From: chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Contradictions in Quaran
Date: 12 Aug 92 17:29:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Aug12.172943.21294
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science

In article <l8ia1hINNapu@pageboy.cs.utexas.edu> hyder@cs.utexas.edu (Syed Irfan Hyder) writes:

>This brings us to the fundamental basic of secularism. Religion of
>secularism decrees that henceforth life of man has been divided
>between "personal" and "collective" spheres. It has further
>been ordained that henceforth any thing to do with god or religion
>will be constrained to fit into the "personal" sphere!!!!!!
>
>Would any one illuminate us as to which god or gods have made this
>demarkation? Is this god the god of logic, rationalism or 
>utilitarianism?

   You are asking a rhetorical question whose import is that i. secularism
is as much a religion as any other religion, and ii. that its separation
of the personal from social is open to question.  Actually, I agree in
some ways with part ii. but I will argue that it is necessary for us
to live in peace with each other.

I agree that ultimately there is only one life we have and separating
it into personal/religious and social is somewhat arbitrary.  It is
often argued ultimately that the religious should take precedence over the
merely social, since religious aspect governs the eternal while social
only governs this one mortal life and so on. So if I truly believed in
my religion, *all* aspects of my life will be goverened by my religion.

But consider: suppose your religion says that people must dress in a
certain way, say A, but my religion says that people must dress in a
different way, say B, and we both live in the same society.  (Or that
your religion is against worshipping idols while mine thinks that all
people should worship god thru idols.)  Now what do we do?  You
believe in your religion just as strongly as I do in mine.  If I have
power, I will try to make sure that all people dress in way B, while
if you have power you would naturally tend to insure that people dress
in way A.  In fact, it would be our *duty* to use our power this way,
since god has ordained so.  Since both of us believe that separation
of religios/personal from social as arbitrary, the only approach for
us is to try to extinguish each other.  You break my idols and put me
in jail for worshipping them, and I repeat the favor and so on.

We have another approach: convince each other that way A or B or even
someother way C is actually good without appealing to your personal
revelation or my personal revelation.  Who knows, you might actually
be able convince me, without appealing to your personal faith that I
don't share, that way A has certain advantages.  

This is the beginning of secularism.  Secularism has the following
features:

i.  People have different faiths about religious truths. Their
personal sense that their religion and its injunctions are the eternal
truth is not shared by others in a community.

ii.  Peoples' behavior often needs to be regulated, of course, but let us
try to decide which behaviors need to be regulated, and if we decide that
some behavior needs to be regulated, let us regulate them. Both deciding
if a certain behavior needs to be regulated and if so how could be done
by some procedure which doesn't appeal only to religious beliefs which
you and I disagree about, but to beliefs that we share commonly.  Some
form of consensus or democracy or whatever may be thrown in so that we
have a functioning society, but the persons who lose out in one round
should have the freedom to convince others of their point of view.

What we now have is secularism. Even though you believe murder is
wrong because of the 10 commandments, and I believe murder is wrong
because of what my scriptures tell me, we can both agree to proscribe
this behavior because we agree that it is a good idea because of the
common vision you and I share about the society we want to live in.  I
don't have to force you to buy into my scriptures and vice versa.

On the other hand, your scripture may say that men should cover their
faces, while mine might say that men should keep their faces clear.
Now first we have to ask whether this is a behavior that must be
regulated independent of our beliefs in our respective scriptures, and
without taking up arms against each other.  In this case, we might
conclude that the best option is not to make this a legally regulated
behavior.  Then you are free to cover your face and try to persuade me
that I should cover mine, and I am free to keep my face clear and try
to persuade you that you should keep your face clear.  

This, my friend, is secularism. I don't really like it because I am being
forced to let people walk around who cover their faces and I think they
are violating some rule which I personally think is eternal and god's word,
and you don't really like the situation because you are being forced to
watch people go with bare faces, violating a rule which you think
is eternal and god's word.  But both of us see that that keeps us from
killing each other.  We can always say, "Well, let me behave the way
that I think god asked me to. As for the others, let god sort it out."

Welcome to secularism. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh