Multiculturalism and animal cruelty

Of course not.

Animals should not pay the price of humans’ stupid religions.

If there is a deity to whom these laws really matter, then that deity is not worth worshipping.

Care to offer some explanation of the claim that Kosher or Halal slaughtering is more cruel than any given alternative method?

In case you were wondering, a Kosher slaughtering requires that the animal’s cartoid artery be severed by a very sharp knife in one stroke. It is, in fact, painless as the animal dies before the pain of the knife registers. (This happens for exactly the same reason that you feel no pain for several seconds, or even minutes, when cut with a very sharp knife.)

So, I’d like to see a method that inflicts *less* pain than the method of Kosher slaughtering.

Empirically, I’m not sure it’s true that Halal or Kosher procedures must be crueler than conventional methods of slaughtering. Degree of cruelty seems orthogonal to the secular vs religious nature of the slaughter. What matters is whether you care if the animals are suffering. So I’m not sure the facts fit the structure of the dilemma you want to pose.

This isn’t very interesting because it is, in essence, the absolutism vs. relativism debate. It shouldn’t come as news to anyone that there are apparently paradoxical consequences of a strong relativism. Weak relativism—which is what most relativists are, in practice—looks for (in a particular context) some principle that is non-relativistic with regards to the conflict by which a moral decision can be made. Which, you know, is pretty much the exact same thing as most practical moral reasoning. So there’s nothing more troubling about this moral decision than there is about any other. Except that anyone at CT would think it worthy of discussion in this context (that it’s a particularly “difficult” problem; not that it’s a problem that requires a decision).

Presumably, the reason that there are animal cruelty laws is that cruelty to animals is morally wrong. Assume that cruelty to animals is morally wrong — and furthermore, that it’s morally wrong in the the kind of way that justifies laws against it.

Now here comes a religion which encourages its members to do X, where X is morally wrong.

Put this way, it doesn’t even look like a reasonable suggestion. We wouldn’t even have to think about our answer if confronted with a religion that encouraged its members to rape children. Such a religion encourages an immoral practice, and we don’t have to tolerate it just because some religion likes it.

I have to think that the only motivation that could make sense behind a question like this post is a doubt as to whether cruelty to animals is *really* morally wrong (or morally wrong in the kind of way that justifies its being illegal). Once that question is settled, the specific provisions of some religion or other are irrelevant.

Chris, there is nothing that is disinctive about this problem except that it has the smell of the absolutism vs. relativism debate.

That aside, all it is is an example of two competing moral claims that people, in aggregate, tend to intuit to be about of equal importance. Is it right to tell a white lie? Is it right to kill in self-defense?

It is a workaday moral problem unless seriously evaluating the value of tolerance is a novel activity. But then, since no two people have identical values, every moral problem involving more than one person includes evaluating the relative value of tolerance. Finding this particular problem unusual strikes me as sophomoric.

Jonathan Ichikawa’s reasoning seems to me to shift the pressure to the issue of what it means for something to be morally wrong in such a way as to be illegal. The obvious idea is that laws codify (certain sorts of) obligations – if we are obliged not to be cruel to animals, it is right to make that illegal, independently of people wanting to be cruel to animals.

But I don’t think that is actually a plausible account of contemporary law. Many laws seem to aim at a good which is, strictly speaking, supererogatory. People are not obliged to be educated, but they are legally required to attend school, for example. Laws aimed at protecting individuals from themselves may be similar, as would the mass of laws creating the welfare state.

If that’s the case, it’s not obviously wrong to have laws which prohibit animal cruelty (and so aim at a particular good), but which have exceptions for people who think certain cruel practices are really important (or even obligatory).

Kosher slaughter avoids the worst risks of Mad Cow disease.

Guess a spike thru the brain that splatters it is “kinder”, eh?

Ibn Warraq talks about this issue in some detail in his book Why I am not a Muslim. He argues that if we value the non-suffering of animals in the absence of religion, it’s a bit disgusting to stop valuing it at the behest of religion.

Well, I’m a vegetarian because I don’t believe that the (undeniable) pleasure I take in eating meat can justify the (also undeniable) suffering of animals which is necessary to give me that pleasure, regardless of what statutory regime or religious ritual determines how they are actually killed.

Now, it’s probably that in the mind of a religious believer, the farming, killing and eating of animals are justified not only by their enjoyment at eating meat, but also by their personal need to conform to a religious standard in order to maintain personal integrity. So I wouldn’t expect to successfully argue against one of them that he should be a vegetarian. Religion is, almost by definition, irrational, so there’s no point in trying to rationally argue that a particular religious practice is wrong.

That’s not really the question, though. The question is whether the (presumably secular) government should grant an exemption to a particular animal cruelty law (which may be inadequate by my standards, but at least it’s something).

I think this question needs to be answered in terms of a wider utilitarian assessment of the roles (positive and negative) played by religion in our society. We already have exemptions to some laws (anti-sex discrimination laws, for instance), in deference to religious practice. In a case like that, I suppose that law makers have said “Sex discrimination is bad, but compromising the church would be worse”. Or, in this case “treating animals inhumanely is bad, but offending religious believers would be worse”. The question is, can such a statement be justified?

It’s my view that, at this point in history, religion itself is a net liability to humanity. This is a big and controversial statement which I’m not going to try and justify here, but assume for the moment that it’s true. It follows from that assumption that I’m rarely going to allow a normal (rational, secular) ethical calculation to be trumped by religious considerations.

There’s a caveat to that, though. Although I think that religion is, overall, a bad thing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I think it should be dismantled as quickly and efficiently as we can manage it. It might be desirable for religious considerations to be phased out over the course of 500 years, for instance, rather than 10 years, in the interests of maintaining order and preventing conflict (which might cause more suffering, overall, than the religiously-killed animals would experience in the meantime). I think that’s the sort of consideration that the commenter alluded to who talked about bits of England going up in flames, etc.

(A similar argument can be made for the slow pace of democratic reform in China, as distinct from the overnight transition in the former USSR. While it might mean maintaining unjust restrictions in the short term, it might be that the slowly-slowly approach might minimise suffering in the long term).

I want to express thanks to Karin for completely changing the tenor of the discussion withthe pointer to Temple Grandin’s site, which includes articles from Halal and kosher butchers discussing the cruelty of alternatives.

When I read about this in the UK press earlier this winter (probably in the Times since it isn’t showing up in the Guardian archives, and I lack subscription to Times to check), the distinction between cruelty-in-restraint and cruelty-in-killing was absent. Jews and Muslims were simply, incomprehensibly refusing to consider modifying an ancient (read: obsolete) custom, against all reason. Perhaps someone else can find the article, must have been when the report mentioned here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,956385,00.html
was released.

From the different ways this has been taken by CT commenters in the US and UK (and elsewhere, and local variations, etc.) I think it may be that the real multiculturalism is not in the philosophical problem Chris wanted to abstract from the real issue (which is indeed interesting). Instead, it is in the presumptions behind the presentation of the motivating example. A Jewish American (me), when pointed to Temple Grandin’s site, finds the discussion among rabbi’s eager to learn from her studies, talking about how the current “cruel” restraint was mandated by law a hundred years ago, and the religious leaders adopted it, with reservation. Now of course less cruel restraints are available, they consider changing. Some vegetarians (from where?) figure that the idea of less cruel animal slaughter is rearranging the deckchairs, to spell out obscenities. A UK commission researches the bolt-in-brain that seems gory and violent to me, but quick, concludes that the former is, the only humane solution.

So even when the last considers the multicultural implications of banning it, it is the question of offending religious people who, though cruel, are worth our formal tolerance and private condemnation as inflexible, intolerant, etc. By members of the commission, I mean, the CT community is thoughtful and too careful to make facile implications. But the pointer to the Grandin site served us well here.

I agree with chuchundra in rejecting the part of the argument that says that since eating meat isn’t compulsory, religious objections to humanely slaughtered meat can be disregarded.

This would seem to justify all sorts of policies that would effectively discriminate against members of particular religions, provided that the activities engaged in were voluntary, and that there was some (perhaps small) net benefit from the policy when religious objections are disregarded.

For example, in countries with voluntary voting, it would justify holding elections on the holy day of a minority religion, and refusing to provide alternatives such as prepoll voting, as long as the resulting arrangement was more convenient for everyone else.

In saying this, I’m not asserting that religious objections should necessarily outweigh animal welfare (in either a utilitarian or a rights-based setup) just that the argument used to dispose of them here doesn’t stand up.

Chris, I agree that the election example introduces some additional complications. Suppose instead that public university examinations are held on a minority holy day, and that, to prevent cheating, no alternative sitting days are permitted. The result is that observant members of the minority religion can attend university, but can’t obtain degrees. Arguably this is less of an imposition than being prohibited from eating meat. And clearly obtaining a university degree is neither a fundamental right nor an obligation of citizenship. Yet I would still argue that the university should make reasonable efforts to accommodate the believers.

Taking the example in the other direction, consider a religion that encouraged vegetarianism, but required that, if believers did eat meat, the animal should be ritually slaughtered in an inhumane way. It could scarcely be said in this case that forcing observant believers to become vegetarians deprived them of full membership of the community. Would this change your conclusion?

The point of setting up the argument in the way I did was to challenge the notion that there are, in fact, religious objections to uniform animal cruelty regulations where there is no categorical religious obligation. If no-one is under a religious obligation to eat meat (and ex hypothesi no-one is) then such an obligation can’t be used to ground an argument for a legal exemption to a cruelty law.

Of course religious people always have troubing “getting with the program.” But the program here, while well-calculated to generate comments, seems poorly set up. The comparison with exams on a religious holy day doesn’t work for a whole host of reasons, some better, some worse. And asking people to become vegetarians for their religion–if they’re not already Jain–is only going to get non-philosophers working to find practical everyday workarounds. If that’s not the result you were seeking, you have only yourself to blame.

I’m a Jacobin, then. I don’t see why the needs of any religious group should be accomodated. It doesn’t matter how much of a role religion plays in someone’s life, it’s still a choice and a preference.

But I wouldn’t make this argument about meat slaughtering and religious practices. All meat slaughtering is cruel in itself; halal and kosher don’t seem to be particularly crueller, really. I’m not a vegetarian and have nothing against meat. It’s just, once you kill an animal, it’s all the same, whatever technique you use. Plus, it’s not like halal and kosher add unnecessary prolonged _torture_. It’s just a different way of killing. Animals die quickly just the same. Animals die, full stop.

It’s not what bothers me about those practices. It’s that I don’t like the idea of any system of thought telling people what to eat or not, and how. I don’t like any system of thought telling people what to do or not with their bodies, in general. But that’s totally irrelevant to this argument. As long as those beliefs and practices are not enforced on others, and do not make special demands on others, I see no problem in people embracing them freely.

(Which leads to the question, how many people are _really_ free to choose their religion…)

It can’t plausibly be maintained that banning Halal or Kosher slaughtering methods is a violation of religious freedom because meat consumption isn’t required by the religions in question.

Well, how then can it plausibly be maintained that banning gay marriage is a violation of rights, since gays don’t have to get married and can always get a heterosexual marriage, just as the religious can choose not to marry or ignore their religion.

Perhaps this would be the response: Given the range of life-opportunities that would be denied to religious believers if we did not then not doing so would be outrageous. So that whether the law should respect the desires of the group hinges on how great not respecting the group’s desires affects that group.

It seems clear then that you do not value meat eating very highly. However, whose values should be determinitive?
I would give up whatever legal rights the law gives to my marriage before I would give up burgers, steaks, and barbecue.

Thus, in my view, not allowing me to eat meat while respecting my religious beliefs would be a greater burden on my happiness than not allowing me to enjoy the legal benefits of marriage while respecting my choice of partners.

Chris,

“I don’t think that religious belief given the role it plays in believer’s lives and imposing perceived duties as it does, should be assimilated to mere desire, choice, preference etc.”

This is one version of a question I’ve been trying to figure out on B&W lately. The question of why religion gets more of a free pass than other systems of ideas. (One can interject there that religion is not a system of ideas, but if it’s not, what is it then? I’m assuming that it is at any rate partly a system of ideas, and that its ideational content should not be overlooked or concealed or minimized or pretended away, as I think it tends to be in various arguments.) Yes it’s important in people’s lives, but so are a lot of things that don’t thereby get a free pass. So what is different about religion? Why is it so generally believed (or rather, often, assumed rather than believed) that religion deserves special treatment?

A Jacobin in crotchless leather pants with a rock in one hand and a pork sandwich in the other. An SUV with a fawn embedded in its grille. A cynical right-wing billionaire turning the filets of dolphin on his top-of-the-line propane barbecue.
The serenely calm and relatively painless death of the very last individual of a now extinct species, that no one killed, that no one ate, that no one even knew was there. And now it isn’t.
Religion gets its due because of weight, it has volume and mass, and gets respect in direct ratio accordingly. Jains don’t get much because they aren’t politically essential; they lack presence, lacking votes.
–
Teletubby morality versus logico-rationalist pseudo-pragmatism, all within the unbreachable walls of human artifice.
Who wouldn’t trade five hours of living at great pain for a quick death now?
But trade which way?

Thanks, Chris. I’ll make a note of the Dworkin. I have a feeling that if the supernatural beliefs are omitted, then so is the special treatment. Socialism, for instance, is very important in a lot of people’s lives, but as far as I know it’s never (even by people who don’t blanch in horror at the very idea) given the kind of benefit of the doubt for dubious (morally and/or legally) acts or rules that religion gets. If that’s true, one has to wonder why ideas with supernatural content have a better case for special treatment than ideas without supernatural content do.

Chris, your analysis turns crucially on a distinction between “rights and obligations”, “life opportunities” and “mere desire, choice, preference” but I think its main effect is to show how problematic that distinction is.

I’ll narrow my example a bit further and suppose that some (reasonable and rights-based, but not crucial) requirement for a medical degree is inconsistent with religious beliefs for some group. Is the right to become a doctor, rather than, say, a dentist or physiotherapist, a crucial life opportunity [in which case religious objections must be accommodated if reasonably possible] or a mere taste, choice or preference [which can be disregarded]?

Patrick,

“What kind of weasely conclusion is that, for f’s sake?!”

You can say “fuck”, don’t worry.

“When was the last time a Jewish homosexual was executed?”

Don’t know. I believe this secondary discussion was about what certains religions called for when it comes to gays. No ashkenazi/mizrahi has been executed for idolatry either, but that doesn’t mean Judaism has nothing against idolatry.

“That isn’t “relativising”; it’s just plain recognizing a worldview that’s wrong and plainly archaic.”

If you say “this morality was acceptable but only for people back then”, when you make acceptability dependent on time, that is relativism. If it was once right to kill gay people( that order coming from YHVH ), if it isn’t anymore, it is because YHVH changed his mind.

If a divine revelation says “Do X and do Y”, that you want to follow that revelation and that you do X but not Y, then you’re not acting like someone who considers that divine revelation is the highest normative yardstick that exists ( or you’re lazy ).

If you say that it is wrong and archaic, does that mean it was once right? Just so you don’t think I’m a frumite or a fundamentalist, I think it’s always been wrong.

“If you want to object to barbarism (religious or other), there’s plenty of the real stuff around right now.”

Being opposed to Lev. 20:13 does not stop me from being opposed to Saudi laws.

Ophelia, I did say that I was just concentrating on the question of the basis for allowing exceptions, not on the extent of the exceptions. Myself I think the whole business of meat-eating involves so much cruelty that no-one should be allowed to do it at all. But since the law doesn’t agree with me, and animal butchery is going to happen, I’m bound to consider whether there should be special allowances for those to whom various practices carry particular emotional weight. If I thought that kashrut or halal practices were *much* more cruel than the normal run of butchery, I probably wouldn’t want to make any allowances, so you’re quite right in thinking that the extent of cruelty makes a difference. But if the difference isn’t very great, then it looks to me a bit like the permission we give parents to smack their own children, or punish them in other ways (that would amount to serious offences if done to strangers), or favouring them in special ways as well. We recognise that family relationships and the associated practices matter intensely to many people, and rightly so. Similarly we can recognise that religion matters intensely to many people, and rightly (though conditionally) so. One such condition is that the religion in question should be not too morally obnoxious: if the religion in question involved the worship of an Evil Demon on account of his being evil, then of course I wouldn’t be inclined to make any allowances at all. But I don’t think that either Judaism or Islam is really like that.

Ophelia, I did say that I was just concentrating on the question of the basis for allowing exceptions, not on the extent of the exceptions. Myself I think the whole business of meat-eating involves so much cruelty that no-one should be allowed to do it at all. But since the law doesn’t agree with me, and animal butchery is going to happen, I’m bound to consider whether there should be special allowances for those to whom various practices carry particular emotional weight. If I thought that kashrut or halal practices were *much* more cruel than the normal run of butchery, I probably wouldn’t want to make any allowances, so you’re quite right in thinking that the extent of cruelty makes a difference. But if the difference isn’t very great, then it looks to me a bit like the permission we give parents to smack their own children, or punish them in other ways (that would amount to serious offences if done to strangers), or favouring them in special ways as well. We recognise that family relationships and the associated practices matter intensely to many people, and rightly so. Similarly we can recognise that religion matters intensely to many people, and rightly (though conditionally) so. One such condition is that the religion in question should be not too morally obnoxious: if the religion in question involved the worship of an Evil Demon on account of his being evil, then of course I wouldn’t be inclined to make any allowances at all. But I don’t think that either Judaism or Islam is really like that.

Perhaps the reason that we allow special treatment for religious ideas is that we recognise that people feel especially strongly about them

With all due respect, and pre-emptive apologies to Ophelia Benson for trivialising her excellent question, but, a lot of people feel strongly about Aerosmith, or Led Zeppelin, or Nirvana, or Justin Timberlake, and countless other rock and pop stars who are demi-gods to crowds of adoring fans. Shouldn’t we recognize that too?

If your idol of choice is putting on a show the same date you have an exam, do you get an exemption from school?

Why is harmless worship of an artist and/or celebrity less worthy of special attentions and allowances?

Leaving aside all matters of transcendence and whose object of adoration is worthier, it’s simply because it makes far less demands on the ‘worshippers’, and these in turn make a lot less demands on the non-worshippers. Using the school exam instance, no one in their right mind would dare ask their teachers for exemption from exams just because they really really want to go see that concert instead. They’ll have to skip the show, or else, take exams next year.

We all rightly accept that such things as matters of choice and preference – no matter how trivial or stupid or serious and life-changing – are not something anyone has the right to impose on others, or make demands on others about.

With religion, it’s the opposite – even though it is still a matter of preference and choice. But because it is the most powerful tool for social control, it’s always been granted a special treatment. All non-religious powers have learnt that they can’t do a thing against religious authorities and their influence; on the other hand, they can exploit that influence to their political advantage, so, they find it always pays off to strike a deal with religious groups.

And so, lots of people take for granted that religious beliefs and practices, no matter how wacky and absurd, or even harmful, need to be respected.

But that’s a dogma. Quite funny actually, to notice how deep it’s ingrained. And how acceptance of it is often tinged with a little superstition. As if allowing ourselves to criticize religious thinking and behaviour in the same way we can criticize any other ideology could make the earth shake or rivers dry out.

– disclaimer: no actual comparison between different kinds and objects of worship. I’m speaking of ‘religion’ only in its aspect of ideology, of being a social-political system of practices and rules and behaviours demanded of its followers.

And sorry for rambling.

Ophelia,

“I still think religion is getting more special treatment than other things that people care about enormously, and I am still curious as to why that is.”

Here is, perhaps, a possible reason.

Religion is about knowing truth, not making choices or expressing preferences. It isn’t just about “caring about” something, it is about knowing something.

Say that a religious person knows something to be true, without basing it on observation or reason, but revelation. Then, they must step aside when faced with reason or observation that contradicts them (just like reason steps aside once observation contradicts it).

Start with an ethical analogy. If there were a solid reason-based ethical argument against cruelty to animals, then even if the Bible said it was right, a religious person would reject the Bible, not reason (i.e. they would know that they misinterpreted their sacred text).

However, I don’t think such an argument exists that isn’t also solidly disputed (not invalidated, just disputed). So, there isn’t a huge reason to reject the revelation.

Now we go to the law. If there were solid reason-based legal arguments about animal cruelty, religious people would accept the law and reject the Bible. Again, I don’t think such an argument exists that isn’t solidly disputed.

So we step away from normative law, and into descriptive law i.e. law created by legislatures, not reason.

Things start looking different now; religion must instantly bow before reason, but not before simple majorities.

Religion is about truth, whereas descriptive law is much more about people’s choices/preferences (maybe? Any expert opinion on this?). That might be a reason that, once you stop making laws based on reason and start making laws democratically, that you treat religion rather carefully.

So, perhaps we should do the following: any time there are solid reason-based arguments for a law, then it shouldn’t matter what the religion says; reason trumps religion. So murder, theft, etc. would admit no exceptions.

In cases where the law simply represents the will of the majority, and isn’t backed by reason, we should allow religious exceptions to the law. Perhaps cruelty to animals is one of these laws at the moment, one that good people believe to be a truly good law, and have enacted, but haven’t proved their case reasonably.

What do you think?

Bill,

“basing it on observation or reason, but revelation. Then, they must step aside when faced with reason or observation that contradicts them (just like reason steps aside once observation contradicts it).”

Have you heard of Creationnists? Have you talked to a Thomist? How about “credo quia absurdum”, does that sound like Augustine would have bowed to reason? If someone believes that his revelation is true and that if reason contradicts revelation, then your reason must have erred, what do you do?

“If there were solid reason-based legal arguments about animal cruelty, religious people would accept the law and reject the Bible. ”

Were there solid reason-based arguments against slavery in the 19th century? If so, it didn’t stop a considerable number of people from using religious arguments. Same for women’s rights in the 20th century. I could mention people who think that deities play real estate agents, handing this piece of land to this and that group, but that’s a bit of a hot button issue, isn’t it?

To take a contemporary example: Some religious people argue in favour of discrimation against homosexuals. Are there no solid reason-based arguments against such dscrimination? You might answer “Yes, but those reasons are disputed”. Correct, but who are they disputed by? Mainly religious people. What proportion of philosophy professors in major universities are in favour of sodomy laws being enforced?

So the pious dispute a reason based on their religion, and since the reason is disupted, it’s OK for the pious not to accept it. Seems like a catch-22.

Your revelation-reason-observation reminds me of Comte. Would you happen to be a positivist?

Ophelia,

My theory: People know it’s a can of worms. They know that if someone says “The Bible says A therefore A” there isn’t a reliable way of demonstrating A- to that person and that attempting to do so will cause tempers to flare. Perhaps they look back in history and see how big a can of worms it can be and how fickly/sysiphian the process of changing religious views can be.

It is much the same reason that families with both homophobes and homosexuals in it go out of their way to avoid topics relating to sexuality.

There is also the fear that if a Hindu says to a Muslim “You support X because the Koran says so, but what makes you so sure the Koran is true?” The Muslim will ask the equivalent embarrassing question to the Hindu and his religious text.

The Ten Commandments (which are the only laws for men given directly by God to a man–ok we could argue about that but not right now, ok?) say, among other things, “Thou shall not kill.” Seems pretty clear to me. No killing. period. Are there any religious out there who include animals as those things not to be killed? Plenty of exceptions have been made throughout time; enemies, heathens, witches, adulterers, etc. So it seems as if this law has little or no meaning. Yet, if I were a believer in the Bible, I’d consider the law of God to demand that believers not kill or slaughter anything. Yes, I know the book is full of sacrifice, murder, killing and blood but perhaps it’s all there because the flock just haven’t gotten the message?
As for levels of cruelty? Well, slaughterhouses are innately cruel. Sculley’s article on Kosher vs. slaughterhouse is definitely a good place to start reading. I really can’t see any justification for calling one system intrinsincally more cruel than another.
Personally? I think those who want to eat meat should go through the process of killing, dressing, and preparing an animal at least once just so they really know and understand what the price of an animal’s death is.

Shell Rae Clift,

The original Hebrew word tirtzach translates as “murder”. “Kill” would be an entirely different word: taharog.

“With religion, it’s the opposite … But because it is the most powerful tool for social control, it’s always been granted a special treatment. All non-religious powers have learnt that they can’t do a thing against religious authorities and their influence…”

I ‘m real uncomfortable saying this because of the company it puts me in, but I’d wager despotic terror is a far more powerful tool for social control, all in all, than religion per se. Stalin did all right without God.
–
That “…powers have learnt…” seems a little bizarre.
China got bad press, gets bad press, for how it treats the Falun Gong cult. And how it treats the Tibetan Buddhists. The Dalai Llama doesn’t live in Tibet, right? He’s a religious authority, and has tremendous influence among Tibetans.
It’s those guns, those soldiers,
China has recognized the immediate necessity of participation in capitalist economies, which means the usual diplomatic pro forma respects get paid, to the deities of their trading partners. Which is pure coercion on the part of the economic institutions under the sway of Judeo-Christianity. Muslims and Hindus haven’t had a lot of influence in lightening the Chinese intolerance toward organized religion.
But most of this question, of why religion gets an exemption for extra-legal activity, comes down to the heritage of the legal system, here, in the West. It’s a theocentric construct, traditionally, and an organic one. It’s a living thing, not a chemical formula.
Laws and moral codes are like language, once you get old enough, once you learn there are others, the one you were raised in begins to show its limitations and it’s not that much a stretch to imagine a better way.
Esperanto comes to mind.
Moral esperanto, and good luck with that.
Or Babel. There’s a nicely apt biblical reference. Slime and mortar and logical progress.
And again, the actual instances of animal cruelty cited in this thread are all based on intentional acts.
The wholesale massacre of species, and the cruel and often slow killing of individual animals and birds, as an unintended consequence of our use of the automobile, comes under the rubric of neither religious doctrine nor civil law. Though it should have, and long before now.

Religion is about knowing truth, not making choices or expressing preferences. It isn’t just about “caring about” something, it is about knowing something.

That just doesn’t mean a thing. Who decides what “truth” is? Even religions contradict each other all the time. There’s no single “truth” everyone acknowledges, it’s only different beliefs.

Religion is about truth, whereas descriptive law is much more about people’s choices/preferences (maybe? Any expert opinion on this?). That might be a reason that, once you stop making laws based on reason and start making laws democratically, that you treat religion rather carefully.

But all laws are based on reasoned arguments and conclusions, there’s no law that just says “you shall do this” without explaining why, or assuming reasonable explanations as to why. That’d be exactly the kind of “laws” religions prescribe, not non-religious legal systems.

You shall not eat meat that is not butchered this way. Why? There’s no explanation, no reason given. It’s just a rule.

Find me an example in a modern legal system that works the same way. There isn’t! So you can’t say “when we stop making laws based on reason”, because you can’t make laws without reasons behind them. That only happens in religious laws.

All religions have been, and some still are, political powers, authorities, before the modern secular state was developed. That’s simply why religions hold such influence, even in secular countries, that all non-religious powers have to concede on many things. It’s a matter of power relations, that’s all.

Ophelia – when considering why religion is so often given exemptions, put yourself in the place of someone who is religious. And pick a religion which holds that if a person (depending on the religion, this may only apply to believers) does not act according to certain rules the result will be terrible (e.g. you will be tormented in hell for all eternity, or be reincarnated as a philosopher).

Wouldn’t you, facing a terrible fate, be willing to sacrifice a vast amount to obey your religion’s rules? And how about ensuring that your children’s afterlives are saved by making sure that they can follow the rules? People have endured terrible martyrships because of their faith, and have committed terrible crimes. And such things lead to blood on the carpet, which, as someone who has cleaned blood off the carpet too many times, I am firmly opposed to. After the bloody religious wars in European history, the West came to a general consensus to let people follow their religions, cleaning blood off the carpet is not fun. That, I think, is why religions will continue to get exemptions, we don’t want to force people to choose between obeying the law and saving their soul (by their own perception of course).

Of course religions can lead people to commit violations of the normal rules so bad that they have to be stopped or punished, e.g. the cult in Japan that carried out gas attacks on the subway. And religious people, for peace, have to not wander around converting people of other religions (or none) to their religion by force. The philosophical question is whether animal welfare is a moral issue of such import that it is worth overriding the reasons for deference towards religion, or if it is of a scale not worth getting blood on the carpet.

Also of course people can feel so strongly about moral causes to feel compelled to break the laws of the land, without thinking the state of their immortal soul is at stake. E.g. oppostion to the pass laws in apartheid South Africa. But that is not as clear a cause of conflict as religion, and therefore special exemptions cannot be carved out for those groups. (And the pass laws were morally wrong, and the laws would have been made pointless if people could ignore them because they were morally opposed to them).

“The philosophical question is whether animal welfare is a moral issue of such import that it is worth overriding the reasons for deference towards religion, or if it is of a scale not worth getting blood on the carpet.”

Well, of course, that depends on whom you ask. And happily for us, we can’t actually ask the sentient beings who are at issue – not and get an articulate answer, we can’t. So we’re at liberty to decide that their welfare is in fact not of ‘such import.’

As for the blood on the carpet. Yes, but all that kind of thing works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Secularists decide it’s too risky to contradict religious people lest they burn down Sheffield. So religious people become ever more entrenched in their own deeply mistaken views of reality, and before long perhaps that which is of sufficient moral import will be re-defined. And then again, and again. Female genital mutilation? Well, that’s their religion, see, can’t mess with that. Honour killing? Well, uh – it’s their own family, so, uh…

Mic, thanks for your comments.

“There’s no single “truth” everyone acknowledges, it’s only different beliefs.”

Well, I don’t think we need to bring out the “There is no truth” card just yet :-)

I was only saying that religious claims are about truth, not just about preference. In other words, they are saying “This is true,” or “This is right” not “We like this” or “We choose to do this.” Does that make sense? This differentiates it from most of the other things that don’t get special treatment.

“But all laws are based on reasoned arguments and conclusions,”

I disagree. My understanding is that laws in the US are made by voting, not arguing logically. Do you equate the two (arguable, but I don’t buy it)? Sometimes people vote according to reason, sometimes not, right? Many people vote because of stupid things they believe, not because they reasoned things out. There may be reasons given, but they certainly aren’t even semi-rigorous arguments.

I think there are many laws not motivated by reason. In other words, I think there are many laws that we don’t have a solid argument for, but the majority has enacted them anyway. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. But I think it is there.

You point this out in your later post; laws can be made just because lots of religious people vote for them, not because of reason. Perhaps non-religious people should be given exemptions from those :-).

My argument says that religious exceptions should be given when the laws are “majority”-type laws and not “reason”-type laws. Who decides which is which? I don’t know. I am just saying that this line of argument might be used by someone trying to make those decisions, and the result would be that religion would be given a favored position over many other things. That is the question Ophelia was interested in.

“You shall not eat meat that is not butchered this way. Why? There’s no explanation, no reason given.”

Faith is their explanation. Religions openly admit that they have no reason or observation that supports their position; they do it based on revelation. They also know that faith carries no weight, and shouldn’t carry any weight with people who don’t share their faith.

You can claim that only observation and reason can produce truth, but that is certainly not self-evident. That doesn’t mean you should believe what a religious person says was revealed to him; you shouldn’t, unless you trust him and he is saying something not too unlikely (as an aside, this has never happened to me. Everything any religious person has said to me has been way too unlikely for me to just take their word for it.).

Bill,

Why give the benefit of the doubt to religions but not to the law when making statements? Why is it more generous to presume that true law is reason-based than to presume that true religion imposes the limits you spoke of on itself? Why not start with the best view of law possible, just as you do with religion?

Nozick made arguments that progressive taxation is unjust. Should people who include that in their theological/philosophical systems be allowed to pay a flat or head tax instead?

Should individuals who subscribe to a secular philosophy and claim truth be exempted from majority laws too? Guess nominalists are screwed, eh?

“Religions openly admit that they have no reason or observation that supports their position; they do it based on revelation.”

Didn’t Aquinas say that faith and reason go together? Isn’t Thomism about proving the faith through reason?

Credo quia absurdum: If I remember correctly, believing something that makes sense doesn’t show you have faith, believing something that doesn’t make sense does.

“Are you arguing that the only reason it is wrong to kill homosexuals is that a majority has voted that way? Are their reasonable arguments on both sides?”

No to both question. It is wrong to discriminate against/punish them no matter what the majority says, see Mill, J.S. .But what does Karol Wojtyla think? How about the two chief Israeli rabbis? How about the most prominent ayatollahs and muftis?

If you dismiss them as not being expert theologians, your expert theologians are platonic.

“I am not an expert, but I suspect that a “no murder” law has quite a bit of philosophical backing, regardless of popular support. Do you disagree?”

Wasn’t it Leo Strauss who said that the Jews didn’t philosophy?
Since it permits slaughtering all the women and children of a vanquished nation ( well, except the young women, who can be used as wives, see Numbers 31 ), I don’t know if it has much philosophical backing. Ever heard of Amalekh and what’s supposed to happen to them? See Psalms 137:9 and tell me this shouldn’t be included as murder even though it’s encouraged.

I was asking the question because many people who say “Murder is wrong” define “murder” as “killing a human being immorally”, which doesn’t help us very much. say I just killed someone, how do I know if it was immoral? Well, I just have to figure out if it was a murder. How do I know if it was a murder, if it was immoral. How do I know if it was immoral? If it was a murder etc

I was wondering if there was a non-circular definition of “murder”.

Say my worldview is that I have to get as much land as possible because God told me to do so. Anyone who tries to convince me ( ratioanlly or otherwise ) that I shouldn’t try to acquire land at any cost is working against God’s plan. What do you do?

I hope that we can also bring to bear the same considerations regarding avoiding suffering to sentient beings to the issue of abortion.

Shalom — be heartened: many people do. True, some of us come to a different conclusion, I suspect, than you do.

Albert, thanks for your post, and sorry for the length of the reply.

“Why is it more generous to presume that true law is reason-based than to presume that true religion imposes the limits you spoke of on itself?”

If all laws had solid, undisputed, reason-based arguments for them, then there would be no way for religion to wriggle out, according to my argument.

But that wouldn’t explain Ophelia’s observation, that religion seems to get wiggle-room, while other groups do not.

If you take a less perfect view of law, you get a possible explanation, which survives even when you take a less perfect view of religion.

I already said that e.g. people who treat religion more like a social club probably shouldn’t get exemptions. Only people who have been exposed to revelation (or truly trust someone else’s revelation), should be “allowed.” How do you prove/disprove this? Tricky, but lawyers could find a way.

“Didn’t Aquinas say that faith and reason go together? Isn’t Thomism about proving the faith through reason?”

I believe, though I am not an expert, that Aquinas said you could prove some things about religion through reason (e.g. existence of God). However, he didn’t say that you could prove all of revelation through reason. Also, things he could prove through reason he also knew through revelation.

For example, Aquinas could prove (supposedly) the existence of the “philosopher’s God” but not the Christian God. He could also prove things about the Christian God, given that he exists.

Another example: he could prove things about angels, given that they exist, but couldn’t prove that they exist. However, he knew through revelation that they exist.

So you are right; I was thinking of something known purely through revelation, while some religious things are known through both reason and revelation.

Must admit, the fact that you disagree is reducing my confidence in this considerably.

“Credo quia absurdum: If I remember correctly, believing something that makes sense doesn’t show you have faith, believing something that doesn’t make sense does.”

But does “doesn’t make sense” mean “without reason” or “contradicted by reason”? My understanding is that religion makes claims without reason, not contrary to reason (and in fact, cannot make claims contrary to reason). Is this what Augustine may have meant? So perhaps he would have booed Bush along with the rest of us. :-)

“I was wondering if there was a non-circular definition of “murder”.”

Less circular might be “killing an innocent person without their consent.” But we don’t have to do this in this thread, as I am sure that ethicists and legal theorists have non-circular and complete definitions much better than this.

“Say my worldview is that I have to get as much land as possible because God told me to do so. Anyone who tries to convince me ( ratioanlly or otherwise ) that I shouldn’t try to acquire land at any cost is working against God’s plan. What do you do?”

Nothing; this seems like a perfectly fine worldview, albeit a little nuts :-)

If we push it further and say that you demand to be legally allowed to kill those who disagree with you or to steal land belonging to others, then I have a problem; laws against murder and theft are backed by reason, not just majorities.

To take a religious exemption, you’d have to prove you were part of that religion. You wouldn’t just be able to say “My religion forbids/allows it” and be let off; you’d have to prove (or refute disproof) that you’ve experienced revelation (or truly trust someone else’s revelation). It can’t just be a different worldview, it must be revealed experience, or my argument doesn’t work.

This might also predict that larger religions, with many people sharing similar revealed experiences, would be easier to litigate than the “I am God, you all bow down before me, even though none of you believe it” sorts of religions.

I don’t like this argument much; perhaps you could help out. Anyone know how this works today? I certainly can’t just start the Church of Bill and get tax exemptions, right?

On your arguments about taxes, “expert theologians” and “secular philosophies”, I am going through an “Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that” phase. May be back shortly, or may vanish in a puff of logic :-)

bill – I was only saying that religious claims are about truth, not just about preference. In other words, they are saying “This is true,” or “This is right” not “We like this” or “We choose to do this.” Does that make sense? This differentiates it from most of the other things that don’t get special treatment.

yes, now I understand what you meant there, ok – but, point is, that beliefs-in-statements-of-truth still belong to the area of choice and preferences, in terms of what gets or doesn’t get special treatment, or rather, what is included in the “not to be discriminated against”.

Precise religious beliefs are something you learn, not something you’re born with and that is physically part of you.

The difference I have in mind is with all other items of non-discrimination in laws: gender, race, age etc. And sexual orientation – which some still argue is a matter of preference when it’s not, but even they will have to concede it’s got more to do with the body than beliefs.

Not to mention physical disability, etc. all those items that get considered when we talk of discrimination.

Religion is completely different from all of them. All the above are not matters of choice – they’re a given, and of a very objective, tangible, physical kind too, gender and race are there since birth, you can’t change them; religion is a matter of choice, education, thought, in short, it is an “opinion”, a worldview, a way of thinking and behaving, not a given, but something that’s learned and accepted and embraced – like *any* system of beliefs, political, ideological, philosophical, etc..

That’s the difference I had in mind with other things that get “special treatment” or even just non-discriminatory treatment, you know?

My understanding is that laws in the US are made by voting, not arguing logically. Do you equate the two (arguable, but I don’t buy it)? Sometimes people vote according to reason, sometimes not, right?

Er, I’m not sure I follow. New laws are voted for in Parliament everywhere, yes. Of course there’s all kinds of political games being played when voting something based on who proposed it, etc. But generally, when it comes to important laws, there is a political debate, and there are reasons to both sides. It’s still a process of *debate*, which means, laws can be called into question. Which means, it’s a process of reasoning, questioning.

It’s not what happens with religious laws, they are dogmas. So there is a difference!

Plus, the core of the legal system is not up for voting, there’s fundamental rights and laws that have been coded into the very political system we live in. Based on reasoned arguments and conclusions about what is the most suitable form of government and social organisation. Not based on faith, or dogmas.

Whether some laws, and the reasons behind them, could be considered stupid or not, is another matter; that’s why everything is open to discussion. But they all have reasons behind them.

I think there are many laws not motivated by reason.

Such as? What kind of laws? Essential ones? Civil code? Or the ones that raise continuing political debates?

If you give examples, maybe I’d understand better.

But my point was that laws in a non-religious legal system works in a completely different ways from a religious system. Of course in a democratic system everything is subject to debate. In religion, it’s not! that’s exactly part of the point too. That’s what I’d call “stupid laws”, with stupid=unreasonable in the sense, no reason is given. Faith is not a reason. It’s an assumption.

There’s no reasonable way to justify a religious prohibition to meat that’s not butchered in a certain way.

laws can be made just because lots of religious people vote for them, not because of reason

Eh? so, assuming there were just enough people to vote for reinstatement of slavery, it should be accepted?

Is that democracy?

There are principles in a legal system. One of them is the acceptance of certain rights and duties, that emerged via reasoned debates. You can’t throw them out the window just because there’s a large group of people who want to do without them.

There are constitutions, there are legal foundations every citizen must respect. So, what gets debated by political representatives discussing new laws or changes to preexisting laws cannot – should not – assume as principles anything other than its own framework – secular, not religious.

Religion is not part of the legal system in a secular country with a secular constitution. It cannot demand to have its beliefs *take over* those legal principles a country is based on.

So, in the debate on homosexuality for instance, legislators have to consider only the parts of the debate that have nothing to do with religion. Otherwise, they’re mixing different fields.

Laws have nothing to do with how many people believe in a certain thing. It has nothing to do with the “majority”.

In the case of butchering methods, it can be considered a belief that does not interfere or contrast with the non-religious secular system and its principles, so it’s granted “an exception”. In the case of elections scheduled on a religious day, it’s just a practical compromise to make sure elections take place in a day where the highest number of people will go vote. So you don’t hold elections on a weekday morning; you don’t hold on christmas or passover etc. It’s just a practical solution. It doesn’t really have much to do with laws and how they get discussed and decided.

But, if religion x says women are legally worth 1/2 of men, in a non-theocratic system, that belief, that “law”, has to go – because it does contrast fundamentally with the very legal foundations of an advanced society, because it is unreasonable, because it is a dogma, because it denies fundamental rights.

Religions openly admit that they have no reason or observation that supports their position; they do it based on revelation. They also know that faith carries no weight, and shouldn’t carry any weight with people who don’t share their faith.

…and that includes the law in a non-theocratic system. Democracy doesn’t mean “accepting anything a significant enough number of people belief”. Democracy is based on principles that are not theocratic, so, it has to work within a non-theocratic context. Put it this way, democracy is contained in a secular system. It does accept a fundamental framework that works on reason, debate, secular ethics and principles – reasoned ‘truths we hold as self-evident’, but which still have rational explanations behind them -, and is the opposite of the system of religion, faith, beliefs in revealed truths.

That was what I was thinkig about in terms of religion vs. law.

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http://nytts.org/asia/orlitia/O1.htm

Albert,

“Should individuals who subscribe to a secular philosophy and claim truth be exempted from majority laws too? Guess nominalists are screwed, eh?”

I don’t know what nominalists are; and after five minutes on Google, I still don’t :-)

For a philosophy to claim it knows the truth about what the law should be, it needs to provide a “beyond reasonable doubt” argument. If it does, then the law should accept it. So philosophers who claim truth do get an exemption from laws that are simply majority edicts.

As an example, we could think of fundamental human rights. Mic argues above that if a majority votes against someone’s human rights, that that person shouldn’t be forced to follow the majority.

Bill,

There could be a fourth category: Intuition or emotions. Some people think that intuition gives one access to truth, do they get a free pass?

How about astrology, there’s a pretension of truth there too.

Shouldn’t all be equal before the law? Perhaps you should be arguing that laws should be reason and observation-based in the first place instead of arguing in favour of selective enforcement.

If expert theologians want to impose their beliefs on people who don’t share their faith, are all bets off?

I don’t know what % of religious people have had a Road to Damascus moment. If it were nearly random ( “it just happens” ), then people raised in Muslim households would get Hinduism revealed to them just as often as they would Judaism, peole raised in Christian households would suddenly see the widsom of Buddha etc. But that’s not what happens in the vast majority of cases is it? It’s a meme.

Nominalism: As opposed to essentialism. We don’t have access to truth ( even if we found it we wouldn’t be 100% it was the truth ), all we can do is make useful theories of what the truth is. Perhaps you have heard of the wrapped gift analogy? You can shake it, weigh it, submerge it to try to guess what’s inside but you can never open it.

Bill,

Well for one thing, saying that I can’t prove religion is not true doesn’t equate to saying that revelation is a source of truth.

How can revelation be a source of truth when it’s not generalizable? Are hallucinations a source of truth? Are dreams? Not the way I understand the word they’re not.
They may be a source of truth about what’s going on in one person’s head, but that’s all. Not a useful kind of truth for legislators, I don’t think.

Did I just try and discuss with someone who takes the notion of religious ‘revelation’ to equal _literal_ truth?

Oh please tell me it’s not so…

But, Bill, I haven’t said anyone has never had a religious revelation. I said revelation is not a source of truth. It’s not a source of truth in the same way and for the same sort of reason that a hallucination is not. That is not the same thing as saying that truth has to be provable – which I have also not said. Generalizable does not mean provable.

Bill –I believe that there is no real revelation, that all people who think they have had a revelation are hallucinating or dreaming. My belief doesn’t make it so, and I can’t prove it. I simply ignore religious arguments.

Sorry, then what’s your whole point?

You’ve kept defending revelation as a source of ‘truth’ on a par with scientific methods of empirical observation. But you don’t believe revelation is actually true. So?

Care to explain that?

Bill,

Did you ask me what I meant by generalizable before? Sorry, I missed that.

I mean capable of being shown, demonstrated, explained etc to anyone and everyone (barring actual disabilities). Not idiosyncratic, personal, singular, internal, which is what revelation is.

“By revelation I mean revealed experience e.g. a real god shows you something that is true (analogous to how nature shows scientists things that are true).”

Um…not a very good analogy, really.

I have the same confusion Mic does. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Ophelia,

“I mean capable of being shown, demonstrated, explained etc to anyone and everyone (barring actual disabilities).”

So my coin analogy is still on point. Even if I know it landed heads, there is no way I could demonstrate or explain it to anyone, right? But it is still true.

Therefore, I have access to a truth that is not generalizable. It is still a truth, though.

What do you think?

Your statement above can be readily interpreted as “Reason and observation are the only sources of truth.” Is this a fair interpretation? (I am not saying you said this, I am asking you.) If not, how does what you said differ from this interpretation?

“Um…not a very good analogy, really.”

How come? I don’t mean that one implies the other, I am using the language of science to try to get my mind around something I can’t understand.

It would really help if I were religious :-).

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

1) I am trying to correct sloppy thinking about truth and religion; I just don’t know if it is mine or you-all’s that needs correcting :-).

2) I gave a possible explanation to your observation that religion is given a free pass, while Aerosmith fans aren’t (that religion is about truth, while all the other examples are about choice and preference).

3) I gave a descriptive argument that subordinating law to truth might lead to a legal system that gives reasonable exemptions to religion, while still not allowing them to murder people.

4) I gave a normative argument that law should give reasonable exemptions to religion. Mic and Albert rebutted it, I answered some of their arguments, but can’t quite see how to deal with them all without descending into libertarianism.

Mic,

““revealed” by who, Bill? Who, if not your parents, or teachers, or someone who taught you about religion?”

Most religious people I know have told me they were given faith by God. Many started going to church because their parents took them, but later were given faith.

So, according to them, it isn’t simply a matter of upbringing, or teaching, or a system of beliefs, or “memes”, or a social club. That isn’t how _they_ see their religion; they think they have been given a gift from God.

I don’t like relying on what people say, as it is notoriously innaccurate, but it is what they say.

I have addressed the point about Jewish parents inexplicably :-) tending to have Jewish kids in a response to Albert above. Perhaps people of different theistic religions are simply interpreting the same revealed knowledge differently, the same way that different Catholics interpret the Bible differently.

“[Science and philosophy] accept that separation from each other and from the law; whereas many religious people have a little problem grasping that separation concept.”

I respectfully dissent. I thought we agreed that science and reason dominate the law.

A law cannot rightly say “The sky is green” (although the law doesn’t usually try to say scientific things). A law cannot rightly say “It is allowable to beat your kids.” Science and reason trump law. My guess was that truth should trump law, so if you believe that revelation might be a source of truth, then religion might also trump law.

I thought you agreed; for example, I thought you said that there are fundamental human rights, correct beyond reasonable doubt, and that a law that doesn’t respect those rights shouldn’t be followed.

Also, science and philosophy don’t accept a separation from each other. There are points of overlap, and science trumps philosophy.

For example, there are philosophical arguments that show that machines will never have human intelligence.

Guess what; if a scientist goes out and builds one, the philosopher can’t say “But science is separate from philosophy; his results don’t have anything to do with mine.” The philosopher says “My philosophical argument has been proved wrong by scientific observation.”

“You really cannot make that sort of “just like” statement. Please.”

You are right; I am being sloppy.

I have no idea what it is like to have a revealed experience. I do know what it is like to have special experience (i.e. observation of nature).

They aren’t “just like” each other, but in order to understand what it like to deal with revelation, I think analogously from what it is like to deal with observation.

Aristotle gives the example of the word “sharp” used in different domains. We can think of a sharp point (feeling), a sharp sound (hearing), or a sharp light (sight).

I can’t say what it is about “sharpness” that is common to these three domains; I’m clearly not using the word _univocally_, or as meaning exactly the same thing. But I’m clearly not using the word _equivocally_, or as meaning entirely different things. This is what is meant when a word is used _analogically_.

The word “experience” in science, philosophy, and religion is used analogically when we speak of “special experience”, “common experience”, and “revealed experience.” It isn’t that they are the same, but they do have something in common that is difficult if not impossible to put your finger on.

Bill,

No, that isn’t what I was saying. For one thing, of course, one has to decide what kind of truth one is talking about. Of course all kinds of things are true (that X loves Y, etc) that have little (though not necessarily nothing) to do with evidence or reason.

I think one of your basic problems is that you conflate evidence with proof. And another is that you’re using one word – truth – to apply to many different ideas. It all makes a bit of a tangle.

Bill –Religion as social club should be treated just like any other social club.

Perhaps we actually agree: religion cannot be given exemptions from laws, only from regulations.

Yes, exactly – but that’s not what you were saying at the beginning, was it?

All the rest, regarding revelation, truth, etc. well it’s kind of irrelevant to that point of religion and the law. And you’re putting it all a bit too theoretical. It is very confusing. For me it’s a lot simpler.

How we each view religion and beliefs and faith and religious experiences and organized religion and the difference thereof, is a personal matter.

But for society at large, organised religion must be treated like any social club, yep.

So why isn’t it? (at least in politics, if not in laws) … back to square one…

It is all a matter of yielding political power and having social control because of making high demands of followers that it affects large sections of their public life too. That’s what differentiates religious groups from any other ‘social club’. That’s why even if laws don’t give religion a free pass, outside of theocracies, politicians still do apply very special treatment to religion. A very very practical matter of reciprocal interests and compromises.

A final note on the upbringing thing – well you said it yourself: “Most religious people I know have told me they were given faith by God. *Many started going to church because their parents took them*, but later were given faith.”

– Bill, the point is, even if you’re not brought up by religious parents, *organised* religion is everywhere. Everyone has been exposed to it.

I’m not judging the worth or truth of that “I was given faith by God” statement, no one can, it’s a personal choice, I see no problem with it. BUT it’s a fact that those people were exposed to religion as a social, organised thing – or they wouldn’t have been able to join that social organised thing! you know?

There’s not a contradiction between the two things – being taught religion, and being spontaneously driven towards religion, or enthusiastically embracing religion, even based on a strong feeling one has – they can happen at the same time. But, if we’re talking organised religion, not merely “mystical experiences”, you have to go through a religious education process, either in childhood, or later, by choosing to convert, to become *part of an organised religious group*.

That’s all. Seemed pretty obvious to me.

msg, are you responding to me? if so, I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing with, but let me just make a couple of things clearer. First, I am not such a ‘rationalist’. I might even have religious beliefs, for all you know. The thing in discussion here was not religion itself, but the relation between secular laws in democracies, and religion -and what Ophelia asked. It’s not that I have a “position” on this, a peculiar view that is just in my head. It’s the system of secular states itself that works by requiring every citizen to obey and recognise the authority of secular laws, regardless of their personal opinions or beliefs on the matter.

I just don’t see that principle in contradiction to religion at all. Only religious fundamentalists and fanatics see a contradiction there.

Asking people to obey secular laws and coexist in a secular system is NOT “tantamount to asking them to not believe”, msg. Otherwise we might as well give up any social order and embrace total anarchy.

Separation of churches and state means both coexist, and can live happily along each other – it happens, in many countries.

It’s not a matter of “laws trump belief”, I don’t see it like that. It’s a matter of giving unto Ceasar, etc. Keep different things separate, where they belong. Belief has little to do with norms, in itself.

Of course, religions that make the heaviest normative demands of their followers, and set their own laws that enter in conflict with the norms set by the non-religious authorities, are incompatible with a legal system. But I don’t see that struggle to create theocracies anywhere except where theocracies already exist. In the west, seems to me that the secular mentality is still prevalent, and even among religious people, the secular-minded outnumber the fanatics who think religion is all about setting norms.

Religion doesn’t have to be about norms, and is not so for the vast majority of people.

The problem is when politicians start pandering to fundamentalists… it’s not something that automatically leads towards theocracy, or theocratic laws, it’s just very disruptive of principles of public life.

But all this has little to do with Chris’s original topic of halal and kosher meat. If only conflicts with religious demands were only about that kind of thing.

“It’s the system of secular states …requiring every citizen to obey and recognise the authority of secular laws, regardless of their personal opinions or beliefs on the matter”
Or, the secular state will tolerate personal opinions or beliefs, provided the first recognition is to the authority of secular law.
A reasonable and practical attitude for a philosophically diverse culture.
This has led to some pretty vague spiritual states, though.
People who are nominal members of differing religions, whose tenets are historically mutually exclusive, and currently to deadly extremes. Watered-down versions of those religions co-exist peacefully, and I think that’s what’s meant by the secular side here “having no problem” with religious belief, as long as secular law is observed.
But watered-down religion can be a foot in the door for the real, intolerant thing. Religious tolerance works as long as there’s a balance of powerlessness. Even buddhism can morph into bigotry and exclusion.
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The trivialization of fundamentalism has allowed it to prosper. Thirty years ago the idea of anti-evolutionists having serious political power in the 2004 presidential election would have been greeted with disdain.
At the heart of the argument I hear, here, is this sense of fundamentalists as marginal and on their way out. Only needing to be catered to for a while until the Second Enlightenment happens. But I don’t think so.
There’s another sense I get, of the inheritance of secular law as something arising out of the clay of human progress and experimentation, instead of what it really was, a marriage of biology and spirituality from the beginning.
Hammurabai’s gods were no more real than anyone else’s, and we have no way of knowing how devout his lawyers were, but there was religion entwined in every legal code I know of, until the French revolution. So it isn’t really a question of believers coming in from the wilderness to the warm fires of secular order. The reverse as it happens. The believers own the idea of law, if it comes to that, or a claim could be made they do.
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We’re having Scopes re-enactments nationally.
And Puritanical assertions in Congress.
The question would be, is this likely to subside with steady doses of reasoned argument?
Or is it a growing phenomenon?
Is there an advantage in asking the question stripped of its politesse?
Isn’t it really something like, “Look, your gibberish may be comforting to someone with a dull mind, but it’s wasting time and energy. You’re slowing down our progress. Either get out of the way, or we’ll push you out of the way.”
I realize no one’s even coming close to suggesting that, but I’m pretty clear it’s what’s at the heart of the argument of tolerance.
And what’s more, those most threatened by that attitude are responding to it, though without knowing they are.
This explains a great deal of what seems to be irrational and nonsensical posturing on the part of religious groups and individuals politically, especially in the areas of science and sexual morality.
It’s not about what it purports to be, evolution or gay rights or the slaughter of meat animals, it’s about the survival of the group and the individual members of the group; belief is secondary to survival. This is borne out by the steady shifting of dogma over time as it incorporates irrefutable scientific fact, and adapts to it. Until that adaptation threatens to dissolve the integrity of the group, which is when an irrational stand becomes more viable than the truth.
Tolerance won’t do much about that, and there’s nothing in the system to prevent the acquisition of power by groups with that dynamic – as current events so ably illustrate – so then what? Now what?
Demanding recognition of the primacy of secular law creates tacit observance, but it also creates and fuels an impulse toward state control on the part of the believers. The arguments get couched in various terms, belief/non-belief, science fact/fiction, but it’s more elemental even than that, it’s about survival.

Albert,

“How about “credo quia absurdum”, does that sound like Augustine would have bowed to reason?”

I have read a secondary source that supports a “yes” answer to this. I haven’t gone through Augustine’s writings, but this is from Adler’s _Truth in religion_.

“His [Augustine’s] first precept was: Hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. Since it is the revealed truth, we must never abandon our belief in its truth.

“His second precept followed: Since Sacred Scriptures can be interpreted in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular version only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it should prove to be false …

“Augustine’s second precept leads to the logical disproof and rejection of articles of faith that are incompatible with what is known _with certitude_ in one or more fields of natural knowledge, such as mathematics, science, and philosophy.”

Adler goes on to say what I said, that “certitude” is a sticking point, but “beyond reasonable doubt” almost always should imply “beyond religious doubt.”

Also, the interpretation given by Adler of the “credo quia absurdum” (attributed to Tertullian) matches mine as well: to believe without reason, not contrary to reason.

I mean, for me it’s a given that secular law has to be respected, and I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s “state control over religion”, even among the most religious people.

I used to think that even in America, that was the prevalent mentality. But probably it isn’t so… I can’t tell cos I’ve never lived there.

I cannot even understand how in the most advanced democracy that kind of fundamentalist view of religion could be spreading. Maybe it’s due to the lack of a history of battles against church powers? I don’t know.

Tolerance won’t do much about that, and there’s nothing in the system to prevent the acquisition of power by groups with that dynamic – as current events so ably illustrate – so then what? Now what?

I don’t know, there just isn’t the same problem at all here. It’s completely different in Europe. And that’s the kind of secular law framework I’m talking about. Because Europe and Britain is where secular law was defined first… and it’s such a part of the legal system it’s not going to get challenged.

Though of course those battles with church powers still come up in the political debate. I just don’t see such a threat here, though.

Is it really that bad in the US?

…. also, re: “special treatment” – I’m talking of the _mentality_ of people who think that just because a certain group is religious, then they should get special treatment on everything, while other groups don’t…

I don’t see that as literally happeing in the legal system, laws or regulations alike, yet.

I do see it happening in the political arena. Even in countries where the main religions are mostly “watered down”, like msg said – ie. where fundamentalists or creationists don’t exist or are really on the fringe, but churches still have power, influence, money, financial connections…

And then of course you got the situations where religious fundamentalists among minorities, practicing a religion that’s not the main one, start making demands. As with Islamic fundamentalists. Not on irrelevant things like butchering though, but polygamy, family law, parental rights, female genital mutilation… (Apologies to the vegetarians for that “irrelevant”, but in making comparisons, issues regarding treatment of human beings are more important than treatment of animals that are destined to butchering anyway). And those bigger issues are where that mentality about religion being somehow “special” can become very tricky, and the idea of “tolerance”, like msg said, taken to a lavel where it becomes invalidation of the principles of the law itself. _Even when the laws don’t actually get changed_. Political debate does, and so do notions about what laws are for. And that can be problematic enough.