Via a diarist on Kos
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In what seems an obviously unconstitutional order, Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion County Superior Court in Indiana has prohibited a man and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."
The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.
Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple’s divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.
Bradford refused to remove the provision after the 9-year-old boy’s outraged parents, Thomas E. Jones Jr. and his ex-wife, Tammie U. Bristol, protested last fall.
The Judge’s argument boiled down to insisting that because they send their son to a Catholic school, teaching him Wicca beliefs at home would cause confusion in him as he ages. (The judge didn’t comment on the confusion he’ll experience when he’s taught the First Amendment, but….)
The parents, although divorced, have joint custody of the child and both agree he should be exposed to Wicca beliefs. Fortunately, this order seems destined to be overturned on the appeal:
Even the U.S. military accommodates Wiccans and educates chaplains about their beliefs, said Lawrence W. Snyder, an associate professor of religious studies at Western Kentucky University.
"The federal government has given Wiccans protection under the First Amendment," Snyder said. "Unless this judge has some very specific information about activities involving the child that are harmful, the law is not on his side."
Bradford gets high marks from the Indianapolis Bar Association, and a fairly short google search didn’t turn up any other indications of wingnuttery in his rulings, so I want to know what the hell was he drinking that day. Through a court spokeswoman, he noted that he couldn’t discuss the pending dispute.
Maybe the Indiana Bar Association has lower standards than others.
Well, this is probably the only time you’ll ever find common ground with a Director at RS.
Well, this is probably the only time you’ll ever find common ground with a Director at RS.
It’s not the only time…there have been others. Although I would have been shocked if we hadn’t agreed on this one.
Best interests of the child means best interests of the child, parents and religion be damned.
Though maybe not the Constitution.
Ugh,
I’d submit that what’s in the best interests of the child includes growing up in a country that values freedom of religion, no?
Wow. Talk about someone who should never again be allowed near a courtroom as anything other than a defendant.
I’m sympathetic to the urge to prevent parents from inflicting religiously-inspired delusions on their children and patterning them for the rest of their lives with “junk”. As far as I’m concerned, religion in general (as opposed to a sense of spirituality, of healthy connection with the world) falls into this category. But it can’t be done–not with respect to the Constitution, and certainly not without turning this country into somewhere we wouldn’t want to live anymore.
I’d submit that “best interests of the child” relate, as far as the court is concerned, only to physical and emotional neglect or abuse. Otherwise you’re going to see the courts deciding whether letting the kid go out for the soccer team might be too academically stressing. Or that the kid’s choice of music isn’t emotionally nurturing enough.
A ridiculous decision by the judge, destined to be swiftly reversed let us hope …
… but I still think it’s hilarious that the Wiccans are sending their kid to Catholic school! It sounds like a sitcom plot.
I’d submit that what’s in the best interests of the child includes growing up in a country that values freedom of religion, no?
Yes, I was just thinking that when the overwhelming focus is on the best interests of the child, people seem to forget that there might be some limits on what a judge can do in pursuit of that.
I’m a single Presbyterian dad who sends his kid to a Jewish school and has him play baseball on a Catholic school baseball team.
Guess I’m not moving to Indy anytime soon.
Unless of course they have a good Hindu basketball program my son can play on.
Edward: The Judge’s argument boiled down to insisting that because they send their son to a Catholic school, teaching him Wicca beliefs at home would cause confusion in him as he ages.
Hm. So, does this mean that parents who believe in Creationist theories ought not to be allowed to expose their children to their beliefs, since their children will be taught biological science in public school and this will “cause confusion in them” as they grow up?
You understand, I’m just being silly about this. As Slartibartfast observed: I’d submit that “best interests of the child” relate, as far as the court is concerned, only to physical and emotional neglect or abuse.
It’s always odd, yet strangely satisfying, when Slarti post something that I wholeheartedly agree with.
Edward_:
Not to carp about your post, or anything (for me, I agree 100% with the ICLU person who charcterized the probable striking of this provision as a “slam dunk” and fervently wish it so) – but the recap of the case you give misses a couple of points (which, to be fair, are not even immediately apparent even in the Indianapolis Star article in the link).
First, this “decision” is several months old: the Star’s piece recapping the issue in the case seems to have been prompted by the impending hearing of the father’s appeal of Judge Bradford’s ruling, filed in January. So it’s not as if this just popped up out of the blue.
Secondly (and in IMO, more importantly) the article points out that the “non-exposure to non-mainstream religion” proviso in the divorce/custody agreement was not the Judge’s decision on his own, but was the recommendation from an (presumably official State) outside agency, who had “reviewed” the Jones/Bristol divorce agreement, and inserted the Wicca-bashing bit themselves. Not that that excuses the judge for going along with this nonsense, of course – but it is. I think, an important point overlooked.
Of course, that would make your post less a case of “Proselytizing from the Bench” than one of “Proselytizing by Unelected and Unaccountable Social-Service Bureaucrats abetted by Sloppy Jursiprudence” – so I guess the snappier title works better!
Oh, and one carp: no first “t” in “Proselytizing”. Remember, Spellcheck Is Your Friend. 😉
“.. but I still think it’s hilarious that the Wiccans are sending their kid to a Catholic school! It sounds like a sitcom plot.”
I’m sure Agnes Morehead is still ticked that Samantha and Davin or Daikon or whatever his name was sent Tabitha to the local public school, too. I think she favored vouchers.
Actually, in places like the Philippines, where Catholicism is the dominant faith, there is a syncretism between the various Animist worldviews and Catholic practice. Same, same all over.
The comment by Trevino at Redstate says O.K. to legal tolerance but NOT to social tolerance. I don’t know what this means in this particular case. Should the Catholic school conduct an exorcism on the kid every morning in homeroom, or conversely, should the parents feed the kid some witch’s brew and cookies to purify him or her after school each day? Why not social tolerance? Will it kill ya?
Now I know how the Munster and Addams Family kids felt.
JayC…thanks for the clarifications and spelling corrections…
So, I pop back over to check the Trevino post at Redstate and the last sentence regarding social tolerance is not there. Did I imagine it?
Checked again. It’s back. Must be a loading delay.
Never mind.
I still think it’s hilarious that the Wiccans are sending their kid to Catholic school! It sounds like a sitcom plot.
Title that sitcom!
Title that sitcom!
“Bewitched, Baptized, and Bewildered.”
“Macbeth”?
I don’t know what this means in this particular case.
Probably nothing — I see no purpose in advocating a shunning of the unfortunate child. However, on a broader scale, I do see a great deal of purpose in generalized social ridicule of the likes of Wicca, Scientology, et al.
Bush’s Next Supreme Court Judicial Appointment?
Maybe he’ll pick this judge. Sounds like a real Bush kinda’ guy.
Title that sitcom!
Salem!
Out, damned blockquote!
Out, damned italic!
Social tolerance is a good thing: only those who have lived entirely privileged lives would think otherwise.
Judge Says Parents Can’t Teach Pagan Beliefs
There has to be something else going on here. Otherwise, I just can’t fathom how a judge could think for a second he was acting constitutionally. Kevin Corcoran for the Indianapolis Star has an article entitled Judge: Parents can’t teach…
“However, on a broader scale, I do see a great deal of purpose in generalized social ridicule of the likes of Wicca, Scientology, et al.”
Well, me too. I get this from my Protestant grandmother who, if I remember correctly, spat on the kitchen floor when I announced, against my mother’s shushing, that my high school girlfriend was Catholic.
Jesurgislac’s comment is flatly absurd. There are certainly things that society ought not tolerate. While we disagree on what those things are, the needed existence of mores and prohibitions on certain behaviors are not, I would think, in dispute among people of ordinary sense.
thanks Jes…I hate when that happens…anyone with typepad experience know how to prevent trackbacks from doing that
btw…totally agree with this: Social tolerance is a good thing: only those who have lived entirely privileged lives would think otherwise.
Tac,
I think we’re using “tolerance” in different ways. Jes and I more generically, and you more specifically.
I don’t think you do, Edward, given your disapproval of social tolerance — indeed, your expressions of social intolerance — for those who declare homosexuality intrinsically disordered. You, like most of the rest of us, have your preferred set of social mores that you wish to advance and see become common.
We’re not using it differently at all. You’re expressing support for a broad tolerance-as-intrinsic-virtue, and I’m using specifics to shoot that down.
Title that sitcom!
“The Wicked Virgin of the West”
Sorry
You’re shooting it down without offering an alternative…only this or that behaivor/set of beliefs is worthy of tolerance? Can’t you agree that tolerance, as a Christian virtue, should be supported?
“However, on a broader scale, I do see a great deal of purpose in generalized social ridicule of the likes of Wicca, Scientology, et al.”
Does et al include Christianity? I find it at least as silly as Wicca, although perhaps a little less so than Scientology. I’m not sure of the social value of ridiculing any of them, however. People seem to need religion and one is probably as good as another, with the exception of those religions that declare themselves to be THE religion and demand that their followers convert or kill all nonbelievers. That vision I think deserves social ridicule.
Tac: Scientology, sure. Diehard supporter of Operation Clambake here. Wicca, though? What have they done that’s so censurable?
Mores:
1. The accepted traditional customs and usages of a particular social group.
2. Moral attitudes.
3. Manners; ways.
Translation of “the needed existence of mores and prohibitions on certain behaviors are not, I would think, in dispute among people of ordinary sense.” into ordinary English:
Libertarians are stupid. Non-conservatives are crazy. People who disagree with me are wrong.
I’m not intending this as a comment on this particular case, but can there be any legitimate discrimination between long-established religions, which are often tied to ethnicity, and new religions, especially those centered on individuals? Should they always be treated identically? I’m not sure.
Also, in this case we have the issue of parents’ decisions about child raising being overruled by the government, which offsets the church-state issue, so I think it’s unlikely to have political resonance. I’m more worried about the political consequences of cases like the one about the Wiccan asking to give the opening prayer. The only logical resolution for that seems to me to be to prohibit the opening prayers entirely, which I’d favor but which is a political loser for the left. The alternative of allowing anyone who wants to to give the prayer would be even worse. If these are the sorts of church-state cases that keep coming up, I fear that the right will only become more energized and we’ll end up moving backward on the issue.
I should think the alternative is “social disapproval”; and indeed, I can’t see that what Tacitus is saying is even remotely controversial. While that disapproval need not be expressed in hostility towards individuals — particularly, in this case, children — nor as any sort of legal sanction, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with publicly saying, in general, “This behavior/set of beliefs is wrong, misguided or harmful.” (Or with society at large adopting it as a general proposition.) I seriously doubt that either Edward or Jesurgislac would disagree that there should be broad social disapproval of, say, the belief that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, or that women should be subservient to their husbands; nor with our respective socities actively opposing those beliefs.
It’s simply contrarian to state otherwise in a misguided aspiration towards some ideal.
You’re shooting it down without offering an alternative…
The alternative, of course, is the exercise of your own conscience and powers of reason on the world around you. “Tolerance” as set forth by Jesurgislac is indistinguishable from total moral and intellectual abdication. Dianne, for example, finds Christianity absurd. I disagree; but when I argue with her on the subject, my task is to argue the merits of Christianity — not insist that she suspend her rational processes for tolerance’s sake.
Can’t you agree that tolerance, as a Christian virtue, should be supported?
Tolerance as a Christian virtue is an exercise in personal behavior, not an exercise in suspension of personal judgment.
Tac:
I’ll agree with you insofar as this: social intolerance cannot be prevented in any meaningful way, so measures to prevent it would almost certainly have unintended consequences worse than the ills they seek to end. I would also say that since – as you note – social mores vary, any effort to stamp out “social intolerance” is doomed to end in the same yapping arguments about what is and is not worthy of social censure. If you think that the Catholic Church is a useless ossuary of troglodytic pederasts, or that wicca is right up there with Kwanzaa as a politically engineered pseudo-observance, there’s nothing the state can or should do about that.
Mind you, I’m talking about social intolerance, not downright bigotry or discrimination, which shade back under the strictures of the legal tolerance that we both may agree is appropriate.
Rilkefan summarizes my thoughts well enough, but that summary is not a paraphrase of the passage he quotes.
Wicca, though? What have they done that’s so censurable?
Depends on what you find censurable. For my part, a demonstrably falsified “religion” is pretty censurable. That’s all. We probably agree that Scientology is the more directly pernicious.
a useless ossuary of troglodytic pederasts
When I become a world-famous musician, I want Pitchfork to review my first album this way.
Another quick note:
Tacitus: I don’t think you do, Edward, given your disapproval of social tolerance — indeed, your expressions of social intolerance — for those who declare homosexuality intrinsically disordered.
Although it’s often misused — often by people who should know better, especially those who espouse this belief — the virtue of tolerance is not and has never been an absolutist position. Depending on how one defines it, there’s a vast spectrum of potential “tolerances” out there, some of which are what is meant by “tolerance is a virtue” and most of which are not. The position isn’t contradictory nor, to be specific, does it fall prey to the supposed contradiction you’ve inflicted on it above; this is a linguistic, not a moral or logical, failure in the way it’s been rendered into a bumpersticker.
Oh, one other thing: when you say “intrinsically disordered” it’s not clear whether you mean in a moral or biological way. If you purely meant the former, your point stands; if you meant to include the latter then there’s a category error at work. I’d recommend rephrasing that in future to avoid any potential confusion.
Depends on what you find censurable. For my part, a demonstrably falsified “religion” is pretty censurable.
Insofar as it makes any falsifiable claims, one could say the same thing of Christianity, no? [Ditto Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc; nothing particularly unique about any of the religions here.] And yes, it’s the pernicious aspect that, to me, makes Scientology far less acceptable — qualitatively less acceptable — than Wicca.
Phil:
I predict that you will find this incredibly funny.
I don’t think you do, Edward, given your disapproval of social tolerance — indeed, your expressions of social intolerance — for those who declare homosexuality intrinsically disordered.
Further on this point. If, as Tacitus argues, “Tolerance as a Christian virtue is an exercise in personal behavior, not an exercise in suspension of personal judgment,” does that personal behavior extend to voting to deny someone else marriage? I mean, you can judge for yourself that gay marriage is wrong, but doesn’t tolerance in this Christian sense demand you don’t stop others who think it’s not only right, but actually a right, from pursuing means to secure that right?
a demonstrably falsified “religion” is pretty censurable
well, that’s no good. “demonstrably falsifiable” pretty much encompasses the whole lot of them.
Depends upon the brand of Christianity you adhere to, Anarch. Some denominations do adhere to falsifiable tenets as points of doctrine. Obviously I don’t find mine to.
And yes, we agree on the basis for the qualitative degraded status of Scientology.
Tacitus: “Tolerance” as set forth by Jesurgislac is indistinguishable from total moral and intellectual abdication.
Excuse me? In this thread I have not set forth any definition of “tolerance”: nor I am certain exactly where you are deriving your summary of my views from. Can you cite where, exactly, I “set forth” my ideas of tolerance that you summarise here?
Don’t be silly, cleek — if you can disprove the existence of God, you’ll have achieved a first in human history. Moving on.
Edward, please note I didn’t say that Christian tolerance is an exercise in suspending all personal behavior. Christianity is not at its core reclusive monasticism: you still must engage in the world you live in, and do your best to be “salt and light,” to paraphrase the Gospel of….Matthew, I believe.
Tacitus: There are certainly things that society ought not tolerate.
There are indeed. But I don’t quite get why you think Wicca is one of them.
(Scientology? I think scientology is more than a little absurd, a religion invented by someone who couldn’t make it as a sci-fi writer. But many people believe in absurd things, and so long as they don’t insist that other people live by their absurd rules, I see no reason why they should not.)
Forgive me for assuming you expressed yourself coherently and in full, Jesurgislac. I should have assumed otherwise.
Jesurgislac’s comment is flatly absurd.
*blinks eyes*
Among people of ordinary sense, I would think that ‘social tolerance’ usually doesn’t really extend to anti-social acts (unless you are the CEO of a major company? ;^)).
About Scientology, that’s an interesting question. While I think it is waaaay out there, there are a number of very talented people who seem to have been able to pull something of value from it. How they did it, I have no idea, especially given that there is no small measure of responsibility for the movie ‘Battlefield Earth’ in there.
Of course, tolerance is a two barreled world, in that saying that you ‘tolerate’ someone is not really high praise. But it does indicate that you aren’t going to bully someone just because they worship in a different way, choose to believe in things you can’t believe in, or make some sort of funky clicking noise to signal agreement with you.
At any rate, a libertarian view is most amenable to me, in that behavior that doesn’t harm others should be tolerated. Beliefs as well, as long as they don’t harm others and they are not walled off but are forced to freely compete in the marketplace of ideas. fwiw
….I would think that ‘social tolerance’ usually doesn’t really extend to anti-social acts….
Well, here’s the absurdity of tolerance per se, yes? What defines an “anti-social act” except that which you or society won’t tolerate?
Edward, please note I didn’t say that Christian tolerance is an exercise in suspending all personal behavior.
Actually, Tacitus, you didn’t say anything about suspending personal behavior…merely that “Tolerance as a Christian virtue is an exercise in personal behavior.” I took that to mean that although a Christian may not like the fact their neighbors drink alcohol, for example, they don’t try to physically stop them when they pop the top off a cold one. With regards to the case example, anti-gay voters are not “suspending” anything…they are actively working to deny someone else something. This goes beyond merely engaging in the world and enters the realm of repression.
For my part, a demonstrably falsified “religion” is pretty censurable.
What does “dmonstrably falsified” mean here? What central tenets of doctrine of a religion have been demonstrably falsified?
Tacitus: Well, here’s the absurdity of tolerance per se, yes?
No: it is merely the absurdity of assuming that if social tolerance is declared to be a social good, it means one must tolerate all anti-social acts – murder, theft, child abuse, torture.
st, that’s great. I’ve seen Cross live — opening for Aimee Mann and Michael Penn on the “Acoustic Alchemy” tour they did — and he was superb.
Jes, are you aware of the, er, extralegal (and legal but harrassing) means to which Scientology sometimes resorts to silence its critics? Or its tendency to hold members captive and abuse them?
Edward, you’re right — I didn’t originally say anything about suspending behavior. Quite so. Because I never thought all behavior should be suspended.
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing meaningful I can say to counter, in your mind, the contention that actively disapproving of a radical and unprecedented redefinition of the basic unit of society constitutes “repression.” Although I suppose, in a strict sense, it is repression inasmuch as my wife’s refusal to accede to my redefinition of my marriage to include Angelina Jolie is an example of her repressing me according to my redefinition of the term. (Sadly, it appears that Angelina Jolie is also refusing to accede and is therefore repressing me as well.)
See reply to LJ above, Jesurgislac. Covered ground. I’d backtrack on this one.
Edward: “Tac, I think we’re using “tolerance” in different ways. Jes and I more generically, and you more specifically.”
Tac: “We’re not using it differently at all. You’re expressing support for a broad tolerance-as-intrinsic-virtue, and I’m using specifics to shoot that down.”
I don’t think virtues, in general, work the way Tac suggests. Take an obvious virtue like generosity: trying to be a generous person does not mean accepting some claim like: whenever I can offer help to anyone, I should. And it is not falsified by pointing out particular counterexamples like: suppose you saw Hitler struggling with some very difficult problem about how to successfully prosecute genocide, and you saw the answer; would you “help” him? What if, in 1938, you were walking along the beach and saw Hitler drowning; would you help him then? Etc. You can answer ‘no’ to any of these questions and still be in favor of generosity as a general virtue. Likewise, being in favor of justice, in general, does not rule out thinking that it should, on occasion, be tempered by virtue.
If this is right, then being in favor of tolerance as a general virtue is not falsified by specific counterexamples of the sort Tac provides.
Besides, many virtues involve what you might think of as built-in requirements for the exercise of judgment. To stick to uncontroversial virtues again: consider courage. Courage involves the willingness to risk your life, if necessary. But the ‘if necessary’ part is key: courage does not involve being willing to run any old risk to your life that crosses your path (as in: oh look, here’s a hand grenade, I would display courage by pulling out the pin and lying on top of it!), but only those risks that you need to run in order to achieve some worthwhile purpose. (As Aristotle said, the exercise of judgment is what separates courage from rashness.)
Tolerance, I would think, is a willingness to let others act on their sincerely held beliefs, when those beliefs do not harm others, and a commitment to making sure that something does harm others before trying to forbid it. (Accepting that the burden of proof is on those who would forbid others from acting on their sincerely held beliefs.) In the case of Christianity, at least, I would also think it involves an unwillingness to use to coercive power of the state to enforce rules designed to prevent harms that can be seen to be harms only through revelation, not through natural reason. (I limit this to Christianity because the relevant terms are taken from straight Christian theology, and i don’t feel like translating them into other idioms just now.) Thus, if one’s reason for thinking that e.g. Wicca was harmful essentially required the truth of Christianity as a premiss, a tolerant Christian would not seek to legally proscribe or penalize it; whereas one would be willing to outlaw e.g. a religion involving human sacrifice.
social intolerance — for those who declare homosexuality intrinsically disordered.
I hide my wallet and start paying particularly sceptical attention when someone claims that a behavior is “intrinsically disordered”. If one can show that a behavior is harmful to the actor or to society, that is useful to know, and it may be reasonable to assert that such behavior is disordered, but asserting that something is just intrinsically disordered without being willing or able to actually show, to actually use evidence, shows a profound abdication of what I consider to be a fundamental social and moral duty to actually consider your own moral standards, consider the evidence that supports them and consider the harm that your standards cause, as well as the harm that is caused by not following such standards.
As far as I can tell, each of us have a duty to learn enough about others that we do not unthinkingly apply our unconsidered moral standards to others in a way that harms them because of our indifference or ignorance. That, as I understand it, is what Jesus and the Buddha and other great teachers have taught. Sadly, there are many people who consider themselves to be Christian who refuse to treat others with honor or dignity, who don’t care how badly they stray from the teachings of Jesus.
Tac again: “What defines an “anti-social act” except that which you or society won’t tolerate?” Actually, there are lots of ways. An act that harms another person, in ways discernible through the use of natural reason, for one. But there are lots of others.
Tacitus–I would argue that “a radical and unprecedented redefinition of the basic unit of society” is a fairly good description of Christianity for the first several centuries. How would you differentiate the (for the time) anti-family and severely socially debilitating practice of Christianity in pre-Constantine Rome from someone choosing to practice Wicca or some other “non-mainstream” religion today?
Social tolerance might to be tied into ‘judge not, lest you be judged’, which is also from the Gospel of … Matthew, I believe, though I like Luke 6:37 better…
At any rate, Gary does this stuff with a lot more panache and flair.
Phil: Jes, are you aware of the, er, extralegal (and legal but harrassing) means to which Scientology sometimes resorts to silence its critics?
I had read about this happening, yes. I am not clear that Scientology has been demonstrably worse than most other religions in this regard.
Phil: Or its tendency to hold members captive and abuse them?
I had also read about this happening, but wasn’t sure how seriously to take the reports – they seemed to be on a FoaF level (those I’d read). If Scientological churches are in the habit of holding their members captive – whether or not they abuse them – this falls easily into the category of “anti-social behavior”, if not actual criminal assault.
I seriously doubt that either Edward or Jesurgislac would disagree that there should be broad social disapproval of, say, the belief that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, or that women should be subservient to their husbands; nor with our respective socities actively opposing those beliefs.
I only wish that there were also broad social disapproval of the belief that Islam is inferior to Christianity, that gays are inferior to straights, that parents have a right to abuse and bully their gay children in order to persuade them into appearing straight.
But I’ll take the social tolerance that says Christians and Muslims and Jews each have a right to worship the same God in their different ways: that Wiccans have a right to believe “An’ it harm none, do what ye will”: that Scientologists have a right to believe that L. Ron Hubbard is a great writer: that I have a right to believe that there is no God. And that, assuming all of us had children going to the same school, no teacher would be allowed to ridicule any child or their parents for their beliefs.
(All religions have some tenets, I suppose, that have been disproved as a matter of fact, and in such cases all the school can do is teach the facts: America was not first populated by a wave of immigrants from the Middle East, whatever the Book of Mormon says; Wicca as a religion developed in the early 20th century; and Creationism is religious fantasy, not scientific fact; and so on. If this leads the child to question his/her parents’ beliefs, that’s unavoidable.)
Hilzoy, I don’t find much to disagree with in your characterization of virtues, except where we come to tolerance-as-virtue — it’s been so badly abused that in the modern context, it virtually demands qualification.
I’m not at all convinced that Christianity equals libertarianism.
I do think you need to elaborate further on your definition of an anti-social act, though: in the one example you give, I can think of many acts that bring harm to persons that societies would tolerate.
Don’t be silly, cleek — if you can disprove the existence of God, you’ll have achieved a first in human history. Moving on.
i look around, i don’t see a god. i don’t find evidence there ever was a god. i don’t see anything that requires a god. good enough for me.
the fact that the typical ‘god’ needs to reside in a place logic and rhetoric can’t touch does little to help his followers’ cause.
“Rilkefan summarizes my thoughts well enough, but that summary is not a paraphrase of the passage he quotes.”
Tac, still not sure if you knew what “mores” meant. In some ideal world I could write “Quo usque tandem abutere Tacite patientia nostra?” knowing everyone would understand the relevance to “mores”. Sadly, standards have slipped (mine, too – guessing on the vocative – any help there, Anarch?).
Anyway, your comment gave me a good laugh, thanks. What you wrote didn’t say what you meant, but you write that what it says is what you mean. Priceless.
Nous, I don’t see much difference between the familial views of early Christianity and the Roman ideal (as opposed, of course, to the Roman practice) of family as espoused by Augustine.
LJ, I believe that passage is an admonition against personal pride versus others rather than a call to suspend moral faculties wholesale.
I am not clear that Scientology has been demonstrably worse than most other religions in this regard.
Wow. I guess this goes to follow, though.
good enough for me.
Indeed. Don’t labor under the illusion that what satisfies you equates to proof.
Tac, still not sure if you knew what “mores” meant.
Okay.
cleek-
If you read various religious texts, these gods were ongoing actors in life, up to the point that people discovered the natural explanation for what has happened and then the god was relegated more and more to position that was out of nature, until the major gods that survive today are almost completely divorced from the gods that they were when the storytellers were inventing them.
Of course, there is no reason to disprove any gods. Tac won’t try to disprove Jove or Thor because he knows it’s a fool’s errand. Things that do not exist cannot be proven not to exist.
Tac: true; I was just trying to make the general point that there are ways of explaining what societies ought not to tolerate other than: “what we won’t tolerate”. (I mean, there are arguments to be made about what society should or should not tolerate, which your remark seemed to imply couldn’t be made.) I was just wondering whether making this rather minor point required me to go on and say: of course, one needs to ask about the costs and/or harms of prohibiting something, the intrusiveness of the prohibition, etc., etc.; especially since I was just trying to give one example of what, other than ‘I don’t feel like tolerating X’, one might say, not a fully worked out view… when the phone rang, and I hit ‘post’. Oops.
I didn’t think I meant to say that Christianity = libertarianism. (Certainly I can’t see what in my post implied e.g. that it would be wrong to tax people in order to pay for social services, etc.) I do think (speaking as an ex-serious Christian who remembers how she tried to act at the time) that it’s always important for Christians to distinguish those actions s/he takes to be wrong, but whose wrongness is not and should not be apparent to non-Christians, from those actions whose wrongness is apparent to them.
I always thought, for instance, as a Christian I had to think that sex outside marriage was wrong, since any remotely plausible reading of the Bible yielded that conclusion; but I could not for the life of me see why. That wasn’t a problem for me: it was just one more illustration of the fact that God is omniscient and I am not, from which it obviously followed that I should not expect to understand everything. But it did mean that I did not condemn non-Christians who had sex outside marriage. (More precisely: I might think they were doing other wrong things by doing this, in specific cases: lying to their spouses, for instance, or acting with a lack of charity; but I thought that extra-marital sex per se was not wrong in any way that ought to be clear to them.)
I remember when I was a Catholic, and I wanted to leave the church…they kept me locked in the basement for months. Honest, true story. Plus, the Pope sues practically anyone who has a bad word to say about Catholicism.
Wait…hang on, I’ve got to go answer the door
See: ether wind.
(Sadly, it appears that Angelina Jolie is also refusing to accede and is therefore repressing me as well.)
Can I just say (and I hope Bambino’s not reading), but that woman is h-o-t hot! I know I’ll get kicked out of the gay club (and a few others) for this, but in the same way that many of my straight friends admit an attraction to Johnny Depp or Rob Lowe, I find Ms. Jolie simply irresistible. Tacita is being totally unprogressive about this… ;-p
sorry…back to my PC liberal rantings…
Don’t labor under the illusion that what satisfies you equates to proof
i won’t if you won’t
I have to go now. So if a fight breaks out, the answer to the question ‘where is hilzoy?’ is: not here.
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable approach to living one’s Christianity, Hilzoy. I don’t think it completely covers all things — for example, if you adhere to Catholic teachings on life at conception, you’re pretty much compelled to act regardless of non-Christians’ perception — but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb for daily life.
Besides, many virtues involve what you might think of as built-in requirements for the exercise of judgment.
Your Kant is showing…
And, in a completely non-patronizing sense, if you worked that rule of thumb out on your own, I’m pretty impressed.
“they kept me locked in the basement for months.”
Did you at least have a cask of amontillado for company?
LJ, I believe that passage is an admonition against personal pride versus others rather than a call to suspend moral faculties wholesale.
You might want to note that the Golden Rule occurs right before that. I’ve never heard the Golden Rule described as an admonition against personal pride.
If you read various religious texts, these gods were ongoing actors in life, up to the point that people discovered the natural explanation for what has happened and then the god was relegated more and more to position that was out of nature, until the major gods that survive today are almost completely divorced from the gods that they were when the storytellers were inventing them.
and they’re not at all happy about it (Gaiman, American Gods).
LJ, isn’t Scientology more or less infinitely more compatible with an educated worldview than Christianity? It has only one point of supernaturalism – souls, something I guess I can imagine science surviving – whereas the Mormons and Catholics and so forth believe in an omniscient omnipotent entity, which makes all of physics a joke. I’d say it’s more reasonable than astrology too for that matter, though much less so than UFO worship.
Slarti: I remember when I was a Catholic, and I wanted to leave the church…they kept me locked in the basement for months. Honest, true story.
Should I therefore conclude the Catholic Church ought to be condemned in its entirety? I don’t think so, even though I disrespect its inability (or unwillingness) to put the safety of children first, ahead of the reputation of the Church.
I will condemn those who were involved in abuse, or in covering-up for abuse, and more widely, those who believe that their Church gives them a right to abuse. Whether Scientologists, or Catholics, or Mormons, – or any other religion.
But I see no reason to condemn an entire church or an entire religion and its adherents, because some members of the church have committed horrible crimes, and others have systematically covered up for them.
Things that do not exist cannot be proven not to exist.
See: ether wind.
Okay, smarty — things that do not exist cannot be proven not to exist to people who are attached to the idea of their existence. They will always needlessly multiply entities, Occam be damned.
Jesurgislac, I would suggest, in cases like those, examining to what extent the malign behavior is a logical outgrowth of that faith’s orthodoxy.
As for Scientology only having a single point of supernaturalism….oy.
Slart-
It is true that scientists do not bother with the concept of liminiferous ether any more, but that is not because the ether itself was disproven, but because the mechanism that required ether to exist was shown to be an inaccurate understanding of the way light was propagated. Once scientists no longer needed a luminiferous ether to explain the propagation of light, they discarded the hypothesis of the ether, rather than try to redefine ether by giving it other characteristics.
Ether was not proven not to exist, it was merely discarded when it was no longer necessary using the principle of parsimony.
Tacitus–I don’t see much difference between the familial views of early Christianity and the Roman ideal (as opposed, of course, to the Roman practice) of family as espoused by Augustine
Augustine was late in the game as far as Roman ideals are concerned and he tends towards radical redefinition when viewed against his predecessors. He himself is a figure of institutional revolution which won out in the long run (one can argue) because it mitigated the more anti-social tendencies of the 200+ years of Christian theology which preceded it and allowed it to co-exist with secular and temporal politics.
What I am talking about is primarily a feature of pre-Augustinian Christianity, though I include several centuries post-Augustine because it took a while for the relative positions to settle into anything like an internally consistent argument.
Specifically, what I’m talking about is the way in which Christian rhetoric drove a wedge between the traditional family authority (the paterfamilias) and his children. This is more than just a societal shift in Roman eyes, since it is also an attack on the very idea of the family as a continuous expression of the various ancestral spirits. Christianity espoused a radical break with this practice of ancestor veneration and eroded the social institutions which had grown from these familial practices.
But this is all getting rather esoteric for the question at hand. My main point is that the very viewpoint you defend was itself once a huge disruption of social practice and that to censure those who now exercise a similar individualist and anti-societal choice is to ignore this. Christianity was once where Wicca is today, still sorting out details and getting its story and theology straight.
Personally, I think the point Jes is making with regards to Scientology and other newer religions vs. Catholicism or other relatively older religions (where’s our Jewish friends?…my business partner who is Jewish simply laughs each time a Christian calls another religion a cult) is valid and reveals that social mores have ways of curbing religious excesses just as much as religions have ways of curbing social excesses over time. Three centuries from now Scientology might stand as the most idealistic and human of all religions for all we know. Which isn’t to say we can’t criticize its excesses now, but that suggesting it’s “junk” because of them misses the forest for the trees here.
“Things that do not exist cannot be proven not to exist.”
My thesis proved that a theorized class of Z-coupled particles of a certain mass do not exist.
The stuff literalist Christians have to believe – witchcraft, magic powers from forgotten gods, pig-possessing spirits, etc etc – can of course not be disproven in the above sense.
LJ, isn’t Scientology more or less infinitely more compatible with an educated worldview than Christianity?
I don’t know, I just know that Chick Corea is a Scientologist, and if I could play the piano like that, I would be down at the local recruiting office singing the praises of L. Ron post haste. But that might just be my foolish pride speaking.
Tacitus: Jesurgislac, I would suggest, in cases like those, examining to what extent the malign behavior is a logical outgrowth of that faith’s orthodoxy.
Certainly.
It is an orthodox belief in the Catholic church that an ordained priest is God’s representative on earth. It is an orthodox belief among many Christian sects that all are guilty of “original sin”.
It is a logical outgrowth of that orthodoxy to believe that children are more likely to be sinful than priests – because all are wicked from infancy: further, that women are more innately sinful than men. And that, because all priests are God’s representatives, even when a priest is proved to be a child abuser, it is more important to protect the reputation of the priesthood than it is to protect the children who may be abused by this priest in the future.
The malign behavior of the Catholic Church towards the children in the care of priests and nuns, who were physically and sometimes sexually abused, is indeed a logical outgrowth of that faith’s orthodoxy. That still doesn’t mean condemning every Catholic without reference to whether they support or are horrified by this aspect of their church’s beliefs.
Let’s walk though this slowly, shall we? Luminiferous ether was supposed to have some effect on light propagation. That effect was shown to be indistinguishable from zero, and much smaller than the effect predicted. Since its effects on light propagation was the only predicted property of luminiferous ether, the hypothesis that there was such a thing was negated. If your point is that there may be some undetectable thing out there called luminiferous ether, my point is that ain’t it, and even if it were, it’s indistinguishable from nonexistence.
Ditto phlogiston.
I only wish that there were also broad social disapproval of the belief that Islam is inferior to Christianity, that gays are inferior to straights, that parents have a right to abuse and bully their gay children in order to persuade them into appearing straight.
Me too. I do what I can.
Edward, Scientology isn’t junk because of its excesses. It’s junk because it relies on demonstrably falsifiable premises, e.g., that alcoholism or heroin addiction can be cured by having addicts hold on to a couple of tin cans hooked up to a multimeter and watching the needle jump. (And then using the publicly-perceived status and insight of celebrities to lure people to this load of crap.) It also proposes that salvation, as it were, can be purchased by its adherents, and that the more you spend, the more “clear” you become.
We won’t even get into the alien-spirits-inhabiting-human-bodies stuff.
I just know that Chick Corea is a Scientologist
Beck, too. which sucks, because i don’t like knowing that someone as clever as that would fall for something a non-clever as Scientology.
oh well.
It’s junk because it relies on demonstrably falsifiable premises,
My presumption about those Phil, as moronic as they are, is that if the rest of what attracts people to Scientology can withstand and evolve past those premises, it may emerge as another valuable faith.
It’s junk because it relies on demonstrably falsifiable premises
No, it’s junk because it is a massive scam, a huge pyramid scheme cynically (and, occasionally, violently) manipulated for obscene profit by a handful of very, very rich con men. Given this, I profoundly doubt that it will “emerge as another valuable faith,” unless one intends “valuable” to mean “owning many many things of great value.”
Ok, I’ll concede that Scientology may never evolve out of its junk status…but my point is that religions do evolve from cult status into mainstream respectability and it behooves us to remember that with regard to declaring cults invalid. In other words, simply follow the First Amendment.
“Remember, Spellcheck Is Your Friend. ;)”
If you mean “using a program,” and that’s all, nah, it’s the enemy. It consistently leads to properly spelled homonyms that are the wrong word choices. The only way to spell properly and consistently is to learn to do so, and to be patient enough to look up anything that inspires the slightest doubt. A program can’t yet check if a word is the wrong word properly spelled.
“Excuse me? In this thread I have not set forth any definition of ‘tolerance’: nor I am certain exactly where you are deriving your summary of my views from. Can you cite where, exactly, I ‘set forth’ my ideas of tolerance that you summarise here?”
A challenge you find utterly unfair when put to you, you issue in regard to others. Noted.
A thought applicable in many directions: someone said: “The straw that is in thy brother’s eye, though seest; but the beam that is in thine own eye, thou seest not! When thou hast cast out the beam that is in thine own eye, then thou wilt see to cast out the straw from thy brother’s eye.”
Tacitus asserts “the contention that actively disapproving of a radical and unprecedented redefinition of the basic unit of society.”
Using “society” as a singular here is an interesting choice, since it omits any discussion of whose society, where, and when, and when used in conjunction with “unprecedented,” opens up a world of precedent for discussion, comparison, and contemplation, from the society of the ancient Greeks to African and Polynesian societies, to societies where polyamy has been a norm, and so on. The idea of a heterosexual, dualistically-based, strictly nuclear, family, is hardly the only “precedent” in history, and alternative schema have, on the contrary, perfectly normal over the past 50,000 years, or even 10,000, as measured descriptively, rather than prescriptively, or by choosing a preferred sample set.
Phil: “I am not clear that Scientology has been demonstrably worse than most other religions in this regard.”
There are a number of good books detailing the history; I’d suggest looking into them. Or reading up on the Internets. Few “religions” have such extremely detailed histories of being such a simple and direct money-scamming scheme, from conception through today. (If you buy concepts that arise from articles in Astounding Science Fiction, I suggest also looking into and defending the “Hieronymous machine” and, of course, the Dean Drive, as valid “religious” beliefs.)
Oh, sorry, that was Jes, not Phil.
Er . . . that’s like saying, “If Christianity can get past the ideas of virgin births and resurrections and invisible men in the sky and whatnot, it may turn into something worthwhile.” A religion is its premises. I mean, I can see your point in a real general “whatever gets you through the night” kind of way, but other than that, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. If we could take all the woo-woo stuff out of all religions, I guess they’d all be equally valuable, in that they’d all be equally superfluous. Well, more so.
JFTR, Ron Hubbard has committed far more serious literary crimes than “Battlefield Earth”. Arguably, making it into a movie and starring in it ought to carry some artistic penalty, though.
And Forrest Whittaker has no excuse for this one, unless he’s another Scientologist. Seriously, they could have gotten Tom Cruise to play a puny human.
“…Chick Corea is a Scientologist….”
LJ, a key strategy of Scientology, at its strategic heart in the last thirty years, is to target celebrities and shower them with vast benefits, money (if they need it), support, publicity, and simply every kind of seductive benefit imaginable (use your imagination). It’s a shrewd strategy, since in modern culture, there’s no amount of money and effort that can be put into this that doesn’t repay itself many times in terms of the broader acceptance that is gained by people engaging in precisely the reasoning you are jocularly asserting here. (“If Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, John Travolta, and Chick Corea, et al, say their lives have been changed, this must have something to it, no matter how wacky it seems!”)
Coming back to the sitcom idea. The Hollywood types in all their creative magnificence would come up with something like the Wiccan family having an ironic last name like ‘the Crosses.’ Bob and Laura Cross. The judge would be their neighbor for the Agnes Kratz effect. The parents would seem completely normal but the boy would be Eddie Munster like.
And the title of the show? “Cross Purposes”
And Tacitus would be the guy whose forehead appears over the backyard fence.
Sorry, “prove” is a slippery word, and I started this by responding to discussion of Tacitus’s comment where he made the challenge to cleek to disprove God. It has been my experience that the total lack of evidence supporting any claims about the characteristic of a deity will not be accepted as proof that such deity does not exist.
rilkefan wrote: My thesis proved that a theorized class of Z-coupled particles of a certain mass do not exist.
slart wrote: If your point is that there may be some undetectable thing out there called luminiferous ether, my point is that ain’t it, and even if it were, it’s indistinguishable from nonexistence.
I agree completely with both of you that scientists routinely demonstrate by the evidence or lack of evidence, i.e. prove, in one very meaningful sense, that something does not exist. I’m not convinced that Tacitus was using “prove” in that sense when he made his challenge. When you substitute selected$deity for luminiferous ether in slart’s post, it turns out that many people become upset. It’s that atheistic methodological naturalism, you know. It just cannot be trusted.
I’ve spent too much time following discussions with the anti-science crowd about evolution. There the science folks have essentially decided that it’s easier to stop using “prove” except in the purely mathematical sense than try to track which particular meaning the anti-science person is trying to switch to this time.
Nous, Augustine strikes me as a fair place to start, given that his reign is when Christianity started. Well, depending on how you date the latter, I suppose. The break in the concept of the family-in-history as exemplified by the practice of ancestral deification did not constitute a break in the very structure of the family: roles were redefined with reference to the gods and ancestors, not so much with reference, in a practical sense, to one another. A family before Christianity would remain identifiable as such after Christianity.
As for Wicca being where Christianity was once at, obviously I disagree. Christianity, at the least, began historical existence as a Jewish sect — an outgrowth of an extant and established faith. Wicca (like Scientology) was created ex nihilo by some cranks in living memory. Rather different.
It is a logical outgrowth of that orthodoxy to believe that children are more likely to be sinful than priests….
Jesurgislac, not only have you engaged in a total non sequitur here, you’re also dead wrong — precisely backwards, in this case — on Catholic orthodoxy’s teachings on the sinfulness of man. You are quite right in identifying a horrific structural and cultural pathology within that Church, but you haven’t established that this is due to its doctrinal orthodoxy.
“Which isn’t to say we can’t criticize its excesses now, but that suggesting it’s “junk” because of them misses the forest for the trees here.”
Edward, can a “religion” created for the sole purpose of being a scam to make money and gain control over people be criticized merely for “its excesses now”? You’re putting Dianetics (never claimed to be a “religion” in the slightest for years, until L. Ron realized that that was an infinitely better way to go, because people would grant the benefit of the doubt precisely as you are doing) under a shield of “tolerance” here without, forgive me for mindreading, knowing very much at all about its history, details, origins, and practice, I have reason to believe from your words about it. (If I’m wrong, and you can, say, explain a basic such as what a “thetan” is, or what “MEST” is, or without Googling, my apologies.)
I’d strongly recommend, say, starting out by reading Barefaced Messiah, which is readably in its entirety here, before assuming it is just another “religion.”
More or less everything you need to know is here, although I was up on the ins and outs of this since at least age 12, when I was able to speak firsthand with many witnesses at the creation, such as Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov, and many others, about this stuff, and kept up as things developed since 1970.
The idea of a heterosexual, dualistically-based, strictly nuclear, family, is hardly the only “precedent” in history….
Shall we strip it down and state that while homosexuality was socially tolerated at various points in Western civilization, such relationships were never considered to constitute an institutional peer of heterosexual marriage?
I thought the whole God Doesn’t Exist thing had been cleared up by the existence of the Babel Fish. See Well That About Wraps It Up For God by Oolon Colluphid.
Wicca by the way could probably trace its roots back further than Christianity if you look toward the Celts.
Judge: Parents Can’t Teach Pagan Beliefs
An Indiana judge has ordered a divorced couple not to raise him as a Wiccan.
Judge: Parents can’t teach pagan beliefs (Indianapolis Star)
An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge’s unusual order that prohibits him and …
True story: the Waldenbooks at which I briefly worked in high school was trolled by Scientologists who posed as Waldenbooks corporate personnel and threatened us for not properly displaying “bestsellers” like L. Ron Hubbard’s latest. This was in Clearwater, Florida, which ought to ring some bells.
My manager, to his credit, put up a store display with anti-Hubbard books.
Sorry, aside from a number of other unfortunate typos I left in my past couple of comments, such as typoing “polygamy,” I broke the link for Barefaced Messiah.
Shall we strip it down and state that while homosexuality was socially tolerated at various points in Western civilization, such relationships were never considered to constitute an institutional peer of heterosexual marriage?
Doesn’t it depend on state actions involved in marriage? One of the arguments for same sex marriage today is that the state is involved in giving benefits to married couples that it denies to unmarried couples. Opposite sex couples have the right to decide whether they will take advantage of these benefits. If there was no reason for the state to get involved with same sex couples, why would the state have made a big deal of it one way or the other?
State action has also changed toward children who, until recently, were legally ignored by their father if the father was not married to the mother. It has also changed concerning polygamy, from being required in leverite marriage in the Bible, to being completely condemned today.
Gary,
I’ve already conceded your point.
Tacitus,
Shall we strip it down and state that while homosexuality was socially tolerated at various points in Western civilization, such relationships were never considered to constitute an institutional peer of heterosexual marriage?
Sure, but apply that same chronology to slavery or sufferage or a host of other progressive accomplishments in the advance of human rights…tradition does not trump all.
It has been my experience that the total lack of evidence supporting any claims about the characteristic of a deity will not be accepted as proof that such deity does not exist.
it’s a nice arrangement – you can give him any attributes you like, credit him with anything, build fantastic backstories around him and there’s no way anyone can argue against it logically because pedants can always wiggle out the trap-door of logical unfalsifiability, chuckling mordantly to themselves.
of course, by defending god this way, they’re avoiding the problem of logically proving there’s anything worth defending in the first place.
“…in Western civilization….”
Tacitus, why is Western civilization the only relevant precedent in this context? Your statement was of “a radical and unprecedented redefinition of the basic unit of society.” How abouts we first settle if we’re actually referring to human society on an anthropological basis, such as over, say, 50,000 years of human society, or something limited to recorded history, such as the last five thousand years, or some time span specifically narrower, and if “society” is narrowed in your usage from “the world” to something narrower (“Western”?)?
Cleek,
for me, what’s worth defending is the idea of faith.
Tac–roles were redefined with reference to the gods and ancestors, not so much with reference, in a practical sense, to one another. A family before Christianity would remain identifiable as such after Christianity.
Not in the Kuhnian sense. This is a paradigm shift–while the structure of the family unit remains outwardly the same, the meaning of these relationships changes radically. When Perpetua defies her father and places the highest value on the status of her individual soul, she is also defying the authority of the Genius Paterfamilias and the other dii familiaris. This is a rejection of the family unit (which includes the ancestors) for the sake of an individual religious belief, and, to Roman minds, it means a rejection of the agreement (contract) between the ancestors and the living on which family fortunes are based in favor of adoption into a new ‘spiritual’ meta-family (think Jesus’ claim that his disciples, rather than his mother and blood-siblings were his ‘real’ family) .
That seems to me rather like arguing that the shift from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican system is not radical because the difference in actual measurement is less than a degree, but then I am biased.
I also disagree with your dating of the formation of the church to Augustine, but that is irrelevant to the larger point here.
Why is there any obligation to prove that a god does not eixst? No one has to prove the nonexistance of the Tooth Fairy. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on those making the assertion of existence, especially since it is faith-based assertion. But I certainly am not trying to talk any one out of their beliefs. I just think the default mode, so to speak, is that there is no god.
About Wicca–it’s supposed to be the old Celtic religion, but, since hardly anything is known about the old religion, the modern form is mostly made up. Sadly, some Native American ceremonies are “made up” in the same way, ie. the orginal ritual died with the people who knew the ritual, so modern people do their best to recreate something in the spirit of the tradition.
Since all religons are made up, I don’t see why the more recent invention of one makes it any less worthy than one that was made up a thousand or more years ago.
Wicca by the way could probably trace its roots back further than Christianity if you look toward the Celts.
Eh, not so much. Wicca might use a lot of poorly-thought-out Celtic signifiers, but it’s pretty much entirely traceable to the last 100 years or so. IIRC, its roots are in the late 19th/early20th century interest in Spiritualism.
for me, what’s worth defending is the idea of faith
frankly, it’s all a big bunch of hooey, in my eyes; faith is superstition in Sunday clothes.
but, at the same time i understand that my opinion is meaningless to those who do believe. and, i understand that most find faith and religion useful, comforting, a force for good, etc.. and so, like lily above, i’m not about to try to talk anyone out of their beliefs (as if i could).
Phil,
I said roots. It could be argued that they are an offshoot of paganism, masonism and other Celt oriented “religions”. They certainly are not ex nihlo.
And Joe Smith’s little group?
For a well researched examination of the history of Wicca, I recommend Triumph of the Moon: A history of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ronald Hutton.
And Tacitus would be the guy whose forehead appears over the backyard fence.
No, because he won’t socially tolerate the Wiccans. Which I think is just soooooo contrary to what this country’s about; to distinguish political tolerance from social tolerance strikes me as a move that none of the Founders could have taken seriously.
Social tolerance, to me, is participating with fellow citizens in the workplace, the agora, etc., without regard for their differing races, creeds, etc.
You can draw the line at personal tolerance (“thanks but no thanks on us drawing down the moon with you this Friday, Bob”), but to “tolerate” my neighbor’s right to be Wiccan, or gay, or Republican, while shunning him, doesn’t sound like a civic principle for any country that free people would care to live in.
And as for “demonstrably falsified,” that’s been kicked into oblivion by now, but I do wonder what ever happened to faith’s being the evidence of things not seen? It’s very weird for a “Christian” to reject “demonstrably falsified” religions; the pagans found nothing easier than to “demonstrably falsify” Christianity. Popper is not a theologian.
Masons are Celtish? They sure did adopt some Old Testament and cut it to fit along the way.
seems to me that the burden of proof is on those making the assertion of existence, especially since it is faith-based assertion
Ummm…this kind of assumes that people of faith are under some obligation to engage in this argument with active nonbelievers. This, I think, misapprehends the entire edifice of faith. It is not necessary to “prove” the existence of god to successfully convert someone (though this may be necessary for some hard cases); if that were true, the catholic church, among the most successful proselytizers in history, would have an absolute unrebuttable proof to be whipped out at need. Of course there is no rationally testable, utterly convincing proof of the truth of any religion – if there were, that religion would have swept all before it.
Humans are utterly inured to the spiritual experience through millennia of religious practice of various types. It’s just not a rational-proof kind of experience; it’s a different muscle than the one that lifts mathematical proofs. It can be deceived, but it can also become the root and foundation of a person’s entire existence. It’s an immensely powerful element of either human psychology or the human soul, depending on your preference. The inveterate skeptics see it as an Achilles heel to be protected (“How did all those smart people become Scientologists? That’s kind of scary!”), whereas true believers find it renders them invulnerable (“the Shield of Faith”, Ephesians 6:16).
But I just don’t think that burdens of proof enter into it.
“Wicca might use a lot of poorly-thought-out Celtic signifiers, but it’s pretty much entirely traceable to the last 100 years or so”
The basis of Mormonism is entirely traceable to one 19th century man who claimed revealed knowledge of God’s will, using Christianity as a background. Christianity and Islam are each based on a man’s claim of revealed knowledge of God’s will as well (in this case, including the claim that he was the chosen one of God) and his knowledge of Jewish law, which may have been no better than 20th century Wiccans’ knowledge of Celtic ritual. So what? If the religion has meaning for people and helps them live happier lives, maybe even helps them be better, more moral people, what do the origins matter?
Not to mention, that it made up an entire civilization for which there is no evidence at all for, outside the Book of Mormon. But what the hell…six impossible things before breakfast.
Sorry cleek doesn’t like the nature of faith. But it is, you know, faith. If he prefers alternatives, there’s roughly a century past of instructive official atheism for him to look to.
I think Lily and Phil have killed the idea of Wiccan antiquity well enough.
Gary, you are of course free to embrace the whole of human experience from Aztec cannibalism to Chinese female infantcide as your cultural forebears as you prefer. Given, though, that the reality is that our liberal democratic society is the descendant, in varying proportions, of Greek, Roman and Jewish thought and culture, I prefer to keep things firmly within “the West,” as the shorthand goes. While it’s interesting that some Himalayan cultures practiced polyandry (true!) and some Polynesian cultures practiced droit de seigneur up through modern days (also true!), neither are part of our heritage, and neither offer especially useful lessons in a context comprehensible to us.
Which brings us to….
Sure, but apply that same chronology to slavery or sufferage or a host of other progressive accomplishments in the advance of human rights…tradition does not trump all.
Agreed that it does not. The difference is that one can reach back to antiquity and find ample examples of the assertion of the common humanity of slaves and women. Suffrage and emancipation were both fulfillments of preexisting ideas, not radical breaks with millennia of practice. As you note, there simply is no precedent in the West for homosexual marriage — and not particularly much outside of the West. This suggests, to me, that the elevation of heterosexual coupling as the basic unit of society is rooted in something more profound than mere convention.
Nous….
Not in the Kuhnian sense.
I won’t lie: I have no idea what you’re talking about there. That being said, I’m not sure you’re contradicting me here: obviously there was a pretty radical conceptual shift with the advent of Christianity. And yet, single father, single mother, children: all remained in their places in the family unit once evangelization was done.
As for dating the Church to Augustine, I agree that’s a debatable point.
Slarti,
Poor phrasing on my part. Since I had already mentioned paganism I said “other Celt”.
My mistake.
But my poor phrasing does not deny the roots of the Wicca – what? – movement?
….to distinguish political tolerance from social tolerance strikes me as a move that none of the Founders could have taken seriously.
Are you sure you want to go down this road?
And Joe Smith’s little group?
Don’t get me started. I think South Park got the definitive last word on that.
If the religion has meaning for people and helps them live happier lives, maybe even helps them be better, more moral people, what do the origins matter?
Because some of these religions insinuate themselves into the civil and political life of this country in ways that I — and, I hope, a lot of other people — feel are extremely damaging, so to the degree that revealing their foolish, made-up origins helps reduce their credibility, I’m all for it. I won’t countenance being civil or tolerant about a “religion” that claims that a Campbell’s soup can will cure your alcoholism while it hoovers money out of people’s pockets to enrich its leaders, nor about ones that cause such untold misery to homosexuals.
The basis of Mormonism is entirely traceable to one 19th century man who claimed revealed knowledge of God’s will . . .
Yes, by sticking his face in a hat and using colored rocks to translate invisible plates written in fake languages.
Sorry cleek doesn’t like the nature of faith. But it is, you know, faith. If he prefers alternatives, there’s roughly a century past of instructive official atheism for him to look to.
Tacitus, i don’t need any instruction. thanks anyway.
“our liberal democratic society is the descendant, in varying proportions, of Greek, Roman, [serial comma added – ed.] and Jewish thought and culture”
Thank Santa none of those guys were into (resp.) armies of homosexual couples, infanticide on eugenics grounds, or genocide for religious reasons.
I should add that a religion’s relationship to antiquity isn’t make-or-break for me either, lest I be misunderstood. The underlying premises of a religion don’t become less foolish by virtue of being old.
Are you sure you want to go down this road?
Why not? Enlighten me. I could use it.
You might then provide 3 distinctions between Christianity & a “demonstrably falsified” religion, while you’re at it.
for me, what’s worth defending is the idea of faith
I don’t see any intrinsic value or virtue in the willingness of many people to fight to maintain belief in something for which little or no evidence exists–and indeed, frequently by definition /cannot/ exist. Faith, in the religious sense, is an abdication of critical thought, where one effectively says to oneself: “I have decided that this thing is true, even though I cannot prove it, and my willingness to believe in it absent evidence to support it is good.”
It’s a mindset I find absolutely incredible.
there’s roughly a century past of instructive official atheism for him to look to
And official atheism is relevant to their personal decisions…how exactly? Oh, it isn’t. All official atheism did was replace one unquestionable “authority” with another. Religion and Stalinism are, at heart, based on the same blind faith, fear, and obedience.
Given, though, that the reality is that our liberal democratic society is the descendant, in varying proportions, of Greek, Roman and Jewish thought and culture
Someday you will learn to use the number zero, my friend, and your life will be much improved.
As you note, there simply is no precedent in the West for homosexual marriage
This is false – it was legally recognized in ancient Rome, for instance. There are other examples.
“…there’s roughly a century past of instructive official atheism for him to look to.”
I’ll bite: “official”?
“…I prefer to keep things firmly within ‘the West,’ as the shorthand goes.”
I’m unsurprised.
Gary, “official” would suggest Communism.
Tacitus,
I’m going to take this one sentence at a time first and they attempt to consolidate my critique:
The difference is that one can reach back to antiquity and find ample examples of the assertion of the common humanity of slaves and women.
This seems no more or less a rationale for those eventual social stances than your earlier statement that “homosexuality was socially tolerated at various points in Western civilization.”
Suffrage and emancipation were both fulfillments of preexisting ideas, not radical breaks with millennia of practice.
I’ll recommend Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, by John Boswell, to address that point:
In addition to Boswell’s research, I’ll note that Europeans spread homophobia among people who had seen no need for it, as they conquered the new world, suggesting they took a very active role in suppressing whatever pre-existing ideas regarding same-sex unions may have always been there.
As you note, there simply is no precedent in the West for homosexual marriage — and not particularly much outside of the West.
If you go back, there’s precious little precedent for what we widely consider the defintion of heterosexual marriage these days either.
This suggests, to me, that the elevation of heterosexual coupling as the basic unit of society is rooted in something more profound than mere convention.
There is no denying that a homosexual couple, in and of itself, cannot procreate and there’s nothing more profound than that when all is said and done (I can defend this, so anyone who disagrees, please note I do mean that), HOWEVER, in the end, we’re talking about societal benefits being denied to same-sex couples that are not denied to heterosexual couples totally independent of whether that straight couple procreates or not. Consistency demands this wrong be righted.
Altogether, the primary argument against gay marriage seems to me to be like a team of three lame men sharing two crutches. It can’t march forward on the merits of its individual points, but rather requires a combination of points to keep from falling apart. There’s a tradition, but it’s been recorded by homophobes. There’s the issue of procreation, but we’ll just ignore that as far as it applies to barren people. There’s pre-exisiting ideas of human rights I want you to focus on here, but I insist you ignore those pre-exisiting ideas of human rights over there…like those of Native Americans, Hawaiians, or certain European peoples.
I’m a little surprised that I’m the first one to be making this point on social censure. It probably has already been made and I missed it and am being redundant. If so, apologies.
It’s one thing to talk about the locus of tolerance — the set of activities that one person or one culture considers appropriate — and another entirely to talk about the degree or the enforcement of intolerance. In fact, they’re probably entirely orthogonal. It’s useful to articulate which one you’re talking about when you’re making a point. When Edward refers to the spirit of Christian tolerance, he is (I assume) referring to the (arguably sporadic) tradition of gentleness in censure and rehabilitation rather than punishment, exemplified by Christ himself. This in no way suggests that Christians are or should be devoid of a moral sense or social mores.
As an example, both Islamic sharia and modern Christianity (and myself) consider adultery a bad thing, outside the acceptable social mores. The difference is in what you do about it. Under sharia, the woman is (from what I gather) often stoned to death. Under modern Christianity in the US, you have a social censure, some ameliorating factors should a crime occur, and preferential treatment in divorce proceedings. With me personally, you might have a long talk (possibly even longer than this one).
In that context, it’s entirely reasonable to argue for tolerance (in the second sense) without having to be accused of moral relativism.
“official” would suggest Communism
man, am i sorry i missed that little code word.
red baiting !
OMG.
st, I really didn’t mean that anyone had to go around justifying their beliefs to anyone else. I was responding to the debate farther upthread about whether or not god’s nonexistance had been proven. My thought was that, if people felt the need to debate the issue, then it was up to the believers to suppport their contention, since they were the ones creating the belief. I can see that I did not phrase myself very well.
hilzoy: Tolerance, I would think, is a willingness to let others act on their sincerely held beliefs, when those beliefs do not harm others, and a commitment to making sure that something does harm others before trying to forbid it.
This is exactly the point I was making (or trying to make) much more briefly, and therefore much less intelligibly, in my 11:44am post:
“…the virtue of tolerance is not and has never been an absolutist position. Depending on how one defines it, there’s a vast spectrum of potential ‘tolerances’ out there, some of which are what is meant by ‘tolerance is a virtue’ and most of which are not.”
What I meant to say, but forgot to include, is that one can draw distinctions in the continuum of tolerance based on independent moral conclusions, and this is what makes calling tolerance a virtue meaningful instead of, as Tacitus here and Paul Cella elsewhere have claimed, a logical contradiction.
For example, in the one hilzoy‘s just drawn — in essence, tolerate things that don’t harm others — the determining characteristic of what to tolerate is itself extrinsically defined: there’s a characteristic, namely “does not harm others”, that does not depend on the definition of tolerance in order to be well-defined. Contrast that with Tacitus’ formulation — in essence, tolerate that which is tolerable and do not tolerate that which is intolerable — where the defining characteristic is not well-defined absent a definition of “tolerance”. At best you’re looking at one of Ayn Rand’s pseudo-profound circularities. He’s therefore correct that this is a logically untenable position, but incorrect that this is how “tolerance”, as a virtue, is actually defined… despite, as I said, the continual errancies of many of its promoters.
There are also key distinctions between “tolerance” in the sense of what ought not be punished, “tolerance” in the sense of what ought not be declared officially illegitimate, and “tolerance” in the sense of what ought not even be socially censured, that would make this post too long to read were I to attempt to tackle them in anything like the depth they deserve. [There are also contextual tolerances; I have very different notions of tolerances in the sciences as versus tolerances in religion, for example.] It’s useful to ponder exactly which meaning of “tolerance” you intend to use before posting; and, IME, even more useful to ponder exactly which meaning your collocutors are using before you respond.
I quit this thread about 1/3 of the way through, but something did strike me – Tacitus is really good at diverting a thread to crap. Not a classical troll, but a sort of monster of pedantry.
Has anybody else noticed this?
Barry, I think that the story itself raised interesting questions, but since there was unanimous dislike of the judge’s decision, the questions that arose about how tolerance and morality works are important, if not particularly well answered here.
Barry,
I must second freelunch…Tacitus did not derail this thread…in fact he added quite a bit to it.
Tacitus, i don’t need any instruction.
Do I get a point of order here? Formal disagreement?
Thank Santa none of those guys were into (resp.) armies of homosexual couples, infanticide on eugenics grounds, or genocide for religious reasons.
Not really sure what your point is here. Obviously those things did happen — Nazism and Communism were products of the West as well — and no one is denying it. I am happy to argue for the general qualitative superiority of Western civilization without feeling a need to whitewash it.
Why not? Enlighten me. I could use it.
Indeed. My suggestion is to explore the Founders’ personal attitudes toward faith and its place in the public sphere. While they had differing opinions, none of them shrank from judgment, nor did they, as a rule, believe that such judgment should be banished from the public square — which, let us note, they did not equate with the state.
You might then provide 3 distinctions between Christianity & a “demonstrably falsified” religion….
I might, but if you don’t know what demonstrable falsification is — or can’t be bothered to read the thread you’re in — I’m not sure how I can help.
Faith, in the religious sense, is an abdication of critical thought….
Lordy. He means it.
Felix, I’d be happy for you to show us just where you’ve found that homosexual couplings in Rome of antiquity were regarded as social equals of heterosexual marriage.
Gary, got a beef with Western civ? Let’s have at it.
Moving on to Edward:
This seems no more or less a rationale for those eventual social stances than your earlier statement that “homosexuality was socially tolerated at various points in Western civilization.”
Socially tolerated <> considered the equivalent of marriage. As for the late Boswell, while I guess I’m not surprised you cite him, his scholarship there is pretty well discredited by now. The rites he claims were homosexual marriage rites were explicitly non-physical (I think the phrase is that the joiners are bound in the Holy Spirit, and “not by nature” or something similar), and part of a practice of “brothering,” for lack of a better word, that took place in various forms from ancient Greece through the medieval era. Boswell is also guilty of assuming that the “love” spoken of between his case studies must have been sexual: this is pure inference on his part, and anachronistic cultural projection to boot — only in the modern era do we assume that to men bound by “love” (philos, I think, but do correct me) must be sexually involved or gay. Given the many examples in history and literature of boon companions, etc., seems pretty dubious.
If you go back, there’s precious little precedent for what we widely consider the defintion of heterosexual marriage these days either.
Sorry, but that’s just absurd. The joining of a man and a woman — or women — as the base unit of society and family has pretty much been the gold standard since day one, year zero, or whatever you prefer.
….in the end, we’re talking about societal benefits being denied to same-sex couples that are not denied to heterosexual couples….
The two are simply not equivalent and never have been regarded as such. While I’m all for making sure the law is compassionate and fair, calling it “marriage” is simply a definitional falsehood.
There’s a tradition, but it’s been recorded by homophobes.
Surely you don’t include in this the many Romans and Greeks who regarded homosexuality as a normal recreational pasttime, and yet recorded history and ordered society as they did.
There’s pre-exisiting ideas of human rights I want you to focus on here, but I insist you ignore those pre-exisiting ideas of human rights over there…like those of Native Americans, Hawaiians, or certain European peoples.
If you must draw forth your precedent from obscure corners of different cultures, that might tell us something about its applicability here.
Anderson: You might then provide 3 distinctions between Christianity & a “demonstrably falsified” religion….
Tacitus: I might, but if you don’t know what demonstrable falsification is — or can’t be bothered to read the thread you’re in — I’m not sure how I can help.
That would be a “cop-out.” Though, goodness, Tac has exerted himself enough in this thread. Still, I suspect that he either (1) has no good answer or (2) relies on the non-presence of investigative journalists in early 1st-century A.D. Palestine.
(Not that I am denying Jesus’s divinity, etc.; I’m just skeptical that it didn’t look “demonstrably falsifiable” at the time.)
Nor can I figure out why Tac thinks that large chunks of the Bible aren’t “demonstrably falsifiable” (creation story, flood, etc.).
The world wonders …
morning all,
LJ, a key strategy of Scientology…is to target celebrities and shower them with vast benefits
Gary,
Apologies, that was meant to be ironic. I was hoping to get a discussion going about what is going on with Scientology. Exactly what benefits are they showering on to Scientologists? Why are there no celebrities pointing out the problems of Scientology? As cleek pointed out, it is always difficult to understand how someone like a chick corea or Beck can be taken in when they seem so with it.
Ironically, the problems with Scientology point up the problems with social shunning and a lack of ‘tolerance’, in that Scientology cannot seem to tolerate those who criticize it.
Anyway, interesting stuff.
Tacitus: The joining of a man and a woman — or women — as the base unit of society and family has pretty much been the gold standard since day one, year zero, or whatever you prefer.
Nonsense. Just as an example, the Roman family in classical times did not have as a “base unit” the joining of a man with a woman: the traditional Roman family was the paterfamilas, the oldest living male of the family in the patrilineal line, and his sons and brothers and their sons: and his daughters and his sisters. Marriage was a contractual agreement, often between two fathers with regard to their children: a legal agreement to live together. Children of the marriage belonged to their father: divorce was easy to obtain – a mere statement before witnesses that the marriage was ended, and the woman would return to her father’s house. To call this marriage “the base unit of society and family” is to seriously misconstrue classical Roman culture in terms of your own.
The idea that the modern Western concept of marriage is somehow a universal gold standard that all cultures everywhere have at all times adhered to is a serious mistake.
I’d suggest that anyone who thinks that a) discussion threads have a “topic” that it is wrong to be “derailed” from doesn’t understand online conversation (and is extremely unlikely to have a clue as to how Usenet, or BBSs originated the customs), and that b) one person can “derail” a conversation without any input from those who compulsively respond, rather than ignoring what they don’t want to discuss, isn’t even paying attention.
But the most important thing is that — absent this blog or whatever is named in the indictment having some unusual and announced policy about “staying on topic” — comment threads go where people take them as they converse. Unless there’s a policy against it, severely enforced, railing against this as a problem is something one should commiserate with with those who think Canute was serious.
Generally speaking, and without mindreading any individuals (given that this was first observed online at least twenty-five years ago, and likely longer ago than that), such objections tend to translate into “you’re saying things I don’t like, and distracting people from what I want to talk about!” Sucks to be them.
Felix, I’d be happy for you to show us just where you’ve found that homosexual couplings in Rome of antiquity were regarded as social equals of heterosexual marriage.
First of all, don’t move goalposts. You stated, “there simply is no precedent in the West for homosexual marriage”. This is the fact I am disputing. Second, before we go into specifics, let’s make sure we aren’t arguing a moot point.
Suppose it is correct that ancient Rome legally recognized gay marriage. Would you then argue that, since it was a part of the heritage of Western civilization, it should be recognized now? Or would you just come up with some other reason to oppose it?
If you must draw forth your precedent from obscure corners of different cultures
Two continents of people is an obscure corner? How absurd. Sound like circular reasoning to me – any culture that isn’t Western civilization is apparently an obscure corner by your definition.
Not really sure what your point is here.
You’re picking and choosing what you like in the tradition and ignoring the rest. You don’t like how Sparta or Thebes organized themselves – or the exposure of infants by the Romans – or the slay-your-enemies-and-their-kids-and-their-pets religion of my people – but you’re willing to say things have to be the way they did other stuff you happen to like. No doubt Sebastian would express the problem with the above better than me – perhaps he’s reading.
And note that marriage only relatively recently ceased to be any of: between children, for property reasons, for control of women’s sexuality, male-dominated, polygamous, not for romantic love, non-interracial, etc. etc. Not so much a tradition as a spectrum.
calling it “marriage” is simply a definitional falsehood.
And here you’re back to playing Humpty Dumpty.
Out of the Mainstream
But is there any principled way to differentiate this outragous ruling, and a, in my mind anyway, eerily similar one handed down a short while ago by 4th Circuit judge (and potential Supreme Court nominee) J. Harvie Wilkinson III? I don’t think there…
Jes – just a comment that there were three sorts of normal Roman marriage, depending on social level. If I remember correctly, the common folk married in many ways as we do, except of course there were vastly fewer legal protections for women. Certainly the upper classes did things in ways some consider … unnatural.
Felix, no goalposts moved here. Re-read the thread if you must. I’ll be around.
That would be a “cop-out.”
One man’s “cop-out” is another man’s “your attempt at heuristic rhetoric is wasteful and boring.”
Nor can I figure out why Tac thinks that large chunks of the Bible aren’t “demonstrably falsifiable”….
Large chunks quite clearly are. You have me mistaken for someone else, perhaps. No worries.
Jesurgislac, presumably it goes without saying that there’s no contradiction between a patrilineal and heterosexual-union familial model.
You’re picking and choosing what you like in the tradition and ignoring the rest.
Nonsense. You’re really pulling this from thin air, unless my amnesia is blacking out my memory of asserting that Western civ is uniformly rosy.
Felix, no goalposts moved here. Re-read the thread if you must. I’ll be around.
You stated, “there simply is no precedent in the West for homosexual marriage”, to which I objected. You then claimed, “I’d be happy for you to show us just where you’ve found that homosexual couplings in Rome of antiquity were regarded as social equals of heterosexual marriage”. This is moving the goalposts.
Are you now conceding the point, despite your earlier statement, that there is a precedent in the West for homosexual marriage?
I’d suggest that anyone who thinks that a) discussion threads have a “topic” that it is wrong to be “derailed” from doesn’t understand online conversation (and is extremely unlikely to have a clue as to how Usenet, or BBSs originated the customs), and that b) one person can “derail” a conversation without any input from those who compulsively respond, rather than ignoring what they don’t want to discuss, isn’t even paying attention.
This seems to suggest some sort of ‘tradition’ argument, that online conversations have to conform to the details set by Usenet, which is not really reflective of what is going on. Discussons take the form they do to a large, but definable range of parameters, as well as a healthy dose of Gresham’s law. Steps taken by the participants, if they are agreed to and enforced in some way can create different dynamics than the ones set up in Usenet. This is not to say that I disagree with Edward that Tac’s contribution was interesting this time around, though it seemed to start off with a disagreement for disagreement’s sake and then consist of laboriously backtracking from that. Needless to say, the notion that social tolerance is good is ‘flatly absurd’ is a fine discussion for college freshmen bull sessions, (and therefore generates some interesting points), but there is the whiff of ‘let’s discuss what hobby horses I have’, which I think is what Barry is pointing out. Which can be interesting, but not in the way the person who initiates the discussion may think.
And with that, I’m outta here, have a good day all.
Really, Felix, you do need to read the thread.
Apropos of LJ’s latest, I am continually surprised at the apparent power I have to control entire threads. Such power is, of course, not earned by me, but given by others. Which would seem to suggest a solution for Barry, et al.
If I remember correctly, the common folk married in many ways as we do, except of course there were vastly fewer legal protections for women.
Was there actually a formal legal notion of marriage amongst the plebs in Roman society? There was obviously a religious notion of marriage but it’s been too long since I read up on that sort of thing…
My best recollection is that the populace cohabited and were then recognized by their neighbors as wed, and that’s how most people got married. There wouldn’t be a big religious signficance – you’d probably ask your manes or lares or whatevers it is for permission, then the bride’s father would put her hand in the groom’s and there would be a party. All the above (mis)learned about 20 years ago.
Nonsense. You’re really pulling this from thin air, unless my amnesia is blacking out my memory of asserting that Western civ is uniformly rosy.
“Ignoring” not in the sense of whitewashing but in drawing normative morals (or whatever the philosphers would say you’re doing) from only the parts of the Western Tradition that lead to your preferred conclusions.
“Gary, got a beef with Western civ?”
Not particularly, no. Mostly I favor it, and not even just in the snarky Gandhian sense. I don’t agree that it provides the only worthwhile precedents when discussing human culture and world history, but I don’t expect to persuade you that’s relevant in this discussion, so I won’t waste my time and yours attempting to.
LJ: “Why are there no celebrities pointing out the problems of Scientology?”
Easy answer to that: attacking Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Rene Zellweger, et al, is not exactly going to be be a career-advancing move in a company town. I made a post touching on this topic the day before yesterday, by the way.
Freedom Means To Stay the [Choose Your Favorite Expletive] Out of My Family, Your Honor
Family Court Means Never Having to Say You’re Constitutional
…
Really, Felix, you do need to read the thread.
So you are conceding the point. Wise choice.
Gary, I’ve been on Usenet, back in the semi-old days. Please don’t invoke seniority or internetness as some special thing.
As for rest of my opinions, I think that Tacitus’ later posts were an excellent confirmation of my point.
“Please don’t invoke seniority or internetness as some special thing.”
I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. Absent a special prohibition in the posting rules on thread drift, thread drift is inevitable. That’s all. If such a prohibition exists here, it’s news to me; absent such a prohibition, complaints that the nonexistent rule against it is being broken are pointless. (I also wasn’t addressing any particular individual at 6:18.)
Thirded.
Thirded
objection.
without looking, who can tell us what the subject of Edward’s post was ?
Sorry, but that’s just absurd. The joining of a man and a woman — or women — as the base unit of society and family has pretty much been the gold standard since day one, year zero, or whatever you prefer.
Nice spin, but let’s look more closely. Currently the definition is one man and one women equal partners in the marriage. When in the long history of mankind has that ever been the defintion? Hell, it’s barely that now in many places.
If you must draw forth your precedent from obscure corners of different cultures, that might tell us something about its applicability here.
Until you address the way Europeans invading and conquering the new world systematically stomped out tolerance, you’ll not reach me. Believing as I do that left to their own devices, people generally understand how homosexuality fits into to God’s overall plans, I must side with the indigenous peoples who had to be taught to hate.
What differnce does it make what traditional marriage was? We aren’t bound by tradion. There are lots of tradions which have been outgrown or discarded as societies mature. Marriage used to be primarly about continuing the species and secondarily about transfering property. There are plenty of our species around so contiuation is no longer a pressing need. The idea of romanitic love has, in Western Civ. anyway, replaced the focus on the transfer of property. In that new context–romantic love rather than kids and stuff–homosexual marriage is every bit as legitimate as heterosexual marriage.
Tacitus: Jesurgislac, presumably it goes without saying that there’s no contradiction between a patrilineal and heterosexual-union familial model.
Indeed, but what on earth does this have to do with the false claim that: “The joining of a man and a woman — or women — as the base unit of society and family has pretty much been the gold standard since day one, year zero”. Since you have a bias against non-Western civilisations, I cited you an example from a Western civilisation in which the “joining of a man and a woman — or women” was not “the base unit of society and family”: the Roman family.
As others have observed, the notion of what marriage is varies widely from culture to culture, from century to century. In all circumstances, however, where same-sex marriage is recognized, it is recognized in the terms of the surrounding culture. The current model of marriage in what we may call “Western culture” is of two people who love each other romantically. This model fits same-sex couples perfectly as well as it does mixed-sex couples, and it is a simple matter of civil rights that same-sex couples should get to have the same legal/financial benefits of being married as mixed-sex couples do.
I wrote
there is the whiff of ‘let’s discuss what hobby horses I have
and Tac replied
Apropos of LJ’s latest, I am continually surprised at the apparent power I have to control entire threads.
QED
And Gary, I believe you have pulled that one question out of context. What I want to know is how this benefits thing works. If you have experience with people getting involved with Scientology and debunking it, fine, write it up. If you discuss a TV infomercial about Scientology, be aware that I haven’t seen it, and I have no idea what Access Hollywood is. I’m not defending Scientology here, but ‘showering benefits’ seems to suggest a paper trail that could be unearthed and physical objects changing hands. I don’t disagree that there is some relationship, but I don’t really see what Chick Corea or Beck get out of it.
Given the views on Scientology that have been expressed (I know next to nothing about it and it has virtually no presence here in Japan), I wonder if people’s opinion of the judge’s decision would change if the parents had been Scientologists and the judge ruled that they had to be prevented from teaching their child about that.
liberalj: I wonder if people’s opinion of the judge’s decision would change if the parents had been Scientologists and the judge ruled that they had to be prevented from teaching their child about that.
My opinion wouldn’t have changed. Parents have a basic right to teach their children what they believe. Children have – or ought to have – a basic right to sources of information other than their parents, and the right to make up their mind for themselves what they believe. That applies whether we’re talking Scientology, Catholicism, or Wicca.
It must be a more reasonable time of day on your sides of the planet. I have insominia and a headcold. It’s about 2 in the morning here. Maybe one thirty.
LJ, try reading this and this. Note this and this.
This is a particularly good piece on Scientollywood and the “Celebrity Centre.”
Lastly, just peruse here at your leisure.
“I wonder if people’s opinion of the judge’s decision would change if the parents had been Scientologists and the judge ruled that they had to be prevented from teaching their child about that.”
Probably not, but there’s certainly a provable case that Scientology nothing but a racket by con artists, not a legitimate religion; presumably a con artist doesn’t obtain immunity from scrutiny or prosecution simply by announcing that one’s system is now a religion. But I’ll give Hubbard this: he was an extremely canny sociopath, and made a brilliant choice going this. Few challenge the chutzpah involved once they see Scientology as coming under the cloack of a “religion.” It was brilliant.
The joining of a man and a woman — or women — as the base unit of society and family has pretty much been the gold standard since day one, year zero, or whatever you prefer.
So what?
We are not talking about social arrangements of heterosexuals. We are talking about homosexuals, which is to say we are talking about people to whom the idea of entering into a heterosexual marriage is unappealing. The question is what arrangements they should be allowed.
Now I don’t know exactly what the historical “gold standard” in rights accorded homosexuals is, but I am confident that we emphatically do not want to rely on historical precedent in determining the status of homosexuals today. So we have to think anew.
And when we do, it seems to me, the obvious conclusion is that homosexuals should be entitled to marry. The idea that this will somehow damage society, by weakening the “base unit” ranks somewhere between wild conjecture and outright bigotry. Where is the evidence of such damage? On what basis does anyone believe that the harm the prohibition does is less than this conjectural damage?
Sorry, felix. I was wrong to state “you do need to read the thread.” You just need to read.
Edward: Currently the definition is one man and one women equal partners in the marriage.
Well, no. Everything after “woman” there is extraneous. And yes, plenty of precedent for it, thanks. As for your fetishization of indigenous peoples “who had to be taught to hate,” sorry, but that’s just silly. I won’t go further into your reasons for denying the superior utility of the Western heritage, ironic though it is in light of, well, everything about you.
Lily’s argument of tradition-be-damned is about as good as the homosexual marriage proponents are going to get, here. There isn’t precedent for it in the West, after all. Where she goes wrong is not in her analysis, but in her acceptance that the primacy of “romantic love” is a good thing to be embraced. Given the social effects of the acceptance of romantic love as the primary standard for valuation of a relationship — among which, I should note, tolerance of homosexual “marriage” isn’t even close to being the most malign — I would think that in a sane world, we’d want to step back from it.
However, the need for self-satiation being as unfettered as it is in the modern era, there’s little chance.
I won’t go further into your reasons for denying the superior utility of the Western heritage, ironic though it is in light of, well, everything about you.
The corollary to this argument being “Of course you believe in the superior utility of Western heritage, since it is the system on which your privilege is constructed. Who would not work to maintain this system when it works in his favor?”
Note that this statement does not imply any personal endorsement of either (reductive) position. It just puts the obvious corollary out in the open.
Gary Farber: Few challenge the chutzpah involved once they see Scientology as coming under the cloack of a “religion.” It was brilliant.
There are two obvious corrections to this typo. The intended one is doubtless “cloak”; I much prefer the other.
Sorry, felix. I was wrong to state “you do need to read the thread.” You just need to read.
I read quite well. You were wrong on the facts and can deal with that as you wish, which, for you, usually involves petty insults.
Well, no. Everything after “woman” there is extraneous. And yes, plenty of precedent for it, thanks.
To assert implicitly, as you are doing here, that the sum total definition of marriage throughout history is “one man and one woman” is the kind of anachronistic revisionism we properly decry. There are earlier forms of marriage in which “one man and one woman” form a part of the definition — how many is clearly a matter of some dispute — but it’s remarkably tricky to look at this commonality and argue that it’s intrinsic to the definition when the definition itself kept changing, and when those definitions weren’t universal.
I won’t go further into your reasons for denying the superior utility of the Western heritage…
Superior utility, no doubt. Superior morality? A very different question.
Tac: “Sorry, felix. I was wrong to state “you do need to read the thread.” You just need to read.”
See here.
Tacitus: As for your fetishization of indigenous peoples “who had to be taught to hate,” sorry, but that’s just silly.
*blinks* When I see an American referring to respect for people whose ancestors travelled to the continent they live on thousands, rather than hundreds, of years ago as “fetishization”, I do wonder. Is there some special virtue, do you feel, in your ancestors having immigrated thousands of miles in the relatively recent past?
Or are you merely upholding the superiority of Western civilisation (without, it appears, being very clear on much of its history, since you seem to think that the “base unit” of all societies in Western civilisation is marriage consisting of “one man, one woman or women” – which is flagrantly untrue.)
Given the social effects of the acceptance of romantic love as the primary standard for valuation of a relationship — among which, I should note, tolerance of homosexual “marriage” isn’t even close to being the most malign — I would think that in a sane world, we’d want to step back from it.
You may have a point there. There is an argument to made (and I have heard many Muslims make it) that arranged marriages are much more satisfactory if the parents are arranging them with due consideration to the tastes and feelings of their offspring. It’s assumed in many non-Western cultures*, in fact, that marriage is straightforwardly an arrangement between two families. And the only thing to be said rationally against such an arrangement is that parents do not inevitably want what’s best for their offspring: especially parents determined to believe that their child is not really gay. There are tragic accounts of the lesbian daughters of strict Muslim parents in the UK coming out to their parents and promptly being sent “home” to Pakistan** to discover that a marriage had been arranged for them to, as it were, straighten them out. Sometimes the young women escape, but often find, on returning to the UK, that their families have disowned them for refusing to accept the arranged marriage.
You may feel otherwise about marriage, but my feeling is that any marriage where one (or both) of the partners do not have at least the capacity for sexual/romantic feelings about each other, is a travesty. A marriage where the man grimly does his duty because it’s required by his family, without any feeling of sexual attraction towards his wife, or the woman submits to what amounts to rape by her husband because she has no alternative, is a truly ghastly distortion of what marriage ought to mean**, yet it is what happens in many cultures that do practice arranged marriage.
*And was a given in many Western cultures up until about two centuries ago – the changeover to accepting romantic love as a requirement for marriage was gradual, naturally, but it clearly existed as a commonplace by the 19th century.
**To me, living as I do in Western culture, taking for granted that marriage means love/sexual fulfillment for both participants.
Pakistan**
**The majority of British Muslim families immigrated from Pakistan. It’s one of those legacies of Empire.
(Forgot to insert footnote.)
As for your fetishization of indigenous peoples “who had to be taught to hate,” sorry, but that’s just silly.
I think Edward’s comment meant specifically that indigenous peoples were more accepting of homosexuality than the Europeans. Whether this is accurate or not, I don’t think it is reasonable to call it “fetishization.” He was not making some gauzy statement about what an Eden the Americas were before the arrival of Europeans.
First off, thanks to gary for the links. I’m still wondering if there is a difference here between someone like a movie actor (whose ability, in large measure, depends on a certain amount of adulation) and a musician. I’ve never heard of Scientologist handlers surrounding him. I realize that this is suggesting that movie stars are not the same level/type of creative ability as musicians, but I don’t think that is necessarily wrong, but discussion would be nice.
I think Edward’s comment meant specifically that indigenous peoples were more accepting of homosexuality than the Europeans.
Bernard
I think that was precisely what sets Tacitus off, especially when he makes statements like these
I won’t go further into your reasons for denying the superior utility of the Western heritage, ironic though it is in light of, well, everything about you.
However, it is a rather paradoxical stance, in that he seems to be suggesting that the nature of the Western heritage gives rise to something like homosexuality (which thereupon suggests the notion of ‘effete’ and ‘unmanly’) so that what he thinks would be a more primitive culture would be stronger and wouldn’t tolerate it. Of course, this isn’t the first time he’s taken a shot at Edward‘s sexual orientation, so I guess it is not a surprise.
surrounding him
Missing referent alert! I meant Chick Corea.
Tacitus,
Doesn’t it bother you in the least that in order to prop up your argument you have to dismiss the ideal of romantic love? I mean, I’m as realistic as the next person about the shelf-life of romance, but the clinical nature of what you’re resigned to promote so your agrument doesn’t fall apart strikes me as tragic.
But taking your advice, and stepping back from that, I think my position becomes even stronger actually. Most important for me in this areana about marriage are the rights, benefits and, if you want to get really unromantic about and phrase it in capitalistic terms, my efficiency. I’m simply more productive as one half of my relationship. Denying me and my partner the security that marriage would grant us keeps our lives in a constant state of agitation and makes us both less productive members of society. We have to work harder and spend more money to arrange things, we have to worry more about this or that scenario, we have to endure the stress of being stigmatized by selfish politicians and supposed religious leaders. But we both work, pay taxes, and are expected to produce. Surely as a capitalist that strikes you as less than ideal.
Every basis for marriage has its failings. Marrying to produce children can result in families like the one my mom was raised in–a Catholic clan of eight neglected kids, a constantly pregnant and ill mother, and a bum of a father who only showed up to breed another child once a year. The down side of romantic love is that once the romance is gone and reality sets in, the couple has to find a new basis for their relationship, or break up.
But, ever since divorce became an option, every marriage has faced that same dilemna of change because people change over time. My 78 year old dad told me that he isn’t the same person he was when he married my mom over fifty years ago. Relationships, no matter how they start, have to grown or die. The problem with starting a marriage based on love (as opposed to kids, stuff,etc.) is that people need to recognize that they will change and their love will change. They need to expect change, and I think , often , they don’t.
My interpetation of Tacticus is that he opposes the self-indulgence or self-dellusion of people who get the hots for each other, get married, and then break up a couple kids later. I agree; marriage is for people who have screwed up and screwed around enough to know the ins and outs of relationships. Marriage is also for people who are ready to go through changes together, recognizing tht twenty years in the future they won’t be the same people they were at the beginning of their alliance.
. There is no reason why we we have to hang on to the tradtional bias against homosexual marriage in order to mainntainn the traditional idea of people tryinng to stay togetherr through the changes of the years.. What we need to do is hang on to the idea of commitment and allow homosexuals to commit too.
I haven’t expressed my self very well here and I’m not at all sure I made my point–but my mom-in-law is here and I’m off to my real life.