When your claim to be promoting a moral cause requires you to lie, you may want to reconsider whether you're actually promoting a moral cause. If you cannot convince people to adopt your moral cause by presenting them with facts and reasoning with them, you're admitting that your moral cause isn't as moral as you pretend it is.
@TruthSandwich Correct. And this is a case which shows how critically important it is for those who want forward movement about these issues not to attack the many religious people who move in an opposite direction from the anti-abortion crowd. Prevailing requires broad coalitions in which people with shared goals find common cause and treat each other with respect even when they come at issues from other standpoints.
Religion is not a legitimate basis for opposing women's rights.
In practice, the major religions are ambiguous on specific topics, such as abortion, and good people manage to somehow find an interpretation that allows them to act as good people must. Bad people, however, hide their evil behind "it's not me; my holy book says so!".
That's why religion has no place in public discourse.
@TruthSandwich@wdlindsy Whether you or I think that religion has no place in public discourse is beside the point, given its heavy importance in American political life. That forces us to make a choice about whether we will support or attack, religious people who critique abusive applications of religion in the political arena. If you can afford to knife allies in the back and imagine you’re doing something good for your cause, have at it. I prefer the saner path of solidarity.
@TruthSandwich And a lot of good religious people agree and are working very hard against that eventuality. I prefer to support them and not attack them. Attacking people who share our goals makes absolutely no sense at all.
There are a lot of good people who are also religious, but they're not good because they're religious or religious because they're good. It's orthogonal.
You don't need religion to justify morality; it's self-justifying. But religion is ideal for justifying immorality.
Moreover, arguments from religion do not appeal to those not sharing that religion, making them worse than useless.
@TruthSandwich@wdlindsy I have not said, nor do I think, that religion is a prerequisite for thinking morally. I have said that attacking people with religious beliefs who share our political goals makes absolutely no sense politically. You seem unable to hear that point because you are fixated on being hostile to people who happen to have religious beliefs.