seebs

Well, I would too. I am not sure which bothers me more; the idea of religious laws being imposed, or the idea of law having influence on religion. Both strike me as gravely harmful.

Seven

The name is Seven, not Steven

JPD

Seebs, I just have one point to make in reference to law influencing religion. If a group of individuals wrongly interpret a section from the bible and decide to start sacrificing virgins, surely you would not expect the law to stand idly by and not intervene?

seebs

An interesting question. I mean, obviously, we want something done about that... But what do we do if, say, people misinterpret something, and through inaction, allow others to die or suffer horribly? Note that this problem is not restricted to religion; consider that there are non-religious conscientious objectors, and many people who believe sincerely that failing to actively support the military results in the loss of innocent lives.

What if, say, a group of people had a mistaken belief causing them to kill a number of innocent people? Does it matter whether it's a religious belief in sacrificing virgins, or an abortion clinic?

The question of when exactly we can intervene to prevent something that people disagree about the morality of is a very, very, complicated question, and I don't think I've ever seen an answer we can use consistently. As the abortion case shows, there can be honest disagreement about whether or not a given action is hurting people, so we can't just say "it's okay unless it hurts people". We could come up with some rule for which people can and can't be hurt, but any attempt to do that runs afoul of the notion that it's okay to kill blacks and women, 'cuz they can't vote, after all.