Category: Politics & Society

At present this includes posts on history of Zionism and modern Israel and Palestine as well as current events. Continue this setup? What of other histories? Adjust name of category? Currently includes Islamism (distinct from Islam) as an ideology of terrorism. Also currently includes Islamophobia and hostile denunciations of Islam — but see the question on Islam in Religion and Atheism.

2008-05-06

A Palestinian Christian’s perspective on the Israeli occupation and suicide bombing

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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It is ironical that so many western Christians support or excuse the state of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians when there are both Christian Israelis and Christian Palestinians who do not. Indeed, the use of the Hebrew Bible by both Zionists and their Christian supporters to justify Zionism, illegal settlements, land confiscations, defiance of international law, humiliation and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, has been said to have turned the Old Testament almost into a current-day Mein Kampf.

Dr. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian and theologian, has compared the current Israeli state to Herod. He sees “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him”.

He has posted an article reflecting on 40 years of Israeli occupation and discussing what Palestinians, particularly Palestinian Christians, must do. It is part of a special edition of Cornerstone [link downloads 2 MB PDF file], titled The Great Deception: What must Palestinians do? Cornerstone is a publication of the Sabeel, the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.

Download (PDF, 1.99MB)

(from https://www.fosna.org/)

An earlier article of his take, as a Palestinian Christian, on Suicide Bombers is also worth reading.

2008-04-27

Tibet protests over China Olympics: hope for Diego Garcians by 2012?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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I wish the thought didn’t sound so fanciful, but if there can be such a world-wide clout against China over Tibet at the Olympics, can the people who were forcibly deported by the UK in the 1960s and ’70s find any hope for international support in their wish to be repatriated?

Or does a Creole speaking black African Chagossian ethnicity simply not compare with the image of serene Tibetan Buddhists and Shangri-La up there in nirvana-high mountains?

Or does an atavistic enemy of Chinese barbarians evoke more visceral response than anything that could possibly be done, however “misguidedly” and “undoubtedly well-intentioned”, by a white English speaking nation?

See the contrasting images in a Spiked-Online article by Brendon O’Neill:- example …..

The UK decided they had the power and therefore the right to deport the entire population (mirroring the population deportation practices that we first see practised among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians and Persians and that were thought to be the modern day preserve of the Nazis and Soviets) of Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia was then turned into a military base cum (torture?) prison for extraordinary rendition prisoners.

Much of the population of Diego Garcia, demonstrating human propensities we normally associate with whites (and non-Chinese Tibetans), still wants to return.

After the China Olympics it might be a good idea to turn attentions to requiring the UK government to make full amends for its perpetration of what was at the Nuremberg Trials declared a crime against humanity.

2008-04-18

Israel’s God of War — against both Arab and (secular) Jew

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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The ultra-orthodox religionists (the Haredim/Charedim) of Israel now make up 10% of the population and are a critical support for the Olmert government.

For the Haredim the very existence of Israel cannot be justified without God and the Abrahamic promises in the Bible, which require the expulsion of the Palestinians from all that they believe God has given them. Haredi/Charedi prayers even call for the destruction of the secular state of Israel. Today these Haredim are a minority, “only” 10% of the population. But they make no secret of how they would enforce changes on Israel if ever they feel the muscle to do so.

They are the direct counterpart of Moslem extremists. Haredim claim to follow the Halachi [link downloads a 400 KB PDF file] rules as forever binding. The Halachi gives licence to kill secular Jews, to show no kindness to them. It also relegates women to being the property of their fathers and husbands, and forbids them to testify in legal proceedings. In another ironic twist in the minds no doubt for some western observers, some Jewish Haredi/Charedi women in Israel today are volunteering to wear the hijab. This is just one of their practices that actually demonstrates their claim to be reliving a past tradition that may never have existed: where there are doubts about interpretation of Halachi directives, they will err on the side of over-doing them.

Harmless nuts? A passing fad?

A Jewish site dedicated to “Enlightenment, education and freedom from religion”, Daat Emet, publishes online the reasons they believe non religious Jews and others should not dismiss the ultra-orthodox as harmless cranks.

There have always been religious extremists among orthodox Jews, and back in the 1960’s we were reading of sects who were apparently plotting the destruction of the Moslem Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of sacrifices. It appears that Jewish extremism is currently finding a growing support base within Israel itself.

Background Briefing (on Australia’s ABC Radio National) put together a well researched (though perhaps hastily edited) program on these ultra-orthodox Jews who are already having a serious impact on Israeli politics, not to mention the lives of other Jews and Arabs who come within their orbit. It is titled Israel: selling out secularism? From their site one can download the podcast of the program, listen to live-streaming, or read the transcript.

Background Briefing lists the following bibliography — of all readily accessible online articles — discussing more academically the background to the growth of the Haredi in Israel. I’ve read most of them, and recommend them to anyone wanting to seriously understand the social and psychological background to the rise of this social and political group today, and to explore some of the details of the fluctuations of their political strength over the past decade.

Iannaccone and Berman’s article (listed first) argues that safety lies in religious pluralism. Danger follows where States attempt to suppress certain militant religious movements. The United States is, perhaps paradoxically, held up as a model. Maybe so. The future is impossible to know. But thank the Enlightenment for the secularists, the educators, the peace activists in the meantime.

Title: ‘Religious Extremism, the good, the bad and the deadly’ in Public Choice 2006
Author: Laurence R. Iannaccone and Eli Berman
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/rex.pdf

Title: ‘Haredi Violence in Contemporary Israeli Society’ in Jew and Violence, Image, Ideologies, Realities
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredi-Violence.pdf

Title: Sect, subsidy and Sacrifice: An economist’s view of ultra-orthodox Jews
Author: Eli Berman
Publisher: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/sns.pdf

Title: ‘Rupture and Reconstruction: The transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy’ in Tradition 1994
Author: Haym Soloveitchik
URL: http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm

Title: ‘The Haredim and Israeli Society’ in Whither Israel – The Domestic Challenges
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Ultra-Orthodox.pdf

Title: ‘The State of Israel as a theological dilemma’ in The Israeli State and Society, Boundaries and Frontiers
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1989
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Theological-Dilemma.pdf

Title: ‘Haredim confront the modern city’ in Studies in Contemporary Jewry II
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Indiana University Press 1986
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredim-Modern_City.pdf

Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Manifest Destiny?

12/04/08
By Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom
Copied with permission from the Israeli peace activist site Gush Shalom (my links no longer default to new windows!)

NEXT MONTH, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some 40 million dollars have been allocated to this aim.

But the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy. Continue reading “Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates”

2008-04-14

Information Clearing House

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Information Clearing House is about the best collation I know of both major and alternative media articles about topics related to world issues in which Western powers have major impact, and therefore in which general populations within those western powers have some potential to influence policy. If you wonder what the news is behind the general gumpf you see repeated on Fox, CNN, BBC, et al ad nauseum, do click and scroll down the link Information Clearing House to see what I mean.

For more, see What and Who is Information Clearing House.

But the reason for posting about this here on Vridar is because . . . . . Continue reading “Information Clearing House”

2008-04-10

Human rights in China

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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The Tibetan separatist movement is a red herring (post 1, post 2). Human rights issues in China deserve a far more comprehensive and incisive response from westerners.

For a more comprehensive picture see the 2007 Amnesty International Report on China for details of abuses:

  • against human rights defenders
  • against journalists and internet users
  • against rural migrants
  • against women
  • against spiritual and religious groups
  • use of death penalty against 68 offences, including non-violent ones
  • use of torture, arbitrary detention and unfair trials

not forgetting specific abuses and applications of the above in relation to:

  • Uighurs
  • Tibetans
  • North Korean refugees
  • refusal to apply the UN Refugee Convention to Hong Kong

Supporting, or failing to distinguish, separatist movements that are contrary to international law is doing a disservice to the thousands whose lives are destroyed and ruined throughout China through human rights abuses.

2008-04-09

What is happening in Tibet (2)

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by Neil Godfrey

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Related post now added at Tibet protests . . . hope for Diego Garcians. . .?

Update from my previous post on this topic. See also Human Rights in China.

Update 1: The ugly reality (Ahmed Quraishi)

Pakistani foreign affairs commentator Ahmed Quraishi has argues that the Tibetan issue has been orchestrated by Washington to isolate China, especially in respect to Iran and oil-rich African nations. An article of his in Global Politician, Pakistan Beware, They Are Cornering China, makes some observations worth further exploration and debate. They partly support my own interpretations of what I have observed in news film footage over the last several weeks, that the evidence points to the real issue being racial conflict and the manipulation of this by external and/or sectional political interests:

. . . the ugly reality of what . . . . separatists have done during the Tibet riots. They burned five young waitresses alive in a restaurant. They snatched a young Chinese boy from his father, put him on the ground and then stomped on his chest and abdomen. An ethnic Tibetan doctor who tried to save the Chinese boy’s life was beaten by Dalai Lama’s insurgents. The Tibetan doctor is hospitalized in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The kid couldn’t make it. How about the infant who was burned alive in her parents’ apartment set on fire by the separatists? . . . .

And please don’t believe the U.S. propaganda depicting the riots as some kind of a Tibetan backlash against Chinese oppression. Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, is far ahead in modernization than India’s biggest northern cities across the border. This is the place where China spent a staggering U.S. $ 4.1 billion just to build the world’s highest rail track, a luxury service stretching 1,142km from Beijing to Lhasa. It’s part of an elaborate Chinese vision to ‘open up’ the country’s sparsely populated western regions and make them key to China’s growth in the 21st century.

The western focus now is to push the Chinese government to make one wrong move so that Washington and other ‘allied’ governments could drag Beijing into a costly confrontation. . . .

Update 2: Mythical images (Michael Parenti)

A lengthy article by Michael Parenti, Friendly Feudalism: — The Tibet Myth, examines the various political strains of Buddhism throughout Asia, pointing out that contrary to popular western images, not all Buddhists currently are or have been peaceful. Robert Pape’s Dying to Win documents Buddhists among other non-Islamic individuals being among the earliest and more numerous incidents of horrific violence among some sections of Buddhists.

Update 3: Democrats or feudal slave-owners? (Gary Wilson)

Gary Wilson looks at the history of the 1959 Tibetan uprising in Tibet and the March 10 commemoration of the CIA’s 1959 ‘uprising’. He argues that far from being a popular uprising it was more comparable to the Bay of Pigs fiasco where outside powers attempted to restore feudal rulers and slave owners who would back the right side in the Cold War.

Update 4: The financial and political backers of The International Campaign for Tibet (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich)

Iranian-American Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich in The Tibet Card writes that the International Campaign for Tibet

receives grants from the National Endowment for Democracy – a State Department operation which engages non-suspecting NGOs to openly do what the CIA did/does.

Soraya adds

Neoconservative queen, Jean Kilpatrick was pushing The Committee of 100 for Tibet with artists such as Richard Gere as unsuspecting fronts.

and not to completely overlook a few other little goodies on the side . . .

Tibet has the world’s largest reserve of uranium, and in addition to gold and copper, large quantities of oil and gas were discovered in Qiangtang Basin in western China’s remote Tibet area. A friendly Dalai Lama would help reimburse the CIA subsidies, and much more.

Soraya’s main argument, however, is that the funding and political support for these protests are aimed at isolating China in particular from Iran.

With names like the National Endowment for Democracy and Jean Kilpatrick associated with the current protests over Tibet, anyone with any nous should surely think twice and ask for hard evidence of any claims and assertions being made by all sides before leaping in to the fray.

Yes the Chinese government is responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses that ought to be challenged. But we are not helping that cause by siding with the programs backed by the National Endowment for Democracy.

More on National Endowment for Democracy:

Trojan Horse (Blum)

Loose cannon (Conry/Cato)

Paying to make enemies (Paul)

Wikipedia

2008-03-30

What is happening in Tibet, and in the reporting of what is happening?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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Related post now added at Tibet protests . . . hope for Diego Garcians. . .?

This post has an updated link at What is happening in Tibet, 2:

Firstly, I deplore the human rights situation in China, and was dismayed that it was chosen to host the Olympics in the first place. But having had some contacts with a few Tibetans, and watching the way some of the Tibetan protests are portrayed in the news here, I cannot help but seek answers to a few questions before jumping on board the free Tibet movement. Certainly I would support an increase in human rights in Tibet, as anywhere in China, but independence or even quasi-independence protests are another matter.

Questions that keep coming to mind:

Are the monk-dominated images I see on TV footage representative of the identity of the main body of protesters in Tibet? If so, what is the role of the population who are not monks in the clashes with Chinese authorities?

When TV footage comes with a voice over saying that it is showing monks coming between Chinese troops and other protesters, then why am I unable to see much evidence of the other protesters, and even see some monks throwing rocks and bars at the troops?

When a leader of the protesters was interviewed on a BBC film clip recently, was he translated correctly when he appeared to say: “That’s why we (the monks) have ordered (sic) these demonstrations”?

Why do so many commentators seem to trace Tibetan history in their commentaries back no farther than the 1950’s? At best, I have read of the time Tibet was prised away from China during the time when nineteenth century foreign imperial powers were intent on weakening and breaking up China. Is there any significance in the 1950’s time-frame of historical recollection in the news media coinciding with early Cold War attempts by the U.S. to attempt to undermine the new government of China?

What is the actual evidence that the bulk of the lay population of Tibet is strongly opposed to being part of China? To what extent are the Tibetans at the “free Tibet” booths and stalls one often sees at festivals, fairs, etc, in the West truly representative of the average Tibetans “back home”?

How can one be sure that by supporting Tibetan independence one is not playing into the hands of a well funded attempt by the U.S. in their games with China?

This post has an updated link at What is happening in Tibet, 2

See also Human Rights in China

2008-03-11

A slightly revised parable of the pounds for modern times

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament, Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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Traveling through Thailand one cannot avoid the national focus on the Thai king as benefactor of the poor, the good shepherd of all his people. (Sound familiar to any of us raised in company of a religious tradition with Mid-Eastern roots?) So on a long drive back to Bangkok from a beach resort this evening I could not help but compare the wealth of royalty, multinationals, religious institutions (hidden in real estate and treasure troves of sacred trinkets and ornate architecture and statuary) and a relatively few locals with the mass of ordinary citizens eking out what seems to this new outsider to be surely very little more than subsistence wages.

I found it hard to relate to the arguments that (1) the multinational intruders sincerely believe that their operations are doing much more than tokenism in raising living standards, or that (2) the royal and its subsidiary establishments are moving mountains as fast as they possibly can. I still have a hard time swallowing the Dalai Lama’s giggling suggestion that a village without even public sanitation should raise funds for a Buddha statue or temple on some rationalization that made Jesus’ “you have the poor with you always” quip sound banal.

So what does my Western Christian tradition have to offer as an alternative?

A thought experiment started working itself out on my drive back to the home of my hosts. . . . . 

The New Testament is not alien to the thought of a central government or any rich company or person instituting a plan to assist in money creation. We all know the parables of the talents and pounds in Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:11-27. But those had to do with the rich man’s money and methods by which he utilized his employees or staff to make him even richer. And the poor timid bugger who did his best not to take any risks with losing someone else’s money got sent off to suffer death by torture.

But maybe with a little tweaking perhaps this antiquated Christian parable can still inspire some virtue.

My slightly tweaked parable for modern times:

What if the king in the parable, instead of distributing his money to his servants to see how much they could increase the royal coffers in his absence, opted rather to distribute a small portion to each and every citizen who had an idea how he/she could use the money to establish some enterprise that would make a better living for themselves and their friends and kin.

Then when the king returned he had his servants check how each recipient had done. Those who had done well with the money on behalf of themselves and their loved ones were offered reasonable terms by which they could repay the loan without interest. Those who had managed to improve their lot a little were offered more appropriate repayment terms. Those who had not managed to succeed with their hoped-for enterprises were offered consolations and best wishes that some time still not too distant they might still make good. Till that day, the topic of repayment was not even raised.

So the king would lose a few bucks in the short term. But balance that against the mushrooming prosperity and living standards within his kingdom, and the wealth that would inevitably still find its way to the royal coffers.

A morality parable for an alternative to a mercantilist / capitalist system that current Christianity appears to favour?

2008-03-07

temples, cathedrals, mosques …… everywhere!

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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I’m a latecomer to Thailand, but my first week is enough to remind me that I’ve seen enough Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques and cathedrals, and all their distinctive architecture and murals, and relics and iconic symbols, and statues in all except synagogues, mosques and fundamentalist reactions to the cathedrals, to remind me that the place of religion in societies is pretty much the same the world over.

Everyone with an inkling to proclaim the exclusivity of their faith, especially those fundamentalists among the Christian, Jewish and Moslem religions who insist on the exclusive righteousness of their respective causes, should be compelled to apply for a licence first. Qualification for said licence should be a comprehension of how their religious (including sectarian) faction sits in relation to counterparts world-wide.

And thinking of exclusive righteousness, can’t help reflecting on those “demonic” atheistic societies (like Sweden today, and others in recent history too) that outlaw prostitution and all-round exploitation of women, and that virtually enforce gender equality in all areas of life, with the common lot of women, including the quasi-legal / or illegal but let’s-keep-quiet-about-it status of prostitution, among the most outwardly religious of societies.

2008-03-01

An Invention called “the Jewish People”

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by Neil Godfrey

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My heading, “an invention called the Jewish people” is taken from an article recently published in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. It’s about a book by Professor Zand of the Tel Aviv University. The article concludes with:

His book, “When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a “state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others – in contrast to its declared identity as a “Jewish and democratic” state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.

Some of those facts:

  1. “There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion”, and the exile of 70 c.e. also never happened. At the most, tens of thousands were exiled. Most were permitted, and most did, stay in the land. It follows, if exile is a myth, that the idea that Jews since the twentieth century are “returning” to “their land” is a myth.
  2. When the Arabs conquered the land, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that many Palestinian Arabs today are descendants of the original Jews.

Tom Segev, author of this article, writes:

Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others. . . . . Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse.

So how did the Jewish Diaspora originate?

From Tom Segev’s article on Prof. Zand’s book in the Haaretz:

  1. emigration of their own accord
  2. many Jews in Babylon had simply remained of their own will
  3. members of other faiths were forced to become Jews (c.f. the Book of Esther which says narrates just such an event — many converting because of fear of the Jews.)

Specific case-studies discussed by Zand:

  1. the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula
  2. the Jewish Berbers in North Africa
  3. the Jews in Spain — these originated from Arabs who became Jews and who arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians; these mingled with European individuals who had become Jews.
  4. the first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) . . . became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus.

Segev notes:

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.

The original Haaretz article is worth the full read, not least for the same page’s other interesting news of the sort that does not normally see light of day in the English speaking Western media.

The story will not be news to those who already appreciate the fictional nature of the Bible’s Exodus and genocidal Conquest narratives. Nor to those familiar with some of the racist fictions that were concocted in the latter nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. Focus on Nazi racist myths has obscured from much public memory the fact that such racist ideologies and cults of physical ideals inflicted many races, nations and peoples then, many Jews included.

One day the world will look back on the current myths underpinning Zionism as with no more factual foundation than their nineteenth century and early twentieth century counterparts — and that were likewise used to rationalize ethnic cleansing and expansion of “living space”.

2008-02-28

for the sake of peace, think of ourselves as animals

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature, Politics & Society
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Australian Customs ship, Oceanic Viking, has just returned with film footage of recent Japanese whaling for government ministers to study.

Campaigners against cruelty to animals know how to get their message across. Graphic footage works. It is even said to have helped turn public support against the Vietnam war.  Nothing worse than eating dinner and being confronted with footage of clubbing seals that look so damnably cute, mulesing sheep which still have that damnable iconic image of innocence, spearing and shooting whales until they eventually stop struggling against their fate, screaming naked children fleeing napalmed villages.

I can’t quite fathom the ethics that prohibit the publication of graphic pictures of humans being dismembered at times when governments call on publics to back their next war.

Why don’t we campaign for community standards that will favour the contempt of media for failing to show — “show”, that is, graphically — both sides of a story?

Anti-war campaigns rightly need to be salted with comedy, funny masks and silly costumes. But we anti-war campaigners could also take a leaf from the campaigners against cruelty to animals. Sure it upsets people. But that’s good. It should.

2008-01-12

The Assyrian genocide in Iraq

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by Neil Godfrey

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The Assyrian Christian population of the Middle East – Antiochian, Catholic and Orthodox – is now a fraction of what it once was, and the story of the genocide practised upon them remains largely untold. — blurb from repeat broadcast on Australia’s ABC Radio National’s Religion Report

Check the link to the podcast and / or the transcript now available.

Also check April DeConick’s Forbidden Gospels blog. I know April has taken a special interest in the fate of the Assyrians and posted more extensively on their plight.

I posted an alert to this same broadcast when first aired back in May last year, along with a fuller treatment of the meaning of the word genocide. The same program at that time discussed Christian minorities more generally throughout the Middle East, also linked on that earlier post. The podcast for this other interview is no longer available but the transcript is. For the earlier program and the additional discussion and links to Christian minorities in the Mid East see the post titled Unknown Genocide and Christians in Iraq.

2007-12-24

Why religious arguments do not belong in public debate

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature, Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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Philosophers and political theorists holding a wide variety of philosophical views use the terms ‘public reason’ and ‘public justification’ to describe a broad framework for a discussion in which everyone in a community can take part. Supporters of the idea of public justification see democratic politics not so much as a battle for power, settled by elections, but rather as a kind of public conversation about issues of common concern, with a decision-procedure for reaching temporary closure on these issues when the time for action has come. When we take ­part in this conversation, we seek to justify our views to others, and in so doing we should acknowledge the fact of political and religious pluralism. Continue reading “Why religious arguments do not belong in public debate”