Religion

[Dicknose]

I don't think my sample size is good enough on this, as I don't really know a whole lot of atheists personally (or maybe I do, I don't really make it a point to find out people's religious affiliations).

Wow - Im definitely the other way round.
I dont know many people who are religious. A few cousins, one or two acquaintances, two guys from work - but I dont think any of my circle of friends is.
My close group at university had a couple - but they all died young (under 30)

Id make a quick guess and say less than 10% of Aussies I know are actively/openly religious. Maybe the same amount agaoin could be, but quiet about it and wouldnt be regular at services.

[Tom Servo]

Interesting. I usually assume people are religious as I knew very few atheists growing up. Our family was the atheist one in the neighborhood. My wife and her family are Catholic - not practicing, but definitely still believe. My brother in law is an atheist (I think), but his family is pretty religious, his sister is a minister. They're thankfully one of the not-so-judgmental variations, but he's also got a couple of family members in Scientology, one of which has disconnected from the rest of the family. That family member's daughter is one of the people who started Ex-Scientology Kids

Most people I know I would not categorize as active churchgoers, but almost all of them consider themselves as belonging to some religious order. A good example might be two friends of mine from school. One was a Muslim from Pakistan, and she married the other friend who is a Catholic. She converted for the wedding, but she still identifies as Muslim. Neither of them go to services for either, but they definitely aren't atheists.

[G'day Mate]

Today's topic - are our laws "based on judeo-christian values"

According to Billi ...

Look, no matter how much you’d like to deny this, the western civilization has based itself on the laws of Moses, which was summarized by Jesus as love God and love one another.

Of course the ‘love God’ part could end up being twisted by some to cause persecutions so now we mostly just focus on the love one another part and made sure we allow people the freedom to worship freely.

So to answer your question, yes, it is fairly universal as well, but the Christian influence on the west should be pretty clear.

For a Supreme Court judge to deliver a good and fair judgment, he or she should be able to make both Jesus and the people happy. Not to just follow the letter of the law... we all could interpret the same sentences differently anyway... how can we be sure our interpretation of the law is really right?

Best we could do is to hope that whatever we do is out of love for God and for other people. We do this right, our future will be bright, we do this wrong, we enter into the dark ages...

[Crazed_Insanity]

Forget about Christian influences that caused so many western flags to bear crosses..., here’s something about Jewish influences:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jud...d-civilization

[Rikadyn]

Code of hammurabi probably has a more direct line of influence

[G'day Mate]

The whatnow?

[Rikadyn]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

Tlr 1700 bc babylonian King ordered laws codified.

[Godson]

I'm still waiting for a true separation of church and state to be utilized...

[Tom Servo]

I feel like there's a big gap between "based on Judeo-Christian values" and that modern judicial decisions need to make Jesus happy. As it is, many of the Mosaic laws we've already thrown out, and as far as I can tell only two of the ten commandments are actually illegal here. Like Rikadyn pointed out, some of the laws we still follow can be traced back to Hammurabi, so they're not necessarily unique to Judeo-Christian law.

I don't see a problem with the Supreme Court delivering judgment based on the letter of the law rather than an interpretation fed through an arbitrary religious code. If we find that the interpretation of the law doesn't fit with what we think are our values, that's what the legislature is for - change the law.

Finally, I think it's almost dangerous to require this adherence to Judeo-Christian values as part of being a Supreme Court justice (which I may be wrong but it seems like that's the angle Billi's going for). That'd mean that, presumably, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or anyone else would be immediately unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. I don't think that's reasonable.

[Crazed_Insanity]

My angle was that if a person cannot act according to their own good faith(whatever that might be), then what's the point? I just thought Judge Amy lacks integrity. 1) Based on her own words previously applied to the Obama admin, she should've withdrawn herself or delay her own nomination. 2) Even if US laws were influenced mostly by the Babylonians, as a Christian, particularly on issues like abortion and gay marriage, what would Jesus do should still be in her mind and deliver her judgements appropriately...

Whatever your faith is, as a judge, your judgements should be both legally and morally sound, right? Unless your faith has nothing to do with morals, than perhaps you could throw your faith out on the job? But that's ridiculous.

BTW, as a Christian, I am pro-life, but I'm also pro-choice. I believe God is both too... hence He planted a tree of life(pro-eternal life) and tree of knowledge of good and evil(pro-choice). If God never intended to give Adam and Eve a choice to leave paradise, He would have never planted the tree of knowledge. I really don't understand how can anti-vaxx and anti-mask conservatives not realize the importance of choice.

As for gay marriage, yes, bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin, heterosexuals having sex outside of marriage is sinful too, but bible is equally clear that love can cover up all sins. If you do something out of love, it can't possibly be sinful. Marriage is possibly the only way we can do legally to prove our love? So I'm all for gay marriage at this point.

For these gray area issues where the laws are unclear or silent, what are judges to do? If you can't bring your own faith to work, what else are you going to rely on? Only judge capable of not bringing their own faiths to work would be atheistic judges. Assuming their upbringings were not contaminated by Judeo-christian-babylonian gods...