Rob, great travel advisory link! A public service announcement, well done.
Will contribute to Kickstarter to send @Beschizzle to Tehran in a burka
We’re in Wales.
That’s no excuse for speaking Welsh.
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“Brainwash” is such an ugly word. “Acculturate”, please.
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I’d say “strict” “traditional,” or “conservative” — depending on which I meant — and “liberal,” “progressive,” or “permissive,” again, depending. I’d also name for the relevant branch of Islam: Sunni or Shi’ite, and give the name of the school if it’s generally known. I’d do the same with Christians. I’d expect confusion if I used “fundamentalist” simply to mean “strict.” I’d reserve that term for the strict types who believe that they are returning to the roots of the religion by sticking close to the writings of the religion; calling a conservative Catholic who’s big on Papal authority “fundamentalist” is just confusing.
You may not be interested in a deep dive into theological differences (although it might be more interesting than you think) but the differences matter. If you grasp the space between austere but liberal Quakers, austere and strict Fundamental Baptists, progressive but traditional high-church Episcopalians, and traditional, conservative Eastern Orthodox Christians you may get why a one-dimensional scale won’t work for Islam, either.
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Well, that’s just your opinion and opinions are like faces…
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Yes. Thank you. This isn’t rocket science. It’s really not.
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Click here to find out the one weird trick for making your own terrorism for pennies on the dollar!
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[edit - post removed for incomprehensibility. What I meant to say was “it’s not rocket science but it can be difficult to overcome the conditioning. And some people don’t seem to want to overcome it.”]
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“If a woman was attending to play from a place in the tropics where they customarily leave their breasts exposed, a UK event would probably be scandalized if she didn’t make an effort to dress like a European. They would also refute that the insistence is religiously motivated, despite the ease in demonstrating that that is precisely what it would be.”
I don’t see how that could easily be demonstrated,unless you define ‘religion’ so widely as to cover large areas of what would normally be called culture or tradition.
Religion IS often that sufficiently broad. That was the point I stated above - if a religion’s traditions become dominant in a culture, the people of that culture become blind to them. Except for those who don’t share those views, anyway.
I have seen cogent examples in the US, reading debates about the legislation of laws concerning matters of sex and/or nudity. Legislators knowingly propose and pass laws which they are fully aware are based upon specific religious ethics, but do it anyway under the pretext that if it is dominant, that it might as well be secular law. It goes like this: “This is not a Christian law, it is a law which serves only to enforce community standards, which just happen to be 100% based upon Christian ethics.” Problems being that it 1. normalizes the ethics of that religion for secular people, 2. deeply entrenches that group’s influence upon the society, and 3. makes any “freedom of religion” into mere lip service for those of other groups for whom those ethics might be contentious or even offensive.
I know that there are areas where it is not easy to demonstrate that a certain ethical position is based specifically upon religious or secular ethics. There is an inevitable degree of cultural overlap. But many don’t make any effort to do this, and even deliberately confuse the two. The US has a long history of deliberately marginalizing the indigenous religions of the Americas and (believe it or not) Europe in favor of thinly-veiled Christian ethics typically dogwhistled with terms such as “community standards”, “family values”, often peppered with vaguely evangelical references. The effect it has is that it dishonestly presupposes that those outside of the favored group are essentially lacking of any culture, ethics, or morals whatsoever - rather than possibly having a different perspective for their own legitimate reasons.
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I don’t believe the level of eroticisation of female breasts in Western culture has much to do with religion, and still less with ethics. Though I suppose there’s an ethical/moral dimension to making rules about such things given the fact that they are, for better or worse, eroticised.
The length of skirt considered appropriate seems to vary independently of pronouncements from religious eminences (some have linked it to economic exuberance).
And an atheist society will still have its own ideas of propriety, which may well seem no less absurd to others than those of religious societies.
I think it’s debatable that a secular state has no business making rules about anything based only upon the pretext that some might find them erotic. That’s precisely the kind of thing I refer to as religious ethics. Concepts such as modesty and chastity are wholly religious in their origin. Not that there is anything wrong with that, for those who prescribe to those systems. But secularizing those attitudes is problematic for others, and arguably not helpful for secular folks either.
If I find hands erotic, are people obliged to put gloves on when I ask them to? Most people would tell me that it was my own personal problem, and that they were not actively doing anything to me which needed “redress”.
Sure, it’s more or less arbitrary. And lately I have even been seeing secular groups (France) specifying shorter skirts as a reaction to religiously-motivated long skirts. Legislation of clothing seems like a fool’s errand.
Secular and religious society are not quite the same, as quite a few religions are also atheistic. There is a big difference that legislators may still claim that the individual or society would be victim to a case of impropriety, but not the god(s). It seems to me that it is hard to find solid reasoning behind most victimless crimes from a secular position. This puts the onus on legislators to demonstrate actual harm/benefit behind laws rather than relying upon a particular tradition.
[Edited for re-edit to replied post] Agreed. That’s a huge problem that influences how men and women act in the world.
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I didn’t mean to imply that the anecdote was a template for how these things should be handled.
The point I was trying to make is that life and situations are complex, and the one-size-fits-all responses that seem to be increasingly adopted in our post-literate internet culture are problematic, precisely because they’re put forth as one-size-fits-all…
In a perfect society not driven by tabloid values we would probably
handle these situations much better, but then perhaps they wouldn’t
arise in the first place.
We’re in agreement on this one (at least the first part, because I imagine that these types of situations will always arise; we’re animals, after all, and we’ll never get to experience a perfect society).
I think your definition of religion is over-embracing. It seems to comprise not so much a foundation for understanding the universe and our place in it, but anything that goes against what you call “secularism” - by which you seem to imply a negation of biology as much as of theology.
I guess you could see it that way. I see religion as being systems for, as you say, understanding the universe and our place in it. There are numerous such systems, and tend to involve subscribing to the metaphysics of a number of traditions. Also, they tend to mostly deal with the subjectivity of meaning, purpose, faith, and other such concepts. I think that considering such perspectives can be beneficial, but the systems often do not play nicely with each other. Deep existential meanings from one culture or society may or not be transferable to other people. It’s hard to argue that one has any obligation to subscribe to anyone else’s metaphysics.
This is why we have the secular, which I define as societal concepts which need a bit more objectivity, because they connect disparate groups of people in civic processes and daily life. So, for instance, you can choose to find meaning in life by believing certain axioms or conducting rituals which align your life with such ideals. But you cannot ethically require them of other people for conducting a business or running a hospital, where people outside of your subculture need evidence and assurance which does not require them to believe as you do. Secular ethics are ethics which are stripped down enough to let people communicate and function as a society, with minimal possible interference for the adherents of various traditions.
No, that is not what I am saying. The State is secular so that you are free to practice your religion, and other people are free to practice theirs. If the State was not secular, it would have a state religion which was favored, or even exclusive. The problem is that requiring belief doesn’t work so well, and reasons for favoring one system over another will only convince those who already believe. Religion could be theistic, such as Christianity, or atheistic, such as Taoism, and still have equal protection. It isn’t a negation of biology either. When people strive to enforce what they claim are biological truths, this serves no purpose if it already true and inviolable. The only reason to enforce natural laws to cloak ideology in objective-sounding terms in order to excuse subjecting others to it.
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While there’s no love lost between me and any supernatural belief system, I don’t want to live a world where each person cannot choose for themselves. I’m a staunch individualist, and uncompromisingly believe the fundamental human right to decide for one’s self is paramount over the right of a culture to choose collectively for everyone within it, especially when the least powerful are often the least able to leave a culture, and in particular because in practice human nature is such that cultural consensus is at best a will of the majority, which can still become tyranny if it has no limits to balance it against minority interests, and at worst it’s the will of a powerful elite chosen by heredity and patronage. I’d be no better than any tyrant myself if I sought to deny individuals the choices I find irrational, including religion.
Whosoever attempts to deny the conscious agency of women who choose what he himself does not believe best, in his heart dreams himself their masters. Or herself, since women are also capable of the false-consciousness fallacy, but I’d wager the scales tilt to men committing it more.
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That’s one side of the coin. I see the other, dogma, as a way for behavioral memes to eliminate competition through an ultimate appeal to authority.
Don’t kill your brother and don’t eat pork.
Why should I obey you?
This isn’t coming from me. I talked with the Big Kahuna and He/She/They/It said so. The Big Kahuna made all this around us. Surely the Big Kahuna knows best. And surely the Big Kahuna’s will is unassailable. Are you going to disobey the Big Kahuna? Do you want to be responsible for bringing the Big Kahuna’s wrath down on all of us?
I think your reasoning has a few gaps in it.
I find your lack of faith…disturbing.
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Those are not actually attributes of religion; dogmas are at least as common outside of religion as inside. For every seemingly arbitrary religious law you can quote, I can easily find you 50 equally arbitrary secular laws. What you are referencing is human nature, often found here on the BBS (recent appeals to the CDC vaccination schedule come to mind). Appeal to authority is freudian, not religious.
Frequently, people are exposed to bad religion and they come to believe that the characteristics that they disliked or rejected are the defining characters of religion itself, and not of their own particular bad religious experience. This reminds me of people rejecting evolution because they think it means they are descended from monkeys; it’s a simple and commonplace misunderstanding.
My religion has exactly zero precepts that conflict with science. The church I attend is not very dogmatic; there are seven principles that you can choose to accept, if you wish.
Dogma is part of some religions, it is not a characteristic of religion itself. Theism the same - atheistic religions are not as common as theistic ones, but they exist.
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