Debbie Sandhurst (letter Nov. 13) thinks it is "barbaric" to turn religious beliefs into laws. Here is an interesting thought experiment for Ms. Sandhurst and others. Try to think of a law that is not taught in some religion somewhere.I am not sorry to say that the existence of law at the same time as the existence of religion does not concretely mean that religion created law.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." One could easily cite that as the basis of our laws against murder, stealing, rape and fraud. And it would pretty well sum up our civil rights laws and laws that require honoring of contracts and hundreds of others. One doesn't even have to bring up those unpopular Ten Commandments.
I suppose that the speed limits and water conservation laws are devoid of a religious basis, although even that might be debated.
The issue is not whether to pass laws derived from religious teaching. The question is which religious laws to incorporate into our statutes. That can make for spirited debate, but Ms. Sandhurst will not add much to the discussion until she realizes what the question is.
Preston Simpson
Fresno
Nov 20, 2008
A gem of a letter
Here's an example of textbook false causation:
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4 comments:
I am not sure I follow you. Are you saing that Simpson is sayig that religion created law? If so I read his letter differently. I would say he is merely stating that religion superseeded the laws that we have in his country and had an influence over our system of law and order. There is certainly an influence from religion, it would be hard to deny that, but I also dont think it matters where the influence comes from as long as the law is fair and just. So murder is a crime in the bible and also in society, but something like homosexuality that would be a crime so-to-speak in the bible, is not in society. I feel like that is what Simpson is saying when he states "the issue is not whether to pass laws derived from religious teaching. The question is which laws to incorporate into our statutes". Just because it is a religious law, it doesnt mean it should be a societal law but sometimes they can be.
There are little tics in his letter (see the comment about 10 commandments for example) that lead me to believe he's implying something differently than his letter reads on the surface.
But really he claims, "[t]he question is which religious laws to incorporate into our statutes."
No, the question is which secular laws do we derive from our common experience as a society to incorporate into our statutes.
Social contract theory is a common idea that all humans can work with. Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Mormonism, etc are not.
Framing our lawmaking in religion as Simpson suggests is not the proper route to go. It immediately cuts people from the debate.
And you said, "I also dont think it matters where the influence comes from as long as the law is fair and just."
I certainly do. At least with something like the social contract I referenced before, Rousseau sat down and thought it all out logically and cogently. I can read through it, disagree with assertions or see the steps that were made to get somewhere. I can tweak it, I can mess with it. It's mutable.
A god figure giving me an ultimatum is not the basis I want for my law. I do not want fellow citizens who are sheep, frightened into doing good for fear of punishment from an invisible being passing down immutable declarations. That's how we get the hysteria around Prop. 8 and the children being exposed to "fagotry" and whatnot. People running around screaming about how God will punish us all for letting two men have consensual sex.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Coincidence is no basis for giving crackpot religious bigots even an inch of the idea that their religious laws are valuable enough to impose sodomy laws for example.
Preston Simpson points only to broad rules, like the so-called "golden rule" and prohibitions of rape and murder. He says nothing about the wide variety of procedural laws, and the huge differences in punishments that different religions and different secular regimes implement.
His letter also demonstrates that he has approximately zero knowledge of actual law, and of the problems of defining law. Does he pay attention to current political issues, like the problem of whether torture should be legal (or what it is at all), or whether the United States should ever send people to other countries where it is legal, so it can be used to further U.S. interests? Doesn't that indicate enormous differences? He obviously has no idea how the law of marriage and divorce works, because there are huge variations on that one, too, and one controversy brewing in England right now is whether there should be Islamic courts giving out special Islamic divorces, according to Sharia law — which is religious.
People who make this ridiculous argument that our legal system is rooted in laws that are common to religion ignore huge swathes of our law. Contract law is not based on the Golden Rule, but on the idea that certain promises should be enforceable. How that relates to the Golden Rule in any meaningful way, I do not know, because people can make contracts that are unfair, and those contracts can be enforced by people who would resist the same enforcement against themselves. The law of contract has nothing to do with the kind of distributive fairness we see in the Golden Rule, and everything to do with protecting the sense of expectation that arises from certain serious promises.
Anyway, I could go on a long time but I have other stuff to do. Preston Simpson has no idea what he is talking about.
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