Comments on: Shooting the Shit with Jacob the Hassidic Bus Driver

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 28 May 2012 02:36:15 +0000

In Saudi Arabia, all citizens are reeiurqd to be Muslims, and the public practice of other religions is forbidden. Private practice of other religions is sometimes allowed and sometimes persecuted; there is no law protecting even this.Iran is officially a Twelver Shiite state. Some other religions (Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism) are permitted, but are not allowed to proselytize; and they are sometimes persecuted even if they don’t. The Bahai faith is not allowed at all. Sunni Muslims are subject to some restrictions also.In China, all religious organizations have to be authorized by the government. This has given rise to conflict when the government appoints religious leaders different from what the religion itself chooses. There are state-appointed Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim leaders. These are not always approved by the religious organizations outside of China. Those who practice religion outside these state-approved organizations are subject to severe persecution.In Turkey, since the secularization by Ataturk in the early 20th century, the government permits all religions but keeps them all under close surveillance. Special religious clothing (the veil, the fez) is not permitted to be worn in public. Turkey is predominantly Muslim, and there is some prejudice against other religions.In North Korea, virtually no religious practice is allowed except a limited amount by foreigners. Worship is considered a political offense.Cuba was for years officially atheist, and religious practice was seriously discouraged, with some persecution. But now religious people are even allowed to join the Communist Party. The government is secular rather than atheist, and religious practice is pretty much free.These are a few varied examples of governments which have restricted religious practice. In our time, the States that restrict religious freedom are mostly Muslim or Atheist.I can’t think of any other belief system that does this in modern times.Religion is the source of meaning and values for many people, and restricting it restricts the growth of the human soul. In countries where a religion is imposed, it loses some of its growth potential. In countries where religion is not restricted or mandated by the government, it flourishes and leads to better values and ways of life.

By: Maria Gatti

Maria Gatti — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:54:17 +0000

Your story was touching and sensitive, and while I’m glad the Chassidim feel safe and secure here, no, I do NOT support any public funding to religious schools of any confession. Almost all of them teach the inferiority of women, for one thing, counter to the Québec and Canadian charters.

By: Shep

Shep — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:41:51 +0000

“Their demand to cover up the windows of the Park Avenue YMCA gym led to the Bouchard-Taylor commission on Reasonable Accomodations”

Enh?

Hérouxville, Québec, anyone? Islamophobia? Ringing a bell at all?

By: Michel

Michel — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:07:13 +0000

Where would Quebec or Canada for that matter,be without “religion”.?

What fascinates me is how people yearn for an “indepedence” that cannot be, considering how, take away language, any language, most people are merely willing subjects of a “consumer society”.

By: Hamer

Hamer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:15:40 +0000

Le piège de l’indépendance : le Québec sera-t-il affaibli par la souveraineté?

Valaskakis, Kimon
Fournier, Angeline

By: Tancrède

Tancrède — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:58:41 +0000

Thanks Raman, interesting reading.
Contrarily to what was said at the beginning, I do not know much about the new atheist, but I wish I would. I will abjure soon and I want that to be an occasion to reflect about this whole question.

By: Raman

Raman — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:51:52 +0000

@Tancrède & @Allophone

You might want to head over to the Reason Project, led by Sam Harris, and read the following debate he had with Philip Ball, from Nature :
http://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/what_should_science_dosam_harris_v_philip_ball/

Very interesting.

(I’m on Harris’ side : you can’t be a “rational extremist”… Science and reason should always attack irrationality : especially of the dogmatic kind.)

By: Tancrède

Tancrède — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:38:08 +0000

@allophone again:
Our little debate shows me how interesting it would have been if the “reasonable accommodation” turned to be about the place of (any) religion in a modern society and the debate on religion itself instead of turning into a sterile “our religion vs their’s” debate (a kind of bad remake of O’Reilly’s delirium about “War on Chrismas”).
We badly need all ideas to be debated about this subject that we just swept under the carpet in the 60′s.
But this is perhaps a bit offtopic. Or perhaps not ?

By: Tancrède

Tancrède — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:23:18 +0000

@allophone:
“What if they’re not dangerous? What if they go to church and just mind their own business? Like these old people who go to mass in the church close to my house. Do you want go after them too?”

Obviously not. For the same reason that if you believe you are contacted by aliens and they tell you wonderful things at night, I won’t care. Or if you think you are Napoleon. Or anything like that. Only in Soviet Russia they had no laws to protect mentally ill people from being interned without their consent. We all know what happened: dissent became a mental illness. So we absolutely need these laws.

I won’t care if you believe you received messages from another solar system. But if they instruct you to not receive any blood transfusion even to the risk of death, or do any other such things to others, then, we’re in another category. And the law should make no exception under the pretext that a crazy belief system was generated 4000 years ago instead of the night before. The line is clear: mad people should be interned against their consent if and only if “dangerous for themselves or for others”.

allophone:
“Today we have full freedom of speech, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Today you can say [...]. I can say that I’m an agnostic [...]. At the same time, someone else can freely say that Jesus [...].”

Well, then I misunderstood your sentence. But the confounding sentence was similar to the following:

allophone:
“And as long as he leaves us alone, we have to leave him alone. Otherwise, we’d be no different than them.”

Leave him alone, in what sense ? I saw people claiming that they were “offended” by the ‘atheist’ buses ad campaign (‘Dieu n’existe probablement pas alors profitez de la vie’), that it shouldn’t have happened. I grant these people the full right to say and promote (at their expenses) whatever weird belief system they have (and they often do, on STCUM buses too). At the same time, I don’t think we should “leave them alone” in the sense of not arguing against the coherence and the (historical, psychological, social, conceptual, methodological) dangerousity of their belief system. That’s like alcohol: it’s not illegal, but we must have the right to tell if it’s good or bad for our system.

allophone:
“’Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law…’
What are you talking about? Let me know on what wavelength you operate, so I can tune in.”

That’s the preamble of the Constitution. Happily, Quebec never signed the piece of paper that begin with this medieval theocratic statement. So I am glad that I am not (at least in Quebec), in my most fundamental values, in contradiction with the Constitution of the country where I live (because the so-called Constitution of 1982 is “illegitimate”, in the very words of the Supreme Court). It’s just a glimpse of the mess we have as a country.

By: allophone

allophone — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:20:44 +0000

Regarding the link you posted, Jehovah Witnesses’ refusal to accept blood transfusions or any sort of medical intervention is an example of religious extremism that I deplore.