Which Is Worse Church or State? My vote is church. At least with the state they are satisfied when your a corpse. The church has to feel like its punishing you forever. This is just to start the discussion. Pick one and say why in your comment.
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Which Is Worse Church or State?
Which Is Worse Church or State? My vote is church. At least with the state they are satisfied when your a corpse. The church has to feel like its punishing you forever. This is just to start the discussion. Pick one and say why in your comment.
At least for this time in history I’d say the State. Most churches are funded voluntarily and no one who doesn’t believe has to attend or show religion any respect. Of course, thats just the US. In Norway (I think) you have to be a member of the official state church to hold office and stuff, but the church will pretty much accept anyone or anything. I think it might be Germany where the state approves churches who are then funded by taxes (’cause it aint fair that one church gets more tithing than others).
As usual, I’m opposed to anything the state does. Any problem an evil individual might concoct to inflict on others the state magnifies, institutionalizes, rationalizes, subsidizes, and forces it on everyone it can. This goes for churches as well. On their own without the state I’d think churches would be what they were meant to be: congregations of co-believers meeting to enjoy the edification of their souls, to help each other, and to do goodly works. Only the State could corrupt that but that’s what a State does to everything.
Wasn’t going to turn this in to a reply thing. But I have to point out at one point in time they were the exact same thing.
For sure, Joseph. I prefaced my statement with “At least for this time in history” or something like that. Now, Im no scholar I’m just a redneck, but wasnt the problem with the Church it’s connection with the State when the Church started granting exclusive divine right to rule to kings like Alfred the Great, the Merovingians, and so on in Europe? At that time, the Church was a tiny minority abused by anyone who cared to, most Staes (like Rome) actively attacked them- often with the accusation of “destroying the social order” and such things.
When the Church started partnering with the State (ordaining them our rulers etc) they really got rotten. I see it like this: I love oil, gasoline, and heating oil as well as plastic. I love what the petroleum industry can do for me. But when they get in bed with the State- kiss your private property rights good-bye. I feel the same way about the State.
The State. The church is voluntary, The State isn’t. And if the church ‘bothers’ you when you’re dead, what do you care; you’re dead.
While yes, in some instances, the church is The State, but at that point the issue isn’t truly the church, it’s the leaders placing the church into the apparatus of The State. The State is still the problem.
The other issue here is while saying “the church” generally implies Christianity, there’s a multitude of religions out there with various degrees inside them. To compare religions such as Zoroastrianism or Buddhism to Christianity is a bananas to kumquats analogy.
State is worse. The State practices both ego-driven intervention and ego-driven interpretation.
The Church practices ego-driven interpretation.
Theocracy is the worst. Forced genital mutilation, public stoning, forced conversion ect.
In his essay, The Death of Politics, Karl Hess has lots to say about how Christians have authoritarian tendencies that poison their idea of a small government. Personally, I think it would be impossible to really answer your question because there are too many different churches with different beliefs and practices out there. However, I think I would say that if someone’s beliefs lead them to violence, force, or lots of other things, that’s bad.
You have philosophers such as Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the late scholastics at Spain’s University of Salamanca and these were the early libertarians. Christians ans catholics believe in subsidiarity which is also a libertarian concept as well If you read Aquinas Summa Theologica he sets forth in part that men’s vices should not be subject to man’s law. A religion is like if it were a private club where one acts voluntarily in what one wishes to help achieve. in such an organization Such an organization has rules but a person joins voluntarily He or she is not coerced to joining at least here in USA. I opppose to any nation state espousing a religious belief like what had been done in ENGLAND THAT CAUSED PEOPLE TO MIGRATE due to religious persecution
You have philosophers such as Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the late scholastics at Spain’s University of Salamanca and these were the early libertarians.
Uh, no. Medieval Christian thought(i.e., warmed over Plato and Aristotle) was not an intellectual forbearer of laissez faire. It actually springs from the 18th century French physiocrat’s translations of first millennium(or thereabouts) Chinese writers/scholars.
I’d go with State. As said already, a lot of the horrors that the churches produced in the past was when they were one and the same with the States they operated within. When Church (in this case, any religious body) and State (as we use the term) are combined, they have the capacity to trample individual rights and claim religious rights to commit atrocities. But when they are separate, the former becomes voluntary and personal whereas the the latter becomes tyrannical and overwhelming in our personal lives.
I’d go with state also because the church doesn’t (currently) violently enforce its ‘teachings’. I do hate the (catholic) church too though, having been raised in it I know its slavery firsthand.
What? is the state of the State? What? is the state of the Church? Which? Church/Religion What? happens when you irritate a rattle-snake?
It used to be the church, but the state now is what the church used to be. So, I gotta go with the state — the new church.
Taking a cue from a comment above, isn’t it when the church and the state are one and you don’t have a choice.
Every complaint I’ve ever heard about a religion’s tyranny is when the religion is the state: the Spanish inquisition, oppression of Galileo, witch burnings, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, and ISIS. In all these cases it is religion wielding state power. This gives religion a bad rap. Separate the two. Pick the most obnoxious voluntary non-state religion you can think of. Now pick the most obnoxious secular government. For the latter, I suggest communism since Marx and the Soviets were explicitly atheist. Which would you rather be a part of? And as bad as theocracy might be, are secular totalitarian states like communism any better?
Look around the World today tell me where the terrorism is going on, then tell me if it is religion being “practiced” under the authority of the State, or the State practicing religion that is the problem. Should a bad religion give all religion a bad name any more than a bad government gives all government a bad name?
The church begs me for my money whilst doing everything conceivable to deter me from giving them any (touching kids, promoting socialism etc). They can’t harm me, nor can they take from me without my consent.
The state on the other hand…
Right now the state is worse. It’s the most dangerous religion.
went to church last Sunday for the first time in over 50 years. Not to bad, did not get struck by lightening, no unnecessary calisthenics! It was Unitarian, so maybe church lite!
Both are under the sway of ego-driven interpreters. The State is worse because of the compounding of ego-driven interventionists.
Since you distinguish church from state, we aren’t discussing a state church or a church able to force me to respect its creeds. With this understanding, the answer could be no simpler. The state is worse, and a church is no threat to me at all.
Why would I care about someone else’s fairy tale about eternal punishments? It’s a fairy tale, right? A fairy tale does me no harm. If some people want to believe a fairy tale and reinforce this belief among other believers, how do these beliefs harm me? The believers regulate their own behavior this way, not mine. Why would I care how they regulate it? If their belief affects their voluntary interaction with me, I respond to their actions, not to their beliefs. If one person wants to prohibit my choices for “secular” reasons, to protect my health for example, while another wants to prohibit the same choice to protect my mythical, immortal soul, how does the motivation affect me? Either of these people may freely associate with persons choosing as they prefer and disassociate from me, and the effect on me is the same regardless.
If by “church” you’re referring to those organizations with “501c3” tax favoritism, you’ll need to consider them equal as far as the science of rulership is concerned. Both are set up to engineer your and my brains to favor collectivism and to quash individualism.
On the other hand, there are thousands upon thousands of groups of individuals who fall under a category commonly referred to as “churches” who make no concordat with that evil phenomenon we call “The State“. Most in my part of the world lay claim for their beliefs in a Hebrew Book called “the-holy-bible” (which is anarchist from stem to stern, regardless of what you choose to believe).
A strange phenomenon, that incestuous relationship between church and state. Sam
State. Church without the state, is just a voluntary society. Church combined with a state, equates to horrible oppression and atrocities. State plus anything, equals horrible.
I’d say door number 3: People. Specifically the ones wielding power in order to obtain more power.
The state and organized religion(s) are mere symptoms of the underlying problem.
I had to face this head on when I was looking for a proper school for my kid.
I realized that I could cure any religious notions he may encounter at a school far easier than I could, statist ones.
