States without God centered morality become dictatorships without souls

the United States has a Creator-centered morality; it says so in the Declaration of Independence.

That is a state expressing a particular morality, Zmaj. Moreover, pretty much every action taken by the justice system, the police, and the military would also involve state morality. So the answer is no. As long as there is a state, there is a state morality.

"States without God centered morality become dictatorships without souls"

How are you for history, Brad? Plenty of soulless theocracies in history. A number of godless states that weren't/aren't soulless dictatorships, too.

@Lethologica, if everything flowed from the Golden Rule, it would be almost a zero-level morality, the closest you can get to having no state morality. Wouldn't such a simple situation be preferable, as it would reduce to a minimum the possibility of (huge) mistakes caused by misdirected morality?

"if everything flowed from the Golden Rule"

A: The Golden Rule is a shit basis for morality on its own.
B: "If everything flowed from a particular moral principle, would there be no morality involved?" No.

"Wouldn't such a simple situation be preferable"

For armchair politicking, maybe. For every complicated problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. I agree that there are costs to complexity, but that does not make simplicity clearly better.

(Meh. Clearly I'm not up on my Mencken.)

@Lethologica, thanks for the answer. It hasn't provided any concrete material to continue the debate, but at least I know where you stand.

Unbelievable. Actually states with "God" based morality are pretty keen on dictatorship. That'd be the worst

Naturally, people who haven't been screwed by society always object to justice. Not at all surprising.

And ALL states express some kind of morality of one kind another.

@Ogion, it seems you missed my post above.

"Wow, mods, does zmaj's totally irrational attacks qualify as off limits?"

How do you explain that? Do you inform against people offline too?

I am with you Zmaj. Souls can go off the rails, but the soulless are never on the track

Damn, Brad is pushing that bullshit theocracy crap. Someone hasn't noticed the first amendment. Which IS actually law

@Capt, thank you, but I wouldn't say we're on the same page here. I don't think God has anything to do with state morality or the lack thereof.

LOL Ogion invoking the first amendment after trying to silence me because of my views. Priceless.

You're claim of dictatorial desires had precisely zero basis in anything I wrote and was every bit as batshit crazy as your "you want to kick everyone out" straw man. If you have nothing rational to add, then at least stop with the stupid ad hominems.

The soul is a total fiction. Complete nonsense. Might as well base a society on tinker bell

Ogion is totally irrational

@Zmaj, i concurred with your reply to Letho's answer. Oh Letho, you have as soul whether you believe it or not.

Funny, Ogion is probably railing at my comments and calling me names and just going nuts over what i said, but since i have muted him i can't be insulted. Ha ha! of course if he has muted me then what i post has no effect but what do i care about that nutty hairless guy

@Ogion, I was imagining what kind of a dictator you would be. To you, this mental exercise was enough reason to start meta-actions to apply physical force against the speaker (in this case, to silence me with a ban). It's the kind of thinking that is encouraged in every dictatorship. Are you aware of that?

Speaking of going off the rails (Brad), this thread was about sovereign rights for Indians wasn't it?

Good job tossing off a random bit of pious noise without answering the objection to your specious claim, Brad.

Ooh. Railing. Not Dismissing, sure.

Which, leth, is kind of why I had him muted before

Funny how it became "can't do anything good because God hates it when people are nice!"

I am for sovereign rights for my people. there does that answer the question, hauta?

specious, ha! you can deny the truth Letho, but the truth does not deny you

Yeah, Brad wants right for "his people" and screw everyone else. Nice

Ogion, don't take the bait -- Brad is gonna get all pious about his foster kids now!

He is muted. It seems he ought to just move to Syria and join ISIS. They seem to be right in line with his "society must be based on what we think tinkerbell told us" line of thinking