I assume Phil means that Christian-majority societies have tended to enforce not only Christian rules that are widely shared among non-Christians, but also Christian rules that are not. Phil, would you care to clarify?
I assume Phil means that Christian-majority societies have tended to enforce not only Christian rules that are widely shared among non-Christians, but also Christian rules that are not.
Well, all the examples cited in this thread are also widely shared among non-Christians.
Among examples of rules not widely shared among non-Christians that are enforced in present-day western countries, off the top of my head I can think of the ban on selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland, and bans on certain types of stem cell research in various countries. There probably are many more that don’t immediately spring to my mind.
I don’t think that the notion of limiting marriage to couples that are not of the same gender is exclusively a Christian concept. Until fairly recently, I don’t think that government recognition of same-sex marriage has been common even among jurisdictions that are not predominantly Christian. And, even today, it is hardly the case that same-sex marriage is forbidden only in countries with a majority Christian population.
Among examples of rules not widely shared among non-Christians that are enforced in present-day western countries, off the top of my head I can think of the ban on selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland
One could hardly come up with a worse example of a Christian-only prohibition. Alcohol is religiously forbidden to Moslems, and in some Moslem countries, legally forbidden on every day of the year, not just the selling of it, but the drinking. The punishment is flogging, or death for persistent offenders.
ETA: Ah, you said Western countries, which currently excludes all the Moslem states. But the Moslem populations of the West still have the religious prohibition.
“Prohibits alcohol on Good Friday” means “specifically prohibits alcohol on Good Friday”. Prohibiting it as a subset of a generic prohibition on all alcohol doesn’t count.
Why’s that relevant? The point (unless I’m misunderstanding badly) is that the ban is there because some Christians wanted it to be, that the great majority of the non-Christian population would likely prefer it not to be there, and that this is therefore an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians.
The fact that a small fraction of the non-Christian population might be happy enough for the rule to be there is irrelevant. If there were a law requiring everyone to go to church on Sundays there would probably be as large a fraction of the non-Christian population in favour; it would still (obviously, no?) be an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians.
If there were a law requiring everyone to go to church on Sundays
There have been such laws in the past, but is impossible for there to be such a law in the present day. There aren’t enough Christians to pass it or enforce it. Such laws were made when everyone was Christian. With increasing secularisation they fall away. Sunday trading, sale of alcohol on holy days, laws against the wrong sort of Christian and all non-Christians: in the countries of Christian traditions these have mostly disappeared. To point to a minor historical relic like the banning of alcohol sales on one day of the year (a ban with many loopholes in it) is not a good example of Christians imposing their rules on non-Christians.
Especially since alcohol is not even forbidden to Christians, whatever the day of the year.
So you’re suggesting that these rules weren’t a matter of Christians imposing on non-Christians when they were put in place (because everyone was Christian then) and aren’t now (because they have mostly fallen into disuse)?
Ingenious, but I’m not convinced, on two counts.
First (and less importantly), I am not convinced that “everyone was Christian” when those laws first came into being. There have always been dissenters of one sort or another. It was doubtless true that almost everyone was at least nominally Christian, though.
Second (and more importantly), at least some of those laws are still on the books—e.g., the law against selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland, or the restrictions on Sunday trading in the UK. They may indeed have been put in place as restrictions on a nation composed almost entirely (at least in principle) of Christians, but they are still there now and generally Christian legislators have shown little enthusiasm for ceasing to impose restrictions on non-Christian citizens. When the possibility of repealing such restrictions comes up, there is generally no shortage of Christian legislators speaking fervently in favour of keeping them on the basis of their religion.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not arguing (and I don’t think anyone else is arguing) that restrictions on Sunday trading and alcohol on Good Friday constitute terrible oppression of non-Christian citizens by Christian legislators. They’re not a very big deal in practice.
Especially since alcohol is not even forbidden to Christians
The alcohol rule is not enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians, since neither Christians nor Catholics have a rule against buying alcohol on Good Friday. That law (which I only know about from this comment) is specifically Irish. It is not banning something for everyone which is against the rules for some; it is banning something for everyone which normally would not be against anyone’s rules.
(Which does not mean there are no cases of Christians enforcing specifically Christian rules on non-Christians; there are likely cases like that.)
It certainly is enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians. “Christian rule” here means not “rule found in the Bible” or “rule adhered to by at least 40% of Christians” or anything like that but “rule wanted only by Christians, for specifically Christianity-related reasons”.
The only plausible reason to forbid buying alcohol on Good Friday in particular is that among Christians Good Friday is a solemn holy day on which drunkenness would be exceptionally inappropriate.
(Other hypothetical things that I think would be “Christian rules” in the relevant sense, just to make sure my point is clear: A rule forbidding anyone to speak ill of any canonized Christian saint. A rule forbidding commercial transactions on Sundays. A rule obliging everyone to attend at least one service in an Anglican church every Sunday. None of these is regarded as obligatory by most Christians. Any of them, if made into law, would be an obvious example of Christians imposing Christianity-specific obligations on others. That the obligations aren’t readily derivable consequences of Christianity as such makes this worse if anything, not better.)
I agree with you on all the facts here, but I still don’t think talking about this as Christians enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians is a good way to think about it.
At least parts of Italy have a law against stores being open on Easter Sunday, although they are allowed to be open on other Sundays. You could say that they are enforcing a rule which simply has Christian motivations on non-Christians, and you would be right in a certain way, but I think wrong in a more important way. The real reason for the law is to make sure that employees can be at home celebrating Easter instead of working that day. The vast majority of those employees are Catholics, and even most of the non-Catholics have Catholic relatives, and would probably appreciate the day off as well.
And really this kind of discussion has very little to do with religion in general: you might as well say that laws against public nudity are enforcing special rules on people who believe it is ok to go around naked. The reason why some places have such laws is not a religious reason; it is because many people find it offensive. Of course it is true that societies where most people belong to a religion are going to have some laws that in some way are based on that religion. That does not tend to show that religious societies are especially tyrannical.
You may well be right about the Italian laws about Easter Sunday. It doesn’t look to me as if a parallel explanation can work for the “no alcohol on Good Friday” law, though. (It might for more general Sunday-trading restrictions.)
The reason why some places have such laws is not a religious reason; it is because many people find it offensive.
Rules against public nudity exist in lots of societies, even societies with different dominant religions. Only societies dominated by Christianity have rules against stores being open on Easter Sunday. This suggests that nudity laws are not religion-based and Easter Sunday laws are.
The reason why some places have such laws is not a religious reason; it is because many people find it offensive.
But do many people find it offensive because a religion told them so?
Religion is usually tightly intertwined with culture and disentangling them is not always possible. Many people find women whose face is open and whose hair is uncovered to be offensive. Take bikinis as an intermediate stage.
No, I don’t think people find nakedness offensive because a religion told them so. I think if religion tends to say that it is offensive, this is because people first found it offensive regardless of religion.
No, I can’t specify a particular degree. I suppose it depends on the individual and on circumstances.
Are you simply asking questions or are you implying that in fact people are not naturally uncomfortable with nakedness? If so, do you think it is also only religion that makes people uncomfortable with being touched on certain parts of the body without their consent? And if this is not only religious, why not? There is nothing painful about it. It is just contact, and you are anyway coming into contact with things all the time.
I don’t “know” that religion is not the cause, but as I said in the previous comment, I don’t think it is. One reason is that bans or at least taboos on nudity exist all over the world with very few exceptions, regardless of the religion in the region. Another reason is that religion tries to explain the ban in a way that wouldn’t be necessary, if it was inventing the ban. For example, Genesis says that the sin of Adam and Eve made them embarrassed about being naked. That is an attempt to explain a pre-existing feeling; if they were inventing a ban, they could have just said it is embarrassing because it is bad.
Well, I think people “naturally” tend to cover their genitals for a variety of reasons which we need not concern ourselves with. But beyond that, what do you need to cover is mostly cultural and I think that in this respect culture is mostly driven by religion.
For example, most pre-religious people do not care about women going topless. But Christianity is pretty sure women should cover their breasts. Traditional Judaism goes further and says that married women should also keep their head covered at all times, that’s why married Jewish Orthodox women wear wigs. Islam agrees that hair should be covered but in many places goes further and says most of the face should be hidden as well.
In, say, contemporary Christianity-based American culture women can’t normally go topless—that would be offensive to many people. But a hundred years ago a woman in bikini would also have been offensive. And a woman with uncovered head and open face would be offensive to some Muslims.
if they were inventing a ban, they could have just said it is embarrassing because it is bad.
I think religion is more sophisticated than that :-)
I am personally uncomfortable with men going topless. I do not have, and have never had, any religious opinions saying that it is wrong or even inappropriate for men to go topless. Obviously not everyone shares my personal feelings, but a good number of other people do. So your explanation still seems inadequate: the limitation to genitals is simply a common denominator. The feelings themselves vary between people in ways that do not necessarily correspond with religion.
Your feelings in this regard may be shaped by religion in a subtler way. Suppose, for instance, the following things are true:
The culture you’re in has been strongly shaped by Religion X.
Religion X has a strong tradition of modesty about bodies, extending to more or less every part of the body for which there isn’t common need to have it uncovered.
Not because of anything very specific in Religion X’s sacred writings or official dogma; but the tradition has grown up within Religion X and is widely held there.
As a result, in this culture it is usual for people to keep most of their bodies covered in public.
As a result, you are not used to seeing people more-than-usually uncovered in public.
Therefore, seeing people so may (1) just seem strange-and-therefore-uncomfortable to you, and/or (2) look like a signal of intimacy that’s uncomfortable outside contexts where intimacy would normally be signalled.
Once this effect is in play, it can continue even if Religion X becomes much less influential or loses its misgivings about exposing bodies: it’s traditional to keep most of your body covered up, so most people do, so doing otherwise makes people uncomfortable, so the tradition persists.
In such situations it’s difficult to tell how far Religion X really is the cause, though. It could just be a free-floating tradition. It could be a tradition with some other origin that Religion X has (at least within your culture) assimilated.
All of this is plausible but also consistent with the idea that Religion X took the tradition in the first place from culture, rather than inventing the tradition, as Lumifer at least seemed to be proposing at first.
When it comes to dresscode, there are a lot of cultural influences that have little to do with religion. In some cases not wearing a tie will be offensive.
If you wear sandals some people might disapprove of you if you also wear socks at the same time.
Of course. I’m talking about averages and broad trends. There is certainly a LOT of individual variation here.
I do not have, and have never had, any religious opinions saying that it is wrong
Beyond individual variation, you are, to a certain degree, a product of your culture. And your culture, I would expect, has been majorly influenced by religion.
I assume Phil means that Christian-majority societies have tended to enforce not only Christian rules that are widely shared among non-Christians, but also Christian rules that are not. Phil, would you care to clarify?
Well, all the examples cited in this thread are also widely shared among non-Christians.
Much less widely than the prohibition on murder.
Among examples of rules not widely shared among non-Christians that are enforced in present-day western countries, off the top of my head I can think of the ban on selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland, and bans on certain types of stem cell research in various countries. There probably are many more that don’t immediately spring to my mind.
Sunday blue laws (bans on selling alcohol in the USA on Sundays.)
Heterosexual-only marriage.
I suppose having Christmas be a Federal holiday technically counts as well.
I don’t think that the notion of limiting marriage to couples that are not of the same gender is exclusively a Christian concept. Until fairly recently, I don’t think that government recognition of same-sex marriage has been common even among jurisdictions that are not predominantly Christian. And, even today, it is hardly the case that same-sex marriage is forbidden only in countries with a majority Christian population.
One could hardly come up with a worse example of a Christian-only prohibition. Alcohol is religiously forbidden to Moslems, and in some Moslem countries, legally forbidden on every day of the year, not just the selling of it, but the drinking. The punishment is flogging, or death for persistent offenders.
ETA: Ah, you said Western countries, which currently excludes all the Moslem states. But the Moslem populations of the West still have the religious prohibition.
“Prohibits alcohol on Good Friday” means “specifically prohibits alcohol on Good Friday”. Prohibiting it as a subset of a generic prohibition on all alcohol doesn’t count.
Which is a sliver of a prohibition. And even that got trumped by commercial lobbying by pubs on a Good Friday when there was a big football match.
Why’s that relevant? The point (unless I’m misunderstanding badly) is that the ban is there because some Christians wanted it to be, that the great majority of the non-Christian population would likely prefer it not to be there, and that this is therefore an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians.
The fact that a small fraction of the non-Christian population might be happy enough for the rule to be there is irrelevant. If there were a law requiring everyone to go to church on Sundays there would probably be as large a fraction of the non-Christian population in favour; it would still (obviously, no?) be an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians.
There have been such laws in the past, but is impossible for there to be such a law in the present day. There aren’t enough Christians to pass it or enforce it. Such laws were made when everyone was Christian. With increasing secularisation they fall away. Sunday trading, sale of alcohol on holy days, laws against the wrong sort of Christian and all non-Christians: in the countries of Christian traditions these have mostly disappeared. To point to a minor historical relic like the banning of alcohol sales on one day of the year (a ban with many loopholes in it) is not a good example of Christians imposing their rules on non-Christians.
Especially since alcohol is not even forbidden to Christians, whatever the day of the year.
So you’re suggesting that these rules weren’t a matter of Christians imposing on non-Christians when they were put in place (because everyone was Christian then) and aren’t now (because they have mostly fallen into disuse)?
Ingenious, but I’m not convinced, on two counts.
First (and less importantly), I am not convinced that “everyone was Christian” when those laws first came into being. There have always been dissenters of one sort or another. It was doubtless true that almost everyone was at least nominally Christian, though.
Second (and more importantly), at least some of those laws are still on the books—e.g., the law against selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland, or the restrictions on Sunday trading in the UK. They may indeed have been put in place as restrictions on a nation composed almost entirely (at least in principle) of Christians, but they are still there now and generally Christian legislators have shown little enthusiasm for ceasing to impose restrictions on non-Christian citizens. When the possibility of repealing such restrictions comes up, there is generally no shortage of Christian legislators speaking fervently in favour of keeping them on the basis of their religion.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not arguing (and I don’t think anyone else is arguing) that restrictions on Sunday trading and alcohol on Good Friday constitute terrible oppression of non-Christian citizens by Christian legislators. They’re not a very big deal in practice.
See my reply to entirelyuseless.
Lot’s of societies have laws banning conducting of various types of business on major holidays.
The first thing that pops into my head is monogamy.
That was a Greco-Roman idea the Christianity inherited.
Not just inherited. In Christianity marriage is a sacrament, as opposed to a convention of social arrangement.
The alcohol rule is not enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians, since neither Christians nor Catholics have a rule against buying alcohol on Good Friday. That law (which I only know about from this comment) is specifically Irish. It is not banning something for everyone which is against the rules for some; it is banning something for everyone which normally would not be against anyone’s rules.
(Which does not mean there are no cases of Christians enforcing specifically Christian rules on non-Christians; there are likely cases like that.)
It certainly is enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians. “Christian rule” here means not “rule found in the Bible” or “rule adhered to by at least 40% of Christians” or anything like that but “rule wanted only by Christians, for specifically Christianity-related reasons”.
The only plausible reason to forbid buying alcohol on Good Friday in particular is that among Christians Good Friday is a solemn holy day on which drunkenness would be exceptionally inappropriate.
(Other hypothetical things that I think would be “Christian rules” in the relevant sense, just to make sure my point is clear: A rule forbidding anyone to speak ill of any canonized Christian saint. A rule forbidding commercial transactions on Sundays. A rule obliging everyone to attend at least one service in an Anglican church every Sunday. None of these is regarded as obligatory by most Christians. Any of them, if made into law, would be an obvious example of Christians imposing Christianity-specific obligations on others. That the obligations aren’t readily derivable consequences of Christianity as such makes this worse if anything, not better.)
I agree with you on all the facts here, but I still don’t think talking about this as Christians enforcing a Christian rule on non-Christians is a good way to think about it.
At least parts of Italy have a law against stores being open on Easter Sunday, although they are allowed to be open on other Sundays. You could say that they are enforcing a rule which simply has Christian motivations on non-Christians, and you would be right in a certain way, but I think wrong in a more important way. The real reason for the law is to make sure that employees can be at home celebrating Easter instead of working that day. The vast majority of those employees are Catholics, and even most of the non-Catholics have Catholic relatives, and would probably appreciate the day off as well.
And really this kind of discussion has very little to do with religion in general: you might as well say that laws against public nudity are enforcing special rules on people who believe it is ok to go around naked. The reason why some places have such laws is not a religious reason; it is because many people find it offensive. Of course it is true that societies where most people belong to a religion are going to have some laws that in some way are based on that religion. That does not tend to show that religious societies are especially tyrannical.
You may well be right about the Italian laws about Easter Sunday. It doesn’t look to me as if a parallel explanation can work for the “no alcohol on Good Friday” law, though. (It might for more general Sunday-trading restrictions.)
Rules against public nudity exist in lots of societies, even societies with different dominant religions. Only societies dominated by Christianity have rules against stores being open on Easter Sunday. This suggests that nudity laws are not religion-based and Easter Sunday laws are.
But do many people find it offensive because a religion told them so?
Religion is usually tightly intertwined with culture and disentangling them is not always possible. Many people find women whose face is open and whose hair is uncovered to be offensive. Take bikinis as an intermediate stage.
No, I don’t think people find nakedness offensive because a religion told them so. I think if religion tends to say that it is offensive, this is because people first found it offensive regardless of religion.
So, can you specify the particular degree of nakedness that people “first” find offensive, before any religious influence? And how do you know that?
No, I can’t specify a particular degree. I suppose it depends on the individual and on circumstances.
Are you simply asking questions or are you implying that in fact people are not naturally uncomfortable with nakedness? If so, do you think it is also only religion that makes people uncomfortable with being touched on certain parts of the body without their consent? And if this is not only religious, why not? There is nothing painful about it. It is just contact, and you are anyway coming into contact with things all the time.
I don’t “know” that religion is not the cause, but as I said in the previous comment, I don’t think it is. One reason is that bans or at least taboos on nudity exist all over the world with very few exceptions, regardless of the religion in the region. Another reason is that religion tries to explain the ban in a way that wouldn’t be necessary, if it was inventing the ban. For example, Genesis says that the sin of Adam and Eve made them embarrassed about being naked. That is an attempt to explain a pre-existing feeling; if they were inventing a ban, they could have just said it is embarrassing because it is bad.
Well, I think people “naturally” tend to cover their genitals for a variety of reasons which we need not concern ourselves with. But beyond that, what do you need to cover is mostly cultural and I think that in this respect culture is mostly driven by religion.
For example, most pre-religious people do not care about women going topless. But Christianity is pretty sure women should cover their breasts. Traditional Judaism goes further and says that married women should also keep their head covered at all times, that’s why married Jewish Orthodox women wear wigs. Islam agrees that hair should be covered but in many places goes further and says most of the face should be hidden as well.
In, say, contemporary Christianity-based American culture women can’t normally go topless—that would be offensive to many people. But a hundred years ago a woman in bikini would also have been offensive. And a woman with uncovered head and open face would be offensive to some Muslims.
I think religion is more sophisticated than that :-)
I am personally uncomfortable with men going topless. I do not have, and have never had, any religious opinions saying that it is wrong or even inappropriate for men to go topless. Obviously not everyone shares my personal feelings, but a good number of other people do. So your explanation still seems inadequate: the limitation to genitals is simply a common denominator. The feelings themselves vary between people in ways that do not necessarily correspond with religion.
Your feelings in this regard may be shaped by religion in a subtler way. Suppose, for instance, the following things are true:
The culture you’re in has been strongly shaped by Religion X.
Religion X has a strong tradition of modesty about bodies, extending to more or less every part of the body for which there isn’t common need to have it uncovered.
Not because of anything very specific in Religion X’s sacred writings or official dogma; but the tradition has grown up within Religion X and is widely held there.
As a result, in this culture it is usual for people to keep most of their bodies covered in public.
As a result, you are not used to seeing people more-than-usually uncovered in public.
Therefore, seeing people so may (1) just seem strange-and-therefore-uncomfortable to you, and/or (2) look like a signal of intimacy that’s uncomfortable outside contexts where intimacy would normally be signalled.
Once this effect is in play, it can continue even if Religion X becomes much less influential or loses its misgivings about exposing bodies: it’s traditional to keep most of your body covered up, so most people do, so doing otherwise makes people uncomfortable, so the tradition persists.
In such situations it’s difficult to tell how far Religion X really is the cause, though. It could just be a free-floating tradition. It could be a tradition with some other origin that Religion X has (at least within your culture) assimilated.
All of this is plausible but also consistent with the idea that Religion X took the tradition in the first place from culture, rather than inventing the tradition, as Lumifer at least seemed to be proposing at first.
Let me quote myself: “Religion is usually tightly intertwined with culture and disentangling them is not always possible”.
Yes, that was the point of my last paragraph.
When it comes to dresscode, there are a lot of cultural influences that have little to do with religion. In some cases not wearing a tie will be offensive.
If you wear sandals some people might disapprove of you if you also wear socks at the same time.
Of course. I’m talking about averages and broad trends. There is certainly a LOT of individual variation here.
Beyond individual variation, you are, to a certain degree, a product of your culture. And your culture, I would expect, has been majorly influenced by religion.
What do you mean with “pre-religious people”? Most hunter gather tribes we know of have their gods.
Pre- organized religion.