law 1. the body of rules recognized by a state or community as binding on its members.
Membership being tantamount to democratic belief. When man thought the world was flat the rule was that if you sailed to the horizon you would fall off the edge of the world.
Question: If the Golden Rule is a rule, is it also a law?
morality 1. the relative right or wrong of an action; a system of morals; a set of rules or principles of conduct.
Morality is subjective. Most don't recognize universal laws which hold the universe in place at different levels of consciousness. At the grossest levels of awareness which are plagued with opinion, belief and superstition, the law of survival is that the fittest are superior, and if survival means to take a life that is within the rules.
Question: Is morality and justice one and the same?
Morality and justice a subjective to varying states of conscious awareness in the evolution of the species. History makes a great example of morality and justice and how it evolves with knowledge and spiritual maturity.
Obviously, in a true and secular democracy, the law and morality--the kind any state or community agrees to have as binding on its members--must be determined by its members.
Membership is relegated to the compliance of an already established set of rules. Usually set in place thru belief and opinion. The majority is often swayed in a democracy by a strong will.
Certain laws such as universal laws that establish levels of reality are not affected by democratic opinion. One such example would be that even tho democratic opinion and belief would establish the idea that the world was flat and that the sun rotated around the earth, it did not change the fact that the world was round and the earth orbited the sun.
Question: Who should be the makers of our laws? The elite few chosen to represent us?
The many and the few unconsciously create laws based on the inadequate knowledge of human and universal potential. Man is capable of living without rules but as long as the ego is alive and influencing man to put fear into the equation, man will create laws to fit his beliefs and his fear.
Questions: Should laws be designed to serve the state or community only?
As long as the state or community has a broken leg it will need a crutch, and it will manufacture something to aid its disability.
In a secular democracy, when it comes to the laws and morality by which we choose to live, what it the role of religion?
It is a crutch.
For example, should Muslims, Jews, Christians and others be allowed to make laws for those who belong to those religions?
Should is a relative term.
A better question is: Would mankind, if it found commonality above and beyond the segregation of individual belief and opinion that creates religions that separate humanity into diverse groups, create a better humanity than one that tries to rule over it with superstitious belief and opinion?
I think the answer is obvious. The problem is people are still trying to create rules from personal belief and prejudice that separates man into objects of value and measure and that includes groupings of belief and ability. Such is the state of evolving man. Until man wakes up to lead mankind beyond such a state of ignorance, man will continue to create rules based on limitations and ignorance, approaching man in relative belief and ignorance.
