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.
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.