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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Didn't they try that out with the USSR, how did that work out?
And what about that time France made burkas illegal, very secular country from what I know, doesn't sound very tolerant, but what do I know.
Edited by HailMuffins on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:31:38 PM
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And what happens when religion is a more intrinsic part of country's culture than a more secular one? Should we also apply said secularism in the same manner?
Edit:
Anyway, I think we are getting off-topic and we should move this to the Religion thread.
Edited by raziel365 on Sep 27th 2020 at 12:45:29 PM
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.![]()
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France in theory also would ban comparable displays of Christian religious symbols like wearing a cross. In practice France's state secularism has only been aggressively enforced against minority religions, which suggests that strict state secularism is not a good policy on pragmatic grounds without necessarily conflicting with the idea that strict secularism would be ideal if it could be enforced without bias.
Would be in favor of banning religious exemptions for immunization or social distancing yes? What makes that different than refusing to allow religious exemptions to the wearing of face coverings? It's not actually as clear cut as we might hope, in order to really draw a distinction we need to turn to ANOTHER belief system, ie liberalism, which would assert that a person has a right to autonomy except when that autonomy infringes on the rights of another.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Sep 27th 2020 at 3:43:46 PM
Last I checked, wearing a burka isn't going to spread a potentially deadly disease to thousands and keep dragging on a pandemic that wrecked the economy.
If anything it's the opposite.
But that's just my point: if you are a part of a minority religion, state secularism enforced with or without bias doesn't really matter in practical terms because you're still forbidden to express you religious identity in public.
The best thing you can say is that the latter is less hypocritical, but cold confort, that.
Just keep religious authority and institutions from having any say in government matters on the Law, the rest leave it to society to figure out.
Edited by HailMuffins on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:50:13 PM
Even secular post-Enlightenment Western societies exist on a strong backbone of unconscious Judaeo-Christian values, many secular Arab nations are heavily informed by Islamic values, and officially and aggressively secular China still runs on heavy Confucianist values. For the record Confucianism is indeed a religion, even if westerners see it as more of a philosophy in practice.
As people have mentioned above, aggressive state secularism is basically privileging the dominant ethnic group's religious background, if not its more explicit representations, while discriminating against those who belong to a different faith (or in many cases, race; at its best religion can function as a means of uniting disparate racial groups).
They just don't necessarily realize it because they're operating under the Default Human Being concept. Or less charitably, they probably do on some level, but don't care because they're authoritarians and aggressive secularism/atheism, as a form of strict control over human behavior and culture, is part and parcel of authoritarianism.
Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 27th 2020 at 3:58:47 PM
Yes. Precisely that distinction. A person should have the right to autonomy except when that autonomy infringes on the rights of another. This includes religious autonomy.
The government, however, needs to be entirely impartial. The government must make no distinctions based on religion. This includes agents of the government, as acting non-impartially will infringe the rights of others.
Edited by PointMaid on Sep 27th 2020 at 3:53:13 PM
Yes, but WHY should we make that distinction? There isn't actually any objective reason for that beyond our own set philosophical and/or religious beliefs. No matter what you do one values system is being imposed upon another with the implicit threat of state coercion in the event of noncompliance.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:00:52 AM
And what about when those belief systems do not respect the boundaries you want everyone to play by? Then we run into the Paradox of Tolerance, which I'd consider the best argument for aggressive secularism, at least to the extent of refusing to tolerate or humor fundamentalist religious belief systems that do not respect liberal norms.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:05:34 AM
In which case they'll play Rules Lawyer and skirt the system as much as they possibly can, since fundamentalists (religious or otherwise) do not share the set of values that call for mutual tolerance and restraint. This is very much a problem in secular liberal society as well, where people in the US have been far too reluctant to act preemptively against white nationalists and other groups which hold inherently anti-liberal, anti-democratic beliefs, even though we KNOW that nothing good will come from humoring such people as long as they keep their toes within the line.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:13:13 AM
Religious freedom is a backbone of any free society, IMHO. A society free from religion is no different than a theocracy in terms of oppression. Every citizen should be free to practice their faith in peace.
Societies are also based on the principles people believe are good.
Reconciling these two are important but not impossible.
I think this is also important to US politics.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 27th 2020 at 1:20:33 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The main problem that we run into is that democracy cannot function healthy without a few authoritative impositions.
To address the Paradox of Tolerance means that the system must be intolerant to those that don't respect tolerance in the first place. In this sense, a democracy allows pretty much everything so long as it remains in the parametres of it, so that things like, say, fascism or fundamentalism can never be allowed to poison the system.
Edited by raziel365 on Sep 27th 2020 at 1:22:26 AM
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.![]()
Should people also be free to believe in conspiracy theories and racist pseudoscience? While I can accept that taking action against such people without evidence of any wrongdoing might be a bridge too far, we should absolutely take steps to discourage the proliferation of beliefs that run contrary to core liberal principles, which might include things like a ban on protolyzing or public displays of faith for fundamentalist groups which refuse to acknowledge the rights of LGBT individuals, or regard apostasy as criminal.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Sep 27th 2020 at 4:31:07 AM

I’ve always thought that the Lords Spiritual weren't a totally rotten idea, just one that needed to be expanded. Instead of the Co E getting all the religious seats in the House of Lords, divide them up between all religious (or non-religious) groupings as measured by the census. So you’d have Church of England lords, Catholic Church lords, Muslin lords, Atheist lords, and if people decided to have fun again maybe Jedi lords. How such religious/irreligious lords would be picked for the less formal groupings I’ve yet to work out.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran