It seems to be that you're sneaking in a second premise in argument one, namely "The Church should try to act exactly as Jesus did". Only after assuming this can you claim that the church should stay out of politics.

I guess you could argue about the soundness of that hidden premise, but if you dont take it for granted, you cant make the jump to your conclusion in argument one.

Personally, I think that given the fundamental difference between the Church as an institution and Jesus as a person/divine being, there are things that the latter will be able to do that the former wont, and viceversa.

Makes a lot of sense

This is very helpful thank you!

Thats right. There were of course people there before the Israelis. I was referring to which of the two came first, given that they're the only two groups who are currently disputing the land.

Yes, I am well aware of that. As nation states started to emerge as basic political units, they were founded on their people having a shared culture, history, and (in most cases) religion. So in the context of competing nationalisms, how do we determine which one supersedes the other?

hmmm interesting.

Perhaps I expressed it wrongly. Yes,Cartesian Dualists believe that when the mind intervened in the body, it did so through the pineal gland.But they were both, in principle unrelated. That is to say, it was not a necessary fact that they should be related, they are in essence, diferent substances.

Perhaps were talking past each other. I think what youre trying to say is that in reality, politicians many times dont make any moral considerations when carrying out political actions. I dont disagree with that. It is certainly possible to pass a law or a policy without considering whatsoever what the ethical consequences might be. What Im trying to say, however, is that whether or not you make the moral considerations behind each act, all political acts are inherently moral. Given a hypothetical situation where a righteous group of individuals truly wants to create the best society, they have no way of doing it because the structure of a correct political system relies on the objectivity of the moral claims that sustain it. Sure, you could say "fuck morality" and just go ahead and disregardedly carry out policies and pass laws, but this wouldnt be the correct political system.

I think you may find that right/wrong rarely enters into the equation of policy-makers and their donors. — Rich

I think it does enter into the equation implicitly. Whether you have a healthcare bill you want to pass, or a gun control policy, the law youre passing has a specific goal, e.g. "maximize the number of people who have access to healthcare", this implies that the right thing is for the greatest amount of people to have access to health care. Or, for example if the policy's goal was to "improve the quality of healthcare despite diminishing the amount of people who have access to it",then your moral claim is that the right thing is for society to have access to the best quality of healthcare possible, despite not everyone being able to access it. Hell, even if the policy's goal was just to enrich private insurers, it would carry either an implicit assumption that large business owners maximizing their profits ought to be more important than anything else in healthcare, or if the policymaker is doing it dishonestly and knows its wrong, it still carries with it the assumption that large business owners maximizing their profits ought not to be what a health care bill is built around.

Among the place, what is right and wrong is diverse as the number of people in the populace. People all have their own views on what is right and wrong. — Rich

This is precisely the issue to which Im pointing at. We cannot have an ultimately right political philosophy with diverging notions of morality in our way.

There could be coin toss. Heads, capital punishment is the law. Tails, capital punishment is abolished — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Doing this would implicitly acknowledge that tossing a coin to decide what laws are implemented would be the moral thing to do. In other words, you would be tacitly communicating that the allocation of resources by sheer luck is ethically right.

Or you could simply use force. Cross the border with tanks and infantry and say "This land is now ours". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It strikes me as fascinating how you wouldnt consider this to carry moral baggage. If I suddenly came to an empty piece of land besides your house with a tank and declared its mine, I imagine you would have something to say about the rightness or wrongness of such an action. Would you not ask yourself if someone needs that land more than I do? Do I deserve that land if I wont use it productively? etc...

Somebody could subjectively believe or objectively know that a policy is morally wrong but enforce that policy anyway because he/she likes being in a position of power and needs that policy to keep him/her there. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Even in that case: if I pass and enforce a policy that I believe to be wrong in the benefit of my own interests, this implies that what Im doing is wrong, and that perhaps some other policy would be right, therefore carrying an implicit moral claim.

thanks for that Ill look into it.

That is really the best answer I have gotten from this question up until now. It reminds me of Sam Harris's Moral Landscape, wherein he proposes that despite not being able to determine what is good or bad perfectly, we do know that some things are clearly better than others.

I believe that our definitions are not mutually exclusive. But lets take yours since I think it is more precise. Redifining politics the way you do doesnt free it from its attachment to morality. In other words, there is no way of deciding who gets what resources and who doesnt without involving moral claims. If I say" person A has a right to vote and person B doesnt", or "Person A should be convicted for using drugs", there is an implicit judgement of what is right and wrong.

Why draw the line at the state level? Why not districts or counties?

What I meant is that I feel puzzled as to where the limits of human rights provision should be established.I mean, hardly anyone would argue against someone's right to live, or his freedom, but then goes education, healthcare, where do you draw the line? Where do you say, "ok this is enough".

I really liked your arguments. I followed you and agreed with you up to the doctors example, but if asked "if no instituion provides formal education should the government create them?" Something tells me that the answer is affirmative. . I cant quite explain why my intuition tells me that. Could you further justify your claim that the government should not?

makes sense, thanks for that (english is my second language)

It is certainly undeniable that all sorts of terrorist acts have been committed by people who have nothing to do with Islam. I am not disputing that, what I mean to say is that the problem that exists today with terrorism has its roots in religious ideology. Whether people bombed a building in protest against the Vietnam War, or the Red Army Faction terrorized Europe for 30 years is irrelevant to the topic at hand. I am not denying that acts of terror can be committed for reasons other than religion, because they certainly can. What I am trying to get to is that the current trend in terrorist acts is motivated by religion to a great extent.

Read Bertrand Russell's essay The Value of Philosophy http://www.paulgraham.com/valueofphilosophy.html

I am glad you brought this topic to discussion because it is something I have struggled with personally as well. A couple of years ago, I would have not worried about the links between mathematical/logical ability and general intelligence, but now it is an issue that deeply intrigues me. As someone who is very interested in politics, philosophy, and current affairs, and likes to argue in the rigorous and structured way that an analytic philosopher would, it concerns me that if I lack skill in an ability such as logic, I will be incompetent in political and philosophical discussions. And well, I can tell you what I have learned:

1. Empirically speaking, research does suggest that there is a G factor, or a general intelligence. This means that an individual's level of abilitiy in domains such as literature, math, logic,writing, and so on, are typically correlated.So if you are good at math, you are probably also good at english and writing. This is not to say that abilities across all of those domains are going to be equal, they can and will vary. Neither does it mean that there are'nt people who score really high on one (e.g. math) and are notably deficient in another (e.g. english). It just means that generally speaking, abilities across these domains are correlated. For a controversial but I believe sound conversation on this, look up Charles Murray's and Sam Harris podcast on youtube.

2. There is good news,contrary to disciplines such as history, politics, and other soft areas of study, the process of learning math is different in its nature. Becoming good with mathematical reasoning requires constant exposure to making mistakes. After practicing enough times, you are able to do things with ease. Neuroscientific research has shown that there are specific kinds of neurons, I believe they are called decision making neurons (pardon me if this is not the exact scientific jargon, im no scientist) which release dopamine whenever you are right about something, and fail to release it when you are wrong. These dopamine releasing neurons become trained with enough experience to tell you subconsciously when you are right about something, and release dopamine if you make the right decision. Whenever you are wrong, they constantly rewire themselves in order to detect the pattern in any situation which will yield the right answer. So, whenever you fail a math problem, your brain doesnt like the lack of dopamine release, and thus rewires itself to be able to identifiy what the right answer is in the next circumstance. I apologize if this explanation seems a bit untidy. If you want to learn more about it I recommend the book, "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer.

3. I was always average on math, but begun practicing with online resources such as The Great Courses Plus, there are also other didactic materials such as the For Dummies series, or the Wiley Self- Teaching Guides. Although these may not seem appealing at first, I guarantee you they will do wonders. All you need is constant practice, if you are smart enough to be concerned about your intelligence, you certainly have the ability to master mathematics. Furthermore, once you get the hang of it, it is a truly beautiful experience to observe how everything fits in perfectly. Again, all you need is constant practice, if you ask the average engineer or economist, they will invariably let you know about the amount of hours they spent banging their head against the wall trying to solve problems. I would encourage you to learn math, it will make you much more adept at reasoning in other domains.
There is a wonderful book that talks about this, it is called "How to Not be Wrong;The Power of Mathematical Thinking" by Jordan Ellenberg. In it, he explains, in layman's terms, how viewing the world through the prism of mathematics can help you weed out implausible conclusions in affairs that seem on the surface non-mathematical (e.g. politics, history, philosophy, etc.)

Anyways, I hope this helps. And as someone above mentioned, you dont necessarily need math to be succesful, it will depend on your area of study, but I would encourage you to learn it if you are interested in problems that are political and social in their nature, it helps you a lot in learning to structure your arguments.

This makes a lot of sense. So I think what you are saying is that despite not being able to perfectly describe what an ideal state would look like, we are able in many cases, to differentiate between those states of affairs who are further and those who are closer to this ideal. In other words, despite not being able to tell you what a utopia might look like, I can tell you with certainty that the current state of affairs in the US is better than that of Nazi Germany, and thus closer to this undefined but nontheless existent ideal.

That makes a lot of sense, in fact there have been some studies done on the neuroscience of belief change. They demonstrated that when people were challenged in their deeply held political beliefs, areas of the brain associated with self representation lighted up, suggesting some relationship between the two. You might like to look it up, the study is called "Why the Brain Wont Change Its Mind".

Thanks for adding that it might not be innate, it could have been an error on my part. It seems undeniable that culture does play a great role.