What does "sharia" mean?

[MercyA]

Isn't the fight to ban homosexual marriage an example of trying to implement a religious principle into secular law governing people who do not follow said religious principles?

 

Yes, and I think it's disingenuous to say it's not.

[MercyA]

I get upset when I read threads or articles like this that make me start to realize I'm "other." I go through life blissfully unaware that most of the people who surround me don't actually share my worldview. 

 

I don't see you as "other."  :grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:

[Shred Betty]

Fortunately, there is absolutely no evidence that this is a widespread (or even a barely noticeable) problem among Muslim immigrants to non-Muslim-majority countries or among Muslims born in non-Muslim-majority countries.

 

And how in the world would these extremists manage to implement "sharia" (English defintion) in a western country? Like Rosie said, they don't have enough political power to do so.

Forgive me in advance, BUT.

 

A few of you said on pg 2 that since there is no reality where the minority of Muslims who want to "implement English-defined sharia" would have a majority there is nothing to fear.

 

Doesn't it matter at all that the question goes a little deeper than just legalese, into the philosophy of justice and what they feel is morally ok / not ok, what justice means to them?

 

I have a small problem brushing it off so easy as this: "well no majority, so no concern."

[Ravin]

It might be really different in Australia, but here in Canada I think it might be a bit akward to separate the idea of religious influence on courts being not helpful, on the one hand, and looking at indigenous courts as being possibly enlightening, on the other.  One of the things that is very typical of the various indigenous justice institutions seems to be that they are very much rooted in what are explicitly recognized as spiritual values.  A lot of the First Nations programs and institutions use a restorative justice model, and I have a hard time imagining how that could be really taken as separate from a particular spiritual/religious perspective.  That isn't to say that it involves no separation of institutional religion, but it does seem to involve a very direct acceptance of spirituality and its institutional forms as being related to how we deal with law and order.

 

The Navajo Peacemaking program (which is used to negotiate family disputes as well as being used for pretrial diversion and post-conviction sentencing in criminal cases involving domestic violence) is rooted in traditional Navajo cultural thinking, which is rooted in their spiritual/cultural cosmology and philosophy, but they will also work with a family's pastor if they are Christian--so it's  something that can work flexibly with religion. The Navajos have freedom of religion in their laws while at the same time centering those laws in their traditional roots which did not separate religion from other cultural institutions the way Anglo-European secular law traditions do.

 

Restorative justice can work with people in a culturally relativist way that respects different religions and cultures. The key is finding what is common between people and drawing on that. 

 

Restorative justice is a much healthier model IMO than retributive justice. Jail/prison should be reserved as a last restort for containing individuals dangerous to others or unwilling to cooperate with rehabilitation and restorative strategies, not our go-to form of punishment for every criminal wrong. 

 

In family courts judges do everything they can already to avoid making decisions themselves that parents ought to work out. Mediation and restorative strategies are becoming increasingly popular.

[Amira]

Forgive me in advance, BUT.

 

A few of you said on pg 2 that since there is no reality where the minority of Muslims who want to "implement English-defined sharia" would have a majority there is nothing to fear.

 

Doesn't it matter at all that the question goes a little deeper than just legalese, into the philosophy of justice and what they feel is morally ok / not ok, what justice means to them?

 

I have a small problem brushing it off so easy as this: "well no majority, so no concern."

I actually don't think the question goes deeper than that. Every person has their own moral code and philosophy of justice. For some, it's based on religion, many are heavily influenced by culture or the laws in their own area, etc. Muslims are far from a homogenous group and only make up a tiny to small percentage of people in any western country. They don't have the cultural influence to change law, much less the political or legal influence to do so. So yes, I do think it's as easy as saying if there's not enough influence, there's no concern. Laws aren't made by 1% of the people (except for legislative bodies, and Muslims aren't getting on to those in high numbers, and won't be elected in the future if they're advocating to overhaul a country's legal system). No matter how you define sharia, it's pretty much impossible to follow any aspects of it that might be illegal in the country you're living in, or to make others follow those aspects. And to be clear, sharia (Arabic definition) is usually not in conflict with local laws, unless those laws specifically target Muslims.

 

(This part isn't a direct response to your comment, just some of my related thoughts.) The bigger question instead, to me, how much wiggle room do we give people to not follow certain laws because of their religious or moral code? This is one huge reason I am opposed to many religious freedom bills being passed in the US today. If a state wants to allow people to opt out of anti-discrimination laws because of "religious freedom," they shouldn't just reserve that for the "right" religious people. There are good reasons to set boundaries around religious freedom and I think these new attempts are misguided at best.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Amira

[Pam in CT]

re Freedom To vs Freedom From:

Part of the issue is the definition of "secular government."  There are many Christians, Jews, Buddhists, etc., who would vociferously defend secular government as the only way to ensure religious freedom.  In the case of a devout believer making this argument, I believe they are defending the understanding of secular government as a kind of "neutral observer" whose function is to protect the free exercise of religion in all spheres of life, private and public.  This includes the exercise of individual belief in schools, workplaces, government agencies, in law and politics. In this scenario, a secular government is not atheistic, but is merely non-sectarian.

 

This perspective works inasmuch as the majority religious traditions are able to find enough overlap in the Venn diagram of moral rules to form a viable public space together.  It's also why many the Protestant-majority U.S. was quite distrustful of a Catholic Presidential-candidate John F. Kennedy.  It stood to reason that if Protestants could shape and mold public policy based on a view informed by personal religious beliefs, then Catholics might also act according to their personal beliefs - which included loyalty to a certain Bishop of Rome.  ...That concession has carried forward to today - where voters look suspiciously on anyone from a religious background perceived to be in competition with Protestant / secular America.

 

On one hand, we had Barack Obama having to assure people of his religious identity as a Christian, and this was meant to refute questions of his suitability mainly coming from the political "right."  They very much did not desire to have a practicing Muslim in office of POTUS.  Then, we have Joe Biden and his "I'm personally against abortion, but pro-choice politically,"  which is sort of a code message to people on the "left" - "Hey, I know my Church is anti-abortion, and I believe that's the right position to take, but don't worry about me trying to enforce that on the rest of you."  

 

...

 

So, that's the religious side of it. The atheistic/ agnostic side of things has put a whole new patina on this "secular government" business.  Whereas many a believer has held that "secular" = non-sectarian, now, secular is increasingly coming to mean "a-theistic, naturalistic, humanist."  So, it's not a competing religious perspective, like Protestant versus Catholic, so much as a competing religious philosophy.  It's not Rome versus Luther, or the Moors versus the Crusaders.  It's not even Pope Paul V versus Galileo (as Galileo, a man of science, as also a man of faith, himself).

 

It's Epicurus' primitive physics (atomism) versus Aristotle's forms. The state is to form its rationale, its laws, and judgments based upon empirical evidence, not religious/ philosophical proofs. That is, the secular state is not only to refrain from entering the realm of religion, it is to refuse to even acknowledge its existence outside the boundaries of the private sphere of life.  And, when religiously-tainted practices and rationales are discovered outside their private domain - in public education, in courtrooms, in places of (corporate) business - they are scrutinized and weighed against the greater freedom of the public to be "free from the sphere of religion."...

 

 

What Aelwydd said, to which I would only underscore the relationship between the majority and its ability to exert coercive power over religious minorities and non-religious citizens.  This is easier to see, looking at other societies with different power structures than our own (forex, societies in which power lies with Muslim majorities such as Iran or Saudi Arabia; or that actively suppress religion, as the USSR did).  

 

It is natural coming from a majority-religion perspective to think in terms of Freedom To worship (as "I" wish).  Those on the minority religion or no-religion side are far more likely to think in terms of Freedom From ("your" religion being thrust upon me).  The first of the two definitions of the "secular" state that Aelwyyd provided above -- the non-sectarian state in a society where kinda-sorta-mostly-everyone-is-more-or-less-close-enough... did a good-enough job for lots-though-not-all-Americans for a long time.  (Although, never ALL Americans...in addition to the Papist fears endured by JFK and the Islamophobia by Obama that Aelwyyd references, there are countless other historical examples to be found... Atheists and Jews disproportionately bore the brunt of McCarthyism; Japanese Americans were the ones interred in WWII, yada yada).

 

Partly just because our demographics are changing the old majority-minority balance; but also because of the slow but steady expansion of Enlightenment ideas about empirical evidence, ever more Americans are defining the state in Alwyyd's second sense.  We're caught between models at the moment. 

 

 

...

Speaking as a secular (agnostic) humanist, I value individual freedom and individual conscience.  I, personally, have no desire to live in a society where,  if I walk without my head and body covered in loose clothing, and without a male relative, I'm regarded as "loose" or "dishonorable" to my family.  Such attitudes do derive from persistent cultural and religious beliefs (Adam and Eve, anybody?).  That attitude I described, by the way, would have been at home in most medieval Christian societies.  (It turns out that misogyny and patriarchalism are shared moral values in all three Abrahamic faiths - not surprising given their Bronze Age, desert-bred origins).

 

However, I also do not desire to live in a monochromatic society where morals are expressed as the p-value derived from crowd sourcing. Religious and philosophical traditions represent a cornucopia of human thought and imagination.  A society that lacks fluency in religious and philosophical thought is a society that lacks a valuable discipline in cultivating critical thinking skills. For much of human history, our understanding of the cosmos was necessarily derived from observation, speculation, and philosophical arguments and logic, because we lacked the modern tools of science.

 

But now that we have the scientific methodology, and the powerful tools we built from an empirical understanding of the physical universe, we seem to have decided we've arrived.  That we know so much more from science that that is all we will ever need and we will find all our answers through the rigors of evidence-based study.  The problem is, we've limited our sources of evidence to just what we can empirically test.  There is an infinite number of things we do not know about ourselves or the cosmos.  It seems rather one-dimensional to limit our approach to finding some of those answers to only what we moderns accept as scientific evidence.

 

I think we cultivate a tremendous amount of knowledge but not a lot of wisdom.  And this goes for believers as well.  Many, if not most believers I know, have only a passing familiarity with the logic underpinning the doctrines they embrace.  They'd rather find a 30 second YouTube video by some polemic talking decrying the "immorality" of all those godless New Atheists and how they can't possibly have any sort of moral system apart from the Bible.  Do they carefully  investigate the claims of both their belief system - in this example, Christianity - and the articulated position of their opponents?  Have they ever looking into the arguments for and against the other side?

 

This kind of push-pull between intelligent and informed opponents is sorely missing from US political dialogue.  And honestly, I think it's missing from most Islamic countries as well - I don't see a lot of evidence for examining their own system of beliefs.  Many are so focused on defending their culture from Western hegemony, and sending out their own sound bites - "Islam is the Answer!" - that any disagreement risks retribution and ridicule.  

 

So, I guess the question of how I view sharia is related to the overall picture of how Muslims present themselves.  IME, many of the conservative Muslims strike me as very similar to conservative Christian Protestants and traditionalist Catholics.  That is, they are interested in imposing their worldview on the surrounding society, to solve its problems. I would prefer that Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, believers and non-believers, all -- sought instead to  inform public policy and law through thoughtful dialogue, careful restraint of baser instincts (racism, clannish mentalities, aggression, etc.) and sensible compromise. 

 

As long as "compromise" remains a dirty word, and it's vogue to demonize people of a differing worldview, we will continue to see mistrust fostered between believers and non-believers.  If people can come to some sort of synthesis of common understanding, then a government which acknowledges both and gives space to both secular and non-secular practice, is possible.  But if religious people continue to try to wrest back their majority through power grabs and secular people continue to scoff at all religious arguments as "stupid" or "ridiculous," then to maintain stability one or the other will be forcefully ejected from the public sphere.  Right now, it's looking like religionists are losing that battle, for weal or for woe, as they say.

 

I don't see Islamic societies really faring much better.  The truth of the matter is secularism is sweeping the entire globe, not just Western societies.  What Islamic societies frequently will not admit is that many of their own populaces are privately de-converting.  There are many stories about how Muslims are immigrating to Europe and changing the social fabric -- there is not much said about the 15 - 20% of such Muslims who secularize within the first generation.  The attrition is greater with subsequent generations.   And this does not even touch on those who act as cultural Muslims in Muslim countries, but who privately do not believe, or may even be atheists. They may live under sharia, but that does not mean they agree with it or prefer it.

 

So that divide between religious law and public policy is going to be tested and is being tested, all over the world.  The evolution of human social conventions with the internet and information, combined with the huge increases in scientific discoveries means that we are all facing the question of how to meld the old ways with new understanding.

 

OK, the bolded is the best sound byte I've heard in weeks, and, there are a lot of sound bytes, these weeks.  That is #Genius.

 

Thing is, at the end of the day?  Codified codes like sharia and halacha and canon law... and entrenched social convention like what "marriage" is... and even our own revered Constitution?  Don't they all, ultimately, pretty much amount to the expression of morals at a given place and time, as the p-value derived from crowd sourcing (perhaps -- I do take your point re misogyny and patriarchy -- just the men in the crowd)?  I've never thought about it in quite those terms, certainly not in that #Genius language, but that is essentially how I think I see it.

 

Even today, with an ever-expanding appreciation for the value of empirical evidence, we still can't HELP but be bound to the current-day norms of our "crowd"... perhaps 100 years from now, I dunno, children will have rights separate from those of their parents, or the Earth will have rights separate from our dominion to plunder it, or... as I say, I don't know.  

 

But just as 2000 years ago the idea that slavery was fundamentally, institutionally wrong wasn't really on the moral table, I expect that (should we manage to survive ourselves, which is of course rather a big if) 2000 years from now, they'll look back on our current-day conceit about "empirical evidence" and see us as adorably cute, KWIM?

 

[Shred Betty]

I actually don't think the question goes deeper than that. Every person has their own moral code and philosophy of justice. For some, it's based on religion, many are heavily influenced by culture or the laws in their own area, etc. Muslims are far from a homogenous group and only make up a tiny to small percentage of people in any western country.

 

I should have specified that when I said that I was concerned about more than the question of political clout and improbability, I was referring only to the exact example you gave, which was for extremists. Not Muslims! I don't really think of extremists in the same "category" when I think of a Muslim.

 

I have to make up an acronym. :laugh at:

 

"those areas of extremist justice in conflict with the U.S. Justice system/culture formerly know as Sharia when used by right leaning us media"

 

EJICUS

 

in general I'd totally agree but when you are talking about extremists, they don't tend to follow the moral code the "rest of us " do... And tend to violate our basic rights to life or plot ways to kill others. This is what I meant is also relevant, not just whether as a small number they can overhaul our legal system. So what I meant was, to me, regardless of whether or not it is unlikely that "EJICUS" would actually occur, I still think it is relevant for people to think and talk about when they talk about extremism as a kind of context. So I'm not for scaremongering either, and hand wringing over it, and it sucks that the word is all wrong for how they use it especially considering the polling you mentioned. I'm not trying to pound my point but wanted to clarify I meant extremists only as when I re read it wasn't clear :)

 

Your mention of not following laws for religious reasons made me think of affluenza... Unrelated but an interesting example of precedent for not having to follow laws... Because of his Class, of all things...SMH

Edited August 23, 2016 by Shred Betty

[Pam in CT]

They may see us as adorably clumsy, but I sure hope they are still relying on empirical evidence, just better sourced, better replicated, and even freer from bias.

 

Not to be picky or anything, but p values aren't derived from crowd sourcing - and their applicability to the population, and not just the sample, is fairly rigorously defined.

 

Observation and experimentation aren't perfect tools, but boy, a lot of liberation has taken place since we've had those tools to play with. I don't see the new and improved tool coming up anytime soon...

 

 

FWIW, neither do I.

 

Yet.

 

We never DO see the new and improved tool coming up anytime soon, do we?  I mean, you're a little younger than me; but I came of age before cell phones!  Trust me: we didn't see the contours that world-rocking transformation, until it was already well under way.  And transformative though that was it was Peanuts compared to the still-detonating effects of the Enlightenment.

 

As a species we're smart enough, as such things go, compared to the competition at least.  But our ability to squint much further than the immediate horizon?  Or for that matter to accurately see ourselves, now, bound to our current place and time and values and norms?  I'm not at *all* convinced we're discernibly better now than were the Greeks or Chinese or Egyptians in ancient times.  If anything our conceits about empirical evidence and precision of measurement have made us historically arrogant, which serve as a new kind of blinder.

 

 

 

There's a teeny tiny chance I may be wandering off topic here, so I'll reign it in, lol.  G'night, Sadie!

[Bluegoat]

I'm not going to multi-quote just because it would take up a ton of room, but:

 

I don't know that I would say the Islamic solution to the problem of dividing worldview from government will be better.  And yes, some do look, at the moment, like Christian fundamentalists.  (Really, IMO, that is what all fundamentalists look like, and that includes the secular/empiricist ones.)

 

I don't think, however, that it is reasonable to look only at this moment in time to see what they might be able to offer, they have had their periods of intellectual flowering as well, and they can often follow periods of turmoil.

 

More than that, I think the implied criticisms they make are in many cases valid and are pointing to the problems that people have outlined - the difference between a polemical public discussion and one where people understand the principles of the worldview they base their views on; the problem of creating a consensus on any level within a community where those Venn diagrams have little or no place to intersect; the elevation of a supposedly "neutral" view to the level of an institutionalized national philosophy.  Perhaps, those things are a direct result of some of the choices that have been made in the western path.

 

It's quite true that many, most, western Christians, and churches for that matter, support the idea of a secular government.  I don't think that is some quirk of their belief about why we have such a system - it , factually speaking, developed as much to protect religion as for any other reason.  In much of the west and the English speaking portion of it for sure, it's a more accurate understanding of the reason for separation of church and state than the idea that it is about the church being somehow unreliable or biased or anything else. That isn't to say that it is "correct" as opposed to any other perspective, but it isn't a less correct way to understand it and its historically supported.

 

The elevation of empiricism, or logical positivism more often, as obviously the best way to go and not a worldview at all, is to me another aspect of the same problem of secularism that sees it as a philosophy rather than a method, and is no different than the polemical religious who know nothing about the principles of their system.  Empiricism has to be philosophically supported just like any other system,  it has never been a simple, obvious position, and among philosophers it has never won the day in a clear way, because it is not the only obvious answer and it has problems of its own. 

 

In the late 20th and 21st century in particular it has seen real challenges that it needs to overcome, and logical positivism which is the closest thing to the sort of popular empiricism of the public that is enamoured of scientific progress, has increasingly gone to the wayside in philosophy as having insoluble logical contradictions.  The foundations of scientific empiricism are being looked at much more critically and carefully today than they ever were 100 years ago or at the height of the enlightenment.  I tend to think that Pam is right that the people of the future will look back on that 19th century confidence and its popular instantiation in the 20th and early 21st century as quaint, though probably far sooner than 2000 years from now - I'd say in less than 200 myself.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Bluegoat]

I dunno. Give me the 21st century over most any other time in history. Ds and I just finished learning about Giordano Bruno getting burned at the stake for insisting that the universe was infinite. I think an approach that - at its best - actively encourages questioning, and resists the concept of heresy will take some time to improve upon.

 

I acknowledge the approach isn't always at its best :)

 

'Night.

 

But - not if we are questioning the separation of church and state in it's current form, or at all?  What kind of heresy is that, that makes it different?

[Bluegoat]

FWIW, neither do I.

 

Yet.

 

We never DO see the new and improved tool coming up anytime soon, do we?  I mean, you're a little younger than me; but I came of age before cell phones!  Trust me: we didn't see the contours that world-rocking transformation, until it was already well under way.  And transformative though that was it was Peanuts compared to the still-detonating effects of the Enlightenment.

 

As a species we're smart enough, as such things go, compared to the competition at least.  But our ability to squint much further than the immediate horizon?  Or for that matter to accurately see ourselves, now, bound to our current place and time and values and norms?  I'm not at *all* convinced we're discernibly better now than were the Greeks or Chinese or Egyptians in ancient times.  If anything our conceits about empirical evidence and precision of measurement have made us historically arrogant, which serve as a new kind of blinder.

 

 

 

There's a teeny tiny chance I may be wandering off topic here, so I'll reign it in, lol.  G'night, Sadie!

 

It's pretty much characteristic that a people can't even see the most foundational aspects of their worldview, and so have little or no ability to compensate for it or see when it is distorting their perspective - what information they take in and how they process it.

 

The only way to fight against it IMO is to very carefully look at and even take on the different perspectives of other places and times, in hopes that the contrast illuminates your own unseen assumptions.

 

I don't think science or technology could really, in and of itself, do a darn thing to help that process, it's shown itself pretty clearly capable of those same kinds of blunders and limits in a big way.

[Bluegoat]

I don't think religion could really, in and of itself, do a darn thing to help that process, it's shown itself pretty clearly capable of those some kinds of blunders and limits in a big way. 

 

As a woman, as an atheist, as the wife of a black man, as someone involved with the LBGT community, as someone with a mental illness and a chronic physical illness - I am so good with looking at and rejecting the perspectives of earlier times and places.

 

But then, I guess I just cant compensate for the distortions which make me so very thankful to be living in a time and place where religious law doesn't call the shots (yet), and which make me think that the idea of flirting with an ideology that sees little separation between god and law is irresponsible.

 

Religion isn't meant to do that, particularly, and as far as I know makes no such claim. 

 

I think this is probably the first time I've ever heard someone argue that it is best to NOT attempt to see or understand our own hidden cultural assumptions, or our assumptions about political structures, or really anything else, especially at the same time as they are saying that they are glad we no longer share many of the assumptions of the past and that those people were right when they did examine theirs.  I don't really understand how those ideas can be held together.

[Bluegoat]

 lol, religion makes ALL the claims. 

 

I haven't argued for not looking at our cultural assumptions or comparing them to those of the past.

 

I look, and I am happy that current cultural assumptions around the utility of empirical methods provide me personally - and many peoples collectively - with the highest degree of dignity and liberation so far in our human history. 

 

And that's partly because we have tools other than introspection - notoriously unreliable - and superstition, with which to organize our societies. 

 

Now, are those tools imperfect ? Of course. Do I trust the church or mosque to have cultural wisdom with which to improve those tools ? Not on your nelly. 

 

Well, you did say that you thought questioning the separation of church and state should be avoided. 

 

And - I think you would find that almost every time and place has a great many people who think that their worldview is the one that provides people, personally and collectively, with whatever the things they really value are.  Dignity, liberation, truth, justice, order, stability, whatever.  It's a bit of a conundrum in the sense that the fact of having a particular set of invisible cultural assumptions in and of itself sets people up to see value and meaning in a particular way, and sets up society to create evidences of those values.

 

I cannot for the life of me see a difference between the many people in the past who simply accepted their worldview or religion as a given, and the many today who accept materialist empiricism as a given.  Scientific empiricism doesn't stand on its own feet, in any case, so if the only other options are superstition and introspection, those are the things it is standing on, and it will be subject to whatever instability they have. 

[prairiewindmomma]

What is my understanding of sharia?  I'm not sure anymore.  I sat with a bunch of Muslim scholars and jurisprudists and came away with a fuzzier understanding.  My best advice: be prepared for a long, long, long discussion and expect not to agree at the end.

 

Before the conference I went to:  sharia is based on the Quran and the Hadith/Sunnah, and it is a (religious) framework for shaping one's life as well as your interactions with society/community.  It is a foundation for law and government in some parts of the world.

 

After the conference I went to: no two people agree entirely on what sharia is, how it should be applied, or on interpretations by scholars/imams/or even in some instances the Quran itself let alone its application to society. 

[Pam in CT]

re what evidence is there that closer entwinement of (church) and state can do more for the (greater good):

 

It's not a matter of accepting it as a given; it's a matter of seeing it as a best possible tool at the present, among all the tools at our disposal, given our current limitations. 

 

I'm just not sure what evidence underlies the suggestion that a closer relationship between church and state ( specifically, looking at a sharia-based model ) is worth considering for the greater good. There's none in this thread, that's for sure. So I don't know on what grounds one would even consider it, other than lingering bias towards the spiritual.

 

I can understand it would be attractive to many - look at Houellebecq's Submission - closing that gap is very, very comfortable for his protagonist, who, non-coincidentally, happens to be male.

 

Question the separation all you like, but an idle question does not a robust argument in favour make

 

Although many of the pp in this spectacular thread have my thoughts swirling and whirling in a most marvelous manner, I'd kind of decided to step out because those same thoughts were taking me wildly off topic.  But the bolded usefully brings the issue back around.

 

Amira's OP asked us (challenged us, really) to consider how we each defined sharia, a word rooted in another language and faith tradition that has recently entered our own political arena.  And turns out there was considerable variation between us, about what that word (of a different language, faith and history) meant.

 

Alywyyd also brought to our attention different perspectives within the US in how we define secular state, a word in our own language very much shaped by our own history -- you'd think getting to a common definition would be easy on this one, yet her observation that some Americans think of the "secular state" as non-sectarian, ensuring against government establishment of a specific *denomination* (i.e. the Church of England in opposition to which many of our founding history narratives are told)... while other Americans think of the "secular state" in empirically based, humanist terms, that expects government policies to be rooted in evidence and to apply equally to all citizens without reference to any religious framework.  And while this distinction gets more abstract and la-la than most of us go on ordinary days, it very much informs the political tensions we experience viz. Freedom To (worship as I please) vs. Freedom From (having your religion thrust upon me).

 

Within this thread, the example of "what is marriage" came up as an example of this push-pull.  There's another thread going on hijab and burkinis that to my mind illustrates it even more helpfully.  One of the issues that keeps emerging there is the extent to which Muslim women wearing hijab are compelled to do so.  In France (where the issue first arose), or here, or Australia, they are not -- if anything, the wider societal pressures cut the other way.  But this anxiety about coercion, about people being forced to comply with religiously based dictates to which they are not themselves individually led by their own faith convictions -- very much informs these issues.  

 

For Americans, that coercive potential is more visible when we talk about sharia or hijab, which are Different and thus easily visible, than for ways in which the majority-faith here has informed the push-pull of our own government and history.  The dynamic is the same though.  As bluegoat said, it's quite hard to step out of the values and context of our own worldview even enough to recognize it:

 

People can't even see the most foundational aspects of their worldview, and so have little or no ability to compensate for it or see when it is distorting their perspective - what information they take in and how they process it.

 

The only way to fight against it IMO is to very carefully look at and even take on the different perspectives of other places and times, in hopes that the contrast illuminates your own unseen assumptions.

 

It's hard to overstate how essential is this insight.

 

Just recognizing that each of us does stand within a worldview, which is bound to a place and time (which is Common to all of us living within a given country) and to a particular orientation to questions of faith / faith community (which is Different across citizens within a given society) and other identity-forging characteristics like race / age / language / culture / marital status / sexual orientation / socioeconomics / education etc etc (which are Different across citizens) is necessary for us to begin any kind of engagement with each other that moves much past Tyranny of the Majority (which really is just one more, only incrementally more representative, iteration of its ancient precedent, Might is Right... against which we putatively founded this nation).

 

Just recognizing the (hard-to-see) constraints of our respective worldviews, though, is not enough even to forge real personal connections across difference, let alone to shape fair and effective governance that manages to bridge them any better than Tyranny of the Majority / Might is Right.  Which is what any codified code that putatively speaks to values as opposed merely to power -- sharia, halacha, canon law, Constitution etc -- seeks to do.

 

 

 

 

Within this thread, we've already spoken to the Enlightenment value on evidence and rationalism.  The relative advantages of these values over other, older ones is still very much a Work in Progress in the US.  (More so here than in Europe maybe.)  

 

I don't think we have yet brought in the thread another, equally rock-the-world Enlightenment idea, the concept of the individual as distinct from community.  The genius of the US Constitution, and its astounding historical importance, was its conceptual separation of Rights of Individuals from collective institutions like faith communities and states.  Were its authors not able to break out of the (so natural!  so obvious!  who even thought about it!) idea that everybody is part of a community, they would not have been able to slice through solutions to the wildly passionate wildly divergent arguments about federal v state rights (and other equally passionate arguments about which Christian denomination was demographically dominant where, which economic interests were dominant where, etc that the federal-v-state construction both covered and obscured).

 

Halacha, canon law and sharia all developed within a specific faith community, and overwhelmingly speak to those faith communities.  Until the Enlightenment rocked the world, it wasn't really possible to live a real life outside a faith community -- options for livelihood, property, marriage etc really didn't exist.   

 

The Founding Fathers were well aware, at the time, that they had to thrash out some framework flexible enough to respond to all the different (Christian) sects with representatives in the Room Where It Happened.  The Church of England model (which of course is pretty analogous to state establishment of halacha, or canon law, or sharia) wasn't going to do the job.  

 

The Bill of Rights codified rights for individuals, separate from their status as members of any particular faith community.  It protected freedom of speech not of (say) Quakers (whose freedom as a community had been limited in the society they'd left behind), but to any individual, Quaker or Methodist or Jewish or even... as it worked out, slowly and fitfully... individuals who did not affiliate with any faith at all.  

 

This conceptual creation of individuals with rights distinct from the collective groups to which they belonged was a brilliant solution to the problem of diverse (Christian) sectarian differences and states with different economic problems that were looming at the time.  I sincerely doubt they ever foresaw the journey it would take us on.  How could they.  

 

 

But, here we are, now... and this then-radical idea of the rights of individuals is every bit as essential an element of the modern and American worldview as the equally then-radical idea of the value of empirical evidence.  And my own sense is that while the value of evidence is one that not all Americans fully embrace, the rights of individuals is one that permeates our founding myths and national identity as fundamentally as any other single motif.

 

To bring this all back around: I know halacha much better than canon law or sharia, but I think they are similar in that they all are framed in terms of the community, of responsibilities of everyone in the fold.  There's not a lot of provision for individuals to "opt out" if someone no longer feels individually led by their personal faith.  

 

And that dynamic comes back to coercion, and when/where it's legitimate for all individuals to be compelled to toe a particular line whatever their faith affiliation (don't murder, don't steal) and when/where it's not legitimate (don't eat pork, don't drink wine, cover your hair).  We can (and do) get into all kinds of late night philosophical debates about well what's the basis of "legitimacy" if not reference to some external code.  For some people, very strongly bound to a particular worldview, it's very hard to imagine that it's possible that others not so bound (atheists, for example, or "materialists," a term I've never heard defined by anyone who identifies with it, only ever by people maligning its limitations) *can* discern ethical issues without a religiously based reference.

 

Yet, empirically (  :lol: ), we all do manage to work out "murder is bad" and "pork is personal" kinds of distinctions, from all sorts of faith / no-faith orientations.  From my own orientation (and FTR, many Jewish women do feel individually called to cover for reasons quite analogous to Muslim women's reasons for hijab... and there are also communities within which pressure to cover crosses the line into coercive) it is a fine and legitimate and wonderful thing when Muslim women choose to cover... and municipal legislation or acid-hurling vigilante groups compelling them to do so are Always. Illegitimate.  

 

To Sadie: to my mind, the more direct way to get to a society that allows each of us as individuals to Choose (covering, pork-eating, wine-drinking) without being Compelled (to cover, that pork or wine be either prohibited from all or -?- mandated to all) is not to try to define in 1,243,745 degrees of granularity what Separation of (Church) and State look like (I put "church" in parentheses in recognition that what Church "means" directly reflects whose religious tradition is demographically dominant... and Christians here who want more church/state entwinement here are often -- rightly, I hasten to add -- troubled by religiously based legislation restricting Christian activities in places like Malaysia).

 

Nor is it a (in the US, uphill battle) argument that empirical evidence is a better basis for policy than Christian ethics.  However rational that might be, around here at least, not everyone shares the love for rational over other ways of understanding our place and way in the world.  

 

To my mind, the central Enlightenment idea that gives the *best* tool for sorting out these gnarly problems is the concept of Individual rights.  Policy is always, intrinsically, called on to mediate the many situations in which the rights of one/some collide with the rights of others.  There has to be a good reason for the state to use its coercive power.  Citizens' right to keep living, for example, is a good reason to prohibit murder.  Citizens' right to bodily integrity is a good reason to prohibit assault; to property a good reason to prohibit theft.  A great many ethical issues are sufficiently basic that pretty much all religious codes came up with the same basic principles a very long time ago.

 

But on other issues -- slavery, for instance; or rape, or torture; none of which are outright-prohibited in any of the ancient codes we've discussed in this thread (there are limitations on some of the worst expressions, yes, but as institutions, all are treated as normative facts of life) -- the moral bar has moved.  We live in a different place and time, are bound to different expectations.  It seems a little strange, now, that the Ten Commandments do not prohibit slavery, or rape, or torture, but there we are...  

 

Anyway, I'd argue that to the extent we've made moral progress in such areas (and: we have), that progress has not been attributable to church-related ethics, or the always-kinda-work-in-progress concept of (Church)/state separation, or even the Enlightenment concept that empirical evidence has value.  I'd argue that such moral innovations have largely occurred because once the concept of individual rights was on the table, there was room for ever more "types" of people -- religious minorities, blacks, women, LBGT individuals -- to make the case that they too are individuals.  That they too deserve that their rights also be protected.  There've been a lot of fits and starts along the way, but to the extent that the moral arc has been towards justice, it has been attributable to those two ideas (every human is an individual; and all individuals have rights irrespective of community affiliation).

 

That is also, for me, where the solutions to sectarian and God-Godless conflict have to be found.  Not in sacred texts (by definition, people who are not within the faith tradition, aren't persuaded by such arguments), nor in empirical evidence (I don't eat pork, and I will not in the future, and would fervently oppose any hypothetical government mandate compelling pork, and school lunch menus providing only-pork options are a bit of a gray area to my mind; but I got nothing in terms of empirical evidence against pork; my strong personal practices here are based outside empiricism).  

 

Rather, as we navigate across our differences the solutions to my mind are within this construct of Individuals, analytically and legally separable from the collectives to which we also, simultaneously, belong.  There has to be a Really Good Reason**  for coercion** against individual** freedoms**.  "Don't murder" and "don't steal" have been understood to have Really Good Reasons behind them since ancient times.  That "don't rape" and "don't keep slaves" also have Really Good Reasons, and that people who wish to rape or keep slaves have to be coercively restrained from indulging these preferences, has only become evident more recently, as the concepts that women and slaves also had rights individual autonomy, agency and bodily integrity of women were rather later developments.  (Which, as an aside, should give those of us working out our paths within religiously informed worldviews some pause, that not everything is adequately covered, there.)

 

Not all issues are as straightforward as murder, or theft, or slavery or rape.  There's a LOT of gray, and evolving, room there.  Just thirty years ago, the rights of an individual who wanted to smoke in a restaurant trumped other diners' wishes to dine without smoke in their faces -- now, we've reversed on that particular balance.  There's another thread going on right now about the rights of airplane passengers to bring their pets on board, vs. the rights of others who wish not to be subjected to noise or dander (or the rights of the airlines to earn money for services as they see advantageous to them).  There's not always a self-evident Really Good Reason justifying coercion in one direction rather than another.  The bars move.

 

 

To my mind, though, that is the best tool we've got.  There's more consensus around individual rights, than around either the value in sacred text teachings or in empirical evidence.  Not all of us are persuaded by faith teachings, and not all of us by empirical evidence, but we ARE all individuals... so fractured though that muddling-through process is, I do believe it's as good as it gets.

 

 

 

 

 

** Words to which different people bring different meaning, according to their worldviews.  Which are mighty difficult to see. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ETA: I just re-read all this, and dang, there are a lot of parentheses.     :001_rolleyes:   Oy.

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Pam in CT

[Bluegoat]

It's not a matter of accepting it as a given; it's a matter of seeing it as a best possible tool at the present, among all the tools at our disposal, given our current limitations. 

 

I'm just not sure what evidence underlies the suggestion that a closer relationship between church and state ( specifically, looking at a sharia-based model ) is worth considering for the greater good. There's none in this thread, that's for sure. So I don't know on what grounds one would even consider it, other than lingering bias towards the spiritual.

 

I can understand it would be attractive to many - look at Houellebecq's Submission - closing that gap is very, very comfortable for his protagonist, who, non-coincidentally, happens to be male.

 

Question the separation all you like, but an idle question does not a robust argument in favour make

 

I don't see bias to the spiritual as being a factor at all, it seems like a kind of non-sequitur to me.  Secularism isn't about elevating whatever the opposite of spiritualism is.

 

It's not really an argument to do anything, its simply a matter of accepting that it is a human institution, and one that hasn't always worked as well as we might like.  And there may be some signs that it could face problems in the future.

 

If we can see how other historical paths deal with similar problems, that can potentially give some possible solutions. 

 

What I see as the real problem though is that we tend to assume that our path is the correct one, for everyone,and that therefore other approaches must be more primitive or wrong simply because they don't do things the same way, and often it leads to trying to enforce a particular political structure on others.

[Pam in CT]

I honestly wish that I could talk to you in person about all this. It's really tricky on a message board. Thanks for this post; lots to think about. 

 

Me too, dear.  Some.Day.  

[Aelwydd]

lol, morals derived from p-values in rigorous studies which show an ability to be replicated multiple times sounds freaking awesome to me!

 

And honestly, I think it's somewhat dangerous and irresponsible to start flirting with the idea that maybe a hard split between church and state isn't something to protect and preserve. 

 

 

Sorry for the delayed response, Sadie!  Work projects and school prep and everything else means I don't get much time on the board.

 

I think maybe you misunderstood the gist of my post.  Unless you believe it's "dangerous" and "irresponsible" to even define the terms of debate? Or to consider that maybe expecting people to completely divorce their religion from their public life leads to unresolved cognitive dissonance? 

 

(Also, I know how p-values are derived - my undergrad is in epidemiology, after all.  It was not meant to be a scientific statement, just a recognition that we don't seem to have any systematic way to derive socially common values outside of bouts of Twitter rage.)

 

None of this is to say I want or desire religionists or traditionalists to set up a caliphate, a Catholic monarchy, or some other theocratic state.  Hell no.  If that's what you took from my post, you thoroughly missed my point.

 

That is, there are different types of people in the world, and only a minority are fundamentalists and extremists.  The rest are open to the idea off finding common values in a consortium of global communities.  They understand that finding a mutual basis for public policy need not mean that we must all consign ourselves to societies which are sterilized and purged from any hint of religious/ philosophical/ metaphysical idiosyncrasies.

 

I understand of course, that you, yourself, take a strictly scientific/ utilitarian/ Epicurean approach to understanding life and the cosmos.  I take a similar view as well. I really don't have much appreciation for any worldview that is stubbornly set against empiricism, and which rejects the progression of human knowledge as dangerous to old ideas, and demands intellectual assent from its adherents by requiring submission of their own judgment to some esoteric divine "law" that was set down millennia ago by people who just  knew the brain's main function was cooling the body.

 

The point is, I get it.  I get what you're saying.

 

But, do you also get that a fundamentalist mindset is any one that cannot tolerate or abide any difference of opinion, or deviance from orthodoxy of the majority? It's not the result of any particular religion - although some religions seem to "grow" more of these types than others for sure - and it's not even a religious phenomenon.  But if you cannot even abide having a conversation about how reasonable, moderate types from different religious backgrounds, may foster a healthy presence in the public sphere along with seculars, than how can you accuse of others of irrational thinking?  If you reject the Islamic, and Catholic, and Jewish, and Buddhist, and Hindu, and all the other religious type fundamentalists out there, you need to be equally scornful of that attitude from yourself and other seculars.  Because there are a lot of secular fundamentalists out there - and they are just as eager to oppress, remove, segregate others who take a different view as any Islamist or anti-Catholic Protestant or anti-Semitic Catholic.

 

Again, fundamentalism is a state of mind - it rejects reason, it conflates any deviation of opinion as automatically dangerous or harmful, and it is an inherently prejudiced mindset.

 

So. How do we find a way to keep our societies on the path to a scientifically- and technologically-advanced progressive future? Well, we have to first acknowledge that it is societies - plural, not singular - which comprise the whole of the human race.  And that part of the effort to retain a diversified humanity is to retain vestiges of the art, the language, the culture, and yes, the religious practices and customs of different groups.  Did the religious leaders of hundreds and thousands of years ago understand what Germ Theory is? Did they know the physics of how to put a satellite into orbit?  Could they conceive of artificial intelligence and computer processes that dwarf the speed of human thought?

 

No, they didn't.  That doesn't mean they were stupid.  That's why today, many Christians, for example, reject the story of Adam and Eve as myth, and yet still value some of the observations that were present even back then.  Such as, wondering why when humanity reached a critical mass in terms of intelligence, that the male of the species learned to treat the female as yet another resource in a hostile world to be exploited. Such as wondering about humans began evolving, and their brains grew to the extent that they had to be prematurely born to fit through the maternal pelvic outlet -- that yes, childbirth became an even more painful and dangerous affair.  That the serpent represents to many the inner voice that causes us to question conventional wisdom and "arguments from authority."  The curiosity and inner drive of the species.  The yearning for simple "paradise garden" that we imagine our species started out from, and yet just as utterly reject as too quiet and bucolic for our restless spirit.

 

Science is fantastic for explaining much about the world around us.  It's a powerful tool, and I agree, it should be the basis of things like, whether we protect ourselves from the flu by washing our hands and developing vaccinations, or whether we blame spirits and make a burnt sacrifice to keep our kids safe from viruses.  

 

But how do we decide what direction to take scientific  knowledge?  Science gives us the ability grow embryos in the lab.  Eventually, we will have ectogenesis - the ability to completely gestate a human outside of a uterus.  Can we grow 'extra" embryos from assisted reproduction for parts to harvest?  Can we use them to develop new cures for cancer and ALS and other terrible diseases? Can we use our knowledge of DNA to genetically modify our children? To what percentage or extent can we modify a potential child?  

 

What about artificial intelligence?  What if we are able to give computers and robots the ability to feel emotions - to feel desires and disappointments.  Are we free to manipulate those? Do we owe any care or consideration to what a robot would like to devote its energies and thoughts to?  Can a robot have "thoughts?" What is a thought?  What is its composition?  Where is it born? Where does it go?  Since memories are changed with every single recall, how do we even know how to recognize our own thoughts?

 

 

Ok, so I know I've gone wildly off the tracks with this train of thought - hehehe - from what the OP asked about.  What I am trying to say is the question of sharia, what it is, what it entails, is just part of a bigger question in my mind.  How do we incorporate what do we understand scientifically about ourselves, with what we understand about ourselves, non-scientifically?  Do we adopt a complex and dialogue-heavy public policy, which admits the personal religious beliefs of engaged individuals in some shape or form?  Do we go with a raze-and-burn policy of just shoving anything that smacks of non-empirical thinking outside of the public space? Do we just go with a "majority wins the pool" and whoever has the greatest numbers strong-arms the rest into compliance?

 

I don't know what option we'll ultimately end up with in North America (U.S., Canada).  What I hope for is the moderates acting as the "adults" to work out a solution that respects religious and philosophical conscience. If fundamentalists dictate the conversation, there is no scientific rationale or philosophical argument that can override that retrograde mindset.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Aelwydd

[Rosie_0801]

Off to find out what being an Epicurean fundamentalist is, lol.

 

It sounds to me like someone who protests against low fat cheese. Which would make me one. :leaving:

[Joules]

It sounds to me like someone who protests against low fat cheese. Which would make me one. :leaving:

We might come close to board unanimity on that one!

 

Just want to say thanks to everyone on the discussion.  This has been interesting as I have been able to digest small snippets on the phone during breaks.

[Bluegoat]

lol, messing with separation between church and state is something I'd hunger strike for, or chain myself to fences for, and go to prison for, so it's very unlikely you can convince me in any way, shape or form that possible solutions come from that direction.

 

I mean, there's a nice case study in Turkey right now.

 

I understand your general point.

 

Secularism as a concept has never really stood still, though, nor does it look the same in every place. We could look at how the concept developed which would frankly look very different than many people in the US seem to imagine. The Americans seem to have one of the most extreme examples, banning religion of any kind in any publicly funded school - they of course seem to be the producers of the many of the Christian fundamentalist movements. 

There are places like Australia or Canada where the separation is much less extreme.  Or in Europe, where they are secular but there are clearly defined links between government and institutional religion - and interestingly where fundamentalism has never taken off the same way. 

 

I tend to think that the separation between church and state was overall positive, it solved a very specific set of problems which were largely about the protection of institutional religion and ensuring that government could not use it for political ends.  It also had real benefits for government.

 

That isn't particularly compatible with the view of secularism that is common in the US or which says that somehow non-religious worldviews, no matter hor irrational or faith based, are neutral and may be aligned and instantiated in public policy.  But it sure as heck isn't a "less secular" POV, it has just as much claim to that title as the other, and I would say more IMO, and that the kind of definition of secularism you are talking about is in itself messing with other, earlier, understandings, and represents only one way of thinking about it now.

 

Would what Islamic countries came up with to solve similar problems be called "secularism" or something else?  I don't think it matters, what matters is whether it solves the difficulties with governance and varieties of worldviews and belief systems effectively, with justice, and in a way that allows for a functioning society.

[Pam in CT]

The other side of this issue: yesterday in Israel, Hanna Goor, a nationally well known singer, doing a concert in a beach venue in Ashdod, was required by venue authorities to come off stage because they deemed her outfit -- shorts, bikini top, with an unbuttoned shirt over it -- to be too revealing.... which has opened a hoo-ha of debate there.

 

The NYT reports that the Ministry of Culture (yes, that's a thing) has a policy that 

 

...it was acting to respect the sensibilities of those who might be offended by immodest attire at state-financed shows...(that) festivals and events which are funded by public money will honor the general public that attends the events, which includes all the various sectors and communities... 

 

 

Today Hanna Goor stated in an interview that this incident has nothing to do with France's burkini bans:

 

The comparison was obvious: in France, Muslim women are being forced by to take off their conservative swimwear at the beach while in Israel a Jewish woman in a bikini is told to cover up.

 

But the 34-year-old singer rejects the notion that the Israeli and French authorities are both oppressing women in the same way. In fact, she defended the ban on burkinis as part of the global fight for women’s rights. The ban was overturned last week by a French court, but police have continued to target Muslim women in modest swimwear.

 

“What they are trying to do in France is so right,†she said of the anti-burkini policy. “No woman would have wanted to get into a burkini in 40 degrees celsius into the ocean.â€

 

Except, of course, for fact that the whole issue came up precisely because some women *did* want to get into a burkini.

 

Theory of Mind...

 

 

 

Sigh.

 

I Have A Dream, that one day my daughters will be judged by the content of their character rather than the proportion of their exposed skin.  I Have A Dream, that one day women's bodies will not be the focus of public scrutiny and community strictures in ways that men's bodies never have been and never will be.  I Have A Dream, that one day women will be trusted to make their own free choices based on their own individual consciences.

 

But this day is not that day.

 

[Bluegoat]

Yeah, I know...and seriously, the entire AU Parliament is being held hostage right now by the Christian right wing of the governing party. So - ya know - it's not a magic answer.

 

As always, what solves difficulties for the majority is often not effective, just or functional for those who find themselves in a less privileged minority. 

 

Evidence based public policy - I can't even understand why one would argue about this. Is it perfect ? No. Is it perfectly neutral ? No. But what's the alternative ? Non-evidence based public policy ? 

 

I mean, seriously, if sharia ( or any other faith based world view ) is claimed to have a unique contribution to make to good governance, what's the big deal about testing the evidence for the claim ? 

 

I suppose I think that evidence often isn't nearly as evident as many people think, and more importantly, it doesn't in many cases have meaning.  There is a pretty solid evidence based case that smoking is very unhealthy.  But what to do about it is a different question. 

 

I think most of the really difficult questions in public policy are of the "what do we do, what does it mean" type.

 

I also don't think it's very accurate to divide people in terms of being either religious or an empiricist.  Probably most religious people are also empiricists in the soft sense which would even include people who are philosophically rationalists, and it isn't even all that odd to see religious people who are empiricists in the hard philosophical sense.  So I'm not sure how that really fits in to the question of secularism.

[Bluegoat]

Evidence doesn't have meaning ?

 

It obviously does. 

 

Are you saying the issue lies in how we interpret that meaning ?

 

I am a little cynical that religion has a unique and coherent contribution to make re interpretation, given that the major faiths are constantly in disagreement about how to interpret their own texts and traditions.

 

I don't think it generally does have much on it's own, no. Not the kind that we can really use to create policy without a wider framework. 

 

We could, say, gather a bunch of statistics on poverty.  Our ideas about meaning that go beyond data are themselves going to influence the information we collect, what we perceive as important or related, how we divide up and interpret the phenomena of a basic level.  There are a lot of people including those who work with data who go wrong even at that level, they imagine that there is some objective reality to the data sets they have collected apart from the framework they have given it.  Which tends to mean they give too much, or the wrong kind of weight, to the data.

 

But even if that is not an issue, it still doesn't tell us what to think about poverty, about how to judge the best way to deal with it, or weigh options.

 

Religion doesn't give some united answer, that isn't really the point.  But the same kinds of techniques and ways of thinking that we have to turn to to talk about these questions that do not respond to empirical, material, dats are the ones that people use when talking about things like metaphysics or theology.  So how do we say - we accept them if it helps us talk about things in one context but claim they are invalid for talking about things in another? 

 

More practically I suppose, what religion could offer is language and models and images - pretty much every religion as a individual and institutional endeavor, has developed a complex language specifically to talk about meaning, ethics, and these other kinds of questions. At the popular level there is really something of a lack of language and images for people to talk about such things in a deep way.  The level of public discourse is pretty poor unfortunately.

[Bluegoat]

Creating meaning through narrative is what humans do. It's not specific to religion. It is entirely possible to have a complex language to talk about meaning and ethics without involving religion ( which is, after all, only one subset of the narratives we create). 

 

You seem to be making a claim for tradition, rather than religion's unique capacity to provide us with ways to explore meaning. 

 

To me the argument is as absurd as saying - correctly - that theater has a long, complex tradition with which it explores meaning and - incorrectly - therefore theater makers should have input into public policy outside issues to do with the theater. 

 

The level of public discourse may or may not be poor - I'm not learned enough to know! - but to tie it to a lack of religious discourse seems unsubstantiated at best.

 

The arts would be the closet thing I would compare, and people could take that approach, certainly, the question I have is why we would privilege it.

 

We could develop some new common language to talk about such things, but if it didn't come to be an institutionalized religion, it would have the same kinds of problems people object to with religion, as does using the arts.  They aren't empirical either, and for the same reasons.

 

People talk about meaning, about ideas, according to their particular worldview - its ethical language, its arts and images, its philosophical traditions.  Separating them into religious and non-religious is arbitrary.  If you want deep and articulate thoughts about how to approach policy on people with intellectual disabilities you would be much better off to talk to Jean Varnier, a philosopher and Thomist, who will likely speak in religious Thomistic terms, than Richard Dawkins, a sort of logical positivist, who would try and speak in empirical terms.  In other cases, with other people, you might find it would go the other way, but all you would be doing by excluding Varnier's contribution would be significantly impoverishing the discussion.  How would that in any way create a stronger civil society?

[ktgrok]

Don't you know that they're outbreeding us and the Quiverfuls are the only ones taking the threat seriously or doing anything about it?!?! #superiornumbers

 

Not going to lie...something like this logic is one of the reasons my husband agreed to a 4th child. After hearing so much hate spewed during the primary season, he felt we needed more thoughtful, logical people and said let's make one :)

[Bluegoat]

 lol, I have to keep looking things up when I 'talk' with you - it's hard to keep up with someone trained in philosophy! It's good though - lots to learn.

 

I'll be back!

 

All I'll say for now is that the bolded is an opinion. Why would we be much better off ? Who is better off under this discussion ? And is it only Thomists (??? forgive me, I had a state education :)) who can provide this 'better off-ness' ?

 

(Personally, I think talking to almost anyone other than Dawkins makes us better off, but that's because he's an old white man who thinks he's the bees knees and has almost no insight into his implicit biases. To be fair to Dawkins, I could describe a lot of old white religious blokes in the same way).

 

 

 

OK, I now know what a Thomist is. But I have no hope of learning more in the gap between ds' math and our science lesson for today. 

 

I assume you were talking about eugenics, and how there's no secular argument against eugenics, without reference back to morals derived from religion ?

 

Yes, an opinion, but I think a very well founded one in this case (which is why I picked it, no use picking a difficult to maintain example to make a point.)

 

My point doesn't have to do with their being a secular argument or not, I think there are plenty. 

 

It's simply that Jean Varnier has, in fact, a worldview that is Thomistic (what that entails isn't that important except that it is a religious/theological worldview rather than a non-religious one) and as someone who was a professional philosopher he's very much aware of the background and implications of that. More than most people he would be able to explain the reasons for his perspective from the ground up, including its metaphysics and epistemological basis, the basic assumptions he accepts, and how these things link to his ethical position.  And, he has many years of hands on experience with those with intellectual disabilities both as individuals and on a policy and administrative level.

 

In any public discussion on that topic, his insight, logic, and experience, and his ability to articulate them, would be very valuable.

 

Dawkins I chose only because he considers himself to base his views on facts and evidence, and he has stated some degree of public position on this topic that he considers to come out of that, but he really isn't in quite the same position in terms of being useful in such a discussion - his views on this are not so clearly defined, seem to include unsubstantiated value judgments outside of what he would consider his fact based decision making process, he has a less well founded metaphysical and epistemological position that isn't as well articulated, and nowhere near the experience dealing with those with intellectual disabilities. 

 

Which is to say I guess that if you want a really thoughtful exchange of ideas on the topic in some sort of public policy discussion, you'd be much better off to ask Varnier rather than Dawkins - Varnier has more to offer and it is better thought out.  The fact that he is a Thomist might mean some people don't agree with all of his reasons but it will be clear what they are and how they fit together, and will probably be very coherently argued.

 

This isn't really an indictment of Dawkins (though I also think he is an arse)  - it isn't his area of expertise in the same way, either philosophy or public policy on intellectual disabilities.  And some other person who was also an empiricist might have a lot more to offer on the topic, just as much as Varnier.

 

But why would we want to decide a priory to exclude Varnier from the public discussion because he is a Thomist, and keep Dawkins, the positivist?  Or someone who was a Marxist?  How is that likely to lead to better public policy?  How does it respect the intellectual freedom of individuals and their right to participate in public life?  Doesn't a diversity of views tend to strengthen outcomes - that is a foundational principle of liberal democracy, do we want to abandon it?  Are we assuming that Thomism is known to be a less robust philosophical position than positivism or Marxism, simply because it is theistic or has ties to institutional religion, and if so, on what basis would we say such a thing? There might be some philosophical positions we could say are widely considered discredited or problematic, something like objectivism would count, (though those people are still not barred from the public discourse) but it would be tricky to say that about Thomism. 

 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying, to say we would prefer public policy to be based on evidence rather than religion doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  Evidence is simply not enough in many cases to give us a public policy decision, there are other things, a religious perspective doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't use evidence in any case, and perspectives that religion can offer can be as valuable, and sometimes more valuable, than non-religious ones.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Shred Betty]

I know you asked Bluegoat for something but...

Here's my two cents too :)

Disclaimer:

I used to believe science and what I assume you mean by empiricism trumped religion. Now I believe religion trumps science, and miracles are scientifically real. LOL.

 

IMHO, I'm always seeing "evidence shows this" and "studies show that" and science stating facts about this or that. It seems so arbitrary and so easily skewed, how data is interpreted leads to different conclusions... Evidence is not really evidence :) haha. So I'm agreeing with the above quote from Bluegoat that "evidence is simply not enough." I think these weaknesses of empiricism put science and religion on more of a level playing field than people who believe religion is mumbojumbo would ever be comfortable admitting.

 

Obviously the first thing to think about (if you had asked me) is "what areas would a non-religious perspective" be not so useful as perspectives including religion or simply having more in its tool belt than scientific analysis and empiricism?

For me that's ethics, morality, social structure, laws, politics, economics, education, psychology, healthcare, all kinds of areas are difficult (IMO) for science to quantify and analyze in an empirical way.

 

I think the problem is that empiricists think everything can be "explained" in a non-religious manner. Everything has a non-religious reason why, and it's totally discoverable even for mysterious things if you just get enough data or the correct data. Lol. The assumption that religion is wrong and non-religion can and does explain the world correctly is baked in already. It seems like such circular reasoning to me now that I'm on this side of the fence. So even right there at that point of disagreement unfortunately we have already diverged and will disagree on what kinds of things religion can provide a better perspective on than non-religion alone.

 

Humans are messy and unpredictable :) maybe anything to do with humans and human judgment might be less well understood if looked at from a merely non-religious (I take to mean scientific, analytical, empirical) perspective.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Shred Betty

[Bluegoat]

Would you mind giving me some examples of this unique variance...solutions a religion provides that do not load highly on solutions provided in other ways...(I expect there are solutions that correlate highly between a specific religion, all religions, and non-religious ethics).

 

I suppose another perspective revolves around cost/benefit. Even if, say, Catholicism, could be shown to provide a unique contribution to some public issue, it would, inevitably introduce cost into the system along with that solution. How re perceive and respond to that cost is subject to our privilege relative to Catholicism. 

 

Of course, the same argument can be made for empiricism. It's less that I think a focus empiricism has no costs, and more that I'd prefer to pay those costs in my daily life than the costs associated with the imposition of religiously derived solutions. 

 

I'm not sure that I entirely understand what you are asking.  Varnier's views on intellectual disability, where they overlap or don't, come very much out of his Catholisism - he believes in a certain view of the person, of the community, of our duty to others, his view of certian social values.

 

I'm not sure if it matters whether there is overlap or not, because he is a citizen, and so his most basic views on these things, in a democratic society, are important.  Important as all our views are in the sense that we vote but in this example important because they are well-articulated and have experience behind them.

 

If he can convince people that his understanding of these things is a strong and coherent one, that makes people want to take that direction, that is valuble.  It would also be valuble if he articulates it and firthers people's understanding, and that makes them not want to take that path. 

 

I don't at all see what you are getting at with cost.  Every action or course I suppose has a cost, that people choose.  If they choose the arguments of Catholicism and the costs, I don't see how it is different than choosing a different set of costs and solutions, unless you've made some a priori decision about what society should do, what people should believe., or are simply wanting what appeals most or seems best to you.

 

But the point of liberal democracy is that individuals have a lot of scope to collaborate in making those choices together.  That requires that the choices be very open, that we do not make assumptions.

 

I find it a bit odd to have this discussion this way, actually, because I consider that both a secular model of government and liberal democracy have many good things and are some of the best models we have, without wanting to create them as some sort of orthodoxy.  (Good doesn't mean the only way, or being without challenges, or dependent on a particular environment that might change in order to work.)

 

But liberal democracy and the secular model both seem to me to depend on not setting up any particular worldview, like empiricism, or Catholicism, or any category of worldview, over others.  The foundation of liberal democracy, from Mill on, is the airing and exchange of ideas with no assumptions, so that people can sift through them, be convinced, engage in free and open debate.  The foundation of secularism is limitation on institutional ties between government and religion, where individual citizens are the mediators - but that depends on citizens being free to hold almost any kind of view that is not positively destructive to the state, and to refer to that worldview in their lives as citizens - voting and participating in the state.

 

So to me, it's very odd to be asked to defend the contribution that Catholicism, or Marxism, or conspiracy theories on aliens, could make to civil society with the idea that somehow they are opposed to secularism or liberal democracy.

[Bluegoat]

What ?! Give me just one concrete example of how psychology, for example, benefits from a religious approach in a way that is unique to religion ?

 

I think that she said non-emperical, or non-scientific (not quite the same thing).

 

I don't know if there is really any doubt that we often don't look to science for insights into psychology - it's a rather limited sort of psychology that is directly connected to a scientific method.

 

Or, we could say, ethics.  Ethics absolutly cannot be much adressed by science, because science by definition excludes itself from most of the important questions that ethical questions involve - things that are often not observable, measurable, even material so potentially observable or measurable.

 

As far as religion - well, what is it, what is it for?  It's a systematic way to look at metaphysics, ethics, and other related areas of life, and to provide some kind of practice for individuals to integrate themselves with these aspects of reality, and also often with each other - religion is typically social to some degree.  So, philosophy united to practice, really, perhaps with some mysticism added.

 

Those kinds of questions are fairly specifically the ones that scientific enquiry is limited in.  But also - how likely is it that in at least three thousand years of thinking, it hasn't produced any particular or valuable insights, or unique ways of doing things?  We would never say that about art or literature - both of which are highly integrated with religion in most cultures anyway.  If we are going to reject all systematic philosophy approaches integrated with practice, we really aren't going to be left with much.  Even if we just ditch mysticism there is a lot we would miss - we'd be done with Jung, just for a start.

[8circles]

I admit that this conversation has grown to be something I'm not able to understand with my current limited bandwidth.  It's way over my head.  

 

But one thing I don't understand is this idea of religion and secularism being so separate that someone with religious beliefs can't propose ideas or solutions in the secular world.  I know I'm probably oversimplifying and please let me know if I'm just plain misunderstanding.

 

I think that people of faith are fully capable of finding solutions that don't impose their religious views on anyone else.

 

What am I not getting?

[8circles]

It's over my head too. 

 

Can you give me an example of the bolded ? Maybe a unique insight from your religion that could help make public policy in a particular area ? 

 

So far as the bolded goes, it may be possible, but you sure as heck don't see it much. It's much more common to see an imposition of religious views.

 

Well, I can't think of a real-life example, lets say it's because I'm heading out the door and not because I'm out of my depth lol.

 

But, as a person of faith, I don't support any legislation or candidates who propose legislation that might be unfair to any group of people - at least when I'm aware of it.  I try to listen to people who are different than me because I realize that I can't see things from all sides.  I don't think I'm any kind of exceptional person so I gotta believe there are others who are this way, too.

 

I do think that we don't always know who "people of faith" are - because many people don't advertise.  So finding examples isn't always so easy.

[8circles]

I have no problem letting you have input into my policy making :) But that's because we share values and less because your faith provides us with a unique insight into a problem, kwim ?

Oh yeah, I don't think people with faith have any unique insight into societal problems. I would agree with that.

[Murphy101]

Not going to lie...something like this logic is one of the reasons my husband agreed to a 4th child. After hearing so much hate spewed during the primary season, he felt we needed more thoughtful, logical people and said let's make one :)

No kidding. We'e had that thought a time or two also.

 

Though seriously, when people don't have enough children to preserve their local cultural identity, they can't really complain when it starts to disappear as those who do have children replace them. It isn't even about large families. Some of those countries have an average of 1 kid (or even less) per couple. So immigrants even having just 2-3 is going to replace them very quickly. That's just nature at work. What's the phrase? Nature hates a void?

[Bluegoat]

lol, psychology as a field of studies relies on the empirical method as foundational. The reason we send people to CBT rather than psychoanalysis isn't because we intuited it it was best, but because the research process found evidence for the efficacy of CBT and pretty much no evidence for lying on a couch.

 

I'd still love a concrete example of this unique contribution, particularly from the Big Three. 

 

And sure, re arts....but we're not generally getting novelists to weigh in on issues of public policy.

 

Lol, can't we just get rid of the mysticism ? 

 

Some psychology is pretty emperical, but a lot of it is I think more about insight.

 

I don't think I really can give you a conctrete example like I think you mean.  A tradition of two or three thoudand years, depending on which religion you mean, has all kinds of insights that are so integrated into how we think that I don't know how we could spearate them.  Or - maybe I could say something like empericism itself or the belief that the material world is in fact real - there is a reason that view comes out of the Christian-Jewish tradition, because that was a major part of their insight - the material world is united to, a real part of and unity with, the non-material (which is the more dominant view in a lot of other world religions.)

 

If we are talking about psychology, I'd take Dante over Freud for insight any day, and not because I think Freud was unimportant.

 

I think the arts are pretty important in helping us formulate public policy and political ideas, though not always directly.  And perhaps we ought to take them more seriously - we seem to want scientists to contribute, even well outside their actual areas of expertise to include values or ethics - though they seem as likely to be moral philistines as anyone else.  

 

And with religion - well, really, that is talking about philosophy.   Jean Varnier could be seen as a philosopher as much as a Catholic.  Which means he probably has some training in how to think rationally, and as a Catholic he has access to language specifically dedicated to talking in an exact way about ethical issues, which is probably more accessible to most than philosophical language.  Even apart from specific opinions, one rarely sees that level of

 

Apart from all of this, given that Catholics and Zoroastrians and such are in fact citizens, they simply have every right to be as much a part of public discourse and the public decision making process as any other person.

 

I would hate to be without mysticism, and I think we'd suffer, significantly, if we tried to get rid of it.  Essentially it is about an acknowledgement of the limitations of language and discursive thought, of being limited in time and space, and as a path is related to trying to live in a way that keeps us in touch with, or at least not unaware of, these aspects of reality.  Societies that lose that tend to become bad places.

[Bluegoat]

I suppose if the variance is not unique, and in fact we could find similarly coherent and strong arguments elsewhere, faith does not have a peculiar and singular role to play. 

 

People are free to write and discuss and whatever, but the question was, could we have a closer relationship of church and state based on the concept of sharia that would be for the greater good ?

 

And I'm still not seeing why that would be a great idea.

 

I think the argument of moderate Muslims is along the lines that the relationship the west has now between the state and religion, or institutional religion, has significant problems, and that is because it tries to create a kind of artificial, and unltimatly unsustainable, division within individual persons.

 

People don't exist as members of the political body, on the one hand, and as having a worldview, on the other.  Within an individual, those are integrated and inseperable, for any worldview, religious or not. 

 

To some extent, in a pluralistic society we can set aside certian aspects of practice, and find common ground on more fundamental issues.  So, a Catholic doesn't need to have everyone attend church on Sunday, say.  OTOH, it is actually impossible for people to set aside more fundamental beliefs, say in the dignity of all persons, or perhaps something like all human beings are persons.  In public discourse no one can really set aside these things when they are acting as citizens, voting or whatever.

 

The logic of secularism has been to avoid direct power relations between the state and institutional churches, but using the unity of the individual to mediate between them.  So - when individuals discuss public policy, they do it based on worldview and that is how we link worldview and citizen life. 

 

This seems to work when there is significant overlap in worldviews, but the question seems to be, what happens when their isn't?  And what happens when a worldview that isn't normally identified as religious comes into the picture (say, Marxism.)  Both of those could easily destabilize the balance between worldview and the state that the secular model tried to set up.

 

So from what I can see, the argument is that in fact this is almost certainly inevitable over time with an arrangement like the one we have in much of the west.  Some - and not just Muslims or even religious people - have argued that some kind of unity of a different kind - not just the individual as mediator -  needs to be present in a society to hold it together so it doesn't simply fracture.  It could be religion, that's a pretty traditional one, but there may be other possibilities.  But how that would work seems pretty open at this point - and a fairly standard way to begin thinking about a question like that is simply to see how others do it.