crazyfingers

Not exactly a C-S Sep issue but close.

I'm in a discussion with a fundie at the ILJ board <a href="http://www.iljboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2922&perpage=15&pagenum ber=3" target="_blank">Us vs Them</a>. He says that the moral relativists are oppressing the moral absolutists in Canada.

His example is a hate crime law.

I’ve asked him for the specifics but I’d like to find some specifics of my own

Edit to add:

He's come back with

<a href="http://www.cwfa.org/library/_familyvoice/2001-07/22-26.shtml" target="_blank">this </a> from this <a href="http://www.cwfa.org/" target="_blank">fundie group</a>

[ December 28, 2001: Message edited by: crazyfingers ]</p>

Undercurrent

I'm quite certain the extent of the law is being massively exaggerated, but even if it were absolutely true, how is that being reletivistic. It would be, in fact, enforcing a specific belief system and supressing others.

I think "reletivistic" here is a code-word for "disagrees with me."

m.

Euromutt

That "put in jail" business is so much crap - under most anti-hate crime legislation (and I bet that includes the Canadian one) you get fined at the most, forced to remove your billboards with Bible verses quoted out of context (aside: ten to one it's that line from Leviticus - homophobes love to throw that verse around, but blithely disregard the rest of Leviticus, like not being allowed to eat bottom-feeding fish, and demanding women sacrifice a lamb - or two doves if a lamb's too expensive - after being on the rag); if things get heavier there's probably already a contempt of court charge involved.
It's surprising how persecution has devalued; back in the good old days Christians were persecuted when they were throw to the lions or put through on-the-job gladiator training. Nowadays, you just tell them they can't post an inflammatory billboard and they're yelling "persecution".

Anyway, back to the topic - yer man Svensen, or whatever his name is, is obviously full of it. Moral relativists, by definition, do not enforce their moral standards on others. A moral relativist is, for example, someone who preaches that we sould see clitoridectomy as someone else's cultural practice and we are not to judge. A moral absolutist believes that all people should be held to the same set of moral beliefs; the nature of these moral beliefs (Xtian doctrine, Islamic doctrine, the UN Declaration of Human Rights) are irrelevant to the definition. I'm a oral absoltist - I believe fervently in human rights as laid down in the UN Declaration. I do not, however, believe that my ethical code is a "moral absolute" - i.e. I don't believe that my ethical code is based on The Truth; I do believe it should be applied to all human beings. Considering that most UN member state governments have signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights than have proclaimed themselves to be ruled by the Bible does indcate that my orals are damn sight more widely supported (or at least paid lip service to) than yer man Svensen's.
Hate crime laws as regarding to speech, furthermore, do not impose beliefs - they limit the expression of beliefs in ways deemed to incite hatred. Hypotheticaly, you can think all blacks are soulless heathens and less than human beings; hate crime laws can stop you from expressing this belief, but nobody's stopping you from thinking it. Those same hate crime laws, incidentally, prevent certain hard-line atheists of the kind found on this board from renting a billboard and putting up a poster saying "All Christians are scum who should be put to the sword NOW!"
The fact that certain Christians wind up in court on charges of inciting hatred (against gays or pro-choicers) but that very few free thinkers do says more about the behaviour of said Christians than about any perceived bias in the enforcement of said law (i.e. free-thinkers don't indulge in "hate speech", or at least not as vehemently or frequently as some Christians do).
Christians are not being persecuted for their beliefs, or even for expressing them; they're being prosecuted for broadcasting (from the pulpit, on billboards, on the radio, whatever) opinions which have been deemed by a majority of democratically elected officials and a duly appointed judge to be incitements of hatred against certain groups of the population, or an attempt to usurp powers not theirs by constitutional right (Pro-lifer: "Abortion is murder!" Judge: "That's my call, not yours.").
They can hold those beiefs - there are no laws against "thought crime" - but they can't disseminate them.
Good thing too.

Toto

Hate speech is fully protected in American under the First Amendment principles of Freedom of Speech (with some well defined exceptions where the First Amendment does not apply in general). The cases from the USA in the CWFA page either involve others using their First Amendment Rights to argue against hate-speech, or do not contain full details, and may involve something beyond speech (threats of violence, etc.) You will notice that Baptists are free to call the Pope the anti-Christ; fundamentalist Lutherans are free to condemn interfaith services, Catholics are free to equate abortion with murder, etc.

Most other countries, including Canada, do not follow American practices, and try to outlaw "group libel" or inflammatory hate speech. Germany outlaws Holocaust denial, not because they can't prove that the Holocaust happened, but because Holocaust denial is a tool of neo-Nazis, and they don't want to go down that road again. America relies on a free market place of ideas to counter hate speech, and most hate-mongers are marginal, or become so when their hate agenda is exposed to sunlight. (Falwell is now an object of ridicule, and the Christian Coalition is floundering.)

I think most Americans prefer this situation. Christians would like to classify all talk about atheism as anti-Christian bigotry; Muslims would like to ban Dante for placing Mohammed in Hell. Once you start to create exceptions to the First Amendment, to start to slide down a slippery slope towards thought control.

I don't know anyone on this board who fits this criterion:

On this board, a hard-line atheist is someone who thinks there is no god(s). None that I know of are calling for Christians to be put to the sword NOW (or later), especially since most atheists tend to be related to Christians or have them as friends. Since many atheists were Christians at one point, they believe there is always hope for someone to see the light, as it were.

Besides, Christians provide too much amusement.

And any talk you hear about breeding lions is just hyperbole.

Toto

From another thread in Science and Skepticism (Who should speak for science), it turns out that Bill Maher was accused of blasphemy(!) before the Canadian Broadcast Standards Board:

<a href="http://www.cbsc.ca/english/decision/980728.htm" target="_blank">http://www.cbsc.ca/english/decision/980728.htm</a>

The Canadians very sensibly decided that light hearted irreverence was not the sort of hateful speech that would call for censorship.

Euromutt

I do apologise, Toto, I put that badly. I do believe that there may be certain highly militant atheists around this board who might be tempted to bust out with such a sentiment. That said, such people, if they could be found, form such a minority that their opinions might be seen as negligible within the free-thinking community.

The ain trst of my argument was that, if such anti-Christian hate speech were to be vented n Canada, Christians would be protected by anti-hate crime laws just as much as anybody else. My point was more that, if only self-professed Christians end up in court on hate crimes charges, there may be other reasons than perceived persecution of Christians (e.g. no-one else thinks it's their god-given right to verbally abuse gays and pro-choicers and then get pissy when the judge tells them what they're doing is illegal).

Toto

Someone on a list I am on sent me a story which explains why the Christians have their panties in a bunch. Unfortunately, he didn't send a URL.

Mr. Harding was convicted <a href="http://www.christianweek.org/stories/vol12/no20/story1.htm" target="_blank">and sentenced to do community services for Muslims</a> but not put in jail (although if he refuses the terms of the sentence, it seems like he could end up in jail.)

The quoted words are not that much more outrageous than <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/11/09/pipes/" target="_blank">some I have read from US academics</a>. Perhaps if Harding had more that an 8th grade education, he would have phrased things better and avoided this trouble.