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Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?)Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?)Posted Jun 15, 2012 23:01 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) by JamesErik Parent article: Alan Cox celebrates the queen
There is exactly one example of officially atheistic country in the history. And it's not the USSR which was officially secular with freedom of religion.
Try to guess that country?
>Compare some US evangelicals' advocacy for sponsored prayer in state schools to French secularists' banishment of religious attire in state schools.
>It is not unreasonable to conclude these fall fairly close to each other on the modernity continuum while being poles apart on the faith continuum.
Now, if atheists would demand to have equal time at any sermon or church service then it would be the same.
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Officially atheistic country Posted Jun 17, 2012 6:32 UTC (Sun) by jonasj (guest, #44344) [Link] There is exactly one example of officially atheistic country in the history. And it's not the USSR which was officially secular with freedom of religion. Try to guess that country?I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism and I still can't figure out which country you are referring to.
Officially atheistic country Posted Jun 17, 2012 11:30 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism#People.27s_Soc... - that's technically the only country where atheism was the state religion officially (Cambodia during Khmer Rouge might be another example, but it's a bit hard to tell).
Even the USSR proclaimed freedom of religion in all of its Constitutions (there were several of them).
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 18, 2012 20:49 UTC (Mon) by JamesErik (subscriber, #17417) [Link] Cyberax, it strikes me that you decry "written or unwritten" requirements for faith but then counter with arguments about "officially atheistic" countries. I think it'd be fairer to apply our arguments uniformly, so I'll stick with "unofficial" or "unwritten". I posit that in public schools, banishment of religious attire is as much a regression of modernity (or nearly so) as sponsored prayer, though the former is done (falsely, IMO) in the name of modernity. Claiming "[t]here should be no religion in public schools" does not sufficiently distinguish between an individual's expression of faith and a state expression of faith. Why on earth shouldn't students be free to wear a head-dress or yarmulke or "religion sucks" t-shirt or none or all three at once? Why on earth shouldn't a student be free to discuss her thoughts about spirituality? I find myself strongly disagreeing with you, Cyberax: it is most decidedly NOT "a good decision" to for a state deny students these freedoms. OTOH, I suspect we're in agreement it is bad (or perhaps "not modern") to have the state impose a religious teaching. Hopefully that's all you meant by "no religion in public schools." I must confess you've lost me a bit on your last point, though, Cyberax. Why is it okay for the state to compel a private organization to do anything of the sort? I'm wondering if you're from Europe where state churches were the historical norm? If so, I can see a modicum of merit in your claim in that the pulpit effectively was an extension of the state. Certainly in the US, the state has no say whatsoever in how religious groups conduct themselves. (Not entirely true, but close enough for the purposes of this discussion.)
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 18, 2012 23:14 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I never said that suppression of religion is good. It's bad simply because:
1) Free society should respect beliefs its members. 2) It makes religion look like a victim.
>Claiming "[t]here should be no religion in public schools" does not sufficiently distinguish between an individual's expression of faith and a state expression of faith.
What if my faith demands that my children carry a freshly chopped cat head on their backpacks? Will it be OK?
How about visual depictions of Satanists' orgies? You know that Satanism is a real religion, right?
Would a ritual animal sacrifice during lunch hour be OK?
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 1:00 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
>>Claiming "[t]here should be no religion in public schools" does not sufficiently distinguish between an individual's expression of faith and a state expression of faith.
> I never said that suppression of religion is good.
> Nope. Others should not be forced to be subjected to your faith symbols.
Woah, those are contradictory statements, you can't be free of other peoples faith symbols unless you engage in severe suppression of religion. Everyone has to deal with the fact that everyone else isn't exactly like them and has different ideas, different looks, different values. The only time there should be conflict is where acts cause clear, definable, measurable harm. I don't see how the display of simple religious symbols or choice of clothing can possibly reach the bar of causing harm.
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 7:26 UTC (Tue) by xaoc (guest, #54140) [Link]
You cannot see how the simple religious symbol of a man nailed to a cross, depicting an old torturous execution technique, can possibly cause a harm?
Oh and he is often wearing a thorn crown as if the nailing is not enough of a torture.
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 10:39 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
We're talking about religious symbols that are not merely "different" (nobody cares about Asatru hammers or that nice Wicca pentacles). Hijabs and burquas are used RIGHT NOW as instruments of subjugation of women.
That's not some theory or wild guess, that's a simple fact. Not all religious symbols are equal.
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 2:59 UTC (Tue) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
> What if my faith demands that my children carry a freshly chopped cat head on their backpacks? Will it be OK?
Unsanitary - you'll end up with sticky mess all over the place. Hazmat regs exist for a good reason. Incidentally, you'll have serious trouble with animal cruelty laws almost anywhere, school or no school. No idea what those are .ru and .ua these days, but back in .su times I'd expect at least "zlostnoe huliganstwo w obschestwennyh mestah" to stick, pardon the pun.
> How about visual depictions of Satanists' orgies?
Who cares? If sufficiently distracting, you'll run into school regs against _that_, be it a Satanist orgy or a secular one.
> You know that Satanism is a real religion, right?
*shrug*
> Would a ritual animal sacrifice during lunch hour be OK?
The same mix of hazmat regs and animal cruelty laws, probably. Depends on what's being sacrificed - I'd expect e.g. chanting "death to E.coli, death by millions" while washing your hands to get you very weird looks, but I doubt that it'll get you in more serious trouble than that...
I really don't get it - as far as I'm concerned, one can come to school with e.g. a copy of "Materialism and Empiriocriticism"[1] hanging on a chain off their neck and as long as they don't try to recite that junk in physics class, they shouldn't get in trouble.
[1] for those lucky enough to have missed that, ah, glorious achievement of human thought, that was the one and only claim of V.I.Lenin to being a serious philosopher. Unfortunately, he had chosen theoretical physics as the area to shed his light on. Of course, he had no fscking clue on said area, but when had that stopped any philosopher? Resulting drivel had been preserved as part of .su state religion and ritually quoted - often enough in forewords to physics textbooks, of all places...
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 10:37 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
>Unsanitary - you'll end up with sticky mess all over the place.
Seal it into clear plastic. Would it still be OK?
>Who cares? If sufficiently distracting, you'll run into school regs against _that_, be it a Satanist orgy or a secular one.
>The same mix of hazmat regs and animal cruelty laws, probably.
>I really don't get it - as far as I'm concerned, one can come to school with e.g. a copy of "Materialism and Empiriocriticism"[1] hanging on a chain off their neck and as long as they don't try to recite that junk in physics class, they shouldn't get in trouble.
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:09 UTC (Tue) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
>>Unsanitary - you'll end up with sticky mess all over the place.
>Seal it into clear plastic. Would it still be OK?
Modulo aforementioned animal cruelty laws *and* the odds of that thing being splattered all over the place when your little darling hits the classmate with the bookbag - sure.
>>Who cares? If sufficiently distracting, you'll run into school regs >>against _that_, be it a Satanist orgy or a secular one.
They can and do, insofar as said symbols disrupt the class. Religion is irrelevant here - you need a valid secular reason for restriction. Pictures of e.g. copulating pairs do have an unfortunate effect on the average teenager's ability to pay attention to anything else, regardless of the reason for said copulation.
Freedom of religion does *not* mean that laws get suspended; human sacrifices are going to get you tried and convinced for murder. You are still required to follow laws or suffer the penalties for breaking them; any other obligations you might believe to have do not free you from those. If you can't satisfy both - tough. But the laws (including the local regulations covering acceptable appearance in schools) should be religion-free.
> >The same mix of hazmat regs and animal cruelty laws, probably.
Umm... ever dealt with live chicken? They shit when excited... IOW, I very much doubt that what you've described would be sanitary; other than that I really see no problem.
>The problem is, we're not talking about a book hanging off a chain. We're
You mean to say that your sodding religion was *not* used as instrument of subjugation? Really? Because I remember differently and I'd been born and raised in Soviet Union. I don't know where you are from; I'm from Leningrad, born in 1972. Care to tell me how I would've been free to say what I thought of dialectics[1]? Or of Engels' pseudoscience around the history of our species ("Origin of family, private property and state"; starting with the impact of labour in evolution of hominids, followed by the oh-so-lovely treatment of historical inevitability of something similar to humans developing in the first place). Or of hist-mat and falsifiability of its predictions. Or any other pieces of idiocy in that pile of intellectual offal. And that was 80s; thirty years earlier the consequences would've been much uglier.
[1] Hegel's examples of contradictions had a lot to do with the contemporary mess in analysis; by the middle of 19th century the confusion around the different definitions of convergence had been already sorted out, TYVM, turning those into trivial "if we are seeing contradictions in an area, we probably have similar confusion there and it might be a good indicator of an area in need of attention". But then Engels had very weird views on math in general (c.f. his, er, interesting objections to complex numbers on ideological grounds)...
Time to move on? Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:26 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]
It seems to me that perhaps we have wandered just a tad off-topic for LWN at this point. How about we leave "freedom of religion" and related topics to more appropriate forums?
thanks,
jake
Queen and Popess (or "Mome"?) Posted Jun 19, 2012 19:31 UTC (Tue) by JamesErik (subscriber, #17417) [Link] You're making up religions to fit your point, Cyberax. "Subjecting others to your religious symbols [paraphrased]". I can hardly believe you're serious. Are you ever even around kids? The "other" students you're so keen to defend are more capable than you give them credit for: they're more than apt to just shrug it off, or maybe ask somebody about it, or maybe even make fun of it. I'm around kids a great deal, and I assure you they don't need such defending, Cyberax. They would in fact be the poorer for it. As far as the red herrings of cat's heads and lunchtime rituals, there are rules aplenty to cover those, as raven667 has said. Honestly, such rules could reasonably cover graphic depictions of crucifixion without religion per se coming into play at all. As you've noted, not all religious symbols are equal, but the great majority of them are not graphic. Lastly, in "modern" societies, we should widely proclaim from the rooftops how the subjugated can be freed from their subjugation. We should earnestly help when they come to us seeking to get out of harmful situations. In the meantime--all the while we are proclaiming--we should show others respect by letting them make their own choices.
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