Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Why religious equality & diversity won’t work

Over the past few years I’ve reach a position which I’m not particular happy with: religious neutrality & diversity together are pretty much doomed. In the United States the separation of church & state crystallized at a time when Protestantism was normative, and despite all their differences this branch of Christianity shares some commonalities. With the entrance of Catholicism and Judaism into the religious matrix there was some accommodation, but the reality is that to a great extent American Judaism & Catholicism have been “Protestantized” through various Kulturkampfs (e.g., the vitality of non-Orthodox religious Judaism, the “Americanist” tendencies in the Catholic Church in this country). The main problem is this: most religions involve rituals and customs. These rituals and customs demand accommodation, and as the number of rituals and customs proliferate there is an increased chance that they will clash.


This is pretty obvious with regards to Muslims. In Minnesota some Somali cab drivers have refused fares which involve alcohol (intoxication or possession). This was justified by their religious beliefs. Some Muslims at Target refuse to sell pork. These are small issues, but they are symptomatic of problems which crop up when separate purity taboos mix. Some African groups for example don’t understand why Americans find objectionable a nominal ritualistic cut into the female clitoris.
In any case, today I stumbled upon this story about cow slaughter in Wales. Why the controversy? You can read:

An explosive cultural stand-off between the Government and Britain’s Hindu community is looming in the formidable shape of a six-year-old black Friesian bull named Shambo.
Hindus from around the country are threatening to form a human chain to prevent the slaughter of the animal, which they regard as sacred, after it tested positive for tuberculosis.

Hindu leaders are now exploring the possibility of an injunction to stop the slaughter but if that fails they vow they will stop it physically. “We will do whatever it takes to preserve Shambo,” Swami Suryananda said. “People will come from all over Britain, and not just from Britain but from all over the world – if the Government refuses to respect the core values of the Hindu religion.”

Look, British people eat cows. Religious Hindus believe in the sacred nature of the cow. The killing of this sacred cow seems rather precautionary. Obviously the government of Wales doesn’t really respect this Hindu belief. From personal experience non-Hindus (Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc.) really enjoy making fun of the Hindu attitude toward the cow (though one might say that it is more rational to get enraged about the killing of an animal, which can feel pain, as opposed to sacrilege of a book). Hindus on the other hand imbue the cow with some pretty intense religious feeling, sentiments which have led to intercommunal riots in India. I know some Indian Muslims who find it ludicrous that humans lives might be expended in the interests of the reverence of an animal (to which I would respond that Muslims are well known for threatening when the “reputation” of their Holy Book or prophet is besmirched).
The point isn’t that the United Kingdom will be riven with cow slaughter conflict, it won’t. The issue is the general problem that religious people take their faith quite seriously, but those outside of a given religion tend to see the whole enterprise as silly (though of course those engaged in mockery have their own sacred cows). When you have a situation where numerous segments of the population have disjoint sacrality axioms you’re bound to have clash scenarios that emerge from the divergences of world-views.
In some ways I’m actually just restating the problem that crops up when you assume the importance of overdominance in genetic architectures. Say what? The problem is that relying upon overdominance causes problems because it is difficult to obtain a situation where a given individual is actually heterozygous across all the loci in question. Similarly, as religious pluralism increases the “safe common space” which spans all sects begins to narrow as areas of conflicting emphasis (e.g., Hindu cow reverence vs. Muslim cow slaughter) are cordoned off. If, as in the United States, you privilege and respect religious sentiment, you will encounter a situation where you can’t please all parties, and the pretense of neutrality needs to be addressed. Who speaks with the voice of God? Why man of course….

Posted in Uncategorized

Comments are closed.