For better or for worse, we (not only Finland, but the Western world in general), live in a society where the levels of freedom of speech are going down, and the desperate measures not to offend anyone are going up. I think that this is for the worse, but this is not the point of this post.
The point is that some motherfuckers are clearly more equal than others.
I don't even mean the religion of the perpetually offended in particular. Just the religion in general.
When a person starts believing in an invisible magical being, they are usually advised to cut down on alcohol and various illegal substances, and see a good psychiatrist. When sufficiently many people decide to believe in the same invisible magical being, they get to collect taxes, and teach about it in school, and we are supposed to pretend to respect them. Even if the being wants them to stone fellow citizens or do something similarly nice and respectable.
They get to publish pretty hardcore books, too. If somebody wrote the Old Testament or the Koran in the present-day Finland, they would have a pretty hard time publishing them, and would probably end up in court for agitating against somebody, or worse. I mean, even if we take only the anti-gay texts, it would be enough to convict the writers, and I am not even starting on the infidels.
Seriously. The stuff that those people are allowed to publish is filthy, downright unspeakable, and often contains direct incitement to murder. But since the unstable citizens who wrote it lived very long ago and had a very big following, it gets published.
One would think that organizations that inherently need to stretch the limits of the free speech that far would be very much for preserving the free speech and against all possible limitations on it. But no, the assholes (hmm, I should probably say "anuses") want respect! Respect enshrined in the law, no less, so that nobody would insult their armed-conflict-mongering holy books and their, ahem, age-of-consent-challenged prophets (police be upon them).
And since even they are not crazy enough to demand respect from each other, they want it from us, regular and mostly-secular people.
I should probably stop writing right here, because all I can think of is swear words, but I must say that sometimes I sort of wish the religious groups got what they are asking for, and had most of their literature and teachings banned for offending the other religions.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
...and in tomorrow's news, we'll be burning a witch...
I can't fucking believe it: a man is being put on trial for blasphemy in 2009 Finland.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Kosher, halal, and circumcision
The Muslim immigration to Europe brought with it quite a lot of concern of locals about both Jewish and Muslim traditions that have been around here for a very long time, but are now coming to the public attention again with a new force.
Many Muslims and Jews say that at least some of the people who raise these issues just don't like Muslims, Jews or both. This is undoubtedly so, but it doesn't mean that these are not real issues. It's just that the debate on them sounds rather strange nowadays.
First of all, I find it really strange that people on all sides of the debate often claim that ritual slaughter is barbaric. Or that it is humane. Ritual slaughter, just like regular slaughter, can be as barbaric or as humane as you make it.
At best, the ritual slaughter is cutting the animal's throat very fast with a sharp knife, with the result that the animal loses consciousness immediately. At worst, the animal does not lose consciousness immediately and is hoisted up by its hind legs to bleed out while conscious.
In spite of the popular misconceptions to the contrary kosher and halal slaughter are permitted in Finland, as long as it's done in a proper slaughterhouse and the animal is stunned right after the cut. There is nothing particularly barbaric about this method, unless you disapprove of eating meat in general.
There are some disagreements among both Jews and Muslims as to whether it's kosher/halal to stun the animal after the cut. And yes, some think that it's not, Jews more often than Muslims. Do we have to cater to them? The demand for any kind of kosher meat is so low in Finland that it is AFAIK not slaughtered in Finland anyway, and as for halal - well, stunning is permitted in Saudi Arabia, so wouldn't that be kosher (sorry) enough for the vast majority of Muslims? And IME Jews and Muslims are people like everyone else, in that in the absence of superkosher and superhalal they make do with what they have.
Has anyone besides Abdullah Tammi ever demanded unstunned kosher or halal meat in Finland? (That's not a rhetorical question.)
One point that is rarely raised: people who wish to follow very strict kosher and halal guidelines and don't believe in stunning don't need to become vegetarians or compromise their beliefs, of they are not so inclined. Fish does not require ritual slaughter in Judaism or Islam, and stunning birds after cutting their necks is not required by law in Finland.
In short, I think that Finland already has the right laws, as in Eläinsuojeluasetus 7.6.1996/396.
As to circumcision, the situation is complicated. There is no proper law, and treating it as battery is difficult since authorities have in effect permitted it ever since Jews and Muslims lived here, which is a fairly long time. It has become an issue only after the Muslim immigration of the 90s, which made it more common, raised demand for having it taxpayer-funded, and brought the issue of the female circumcision. A few thoughts on banning circumcision:
1. The people who discuss circumcision as is it were a medieval custom long forgotten in Europe and only brought here by recent Muslim immigration are of course very wrong. Circumcision has been around and permitted for a long, long time. I think that a child's right to bodily integrity is more important than freedom of religion, and that banning non-medical circumcision would be a great step forward, but that's exactly what it would be: a huge step forward. It should be treated as such. As in "we realize that is has been permitted pretty much all over the Western world all the time, but times change and we think it's time to ban it, and this is why...".
2. The people who think that it should be funded by taxpayers are making a step backward. It used to be funded by NHS in UK; when it stopped being so, the rates fell dramatically.
3. The problem of people not obeying the law and doing it anyway is real, and something needs to be done about it. OTOH, if it were illegal it would be a lot less common. My rather obvious suggestion would be to make it mildly punishable if done illegally but in proper medical conditions, and make the punishment a lot more severe for people who do it in a way that endangers the child's health. OTOH, the punishments for grievous bodily harm are ridiculously small in Finland in any case.
Anyway: I see how it is a matter of principle for many people, but IMO even laws that would make at least some people give up on this custom would be good.
Many Muslims and Jews say that at least some of the people who raise these issues just don't like Muslims, Jews or both. This is undoubtedly so, but it doesn't mean that these are not real issues. It's just that the debate on them sounds rather strange nowadays.
First of all, I find it really strange that people on all sides of the debate often claim that ritual slaughter is barbaric. Or that it is humane. Ritual slaughter, just like regular slaughter, can be as barbaric or as humane as you make it.
At best, the ritual slaughter is cutting the animal's throat very fast with a sharp knife, with the result that the animal loses consciousness immediately. At worst, the animal does not lose consciousness immediately and is hoisted up by its hind legs to bleed out while conscious.
In spite of the popular misconceptions to the contrary kosher and halal slaughter are permitted in Finland, as long as it's done in a proper slaughterhouse and the animal is stunned right after the cut. There is nothing particularly barbaric about this method, unless you disapprove of eating meat in general.
There are some disagreements among both Jews and Muslims as to whether it's kosher/halal to stun the animal after the cut. And yes, some think that it's not, Jews more often than Muslims. Do we have to cater to them? The demand for any kind of kosher meat is so low in Finland that it is AFAIK not slaughtered in Finland anyway, and as for halal - well, stunning is permitted in Saudi Arabia, so wouldn't that be kosher (sorry) enough for the vast majority of Muslims? And IME Jews and Muslims are people like everyone else, in that in the absence of superkosher and superhalal they make do with what they have.
Has anyone besides Abdullah Tammi ever demanded unstunned kosher or halal meat in Finland? (That's not a rhetorical question.)
One point that is rarely raised: people who wish to follow very strict kosher and halal guidelines and don't believe in stunning don't need to become vegetarians or compromise their beliefs, of they are not so inclined. Fish does not require ritual slaughter in Judaism or Islam, and stunning birds after cutting their necks is not required by law in Finland.
In short, I think that Finland already has the right laws, as in Eläinsuojeluasetus 7.6.1996/396.
As to circumcision, the situation is complicated. There is no proper law, and treating it as battery is difficult since authorities have in effect permitted it ever since Jews and Muslims lived here, which is a fairly long time. It has become an issue only after the Muslim immigration of the 90s, which made it more common, raised demand for having it taxpayer-funded, and brought the issue of the female circumcision. A few thoughts on banning circumcision:
1. The people who discuss circumcision as is it were a medieval custom long forgotten in Europe and only brought here by recent Muslim immigration are of course very wrong. Circumcision has been around and permitted for a long, long time. I think that a child's right to bodily integrity is more important than freedom of religion, and that banning non-medical circumcision would be a great step forward, but that's exactly what it would be: a huge step forward. It should be treated as such. As in "we realize that is has been permitted pretty much all over the Western world all the time, but times change and we think it's time to ban it, and this is why...".
2. The people who think that it should be funded by taxpayers are making a step backward. It used to be funded by NHS in UK; when it stopped being so, the rates fell dramatically.
3. The problem of people not obeying the law and doing it anyway is real, and something needs to be done about it. OTOH, if it were illegal it would be a lot less common. My rather obvious suggestion would be to make it mildly punishable if done illegally but in proper medical conditions, and make the punishment a lot more severe for people who do it in a way that endangers the child's health. OTOH, the punishments for grievous bodily harm are ridiculously small in Finland in any case.
Anyway: I see how it is a matter of principle for many people, but IMO even laws that would make at least some people give up on this custom would be good.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Global attitudes report
Many news sources have quoted the Pew Research Center's global attitudes report yesterday. I am all for news sources reading long papers, picking out some interesting tidbits and digesting it for us, but why is it so rare for them to show some kind of link to the original source? Anyway, the full report is here.
The biggest news: negative attitudes towards Jews and Muslims on the increase almost everywhere.
My first thought, especially upon noticing that for example in Spain the dislike of Jews, Muslims and Christians is fairly high: what do they mean by the questions, and what do the respondents mean by the answers? More specifically, do they mean Christians as the people who truly believe in Jesus as the savior, the holy trinity, etc., or do they mean all the folks originally from a Christian family, most of whom express they Christianity only by celebrating Christmas? If somebody asked me how I feel about the religious group X, I would tend to assume the latter, but I am not sure they meant it, and even if they did, I am not sure it was understood that way.
In short: how large a percentage of the perceived anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian attitudes in each country are just an expression of a general distaste for religion? And how much of the distaste is based on the perception that all/most members of the group are religious?
This reminds me: in Finland I've run several times into people who sort of assume that all the Jews are very religious and actually believe in something, and were a bit disapponted by me. As an ex-boyfriend of mine explained to one of them: "You know how you don't go to church on Sunday? Well, Jews are the people who don't go to a synagogue on Saturday instead."
Another interesting finding is that Muslims are becoming less and less fond of suicide bombings, with Lebanese people's support for suicide bombings falling from 74% in 2002 to 32% now, Pakistanis' from 33% to 5%, and Turks' from 13% to 3%.
Osama is also becoming less and less popular, from 20% to 2% in Lebanon. from 56% to 19% in Jordan. (The biggest decline in Jordan, from about 63% to about 23%, happened between 2005 and 2006. November 9, 2005, by a strange coincidence, happened to be the date of suicide bombings that killed 60 people and 3 suicide bombers in Amman.)
The only country where support for Bin Laden went up, from 44% to 58%, is Nigeria.
On antisemitism: in Western Europe the people under 50 disliked Jews less than the people over 50, in Poland and Russia the other way around.
In Spain, dislike for all three religions is very much up since 2005. Wonder why.
The biggest news: negative attitudes towards Jews and Muslims on the increase almost everywhere.
My first thought, especially upon noticing that for example in Spain the dislike of Jews, Muslims and Christians is fairly high: what do they mean by the questions, and what do the respondents mean by the answers? More specifically, do they mean Christians as the people who truly believe in Jesus as the savior, the holy trinity, etc., or do they mean all the folks originally from a Christian family, most of whom express they Christianity only by celebrating Christmas? If somebody asked me how I feel about the religious group X, I would tend to assume the latter, but I am not sure they meant it, and even if they did, I am not sure it was understood that way.
In short: how large a percentage of the perceived anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian attitudes in each country are just an expression of a general distaste for religion? And how much of the distaste is based on the perception that all/most members of the group are religious?
This reminds me: in Finland I've run several times into people who sort of assume that all the Jews are very religious and actually believe in something, and were a bit disapponted by me. As an ex-boyfriend of mine explained to one of them: "You know how you don't go to church on Sunday? Well, Jews are the people who don't go to a synagogue on Saturday instead."
Another interesting finding is that Muslims are becoming less and less fond of suicide bombings, with Lebanese people's support for suicide bombings falling from 74% in 2002 to 32% now, Pakistanis' from 33% to 5%, and Turks' from 13% to 3%.
Osama is also becoming less and less popular, from 20% to 2% in Lebanon. from 56% to 19% in Jordan. (The biggest decline in Jordan, from about 63% to about 23%, happened between 2005 and 2006. November 9, 2005, by a strange coincidence, happened to be the date of suicide bombings that killed 60 people and 3 suicide bombers in Amman.)
The only country where support for Bin Laden went up, from 44% to 58%, is Nigeria.
On antisemitism: in Western Europe the people under 50 disliked Jews less than the people over 50, in Poland and Russia the other way around.
In Spain, dislike for all three religions is very much up since 2005. Wonder why.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
"That's our dragon! He'll protect us from other dragons!"
Hannu's and Pasi's recent comments on my blog made me think:
It is fairly common nowadays among the anti-jihad bloggers, both religious and secular, to partially blame the current problems with islamism on secularism, and to believe that a new rise of Christianity would help us against it. (The issue of other religions is usually best left unmentioned in this context.)
That seems somehow very wrong to me. Usually I prefer not to write about the issue, because I have a very strong prejudice against religion and am aware of it. But OTOH a lot of people are quite prejudiced one way or another, and most of what can be said about this, especially with regard to the future, is just guesswork.
The question is not whether or not Christianity is nicer than Islam. It is rather self-evident that it is. It's not whether or not it has always been nicer than Islam, either. The problem with such thinking is that the current versions of Western Christianity are obviously insufficient to keep the unwanted influences of any other religion out, and the versions that were in force during the times of Charles Martel or Isabel la Católica are unacceptable to us. (OK, to me, anyway - it might be acceptable to you, but that just means that we want very different things.) I am not convinced that there is any usable version of kinder, gentler but tougher Christianity between the two.
The other problem is that I, sorry, just don't trust the fuckers. (Not the Jewish ones either.) There is a lot of perfectly nice members of clergy, but in general I don't trust clergy as potential defenders of religious freedoms. Think about all the Islamic trouble is the last few years, starting with the blasphemous cartoons. Some of the clerical voices rose in defense of the secular society and the freedom of speech, but there was just too many of "respect for religion? yes, yes, please, us too!".
When the Archmoron of Canterbury called for use of Sharia in the UK, there was a lot of angry voices reminding him that he is, basically, arguing for empowering imams and disempowering, for example, 18-year-old Pakistani girls brought into the country for marriage with some relative. I wonder whether he envisions a similar power for himself, and whether the natural next step after Halakha and Sharia courts would be the courts where Christian clergy could decide on the affairs of Christians in a Christian way, whatever that is.
It is fairly common nowadays among the anti-jihad bloggers, both religious and secular, to partially blame the current problems with islamism on secularism, and to believe that a new rise of Christianity would help us against it. (The issue of other religions is usually best left unmentioned in this context.)
That seems somehow very wrong to me. Usually I prefer not to write about the issue, because I have a very strong prejudice against religion and am aware of it. But OTOH a lot of people are quite prejudiced one way or another, and most of what can be said about this, especially with regard to the future, is just guesswork.
The question is not whether or not Christianity is nicer than Islam. It is rather self-evident that it is. It's not whether or not it has always been nicer than Islam, either. The problem with such thinking is that the current versions of Western Christianity are obviously insufficient to keep the unwanted influences of any other religion out, and the versions that were in force during the times of Charles Martel or Isabel la Católica are unacceptable to us. (OK, to me, anyway - it might be acceptable to you, but that just means that we want very different things.) I am not convinced that there is any usable version of kinder, gentler but tougher Christianity between the two.
The other problem is that I, sorry, just don't trust the fuckers. (Not the Jewish ones either.) There is a lot of perfectly nice members of clergy, but in general I don't trust clergy as potential defenders of religious freedoms. Think about all the Islamic trouble is the last few years, starting with the blasphemous cartoons. Some of the clerical voices rose in defense of the secular society and the freedom of speech, but there was just too many of "respect for religion? yes, yes, please, us too!".
When the Archmoron of Canterbury called for use of Sharia in the UK, there was a lot of angry voices reminding him that he is, basically, arguing for empowering imams and disempowering, for example, 18-year-old Pakistani girls brought into the country for marriage with some relative. I wonder whether he envisions a similar power for himself, and whether the natural next step after Halakha and Sharia courts would be the courts where Christian clergy could decide on the affairs of Christians in a Christian way, whatever that is.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Freedom of religion
Maybe I just don't understand the whole concept properly. After all, I grew up in a place the "freedom of religion" meant "you can believe in whatever you want as long as you are really quiet about it". Practicing a religion in the Soviet Union in my time was very much like being gay in the US Army: don't ask, don't tell.
It's very nice that people are free to practice whatever religion they choose, much in the same way as it is nice that people are free to wear whatever kind of pants they choose, or have sex with whatever consenting adult they choose, or vote for whatever party they choose. What I find strange is that in many countries religion has special privileges over other life choices.
I don't really mind people asking for various kinds of things, whether it's based on their religion or not. I don't mind them getting whatever they ask for, as long as it is not too much of a trouble. If Sikh cops want to wear turbans, sure, why not. If Muslim kids in school want halal food, sure, whatever, at least if there is enough of them to make it feasible (and if not, they can bring their own lunch). Vegetarians want vegetarian food, same thing. If sufficiently many people ask for something like that, why not please them?
What I don't understand is why the rest of us should consider the religious demands somehow "holier" than the secular ones, more worthy of being fulfilled, or, even worse, a separate right only for the people who really practice the religion in question. Either the religion is asking for something that cannot or should not be fulfilled, in which case it shouldn't, or it is asking for something that can be fulfilled, in which case it should also be fulfilled for anyone who is asking for it, regardless of whether an invisible guy in the sky supports the idea.
Lately the freedom of speech has been eroding here and elsewhere. There are IMO some perfectly legitimate restrictions to what one can say: incitement to crimes, slander, etc. But lately there appears to have developed a right not to be insulted, at least as a particular group of people (insults against the humankind as a whole are for some reason still OK), and the speech insulting various groups tends to be censored. I don't like it, but this is the current trend.
I would really like to know why religions, in their holy books and sermons, get to insult infidels, women, gays and whoever they want, while the rest of us are supposed to pretend to respect them? If you are not allowed to publish a webpage that collects news of crimes committed by foreigners in Finland and some rather rude personal accounts of same, how can you publish a book that calls for killing of engaged women who were raped in a city, or a book that demands that everyone who converts out of a particular religion should be killed?
It's very nice that people are free to practice whatever religion they choose, much in the same way as it is nice that people are free to wear whatever kind of pants they choose, or have sex with whatever consenting adult they choose, or vote for whatever party they choose. What I find strange is that in many countries religion has special privileges over other life choices.
I don't really mind people asking for various kinds of things, whether it's based on their religion or not. I don't mind them getting whatever they ask for, as long as it is not too much of a trouble. If Sikh cops want to wear turbans, sure, why not. If Muslim kids in school want halal food, sure, whatever, at least if there is enough of them to make it feasible (and if not, they can bring their own lunch). Vegetarians want vegetarian food, same thing. If sufficiently many people ask for something like that, why not please them?
What I don't understand is why the rest of us should consider the religious demands somehow "holier" than the secular ones, more worthy of being fulfilled, or, even worse, a separate right only for the people who really practice the religion in question. Either the religion is asking for something that cannot or should not be fulfilled, in which case it shouldn't, or it is asking for something that can be fulfilled, in which case it should also be fulfilled for anyone who is asking for it, regardless of whether an invisible guy in the sky supports the idea.
Lately the freedom of speech has been eroding here and elsewhere. There are IMO some perfectly legitimate restrictions to what one can say: incitement to crimes, slander, etc. But lately there appears to have developed a right not to be insulted, at least as a particular group of people (insults against the humankind as a whole are for some reason still OK), and the speech insulting various groups tends to be censored. I don't like it, but this is the current trend.
I would really like to know why religions, in their holy books and sermons, get to insult infidels, women, gays and whoever they want, while the rest of us are supposed to pretend to respect them? If you are not allowed to publish a webpage that collects news of crimes committed by foreigners in Finland and some rather rude personal accounts of same, how can you publish a book that calls for killing of engaged women who were raped in a city, or a book that demands that everyone who converts out of a particular religion should be killed?
Friday, November 02, 2007
Some holidays are more equal than others
According to the Institute of Public Policy Research, Christmas should be publicly celebrated in Britain only if other religious festivals are marked as well.
WTF? UK is a Christian country, the church and the state are not separated, and the vast majority of the population are either Christians or atheists or agnostics originally from Christian families, who also tend to celebrate Christmas. The minorities who do not celebrate Christmas either have grown up in UK and therefore should be accustommed to the fact that Christians celebrate Christmas, or have at some point moved to the UK and have hopefully figured out that the place is full of Christians before moving.At least I remember that when I moved to Finland my parents warned me that the place is totally full of Lutherans.
Did anyone ever even poll the minorities on this issue?
We Jews do not celebrate Christmas. Some of us pointedly avoid doing anything Christmacy, most just don't celebrate it in any active way. If Christians also stop celebrating Christmas, what is gonna be there for us to pointedly avoid? More importantly, who is gonna make the rice pudding? Are we gonna have to do it ourselves? Shit.
I gladly accept Christmas invitations from friends. OTOH if some official power tried to force me to celebrate Christmas, I'd be the first to remind them that everyone is not Christian, and tell them to bugger off. I hope most normal people understand the difference.
Multicultural practices, however, are fairly diverse, and in a somewhat different spirit of multiculturalism a schol in England ordered all its students and teachers to dress up as Muslims (no, I don't think they meant explosive belts) and celebrate Eid. Let's all dress up the same in order to celebrate diversity. etc. (As an aside, since whoever thought up this idiocy was apparently not a Muslim, somebody should ask them which Eid they were forcing everyone to pretend to celebrate. I think all Muslim holidays are called Eid, or at least all the festive ones.)
Now, Eid (Eid ul-Fitr, I assume in this case) is reasonably fun to celebrate, according to my relatives who have done so. Somehow, I think most of the fun goes out of it if you try to force a schoolful of people to celebrate it, especially in hijabs. I also think that this does not promote much goodwill on anyone's part.
Now I am really curious whether the school will go on with this new fine tradition. Will everyone be forced to celebrate Christmas? Diwali? Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur (he was a Sikh guru who got killed for refusing to convert to Islam, which would make for a rather embarassing multicultural celebration)? Passover? I am sure all the Muslim students would be delighted to bless wine in Hebrew.
I guess that the British idea of diversity now is that some holidays are forcibly taken out of the public sphere, whereas others are forcibly put into it. Maybe someday somebody there will come up with the revolutionary idea of letting people celebrate whatever holidays they feel like celebrating.
WTF? UK is a Christian country, the church and the state are not separated, and the vast majority of the population are either Christians or atheists or agnostics originally from Christian families, who also tend to celebrate Christmas. The minorities who do not celebrate Christmas either have grown up in UK and therefore should be accustommed to the fact that Christians celebrate Christmas, or have at some point moved to the UK and have hopefully figured out that the place is full of Christians before moving.At least I remember that when I moved to Finland my parents warned me that the place is totally full of Lutherans.
Did anyone ever even poll the minorities on this issue?
We Jews do not celebrate Christmas. Some of us pointedly avoid doing anything Christmacy, most just don't celebrate it in any active way. If Christians also stop celebrating Christmas, what is gonna be there for us to pointedly avoid? More importantly, who is gonna make the rice pudding? Are we gonna have to do it ourselves? Shit.
I gladly accept Christmas invitations from friends. OTOH if some official power tried to force me to celebrate Christmas, I'd be the first to remind them that everyone is not Christian, and tell them to bugger off. I hope most normal people understand the difference.
Multicultural practices, however, are fairly diverse, and in a somewhat different spirit of multiculturalism a schol in England ordered all its students and teachers to dress up as Muslims (no, I don't think they meant explosive belts) and celebrate Eid. Let's all dress up the same in order to celebrate diversity. etc. (As an aside, since whoever thought up this idiocy was apparently not a Muslim, somebody should ask them which Eid they were forcing everyone to pretend to celebrate. I think all Muslim holidays are called Eid, or at least all the festive ones.)
Now, Eid (Eid ul-Fitr, I assume in this case) is reasonably fun to celebrate, according to my relatives who have done so. Somehow, I think most of the fun goes out of it if you try to force a schoolful of people to celebrate it, especially in hijabs. I also think that this does not promote much goodwill on anyone's part.
Now I am really curious whether the school will go on with this new fine tradition. Will everyone be forced to celebrate Christmas? Diwali? Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur (he was a Sikh guru who got killed for refusing to convert to Islam, which would make for a rather embarassing multicultural celebration)? Passover? I am sure all the Muslim students would be delighted to bless wine in Hebrew.
I guess that the British idea of diversity now is that some holidays are forcibly taken out of the public sphere, whereas others are forcibly put into it. Maybe someday somebody there will come up with the revolutionary idea of letting people celebrate whatever holidays they feel like celebrating.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
To Ironmistress: about reincarnation and suffering
(In response to the thread in the previous post.)
Most Jews don't know anything about gilgul - it's not a mainstream thing, except among Hassidim. I think its idea - that people get reincarnated in order to correct the past mistakes or finish some unfinished business - is somewhat in contradiction with the rest of Jewish eschatology, where people get ressurected as a reward for having been reasonably good in their past life, not as a punishment for having been bad.
But that's OK. Jewish eschatology is more of a mess than the EU constitution, and much for the same reasons.
I get your point about religion (one's own or someone else's) being useful to some of the users. I certainly don't have anything against the fact that you use it to avoid harming yourself.
The reasoning behind the belief in reincarnation is incomprehensible to me for the same reasons that Adelphi mentioned: if the personality disintegrates, who is there to be punished or rewarded, and if the only thing that remains if some "essense of self" that does not contain any personality or memories, how is this different from a regular death?
As for my personal beliefs:
Emotionally the whole thing is even more incomprehensible to me. From my point of view, life is definitely not full of suffering, and whatever suffering there is in life is usually derived from death (and in general life's finiteness) one way or another, and not from craving. The world is not a bad place, and people are not in general evil. I'd very much like to live forever, especially if I get to remain reasonable young and healthy, and I wish most other people lived forever, except if they really don't want to.
From this point of view, reincarnation as a punishment is a strange idea indeed.
I used to know a Buddhist some years ago. He explained to be that being attached to anything on this earth is bad, because you can always lose it or live in fear of losing it, and this would cause suffering. To me the idea makes about as much sense as "absolute zero is the best temperature, because it least it can never get colder".
Most Jews don't know anything about gilgul - it's not a mainstream thing, except among Hassidim. I think its idea - that people get reincarnated in order to correct the past mistakes or finish some unfinished business - is somewhat in contradiction with the rest of Jewish eschatology, where people get ressurected as a reward for having been reasonably good in their past life, not as a punishment for having been bad.
But that's OK. Jewish eschatology is more of a mess than the EU constitution, and much for the same reasons.
I get your point about religion (one's own or someone else's) being useful to some of the users. I certainly don't have anything against the fact that you use it to avoid harming yourself.
The reasoning behind the belief in reincarnation is incomprehensible to me for the same reasons that Adelphi mentioned: if the personality disintegrates, who is there to be punished or rewarded, and if the only thing that remains if some "essense of self" that does not contain any personality or memories, how is this different from a regular death?
As for my personal beliefs:
Emotionally the whole thing is even more incomprehensible to me. From my point of view, life is definitely not full of suffering, and whatever suffering there is in life is usually derived from death (and in general life's finiteness) one way or another, and not from craving. The world is not a bad place, and people are not in general evil. I'd very much like to live forever, especially if I get to remain reasonable young and healthy, and I wish most other people lived forever, except if they really don't want to.
From this point of view, reincarnation as a punishment is a strange idea indeed.
I used to know a Buddhist some years ago. He explained to be that being attached to anything on this earth is bad, because you can always lose it or live in fear of losing it, and this would cause suffering. To me the idea makes about as much sense as "absolute zero is the best temperature, because it least it can never get colder".
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Reincarnation
I've always wondered what's the deal with the religions where people reincarnate all the time. I can see how you can get some people to believe in heaven or hell or being reborn at the end of the world as we know it, but isn't it empirically self-evident that we did not have a previous life?
I suppose that the standard answer would be that the part of the soul that reincarnated is too small or too lofty to contain memories and/or personality of the previous host, but doesn't this render the whole concept of reincarnation rather meaningless?
I suppose that the standard answer would be that the part of the soul that reincarnated is too small or too lofty to contain memories and/or personality of the previous host, but doesn't this render the whole concept of reincarnation rather meaningless?
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