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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3501)	3/19/2002 1:28:20 PM
From: Bill	Respond to of 21057

If I called you one I apologize. I don't remember any such accusation though.

To: Lane3 who wrote (3501)	3/19/2002 2:50:14 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Whose Commandments? By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, March 19, 2002; Page A21 On his visit to China last month, President Bush invoked G. K. Chesterton's famous description of our country as "a nation with the soul of a church." If you look at last week's news, it's hard to disagree. On Thursday the county commissioners in Tennessee's Rutherford County voted 16-5 to post the Ten Commandments in their courthouse. "It wouldn't hurt nobody," said Commissioner Joe Frank Jernigan. "Nobody's making nobody read it." The day before, a bill allowing school boards to give teachers permission to post the Ten Commandments cleared a state Senate subcommittee in South Carolina -- though not without controversy. Sen. Darrell Jackson, a Democrat who also happens to be pastor of the Bible Way Church, complained he was tired of legislators "playing politics with God." Two days earlier, the Ohio Board of Education heard conflicting testimony over whether the state's schools should teach an alternative to evolution known as "intelligent design." It holds that life on earth is so rich, various and complex that it can't just be the result of random accident. Unlike creationists, intelligent-designers don't insist the public schools teach that God created the universe. But critics see intelligent design as a sophisticated way of smuggling religious ideas into the curriculum. Supporters of intelligent design, such as Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, counter that teaching it is the essence of free inquiry, and that "stifling freedom of discussion," as he wrote recently in the Washington Times, "is wrong because it undermines the pursuit of truth and the presentation of different points of view." What is a country that just waged war against the Taliban to make of all this? As a free society we have a problem: We believe in two kinds of liberty that often conflict with each other. On the one hand, we are rightly fearful that government will endorse some particular religious point of view and, as a result, oppress those who do not subscribe to it. But we also believe that groups of people should be free to hold, nurture and live by absolute, even absolutist, beliefs that give meaning to their lives. These groups will inevitably use their democratic rights to have these beliefs expressed, or at least acknowledged, by public institutions. William Galston, a political philosopher at the University of Maryland, argues that advocates of freedom are torn between their devotion to "autonomy" and their commitment to "diversity." Advocates of autonomy, he writes in a forthcoming book called "Liberal Pluralism," believe in "liberation through reason from externally imposed authority." In this view, "the examined life is understood as superior to reliance on tradition or faith." But a free society encompasses "a rich variety of worthy human lives." That's what Galston means by diversity. These include lives organized around tradition and faith. As a result, Galston argues, the "decision to throw state power behind the promotion of individual autonomy can undermine the lives of individuals and groups that do not and cannot organize their affairs in accordance with that principle without undermining the deepest sources of their identity." This explains why religious parents worry that public schools might teach ideas that could undermine their children's loyalty to faith and tradition. One person's liberalism will thus be seen as illiberal and intolerant by those who reject liberal assumptions about the liberated, free-standing individual. The solution to this problem cannot be posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Government endorsement of the commandment not to have strange gods would violate the religious rights of those whose gods might be viewed as strange by the majority, and of those who have no god at all. Nor can intelligent design be taught as scientifically equal to evolution, since most scientists reject it. A more plausible approach might encourage public schools to acknowledge the verifiable fact that many members of our society believe in a role for the divine in creation. They could say this without pretending it's a view ratified by scientific method. If we are not to be torn apart by religious wars, conservatives need to acknowledge that government cannot be enlisted on behalf of a particular religious view. But liberals need to acknowledge that government has a responsibility to protect and respect our diverse religious communities, including those that reject basic tenets of liberalism. Nurturing individual autonomy and the rights of groups that reject the autonomy principle is a difficult balancing act. But as Galston writes, "The most difficult political choices are not between good and bad, but between good and good." © 2002 The Washington Post Company