In order to understand what I am trying to quickly sketch, its important to actually [read] the damned bible, the OT particularly and as much of the Qu'ran as you can stand. It's there that you find the enormous difference of mentality between a secular state and a theocracy.
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Precisely.
As I've written before, as a boy I received many years of Bible instruction - cover to cover, Old and New Testaments. I can quote scripture like a Southern Baptist preacher and I'm intimately familiar with the American evangelical way of seeing the world (at both the liberal and illiberal ends of the spectrum).
As you say, there is an incompatibility between the mentality required to sustain a modern, secular state and the preoccupations of those who're focused on the OT as their guide.
This incompatibility should be examined more closely.
Trouble is, when this topic is raised here the discussion tends to fly apart in unproductive directions: Yoshie's merging of Islamist thought with that place called The Future, Doug's weariness at hearing about Jesus...yet again, Ravi's concerns about maintaining polite discourse between believers and unbelievers (with the onus almost always placed on the unbeliever's shoulders), Joanna's appeals for us to acknowledge 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy...', Carl's super villain-like joy at lighting a bonfire of the believer's vanities...
Heated fragments hurtling from an exploded starship, moving away from each other at near relativistic speed.
It's much simpler and much more difficult to properly sort out than our arguments often make it seem. Read the Bible if you haven't already had the pleasure. Read the Qu'ran too. Read, listen and view the pop culture of the major religious sub cultures (GOOG Carmen + Christian singer, for example). Work out the political implications.
There's no need for either insults of believer's alleged simplemindedness or principled defense of believer's tender feelings.
What's needed is a concrete linking of source material to belief to action to the political consequences.
Isn't this a great deal like the sort of thing Chip Berlet does?
.d.