passionate respect for the rights which are derived from our nature as human beings that I join everyone, beliefs notwithstanding, in this battle against the most anti-life, anti-rights organization ever to walk the face of the earth--Islam."

Posted by: skidd at May 28, 2005 9:24 PM

BigSleep,

There is another point.

Those who surrender to their 'divine dogma', also surrender their innate sense of human decency and common sense. From that point of submission on, they no longer do human decency or common sense. They only do what is commanded by their dogma. No matter how inhumane or nonsensical.

And we get scenes of mind-boggling dark ages vileness that seems incomprehensible in our electronic age.

. Muslim mothers being happy their sons and daughters are blown to bloody bits by a bomb strapped to their bodies, and murdering innocent people in doing that.

. Muslim men cutting the throats of air stewardesses with box cutters and keeping at it despite arterial spray. Their writing says the blood will frighten the passengers.

. Muslim men kidnapping innocent workers and sawing off their necks because their governments refuse to allow them to dictate foreign policy.

Posted by: skidd at May 28, 2005 9:47 PM

Skidd, you're so right.

I've often wondered how the "born to be wild" rebels survive in Islamic countries.

There are always some people who need to buck the mainstream, whether they be the beatniks, the hippies, etc.

Where are the non-comformists in Islam?

There aren't any.

Because Islam makes people too scared to want to buck the system.

The rebels in our society are a barometer of how free we really are in society.

Posted by: Voltaire at May 29, 2005 5:58 AM

Basically, I made two points here at http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006390.php#c95107

They were

1. Don't be fooled by those wishing to promote Atheism in the public domain by removing religion from it.

and

2. It is our democratic right not to seperate church and state if we don't want to as long as basic rights are respected.

Please take note of the words democratic right and basic rights. All your arguments stem from not paying attention to those words.

Posted by: Informed Christian at May 29, 2005 7:45 AM

At last!

I've always thought I wasn't very communicative of my points. Thanks guys for laying them out here. Those are precisely the reasons I worry about whom would be running a 'secular' government. People who are cognizant of everyone's concerns, or people who laugh at other's concerns, such as giaour.

Posted by: Gary at May 29, 2005 9:21 AM

Informed,

I have been away for a few days--sorry. You will probably not see this, unfortunately.

I paid close attention to all your words.

You response is yet another unfortunately indication of the wrong that has been done to generations of American school children by depriving them of any knowledge of what a "right" is.

"Rights" apply only to the living, and only to individuals. They do not apply to organizations, or to non-living entities.

There are only individual rights, not "democratic" rights or "basic" rights. There are only "rights." Rights do not vary in kind or substance, and they are not influenced by political ideas, which can only support or oppose them.

Rights are defined by our nature as human beings. We are born with them. They are, as the Founders knew, "unalienable." You have rights, I have rights--and they are all exactly the same, because we are the same as human beings.

I do wish that somewhere, sometime, there would be an opportunity to correct the wrong that has been foisted upon Americans, and explain what a right is, and how it is derived.

Oh, well.

Posted by: Cubed at May 31, 2005 2:21 PM