Secularism Plus, Syria, and more.

[tcpip]

Today was a policy meeting for the Victorian Secular Lobby with a presentation on Section 116 of the Australian Constitution by saithkar. Not a heavily attended meeting but with a remarkable and genuine set of apologies which were graciously accepted. Secularism is, of course, one of my great loves - to develop public policy without a deliberate and willful non-consideration of metaphysical claims or applying special cases to religious institutions. Historically of course it has focussed on the separation of religious policy from public policy, and indeed there is plenty of work to be done there. But increasingly I am of the opinion that secularism should also mean use evidence-based research.

Case in point is this continuing conflict in Syria, which illustrates that secularism is necessary but not sufficient for a free and democratic society. The Baathist regime is more-or-less secular and even sometimes slips into fundamentalist atheism. When it comes to being responsible for causing the war crimes associated with civilian deaths, it is the secular fascists rather than the religious fascists (ISIL, Army of Conquest etc) that carry the overwhelming majority of the blame. Still, it should be clear by now that Russia and Syria are utterly indfferent to such things; they and their supporters have also been very indifferent to having a degree of veracity with two of their major public proponents, Bashar Jaafari lying to the UN, along with Lady Haw-Haw Eva Bartlett on war victims being "recycled". So whilst the Assadists are cheering on the carnage, Amnesty International has opened up for donations.

Other events of the week; Linux Users of Victoria on today with a report from the Internet Governance Forum, playtest sessions of Papers and Paycheckes on Wednesday night and Eclipse Phase on Friday night, along with sending interview questions to Rob Boyle for the next issue of RPG Review. Was supposed to go to txxxpxx's gala event tonight (and even made one of my amazing tiramisu for said occasion, but caseopaya has fallen ill, so we'll be missing that. In the work space, big events of the week included finally getting Gaussian and Julia installed, albeit the latter in not in the manner I would prefer. The great success (perhaps too successful) of Spartan apparently is reaching the ears of upper management who are open to the prospect of expansion - which would make sense for one of the world's top ranking universities (as they constantly remind us). Let us see what 2017 brings.

Comments

[drcuriosity]

I haven't really had a chance to catch up with Eclipse Phase recently, let alone play it, but I quite enjoyed some of Rob Boyle's work on 4th ed. Shadowrun. Sadly it appears to have gone sharply downhill since then.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I must confess I haven't been paying any attention at all to Shadowrun post-Boyle. For what it was worth he managed to pull together the positive aspects of the setting in a coherent fashion. Whilst I played a bit of earlier editions (especially first and second) and some of the scenarios and supplements were great, my first reactions when I saw the thing hit the shelves were rather like Willam Gibson's notorious remarks.

[delphipsmith]

...to develop public policy without a deliberate and willful non-consideration of metaphysical claims or applying special cases to religious institutions...

I agree that this is where we desperately need to go. I don't know how we get there, with huge swaths of the population preferring their own echo-chamber narrative to fact, and "truthiness" to truth.

Am re-reading The Journals of Ayn Rand at the moment. She has lots to say about religion, none of it good but all of it pithy and thought-provoking.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Rand is pretty uncompromising on her attitudes towards religion; metaphysically an atheist. It would be difficult, I imagine, to even consider her viewpoint (if it was ever put into social practice) to be considered secularism.

It's a common issue with the philosophy of Objectivism and similar such claims (e.g., vulgar Marxism); once you declare that your philosophy is objective and that is the superior position to take, by definition others are not and are inferior. It's not a good place to start a discussion from.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

In fairness to Rand, and irrespective of what labels might be appropriate for her positions, it probably bears noting that there's a difference between being a metaphysical atheist and pursuing a political programme devoted to state atheism.

I can't immediately tell what Rand's actual programme was. One of Rand's long speeches directed against religion has her explaining that she would "certainly recognise anyone's right to have any religion they want to -- their legal right. Morally and philosophically it is a different issue", and from what I can decipher from other sources, it appears that she generally took the position that religion was terrible but that governments should not have the power either to promote or persecute it, broadly following the general idea that government ought to be concerned with what people do and not with what they think. If so, I'd assume or at least speculate that her moral condemnation of religion does not mean that the above statement about recognising legal rights came with an implied "... at least until I become Objectivist Overlord of Earth."

But I can't actually confirm any of this off the cuff, so don't take this as gospel, particularly as she may have different viewpoints at different times throughout her career.

(I'm extremely disinclined to wade through her rather large corpus of work in pursuit of any sort of definite interpretation. I'm sure she has actual adherents somewhere who could offer one.)

PS. Sorry about the flood of edits, I'm picky about my phrasing and this was a bit of a challenge.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There's a good summary of Rand's perspectives at the following URL

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand,_Objectivism,_and_Religion_%28Part_1_of_4%29.shtml

You're quite right that there is a difference in the metaphysical position and the political programme. But I find that any position of metaphysical certainty becomes hard to avoid in political programmer. There is also many versions of atheism - I am more atheistic about the existence of Zeuss in Mount Olympus than I am of naturalistic pantheism, for example. Politically what it comes down to is the relationship between these positions to secular and evidence-based decision making.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

These four article parts re-iterate her philosophical and moral hostility to religion quite thoroughly, but they again leave me to conjecture her political positions on the basis of those views. For instance, I still don't know if I have the private right to practice and promote a religion &c. under some sort of theoretical Objectivist tyranny run entirely by Rand's disembodied spirit.

(It belatedly occurs to me that I should clarify that I'm perfectly willing to agree with your original point about Rand's positions not making the cut according to any criteria of secularism you have in mind here. I'm consequently not attempting to establish that Rand's hypothetical political programme is secular or that it can be secular or indeed anything of the sort, I'm merely trying to suss out what sorts of things it might consist of.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

In formal legal terms I am utterly sure that a Randian State would allow for freedom of religion. But we can imagine the culture and institutions that would exist where those with religious beliefs were treated as having a mental illness (part 2) or were immoral (part 3 and 4) because of a collective spirit.

Ironically, it could potentially end up being like the treatment of political dissidents in the Soviet Union as having psychiatric disorders - although I am fairly sure Rand wouldn't do that ("Psychology does not regard its subject morally, but medically - i.e., from the aspect of health or malfunction (with cognitive competence as the proper standard of health", was a quote of hers on the subject) - but I am sure that some of her disciples would, if given a chance.