From: chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Contradictions in Secularism
Date: 13 Aug 92 21:28:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Aug13.212845.26794
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science

In article <l8lj7vINNfho@pageboy.cs.utexas.edu> hyder@cs.utexas.edu (Syed Irfan Hyder) writes:
>In article <1992Aug13.190635.3147@cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
>:In article <l8l8tvINNeoo@pageboy.cs.utexas.edu: hyder@cs.utexas.edu (Syed Irfan Hyder) writes:
>::
>::Who has decreed that "to live in peace" is such a wonderful
>::idea? After all, the concept of "evolution" predicates that
>::we wouldn't have reached this level of "learning" and 
>::"intelligence" unless we had overcome all the "weaklings"
>::on the way. May be there is even higher level of "intelligence"
>::waiting for us, if we only allow the "fittest" to survive?
>:
>:Hm, thanks for a pull-no-punches response about a vision of society in
>:which "weaklings" are destroyed and society "evolves" in
>:"intelligence" since only the fittest survive.  There are many
>:problems with this view.  One of them is that killing the other fellow
>:who does not agree to your regulation of his behavior based on your
>:revelation that he disagrees with hardly constitutes any proof of your
>:higher intelligence.
>
>Ah! then you are suggesting that there "are" some eternal
>principles (for instance, living in peace) which "do" have
>eternal truth and are quite independent of evolution (irrespective
>of whether it exists or not). There "is" some "intelligence" and 
>some "balance" in our senses which abhors such violation of life and
>its sanctity, it has always been there and will always remain
>no matter how many Spanish inquisitions take place and no matter
>how many Hitlers come and go?????????

Yes, but the problem is agreeing on what they are without killing each other.
The solution is an empirical one.  Every functioning culture tentatively
agrees on such things, but all such agreements are open to further
discussion.  

I fully understand that any society has to agree on *some* principles
of co-existence, and you may call them *shared religion* if you like.
I think we are better off where a tenet of the shared religion between
you and me is that I should avoid forcing you to believe, to the
extent that is possible, things that you don't believe in.  I think it
is a good idea that we should try to persuade each other, to look for
evidence, etc., and *minimize* the range of things in which I have to
use compulsion on you and you have to use compulsion on me.  I agree
this principle is no more self-evident logically than your revealed
religion, I agree.  But I see no pragmatic problem in devising such a
society.  You seem to think that you have caught me in some sort of
logical/foundational contradiction.  I never claimed that that there
is a clean and final distinction between the religious and secular,
but that it is a good idea to minimize compulsion.  If you say that
belief is my religion which you don't believe in, and thus I am
compelling you to believe in it, yes, that is indeed the case.  I just
think my proposal in the long run is more likely to be accepted by
more people if they are given an opportunity to consider it, since it
maximizes their own chance to hold beliefs that they are comfortable
with.  

The issue of what beliefs can be held to be more shared between people
living in all functioning cultures is an empirical issue, not a purely
logical one.