Religion and all

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/209/story_20904_1.html

A link to a brilliant debate about the meaning of religion in the modern world. It's between two of my favourite authors: Sam Harris, a modern day Thomas Paine, in my horribly biased and militantly agnostic opinion, and Andrew Sullivan, everyone's favourite gay catholic Republican, and one of my favourite bloggers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

another very interesting debate around religion, and why humans believe in it.

Last is a terrible (in my anally perfectionist opinion) 1st-year sociology essay on religion. It was a group essay that had a powerpoint presentation as well, however, I volunteered to do the entire essay myself. Worked for everyone. Because it's a bird course, there wasn't any sources, the writing is low-quality (written drunk haha, and only edited twice), has bad structure, and is, worst of all, almost entirely neutral. But, my quest to stick all my essays on this blog can't be denied.

Religion has acted as an integral social structure throughout history, providing society with order, and individuals with communal and spiritual opportunities. In Canada, religion continues to remain extremely significant. Canadian society has several main concepts relevant to religion, including a secular humanist government and clause 2.a) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: freedom of conscience and religion. Though Canadians value a separation of church and state as much as any other Western nation, they also have distinctive Canadian values that make their experiences with this unique. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms starts out with the line “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law,” an acknowledgement that the country was founded upon traditional Christian values. Canada continues to have policies of very open immigration, largely from areas of Asia where different religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are prevalent. As well, Canadians have a core belief in multiculturalism, which is a policy that endorses the principle of cultural diversity and supports the right of different cultural and ethnic groups to retain distinctive cultural identities. This Canadian value is in opposition to the more American style of assimilation, where people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family, with a core of similar values. And for the most part, these policies are working fine, with millions of secular or moderately religious Canadians getting along without conflict. Recently, however, conflicts between largely fundamentalist religious individuals and the secular Canadian public have come about. This creates the idea of reasonable accommodations, or, how far must irreligious Canadians go to accommodate the beliefs of religious Canadians? Examples abound, largely in Quebec, and usually with male Hasidic Jews, who can’t interact with women outside of their families, or female Muslims who, at their most fundamental, can’t be viewed by men outside of their family or show any part of their body to unfamiliar men. Obviously this creates conflict, as a secular society isn’t divided vertically among gender lines, as some religions are. Other examples of conflict include the wearing of unconventional religious objects in the public sector (which is associated with the secular government), such as Kirpan daggers in public schools, Sikh turbans as part of an RCMP uniform, and most recently, a hijab (head-scarf) on a soccer field. All these examples have to do with conflict created from Canada’s tolerant views on personal religious belief, and the belief in a secular and irreligious public sector. How much are people with no or different personal religious beliefs willing to compromise in the name of freedom of conscience and religion? Reasonable accommodations are a defining social issue in Canada and an important consequence of its multicultural beliefs and open immigration policies.

A more liberal view on reasonable accommodations is that the personal religious beliefs of an individual trump the established norms, that the onus is on an institution to change and suit individual beliefs, and not on the individual to change to suit the norm. An excellent example of this is the recent controversy in Quebec on the soccer field. A young girl from Ontario, who wears a Muslim hijab while playing, which is allowed under Ontario policy, went to play soccer at a tournament in Quebec. Quebec policy follows that of FIFA, including FIFA Law Four, which states that something such as the hijab, not part of the conventional soccer uniform, isn’t to be worn on the field. It also states that it is up to the referee’s discretion on whether or not to force the hijab-wearing player to remove the adornment. The girl played two games wearing the hijab because the referee allowed it, however, another referee told her to remove it or she couldn’t play. Her team then willfully forfeited the rest of their games in protest. FIFA later upheld their rules and the ruling, after discussion, and stood behind the Quebec Soccer Federation. A liberal viewpoint on reasonable accommodations would be that FIFA should change their established rules and accommodate the girl’s beliefs, because that’s the inclusive option and the one respecting the personal religious beliefs of a citizen. This has further repercussions to other reasonable accommodation conflicts in Canada, such as in Montreal, where an orthodox Jewish school petitioned a local gym. The gym had wide-open windows, so you could see men and, specifically, women in tight and revealing exercise clothing from the outside, and the religious school students had such a view. Stating that the view was harming their conservative religious practices that frown on revealing clothing, the school asked the gym’s administration to tint their windows, which they did, angering members of the gym. This is a classic reasonable accommodations conflict, which boils down to a conflict of basic rights. Does the right to religious beliefs, and the respect that Canadians are to have for these religious practices thanks to multiculturalism, trump that of the individual? In other words, does the right to believe in not seeing women at a gym trump that of being able to be a woman at a gym with large windows? Members later complained that the tinted windows made it harder to practice activities such as yoga. This example is one where conflict created a situation of a religious group asking others to change their behavior to suit the beliefs of that religious group. A compromise was reached where the situation of the non-religious group was changed to suit the beliefs of the religious group, a very liberal solution to this particular reasonable accommodations conflict.

With such a liberal decision, however, there are a few problems. A dangerous precedent would have been set that gives minority religious beliefs rein over non-believers and their beliefs. For example, what’s to stop a person from wanting to play soccer in the nude, if their personal beliefs are of nudity, amid a field of non-nudists in regular soccer uniforms? By allowing the girl to break FIFA rules and wear a hijab because of personal beliefs, religious or not, you create a dangerous precedent of people being able to force their personal beliefs upon others, justifying it with “it’s my religion.” This idea bites to the core of Canadian multiculturalism, which was born from cultural relativism, or the belief that all cultural values are arbitrary, and therefore the values of one culture should not be used as a set of standards to assess the activities or principles of people from outside that culture. This is central to the belief that individuals should be free to believe in whichever set of cultural values they want to, however, when conflict is created between these values and the values of others, which side is to be triumphant? A conservative view towards reasonable accommodations is the rejection of cultural relativism, a view that that not all beliefs are created equally. That a belief that is based from faith, such as religion, is not the equal of a belief based from rational empiricism, and thus, it is not due the equal credibility and respect. A conservative view towards reasonable accommodations would be, though people are still free to believe what they will, they can’t justify changing the behaviors of other’s, or the rules of an institution, based on their own beliefs. This view is becoming increasingly relevant, as religion, at its core being a set of faith-based beliefs, comes into conflict with secular public institutions. Taking the side opposing personal religious beliefs can be a double-edged sword, though, with unintended negative consequences. For example, in the case of changing the RCMP uniform to add religious adornments such as a turban, a secular, public institution is intruded upon by people’s personal religious beliefs. However, by opposing the allowance of wearing a turban, the RCMP shuts itself off from a whole market of young persons who could potentially fill its organization with competent police officers, but ones that are also unwilling to change their religious behaviors to suit the norm. By allowing the wearing of turbans, the RCMP pandered to religious beliefs, but it also, more pragmatically, expanded its recruiting base and strengthened the entire institution. Liberal compromises such as this are often the practical solution, sacrificing principle to find a necessary middle-ground between the conflicting beliefs of peoples.

Conflicts of reasonable accommodations aren’t going away in Canada. They are becoming increasingly frequent, as the population rises and a larger variety of cultural and religious beliefs are exposed to, and come into contact with, secular institutions and beliefs. A liberal view of the situation would be the acceptance of their cultural beliefs over the traditional norms of a culture, over the rules of a soccer federation or police department, and that the onus for transformation is on the established culture. The opposing view is that Canada has secular public institutions and beliefs, born out of the Enlightenment, which place the empirical belief over that of the religious faith-based one. The question is, when people have the freedom to believe what they choose, must everybody then share those beliefs, or at least respect them? Canada, with its policies of multiculturalism and the ensuing increased social tension, is in a unique position to face these conflicts and find a reasonable compromise to accommodate the beliefs of all.