Incomplete Thinking

Are we a generation of incomplete thinkers? Do we hold and espouse views that in one thought seems very reasonable, but when followed through to their logical and implied ends are totally at odds with our proclaimed values? This occurred to me recently as I was involved in letter writing with an old friend who had recently taken up social positions that were at odds with our common faith. We began to discuss religion and politics and he made it very clear that he believed that all religion should “always be expelled from political practices and participations”. This stance was taken by him because he claimed to fear theocracy, which he defined as the worst possible form of government. I commented in reply that such a banning of religion from politics was impossible because there is no such thing as non-religion, the secularism he was espousing is simply a replaced faith in a God with faith in man’s own ability. Humanism is a religion; it’s just a religion where man, and his reason, is his own god. Such secular religions were often far more violent and murderous that any group of men who committed any crimes in the name of God. The fact remains, we have to go back hundreds of years to find a calculated and organized government killing and intolerance campaign claiming to do god’s will (at least of the christian stripe), yet we must only look to the east in recent decades to find mass murder influenced by Neitcheze’s Superman or Marxian godless utopianism. I rested the letter at that, not wanting to risk my friendship by questioning the thinking behind his feelings. Then I recalled a comment he had made to me earlier about the upmost important issue of free speech. In a letter to me regarding internet censorship he had said well “Internet freedom is paramount to a united world of open and free speech. Internet censorship is wrong on all levels”.. and there is the incomplete thinking. On the one hand he speaks of the value and “paramount” need for free speech, then in the next he seeks to have government define what is viable free speech and what is secondary and therefore superfluous speech. Obviously such thinking has never been diagramed on a board to try to examine the outcome as the outcome of expelling religion from political realms becomes a exercise in censorship worthy of the Nazis or the communist. You cannot claim to love free speech and deny the right of individuals to express religion influenced and even infused political thought.