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Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

economist.com

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Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#61

Post by arkades »

vadfa wrote: post #5
wongarsu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you strife for integration you have long discussions in your society how to weigh opposing interests. I'm not sure what reasonable alternatives exist.

Striving for keeping the homogeneous culture that has existed for centuries and ejecting those who do not accept it is a reasonable alternative.

How many centuries-to-millennia do Jews have to live in Europe before theyre viewed as having the same rights as all other Europeans, rather than being immigrants in need of assimilation?

If this is the baseline level of Othering involved in the thinking around this, you understand why people view this as an expression of anti-semitism. “Respect other people’s cultures and beliefs, unless they’re Jewish” isn’t a good look for the left wing.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#62

Post by llimos »

FredPret wrote: post #18
brabel wrote: post #6

Why would a religion dictate how you should kill animals, and why do people believe this is a religious matter rather than an animal-rights matter? I just can't understand people sometimes.

There are plenty of religious diktats in the Bible and other books that nobody follows. For instance, if you curse at your parents, the Old Testament calls for you to be stoned to death. This one is conveniently overlooked though

It actually isn't. Orthodox Jews, who are the most literal devotees of the Old Testament (as interpreted by the Talmud), do consider this a capital offence. For technical reasons the death penalty is not administered today (and even when it was, the conditions that needed to be met meant that it hardly ever happened in practice). But this doesn't take away from the severity of the offence.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#63

Post by chuckee »

Joeri wrote: post #14
vadfa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Striving for keeping the homogeneous culture that has existed for centuries and ejecting those who do not accept it is a reasonable alternative.

Apartheid has been tried before. Like communism it doesn’t work out in practice the way the theory predicts.

You have it backwards: ethnic violence is more prevalent in diverse countries without boundaries separating different groups: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Look at ex-Yugoslavia. Is it not working out? Are the people worse off in their separate countries, than when they were genociding each-other under a common flag?

"Good fences make good neighbors" wasn't invented out of thin air.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#64

Post by eesmith »

I remember this back in the 1980s in Miami, regarding Santería.

Ahh, Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Lukumi_Babalu_Ay... .

Basically, the Hialeah City Council thought Santería practices were un-American, un-Cuban, and "abhorrent to its citizens", so banned "sacrifices of animals for any type of ritual", but made sure to allow: "Kosher slaughterhouses, regular slaughterhouses, hunting, fishing, pest extermination, euthanasia of stray animals, and feeding live rabbits to greyhounds."

The Santería church sued, and in 1993 the Supreme Court "concluded that the city's ordinances violated the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution."

The Wikipedia entry also points to the more recent Merced v. Kasson from 2009, where the judge ruled the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act meant that the city's prohibition on the slaughter of four-legged animals "substantially burden plaintiff's free exercise of religion without advancing a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means."

> ... Somewhat similarly in 2009, a freedom of religion case related to animal sacrifice was taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case of Merced v. Kasson ... The court ruled that the ordinances "substantially burden plaintiff's free exercise of religion without advancing a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means", as required by the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#65

Post by WithinReason »

FDSGSG wrote: post #53
NikolaNovak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started mentally translating all instances " because of my religion" to "because I really really want it", as that is what it effectively translates to. There's just no easy line to draw otherwise between "because religion" and any other personal desire. It's not an appeal to any logic or meaning or external truth or specialness or benefit of humankind or world etc. But it's become this magic phrase that causes…

Why does this get downvoted? Does there exist a reasonable counterargument to this? I'd really like to hear it.

It completely ignores the fact that it's possible to have deep religious beliefs about something.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#66

Post by VoodooJuJu »

brabel wrote: post #6

Why would a religion dictate how you should kill animals, and why do people believe this is a religious matter rather than an animal-rights matter? I just can't understand people sometimes.

Religion means different things to different people.

For example, religion to a modern protestant-descended American means something very different to a Salafi Muslim. To one, religion is law. To the other, it's superficial pomp.

If your ancestral law (Salafi religion) dictates that you will slaughter animals a certain way lest the wrath of God and your kin and your ancestors strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, that to violate such a tenet is to violate the law, then by God you will do it.

A rationalist (protestant religion) might divine the religious practice has roots as a hygienic practice that was useful for stone age peoples in a desert climate, but today has no practical use, and he might be right, but that doesn't matter to the Salafist. The Salafist's "why" for doing things is very different and much more personally compelling than the protestant's "why".

The protestant would be well-served in realizing that, although he distinguishes religion from state or law, many others in this world do not.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#67

Post by FDSGSG »

WithinReason wrote: post #65
FDSGSG wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this get downvoted? Does there exist a reasonable counterargument to this? I'd really like to hear it.

It completely ignores the fact that it's possible to have deep religious beliefs about something.

It doesn't. It simply makes the argument that deep religious beliefs are not different from other deep beliefs. At it's face, this appears to be a pretty reasonable take.

Why would religious beliefs be special?

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#68

Post by danbruc »

FDSGSG wrote: post #60
danbruc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even then, if the better part of a population [1] just really, really wants something even if it objectively makes no sense at all, on which ground do you oppose the desire of the majority? I am not sure if you could justifiably oppose the majority, but if you can, it requires probably quite a bit of philosophical work to make that case. [1] Just to be clear, I am not talking about this specific case, there is no…

Our democratic model will bend to the unreasonable demands of the majority. But religious people are increasingly not the majority in Europe, certainly not the ones that demand special animal abuse privileges.

I wouldn't even want to restrict this to religion, there are other topics like taxation, climate change, capital punishment, gun laws, and what not where I can easily imagine that the majority opinion might be flawed because people don't think the issues through carefully enough. And I would guess that it is actually not too uncommon that politics acts against the majority opinion or at least the opinion of large groups. I don't think that this is necessarily bad, after all they are - at least supposed to be - the experts. And that is why I commented to begin with, there is probably some interesting philosophy going on in this area as the majority opinion is not necessarily the correct opinion.

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#69

Post by FredPret »

llimos wrote: post #62
FredPret wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of religious diktats in the Bible and other books that nobody follows. For instance, if you curse at your parents, the Old Testament calls for you to be stoned to death. This one is conveniently overlooked though

It actually isn't. Orthodox Jews, who are the most literal devotees of the Old Testament (as interpreted by the Talmud), do consider this a capital offence. For technical reasons the death penalty is not administered today (and even when it was, the conditions that needed to be met meant that it hardly ever happened in practice). But this doesn't take away from the severity of the offence.

I'm saying that the vast majority of people who live by a book will only follow the parts of said book that they like or find appropriate.

How many Christians have you ever seen laying hands on bodies at funerals, trying to resurrect the dead?

Re: Europe is in a muddle over ritual slaughter

#70

Post by wongarsu »

danbruc wrote: post #57
NikolaNovak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started mentally translating all instances " because of my religion" to "because I really really want it", as that is what it effectively translates to. There's just no easy line to draw otherwise between "because religion" and any other personal desire. It's not an appeal to any logic or meaning or external truth or specialness or benefit of humankind or world etc. But it's become this magic phrase that causes…

But even then, if the better part of a population [1] just really, really wants something even if it objectively makes no sense at all, on which ground do you oppose the desire of the majority? I am not sure if you could justifiably oppose the majority, but if you can, it requires probably quite a bit of philosophical work to make that case. [1] Just to be clear, I am not talking about this specific case, there is no…

You have the constitution setting the framework of what's permissible. Some countries like Germany have portions of the constitution that can't legally be changed, relating to human rights or the state being a democracy.

Of course a sufficiently large majority can just ignore that.

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