--- In [email protected], "PaliGap" <compost...@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > [snip] > > > I AM in favor of challenging the content of religious > > claims just as we have successfully done with > > witchcraft with has fallen out of favor in society as > > a serious intellectual option. > > [snip] > > > Religious ideas have gotten a pass not given any other > > ideas in our culture. It is the only area of > > knowledge where you can claim that you just believe with > > no evidence and that view is taken as seriously as if > > you had good evidence for a belief. > > I can't see where you're coming from on this. What is this > "pass" religious ideas are getting? Religious ideas are being > heavily criticised all the time. Almost anything goes (except > in recent times some special treatment towards Muslims > arguably).
Try challenging a simple thing like the tax-exempt status of churches and see how far you get with it. Politicians (at least in the US) wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. It is accepted as a "given," and effectively can no longer be challenged. Try challenging a Christian university's right to reject students (or faculty, or even workers on the campus) for not being Christian. They can, legally, and do so in the United States. No other employers in the country can. Try challenging churches' right to perform marriages. In this function they are basically surrogates for the state, because only the state can recognize the legal status of a marriage. But religious organizations get to legally act as such surrogates (and turn a tidy profit from it), whereas if you tried to set up a company to marry people legally, you would be unable to do so. It's not just the dogma that Curtis (I think) is talk- ing about. It's the "fallout" from centuries of relig- ions having been granted special privileges that no one else was granted. Many of these special privileges are so accepted as "givens" in society that they are *never* challenged. Try challenging a Catholic priest's ability to refuse to divulge criminal matters told to him in confession. Psychiatrists and doctors no longer have this privilege, if ordered to violate it by a court order (as has hap- pened, many times). For the Willytex-level paranoid among us, a terrorist could walk into a Catholic Church, go into a confession booth, and tell the priest that he was planning to blow up the UN the next day. The priest is under no obligation to tell anyone. If the terrorist *does* blow up the UN and someone finds out that he had confessed to the priest, nothing bad is going to happen to the priest. He skates free. And for what reason? It is in the Catholic Church's benefit to be able to preserve it's reputation for keeping things said in the confessional secret. It is in no one *else's* benefit. in this fictional scenario, not even society's as a whole. But it could happen this way because certain "rights" of religions are accepted as a "given." I don't think they should be so accepted. I think we have a right to challenge these traditional "perks" and "gimmes" that religions have been getting for centuries.
