E O Wilson: You don't have to be an atheist to know that religion is harming the Earth
- Thread starter What Would Jesus Do?
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I'm speaking in the realms of policy. I explain all the time policy is the only thing I care about. Keep your religion out of the laws and courts and government. Of course individuals are free to fly their brand of freak flag. But the question was why can't we all just get along and the answer is because some insist others salute their freak flags.
As to your first sentence, I am on record here numerous times in absolute agreement. You know of the most recent one, where I stated "separation of Church and state is absolutely necessary".
As to your second sentence, can a private bakery refuse to make a cake for somebody and avoid headlines because of their choice (knowing of course THEY didn't seek the press out over it)?
So, you admit that pride parades are designed to insist that others salute your freak flag?
I would bet most every time. How many cases of this do you know about? One? Two? I think that is about it. And none of those case involved private bakeries. Now can a private citizen make a stink about a bakery open to the public, charged with accomidating the public, refusing service?
How do you come to that opinion? Where is the law that insisted you attend or respect the Pride flag? There are many laws that require people salute religious flags.
WHAT? You either don't understand the context of the word "private" or you're suggesting the bakery in question was a government-owned one? C'mon, coach???
EO Wilson calls humans a dysfunctional species. He says we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technological power.
http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/
http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/
There are hundreds of laws that force compliance with some religious doctrine. Fortunately I think we are moving in the correct direction to eliminate many of these. Discrimination, blue laws, obviously marriage are all going the way they should to achieve a secular society.
I'm suggesting something similar of you. A business that serves food open to the public is not private.
I think it's a little naive to think that without religion we would not have the issues we have.
A lot of what we credit or discredit to religion is just politics expressed through religion.
People will always find ways to hate, blame others for their problems, express jealousy, and persecute others for their differences. Religion or no religion it doesn't matter.
I wonder what would happen if you asked all the people on Earth who don't feel harmed by religion....if they feel harmed? Would they lie to you and tell you it's harmful?.....Curious.
Just like fruit is racist, and guns and alcohol are destructive...religion is harmful. Wanna know what factor all 4 have in common?
Can you name one of these laws? "Gay Marriage" isn't requiring compliance with some religious doctrine as there are many religious denominations that would wed gays.
If you want to be private, start a club. You can get away with a lot of bigotry if you are really doing it in private. Of course even if you become a club, there may be some regulations and you are still using some public infrastructure.
One of the things you may have noticed - but if you are like me may not have paid close attention to - is the extent to which we are moving society toward a club/private mentality, So, for example, more roads become privately owned, more universities (or university seats or departments) become privately funded, more utilities become private corporations, more communications go off the air and into privately owned media, more mail and packages are shipped by private firms, and so on.
It's much harder to point to everybody using public resources if those resources are increasingly privatized - and therefor it's harder to argue that to everyone should follow public rules about bigotry. Similarly, if the new pharma and tech discoveries are being started in privately supported universities or departments, it's harder to argue that they "belong" to the public in any way.
I don't like where that seems to be headed.
You don't like where we're headed? We've had seven years of socialist policy shoved down our throats and you don't like where we're headed?
Gotta start somewhere.
I think you are really just echoing Wilson's point - that we are hard-wired this way to some extent. But you may be missing the rest of his point - a point that comes through in a lot of his work - that by learning about the way we are wired, we can choose to alter how we are influenced by that wiring rather than merely succumb to it. Religion being one of the ways that we succumb to it, albeit not the only one
That is one scientist that obviously does not understand the concept of logic.
Of course gay marriage was a big one. The objection was based on a religious understanding. Marriage law itself is based on some rather dubious religious understandings. Adoption laws, blues codes, even modesty laws.
Certainly there are/were religious justifications for such laws, but things like marriage, adoption and modesty cross all religious and societal lines are not purely religious in nature.
I would never go to a nude beach because I doubt anybody has a body I want to see (and certainly no one wants to see mine).
Are you sure about that??
Does North Korea have gay marriage? Does China???
Those are atheist states.
Lets not be revisionists. You know as well as I that religion was the main argument against it here.
Here it was. . . but for a long time marriage was considered to have a reproductive element and that's why there was resistance as well. There is also the ick factor.
I don't mind gay marriage mostly because I don't think gay marriage could do any harm within society. Nothing like no fault divorce has done. But this idea that religion is the only reason we don't have gay marriage is a false one.
The great secularist states of the world havn't done any better then the US which the media tries to tell us is ultra religious.
Doesn't work that way. Is Costco a "private club" exempt from restrictions on "public" businesses?
Sure, but the root of those politics was religion. Religion is at the root of a lot of politics.
Merely charging a membership fee while letting anybody willing to pay it join up, and while conducting business as usual in all other respects doesn't make you a private club. But I agree that it could be tricky to know exactly where to draw that line.
Bar the door, require a membership, and restrict admission to members.
If you are open to the public, and offering your services or wares to the public, you are engaging in consumer fraud if you fail to live up to your public offer.
Doesn't matter to me one whit if you want to whine that that's not what "private business" means in the dictionary of your choosing, It's what we are talking about here.
Of course it's very far from what we were talking about when this thread started. But this is HROT.
Maybe a soul food business or a soul music business?
Otherwise I guess you'll have to ask strum.
A business can survive death. Maybe he just incorporated himself and that's what he means by soul?
That gives a whole new meaning to the notion that souls enter into being at the time of conception. We thought they were talking about conception of the zygote in the womb. But what they have really been talking about all these years is the conception of the corporation in the lawyer's office.
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