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"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" isn't just good Biblical advice. It's sound logic no matter your religion. Doing nice things for others because you'd expect them to do nice things for you might be self-centered, but it still works. From there, it's not that great a leap to do nice things just for the sake of doing so.

A lot of people do violate the Golden Rule, of course, but nobody ever said that humans always perfectly exercise logic...

- Kef

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I believe that morality is exclusively from God. Seeing as God made us and everything we have was created by God. I also believe over time after Adam and Eve's teachings were passed down these teachings got stuck in other religions. I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying which is:
Even though there was an original religion (the worshiping of God) in my book other religions borrowed from it, wrote it down, and added onto it before and Jewish or Christian texts were written. Which totally proves why many religions have stories of great floods and other similarities to Christianity.

Which goes to show why many laws probably are derived from the belief in the Christian God, because I believe the belief in him was the first belief in a deity. Of course you don't have to be a Christian and you can have your own theories, it's just my two cents.

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It's perfectly fine for you to believe that. No one (I don't think) is trying to change your mind. But what you got there is an unprovable point of view in this world. Basically, what people are trying to be sure of is that you can make a distinction between you believing what you believe and the fact that none of that can ever possibly be proven in the world. If it is true, sure, it could be proven spiritually to those open to it, but not proven non-spiritually. It's not something to base government policy on if anyone wants their religious freedom guaranteed.

See, this is the same thing. The Bible says nothing about religious freedom, yet over time people have realized that if they try to force their beliefs on others, it's just a roll of the historical dice and maybe then they'll be the oppressed ones. People have learned through experience that not messing with others that way is better for everyone. Is it that hard to believe that people could have learned the same way that killing each other is bad? You don't have to believe that, but (coming back to the topic) do you see this uncertainty and how you really can't make broad government decisions for everyone based on your beliefs because of that?

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I don't want all of my beliefs forced on people. I actually don't really want any anymore, but by my old logic I wouldn't force a religion, just simple religious based morals (if you get what I'm saying).

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I think I'm going to chime in on this a little bit.

First of all, while I myself at times feel I would appreciate more religious or "faith-based" morality to be encouraged by our culture, even within the contexts of government or public systems (or, at the very least, not discouraged as much as it is today), I have to point out that I do not believe such to be possible within our modern culture. Our population has become so diverse, it would be nearly impossible to determine adequately what the so-called "moral majority" would be anymore.

I presume that what you mean by "morality" is essentially the morality encouraged within the context of biblical Christianity. But therein lies the problem alluded to by Inverse Tiger: what brand of Christianity are we speaking of? I'm not particularly fond of the idea of a Roman Catholic government, for example. It was Roman Catholic governments that persecuted Luther and the Reformers in the 16th century. And while I concede that modern Roman Catholicism is not as dogmatic or as tyrannical as in those days, we must recognize why that is the case: modern Roman Catholicism does not have the same kind of governmental control as it used to, and like most religions, has learned that persuasion rather than coercion is the way to accomplish its goals.

And before anyone jumps me for singling out the Roman Church, I must remind you that this is also the case with many Protestant churches as well. Let us take for example the exalted Pilgrims who came to North America to establish a land where they could be free to worship as they desired. Would I want to live in the Plymouth colony? Definitely not! Why? Because as a Lutheran, I would be expelled from that community for not being Puritan. That is, assuming that they settled for exiling me rather than the usual alternative: burning me at the stake for witchcraft. No, I'd much rather live in the Pennsylvania colony, where, even though there was no distinct religious government, and pretty much anything was allowed, at least I could live in relative safety, without fear of the local Puritan lynch mob.

And given that certain elements of my faith are at odds with modern "evangelicalism" (for example, my belief in Sacraments), I'm not sure I'd want to live under a government represented by the likes of Pat Robertson or Jimmy Swaggart anyway.

And let's examine the society in which the early Christian Church flourished: it was a predominantly pagan culture, in which the prevailing morality constantly clashed with the Christian lifestyle. And yet, the Christians in that culture distinguished themselves by not following the prevailing culture, but living simply according to the morality revealed to them by the Christian faith. In fact, their own religion was considered illegal by the Roman government until the time of Constantine. And if they made any changes to their culture at all, it way by influence and persuasion rather than exercise of governmental power.

So what does this mean for us today? It means that we live in a culture that is increasingly secularized, where Christian morality is no longer considered the norm. Not unlike the Roman Empire of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries. We can no longer expect our government to hear our voice over the cacophony of other voices that are often louder than ours. In this situation, we as Christians have no choice: we must realize that, in the overall scheme of things, we are powerless. All we can do is to live simply by the faith we are called to. And if we have any influence within our culture, it can only be by persuasion, not by power.

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My brand of Christianity is followed by the Old Time Missionary Baptist Church (look it up on Wikipedia). We differ from other baptists too much to just call ourselves Baptists like most any different Baptist denomination would do.

The largest religion is Christianity (considered as a whole), Islam is fastest growing, and there's a slew of Atheists, but if you look at it the right way much of our grand nation the U.S.A. is mostly Christian. Isn't that enough? The majority is still Christian, but for some reason, we aren't speaking out. Is it for fear of being called bigots? Maybe. Is it the fact we're growing cold away from our religion? Yes. I scarcely should say Christian for some people because they just go to Church every Sunday and then go back to their mostly secular lifestyle. That's why we can't bring morality into government, it's because Christians aren't living up to God's expectations. But then again God doesn't want those forced to feed in his pasture.

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Took a while to get to your point there.

So if we did live up to His expectations, we should bring morality into government?

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It depends. People are weird animals and you never know if they would object to being forced but be obliged to do it voluntarily.

Besides we can never live fully up to God's expectations.

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I know that, but I still don't see what that has to do with morality & government.

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I would think that if everyone were living up to such expectations for morality, written governmental law of the same sort wouldn't be needed. Laws, for the most part, are written so that everyone can agree where lines are drawn, and these lines end up being drawn only when someone has already crossed it. But if no one's crossing it, no lines need be drawn.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Thank you, Gidley.

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If has to do with the government forcing morality and why it can't even in places where it seems like the majority wouldn't mind.

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ok...

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Then we get to the debate for the purpose of the government. Should government enforce an ideal, no matter how intangible or ambiguous, that a certain group believes to be true and good, whereas other groups that also make up a significant portion of the society do not? Should the government be a babysitter, a finger pointer, and a hand slapper for petty things? Should the government micromanage its people?

Or should the government stay more loose, more flexible, and less infringing on the rights of people to be different and live differently, so long as none harm each other?

Just remember when you cry out for a government that enforces morality: one day, the tables may turn on you, and you find your government now enforcing a strict morality as defined by another group of people...one with which you disagree. Remember the Bob Enyarts and Fred Phelpses of the world. Remember PolPot, Hitler, Mao, Torquemada, and Hussein. You open up that door for enforcing strict morality, and you open it up for the potential for the government to enforce ANY morality--not just your own.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I don't want that anymore. What I do want is to know the reasons behind everyones belief. I can see your straight and centered. What I'm more worried about is the angry minorities running about killing people or the majority enforcing state religion. I happen to not be a majority when it comes to my exact religion. We are estimated at a count of around 70k people in the U.S.A. which is not a big bunch.

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