What this makes me feel above all else

[BYU71]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The evidence conclusively shows (does it not) that it was simply secular scrutiny--a desire to avoid the dire legal consequences of continued practice of polygamy and increasing pariah status due to the priesthood ban--that forced your LDS Church from a very similar course as the FLDS and closer to the mainstream.

Aren't you glad that "our" LDS church saw the light and got into the mainstream. Look at all the overall good "our" church has done. You may not be a person who believes in the teachings, the vision, the Book of Mormon, etc. and quite frankly I don't care if you do or not. However, you do have to admit the lifestyle of "our" church is one of the lifestyles that is condusive to raising good citizens and good people.

[ERCougar]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

This is a servicable definition of civic virtue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_virtue

With Christianity's long association with our culture it would be narrow minded and unfair to not give Christianity a great deal of credit for our civic virtue. I think the primary beneficial effect has been sort of indirect, however, a trickle down and ferment, if you will. Christianity is in the stew, though Christianity itself is heavily endebted to earlier metaphysics, including Greek philosophy and Judaism, as we've discussed here.

How to "check" religion? See the First Amendment. Secularism is part and parcel of our contemporary civic virtue. There are no formal standards, but our contemporary civic virtue implicitly or explicitly condemns certain traits traditionally endemic to religion such as ethnic hatred if not racism, sexism, superstition, anti-intellectualism, and hostility to science. It is no longer the case that religion is the primary if not sole source of our civic virtue or ethos. Rather, our predominantly secular ethos curbs or checks religion. Thank God.

Good article. On a sidenote, I'm a big wikipedia fan. For as much flak as it takes for inaccuracies, I have yet to find a significant inaccuracy in any article I've read--in the medical field, it's actually extraordinarily accurate.

Anyway...

I've been thinking a lot about secularism lately since listening to an NPR program a couple of weeks ago. To me, it seems attractive on the surface, but one you start delving into specifics, it becomes troublesome. Rather than referring to a specific religion for a moral basis, it instead seems to appeal to some sort of commonly-accepted set of values--what you term "civic virtue". To me, this just seems like a different religion, without all the specific dogma that one can attack and criticize. Sort of convenient.

To the extent that a religion's practices violate our core set of innately-held values (which seem remarkably constant across many generations and continents), they should be eliminated from our society. I guess I don't see this as secularism checking religion; I see it as religion is checking religion.

[hyrum]

Originally Posted by BYU71

Aren't you glad that "our" LDS church saw the light and got into the mainstream. Look at all the overall good "our" church has done. You may not be a person who believes in the teachings, the vision, the Book of Mormon, etc. and quite frankly I don't care if you do or not. However, you do have to admit the lifestyle of "our" church is one of the lifestyles that is condusive to raising good citizens and good people.

Any more so than the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, etc?

[SoonerCoug]

Originally Posted by hyrum

Any more so than the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, etc?

I don't think so.

The difference between Mormonism and these religions, from a practical perspective, is that the Mormon product is more predictable and standardized. We indoctrinate uniformly, while others indoctrinate with great variability. I don't believe any church on earth is more centralized than the mainstream Mormon Church. Even Catholicism comes in more flavors than Mormonism does.

I'm not saying that centralization and generating a "standard product" is good or bad. The system has its strengths and weaknesses.