Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>
>
> [clip]
> This may be true--and I wish I knew enough to
> argue the point with you; the point I underlining
> however is Andrew Collier's:
> "....no religious believer can give his or her
> first allegiance to the state,
This is idealist bullshit. Let's go back to the kernel of truth in reductive materialism: Religion is an ideology. Its content is determined by the social life of its adherents, not by deduction from religious premises. Every religion that has ever existed or will exist is regularly stretched by its adherents to fit whatever political-social perspctive the individual believer happens to have derived from his/her total life in society. Any religious dogma can be made to fit any political or ethical position. There is no religious dogma that has not been stretched by different believers to fit opposed social, moral, or political positions.
It is easy as hell for the member of _any_ religion to give his/her first allegiance to any damn state he/she happens to be living in.
Carrol