We must agree on a meaning of a term (in this case, of "Christian"), or we better cease discussing. — baker

We don't have to agree on what the word means for other people, we merely have to use the word in a way that facilitates further conversation. There is no meaning "out there", just whatever you mean in your head and whatever I mean in mine (if we even have a discrete idea about meaning in the first place). One can speak of Christianity usefully without drawing distinct boundaries around its usage. This is always the nature of language and your wish for it to be otherwise won't change that.

Of course. A discussion of religion should be about what is normative in it. Focusing merely on the descriptive is an exercise in politically correct futility, for that way, anything goes, and anything can pass for anything. — baker

So when the Protestants claimed that the Catholics weren't Christian and the Catholics claimed that the Protestants weren't, one of them magically ceased to be Christian? Or maybe you think that the Catholics never created their own litmus test for what a true Christian was that is in opposition to what other groups defined as a true Christian?

For your reading pleasure - the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation...

ON BAPTISM

CANON I.-If any one saith, that the baptism of John had the same force as the baptism of Christ; let him be anathema.

CANON II.-If any one saith, that true and natural water is not of necessity for baptism, and, on that account, wrests, to some sort of metaphor, those words of our Lord Jesus Christ; Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost; let him be anathema.

CANON III.-If any one saith, that in the Roman church, which is the mother and mistress of all churches, there is not the true doctrine concerning the sacrament of baptism; let him be anathema.

CANON IV.-If any one saith, that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the Church doth, is not true baptism; let him be anathema.

CANON V.-If any one saith, that baptism is free, that is, not necessary unto salvation; let him be anathema.

CANON VI.-If any one saith, that one who has been baptized cannot, even if he would, lose grace, let him sin ever so much, unless he will not believe; let him be anathema.

CANON VII.-If any one saith, that the baptized are, by baptism itself, made debtors but to faith alone, and not to the observance of the whole law of Christ; let him be anathema.

CANON VIII.-If any one saith, that the baptized are freed from all the precepts, whether written or transmitted, of holy Church, in such wise that they are not bound to observe them, unless they have chosen of their own accord to submit themselves thereunto; let him be anathema.

CANON IX.-If any one saith, that the resemblance of the baptism which they have received is so to be recalled unto men, as that they are to understand, that all vows made after baptism are void, in virtue of the promise already made in that baptism; as if, by those vows, they both derogated from that faith which they have professed, and from that baptism itself; let him be anathema.

CANON X.-If any one saith, that by the sole remembrance and the faith of the baptism which has been received, all sins committed after baptism are either remitted, or made venial; let him be anathema.

CANON XI.-If any one saith, that baptism, which was true and rightly conferred, is to be repeated, for him who has denied the faith of Christ amongst Infidels, when he is converted unto penitence; let him be anathema.

CANON XII.-If any one saith, that no one is to be baptized save at that age at which Christ was baptized, or in the very article of death; let him be anathema.

CANON XIII.-If any one saith, that little children, for that they have not actual faith, are not, after having received baptism, to be reckoned amongst the faithful; and that, for this cause, they are to be rebaptized when they have attained to years of discretion; or, that it is better that the baptism of such be omitted, than that, while not believing by their own act, they should be bapized in the faith alone of the Church; let him be anathema.

CANON XIV.-If any one saith, that those who have been thus baptized when children, are, when they have grown up, to be asked whether they will ratify what their sponsors promised in their names when they were baptized; and that, in case they answer that they will not, they are to be left to their own will; and are not to be compelled meanwhile to a Christian life by any other penalty, save that they be excluded from the participation of the Eucharist, and of the other sacraments, until they repent; let him be anathema. — Council of Trent Session 7

So "Christian" is a term like "white", "black", "Scottish", ie. it's not a term denoting a particular quality or set of qualities, but a term that is not specifically linked to any quality, but is merely a name? — baker

I'm not sure what work "merely" does here, but yes, "Christian" is a word people use in reference to lots of different sort of things. Without going through problems of identity or group identification, suffice it to say that different people throughout a long course of history have used "Christian" to refer to a variety of things/people/concepts. Abstracting Christianity away from the people identified with Christianity is taking a theoretical position for whatever reason, not the way in which the term "Christian" is defined and/or used. Sure, for a particular conversation we can define a word however we want, but one has to be aware that they are doing so.

Unless we are religious ourselves, i.e. have a vested interest in who gets to define the word, it is more "intellectually honest" to both recognize and affirm the various uses of a term in the variety of contexts in which it is used. A claim of what is "essential" about Christianity is normative, not descriptive.

This is where you become overly committed to nonsense and try to make it seem like you are somehow being rational while others are not. Put aside epistemology for a moment, what is a historical fact? And what does it mean for someone to make a claim about a historical fact? What does it mean for a religion to make such a claim?

Language is politics - not truth. Behavior is about something other than “reason.” You can have what ever standards you want for what you say, but that has nothing to do with what other people do or intend. When describing why people use religion, it would be nice to at least consider why actual people that you can speak to or interact with represent as the “point” of religion.

There is no point in you being here to discuss them when the very question is whether religions intend to be factual and the obvious “historical fact” is that they do not, did not, and are just misdescribed as being terribly concerned with the truth of various mythological claims. On one level it is helpful legitimization to spend time claiming the fact of the myth, but since the myth can never be meaningfully factual, it is not essential that the myth be a fact for the religion to endure.

On a non-philosophy forum his usage would be unobjectionable, but in this context where he is always going on about facts and truth and states of affairs, there is reason to object. Our best theories often turn out to be “untrue”, but that hardly dooms the endeavor of truth seeking. Religions, in their own way, pursue something something similar (but probably more about meaning/wisdom), and adjusting their course as time develops is not an indication of their failure as a pursuit/institution than changing theories in other contexts are an indication of the failure of the respective pursuit/institution. Immutability is never a virtue.

Whether I agree or disagree, tell me a non-vacuous meaning of “fact” when it comes to history. My claim is that we have extant “facts” from which we theorize about the past. So any historical claim is of necessity non-factual. Holding out your claims about history as factual is the sort of intellectual dishonesty you seem to abhor.

And seriously Banno, either step up and advocate a block universe with no freewill or give up on your historical facts. There is no state-of-affairs there.

That's why Ennui Elucidator and @Metaphysician Undercover find themselves advocating telling lies. — Banno

I’ve advocated no telling of lies, I’ve merely pointed out that myth need not be factual to be important. It might seem a hard distinction for someone that simply cannot understand metaphor or allegory as a dispositional trait, but I suspect you know the difference. As I suggested in another thread, when we invoke religious language we are signaling that what is being discussed is important. The factual accuracy of the language is not the least bit our concern.

Perhaps the goal of organized religions is to teach its adherents not to question them, or at least to assure as much as possible they won't have the opportunity to do so. — Ciceronianus

I'm not sure that would be a goal of organized religion. So far as I can tell from the literature, lots of smart people tried really hard to question those religions in order to establish them as the right one and no one is running around telling adherents not to read the apologists. But then I am not Catholic ("universal") in any sense of the word.

Also, I haven't the patience at this point to do any great googling for you, but I suggest you look into "evil" in other cultures and whether those cultures have anything to say about your type of evil (as a moral/theological matter). Buddhists make up around 6% of the world population. What does Buddhism say about evil?

The Western need to re-interpret non-Western faiths (read Christian and non-Christian) into its own religious terms does great injustice to non-Christian religions. "Evil" as such may be far less of an issue for the rest of the world than it is for you.

I assume you have been exposed to basically the same information on the different religions as I have, therefore you know clear and well they do not share my sentiments on evil. — AlienFromEarth

I wouldn't make such assumptions.

You didn't answer my other question. How are sinning and evil related?

As an aside. Egoism

Also, you might look into the role of freewill in religion. See theological determinism.

Rather, ALL religions have ALWAYS pronounced evil to be a choice in every human being. — AlienFromEarth

Have you studied all religions for all of time?

What is the relationship between sinning and doing evil?

Who is being coy? I was rather direct with my objection to what you said (or so I thought). You used the word "faith" pejoratively in the context of the point religion and I tried to demonstrate that your use of that word is not helpful when discussing the point of religion. Was I obtuse or my meaning obscure?

Is at the tip of my nose.

If, in the last couple of Occidental millennia, "faith" has meant anything, it certainly has meant believing in the unbelievable in order to defend the indefensible ... in the name of insert______here. — 180 Proof

If I misread you as suggesting that "Abrahamic apologists" arrive that their defense of institutions through faith and thereby reflect the poverty of either religion or faith, I apologize. Perhaps you can expand a bit on what you intended so that I can write something you find non-trivial.

Probably just over-reading your comment. Faith is neither a function of nor a feature of religion (though there is something catchy about a "faith community" as another description of a religion). In a thread about the goal of religion in the context of recognition of the abject failure of religious institutions (Christian in particular in the Western/colonialist context) to acknowledge their current and historic failures I didn't want the focus to move to a critique of faith as a proxy for either the critique of religion as a concept or the point of religion as a goal. Religion is not (despite what good Kierkegaard did not say) the will to faith.

Faith, as such, is something endemic to humanity (or so it seems). People just as often kill others in the name of patriotism (or nationalism or whatever you want to call it - "FOR GOD AND KING!" or "TO THE GLORY OF ROME!") as religion even if some religious language is invoked in the call to war (such as manifest destiny in the US). Vicious "irrational" tribalism may be a consequence of faith, but it is not the only consequence. (If you don't like violence, pick your sin - institutional coverups, cf police violence, sexual assault in business/education/sports, etc., are no less wide spread in non-religious institutions.)

Regardless, religion (as a social endeavor/feature) is both more than the failures of certain groups and meaningfully analyzed through its failures just the same as government or any other broad organizing category of people. The point is simultaneously that religion is not unique in its messiness but also that what makes religion unique as a useful concept in our language/thought does not necessarily lead to a worse outcome than other such concepts. One might even say that the point of religion is to make the world a better place. You know, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and visit the sick. Maybe a bit of spitting into the wind while remembering the injunction that justice, justice you shall pursue and that although you cannot complete the task of perfecting the world, neither are you free to desist from it.

So Trumpism doesn’t fit your faith form? Or it just that religion is somehow unique in faith because beardy head?

You mean patriotism? Sure.

Again, I question the broad brush, but the number of Jews verses Christian and Muslims is insignificant - the inclusion of them in the JCI group is a cute move for the sake of inclusion I suppose. I do not disagree, however, with the notion that many religious institutions (including current ones) have much to apologize for (in the moral sense) and that too many people are quick to excuse bad behavior because of an institution’s association with the sacred.

And not that it will help, but here are some important people writing to the Pope about literalism.

From

"The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church"

Presented by the Pontifical Biblical Commission
to Pope John Paul II on April 23, 1993

F. Fundamentalist Interpretation

Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details. But by "literal interpretation" it understands a naively literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development. It is opposed, therefore, to the use of the historical- critical method, as indeed to the use of any other scientific method for the interpretation of Scripture.

The fundamentalist interpretation had its origin at the time of the Reformation, arising out of a concern for fidelity to the literal meaning of Scripture. After the century of the Enlightenment it emerged in Protestantism as a bulwark against liberal exegesis.

The actual term fundamentalist is connected directly with the American Biblical Congress held at Niagara, N.Y., in 1895. At this meeting, conservative Protestant exegetes defined "five points of fundamentalism": the verbal inerrancy of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, his virginal birth, the doctrine of vicarious expiation and the bodily resurrection at the time of the second coming of Christ. As the fundamentalist way of reading the Bible spread to other parts of the world, it gave rise to other ways of interpretation, equally "literalist," in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. As the 20th century comes to an end, this kind of interpretation is winning more and more adherents, in religious groups and sects, as also among Catholics.

Fundamentalism is right to insist on the divine inspiration of the Bible, the inerrancy of the word of God and other biblical truths included in its five fundamental points. But its way of presenting these truths is rooted in an ideology which is not biblical, whatever the proponents of this approach might say. For it demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research.

The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation of this kind is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human. It refuses to admit that the inspired word of God has been expressed in human language and that this word has been expressed, under divine inspiration, by human authors possessed of limited capacities and resources. For this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods. It pays no attention to the literary forms and to the human ways of thinking to be found in the biblical texts, many of which are the result of a process extending over long periods of time and bearing the mark of very diverse historical situations.

. . .

The Abrahamic apologists on this thread have shown themselves to lack intellectual honesty and integrity on par with Holocaust, (US) systemic racism, anthrogenic climate change & pandemic deniers. — 180 Proof

This is boring to say the least. One doesn’t have to be an apologist to be a get-on-with-itest. We take what we want from our inheritance and leave the rest to the dust bin of history. People suck. They have always sucked. We all come from rape and murder and conquest. Our history is one of horror and stuff for which our ancestors should be ashamed (even if they celebrated themselves). We can look at the past and say, “They were assholes, we can do better” and still speak English without “apologizing” for the sins of our linguistic forbearers. The difference between those with religious education (in the secular sense) and those without is that those with education can look back and see the change and multiplicity in religion as an authentic expression of religious communities, not as apologetics. Stagnation is not something to be praised either in thought or religion. You live and learn.

People calling themselves Christian both proclaimed the legitimacy of slavery and fought for its abolition. Neither group was an apologist or any less Christian than the other. History (constructed as it might be) simply does not bear out an enduring strain of religion from early adoption through hundreds of years of people carrying on its name, iconography, or myths. Even in its foundation Christianity had multiplicity of thought with warring factions, some of which continued on and some which were snuffed out.

The OP could use work, but is there really anything he is saying that is so foreign to older ideas about happiness/the good? You just sort of naively take it for granted that someone pursues what they want, that what they want is the good, and that all actions of necessity aim towards good absent illness/error. So outside of lots of hand waving about how examples of intentional harm are either justified or the result of mistake (special pleading at its finest), what more is to be said? Man, the rational beast that pursues the good.

Totalizing theory, all counter-examples explained away, and conclusion affirmed because it is definitional.

especially when it comes to religious practices, as in most case the only sources we have are the writings of Christians who obviously had an enormous axe to grind. — Ciceronianus

History belongs to the victor. cf Postcolonial theology

@Banno And as a "historical" matter, it might be nice to do some serious thinking about myth/mythology and how they function/ed in society. This would be particular useful given your typical agreement with the idea that religion is meant to be a tool to exploit the masses. Why you don't see your holding out of such views as necessarily in contradiction to the idea that religions intend to be "factual" is a mystery. If the people espousing religion the loudest believe it to be false and just an easy way to dupe the sheeple, then the "intent" of the religion has nothing to do with how factually accurate it is, but how effective it is at advancing the agenda of its proponents.

It's not meant to be factually correct, because we found out that it doesn't match the facts. — Banno

This just feels so lazy. A story doesn't survive 3,500 years of transmission because it accurately relates what happened 3,500 years ago (gets the facts right). That people developed writing and wrote it down gives us a more reliable indication that the story has not changed (or changed little) from its first writing, but again, lack of change is not reason enough to keep telling the story.

People, in each successive generation, have their reasons for telling, re-telling, preserving, and transmitting that story between themselves and others. The interpretation of the story being passed is up to each person hearing it - there is no interpretation inherent in the words/symbols/history. Imposing your view on interpretation for all of those people for all of time is just that - an imposition. When actual members of a religion tell you that they don't read the words literally, you can't just dismiss them as if they aren't exactly what the religion is.

You know what exegesis is. You know what critical literary theory is. You even know what philology is. You understand that stories are used (religious or not) for lots of reasons independent of whether the story is understood the same way by the teller and the receiver, the invoker and the audience. How your brain goes to pot when it comes to considering religion isn't clear to me, but it would be nice if you took some of your critical skills and actually used them to understand what is going on.

What constitutes a religious teaching? You can go to many a religious institution and find teachings on how to read. Do you think they are using ineffective methods based on science or maybe that they have bad metrics for verifying language is taught? What about when they teach the history of Germany or Italy? Do you think that history is a fiction inaccessible to scientific scrutiny?

What if they give a class on chemistry and teach that a spark plus oxygen and hydrogen yields water? Because a religious institution teaches it, it is scientifically unprovable?

In other words, besides teaching “science” what can be taught that is, on your view, scientifically provable?

I did. You just missed it in you zeal to have me argue about something I don’t want argue about. An individual cannot assert a claim against another individual to limit their freedom blah blah. Got it. That is not a relevant context for the analysis of governmental because government is not just an individual or collection of individuals. Any analogy to what a person can do to limit what government can do is useless as an exercise in moral reasoning, and calling it “rational intuitions” doesn’t cure the defect.

You shift the parties of your analogy and fail to make your case not because the overall circumstance is so dissimilar, but because the parties are so dissimilar. Your base case is about individuals and your conclusion is not. You provide no reason for your extension.

And a group of cells isn’t a person.

Is this really the quality of thinking that got you the title “professional ethicist”?

And you get extremely inconclusive results. — baker

Yup. Which is why attacking religion with a particular description of religion writ large is pointless. It doesn’t carry any weight with respect to what actual people believe or why they belong/self identify.

It’s like a broken record. Government policy should not be based on individual interests but communal ones. There is nothing in your analogies that gets to the communal interest that is relevant in the case of a pandemic.

You are arguing from irrelevant analogies. What I might have to do in response to a claim/assertion of another is not the same as what government can legitimately compel me to do.

So apparently you aren’t interested.

I’ve already told you that my moral reason says that a community can do things in contravention to an individual’s interests. Your simile of pregnancy to a virus is great and all, but not in the least bit compelling, one might even say it is inapt.

The problem with your virus case is that the issue described does not align with the issues of abortion as presented. Someone gets a virus going about their day and might die - good for them. Someone gets pregnant going about their day and might die - good for them. How they choose to negotiate their own risks relative to themselves is for them.

Now what if someone going about their day might get a virus and, in combination with the rest of the people in the same situation, may destroy the economy as we know it. Is this situation similar or dissimilar to the pregnant woman scenario? Does it introduce a new factor or does it remain the same comparison?

What I am opposed to - and I think careful ethical reflation vindicates my position - is forcing those who do not have a virus, or who reasonably believe themselves not to have it, to lock down — Bartricks

Anyway, here's why I think these lockdowns are unjust. — Bartricks

Virtually everyone's intuitions deliver the same verdict: of course you can. — Bartricks

you're within your rights to leave. — Bartricks

And so it seems that we can reasonably take the judgement about the violinist case and apply it to this one: you are obviously entitled to abort. — Bartricks

What's the moral of these cases? Well, that a person's right to life does not amount to a right to restrict the freedom of another person — Bartricks

Apply that to lockdowns. There's a virus on the loose. And it kills some of those who get it. Well, do we have to give up 9 months freedom in order to prevent those people from being killed? Is that what having a right to life amounts to? No, that's what we just learned from Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiments. — Bartricks

so she is not saying that the right to life of another doesn't place any restrictions on our freedom. The point is that there are limits — Bartricks

So you might see that in your OP you actually opposed one individual’s rights against another’s. Indeed, it is the basis of the thought experiment you referenced as a moral intuition. I am suggesting that the case of a pandemic is dissimilar to your thought experiment because the relevant moral considerations are communal interests verses individual interests, not individual right verse individual right.

My argument does not depend upon the truth of any substantial normative theory about rights and their distribution. I am appealing to intuitions about cases.

What you're doing is focusing on the probative force of rational intuitions - which is to miss the point. — Bartricks

Let’s try this again. In what circumstance can a community assert an interest against an individual interest?

Forget the evidentiary nature of your reference to moral intuitions. I don’t need to tell you how to argue and you don’t need to tell me how to do so. Either you want to discuss the issue that I am bringing up or you don’t. Your decision.

For reasons involving the foregoing, I would rather we inculcate religion within our yor children which does not stand in essential opposition to any known or reasonably theorized fact of reality. What such relugion might look like, I am unsure as yet, but it is something that I have been giving much thought to recently. — Michael Zwingli

I’ve already linked several of them. The gift of the existentialists to some extent is that modern people could use the same language/customs/rituals of their forebearers but understand them in fundamentally different ways, i.e. give them their own meaning. Existence precedes essence - the past is gone and has no claim to the meaning we make in the present. What was once a church is now a night club, no matter how deeply the buildiers of the church wanted it to be something else. Insisting that building is not a church is both right and wrong, but pretending as if it has no history is just disingenuous.

I don’t deny you know something, I simply disagree with your conclusions. I haven’t asked you a single epistemology question, I’ve asked you about community interests vs. individual interests and why anyone should be swayed by your continued claim that moral intuition in thought experiments should control governments policy.

If you don’t want things to sound like epistemology, stop bringing up “evidence” and whether something qualifies as such. You complain about your own language, not mine.

What would be arbitrary would be to ignore that counter evidence. — Bartricks

the trolley cases provide yet further evidence of — Bartricks

widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist case tell us something important, — Bartricks

So they're a good, calm, well trod place to go for insight. And what do they tell us? — Bartricks

And overlapping rational intuitions that Xing is wrong constitutes excellent evidence that Xing is wrong, — Bartricks

What is tedious is that you somehow think that your assertion of rights (that you don’t actually mean as rights as generally conceived) based on some people’s moral intuitions as expressed in relation to contrived thought experiments is supposed to serve as a basis for public policy in a pandemic. Some people said it is wrong to X so the government should stay off my lawn!

What did you intend the conversation to be about? Everyone patting you on the back and saying, “Here here, that violinist analogy really is the way to organize government”?

My moral intuition is that communities have interest in preventing mass harm by enforcing behavior against the interests of individuals. There is no reason for people to submit to authority where that authority is indifferent to their well-being up until the moment that someone that is morally blameworthy comes along and engages in bad behavior.


Or if you really wanted to be offended, there is such a thing as justifiable collateral damage.

I am not a non-cognitivist about ethics and nothing I said implied otherwise. And overlapping rational intuitions that Xing is wrong constitutes excellent evidence that Xing is wrong, other things being equal, just as overlapping visual sensations that Y is red is excellent evidence that Y is red, other things being equal (presuambly you now think I a boo haurrah theorist about colour!). — Bartricks

So people say my moral intuition is that slavery is fine (they were Romans after all) and that is good evidence that slavery is morally OK in Rome? Or for all of time? Please tell me exactly how “moral intuitions” is substantively different than people telling you their moral emotions about various scenarios. And in what way is someone expressing their feelings good evidence for anything besides their feelings?

Imagine a culture that calls red “blue” and you walk around asking everyone whether the red thing you are pointing to is “blue” and they say “yes.” Does that mean that the red thing is “blue” or just that you can use whatever word you want to symbolize? What makes something red is the circumstances in which you have used the word “red” in a particular language community and gotten the response you want. Successful use provides no information about what is “the case”.

I’m talking about religious founders intentions. — Pinprick

And for the record, you may want to consider something called “moving the goal posts” in your quest to be logical.

I’m just asking for evidence, because to the best of my knowledge, no religions make such claims. — Pinprick

Also, the vast majority of the followers of these religions make no such claim. — Pinprick

I simply pointed out you have no knowledge of what the founders’ intent was…

It would be good if we could at least discuss people that you have some evidence about rather than compare unsupported theories about what the founders may have intended. — Ennui Elucidator

Look around for evidence of what actual religious people besides fundamentalist Christians think and you may discover a rich history of religious thought where religious myth is happily understood not as historical fact. — Ennui Elucidator

IOW’s, I take whatever religious text you want to use at face value. — Pinprick

No one who is religious cares what you think, Pinprick. You don’t control their interpretation of the sacred texts or their understanding of their sacred myths. So if you participate in a discussion about the point of religion (present tense), you need to look at what religious people espouse/believe, not what you do. It would be like watching porn and thinking that women enjoy what they are moaning to - you see what you want even though anyone that has a clue understands it is fiction.

I did not put forth a 'rights theory' — Bartricks

our right to life does not give us a right to 9 months of inconvenience and hardship from others — Bartricks

widely shared intuitions — Bartricks

So you aren’t advocating a rights theory, you are just using rights language badly to cover up a majoritarian hurrah/boo theory of ethics as expressed by a particular culture?

Sounds harsh, right? — Bartricks

Doesn’t sound harsh, but sounds exactly like what I asked you about. When do we focus on the community on your account of ethics rather than the individual? That is, rather than evaluating individual claim against individual claim, do we ever get to evaluate individual claim against some other locus of ethical regard?

And if government is predicated on a public negotiation of individual interests as subordinated to public authority, why suppose that an individual claim that, in the aggregate, undermines the public interest has any ethical sway on what government should do?

If you spent as much time googling as writing wholly speculative posts, you might have learned something by now. Founders are long since dead and gone. A religion exists as a product of its people in dialogue with its past. When you ask “What Does X believe”, you don’t read a book, you ask the members of the religion. Some books are good authorities on what X believes and some are not. I leave you to your judgement.

In any event, what people believe is not changed by their justification for what they believe. You might want them to justify, but they don’t have to and they may not have any answer that satisfies you. That won’t make them stop believing. So if the question is, “Does X believe?” it is a waste of time to engage in talks about why they do so.

Meaning is not inherent in words or traditions. Actual people give meaning. Discussing religion as if it is somehow different than the rest of meaning making (or interpretive contexts) is just silly.

Why should I accept that rights theory is meaningful in this analysis when not one word you uttered was about anyone but the rights bearer? A society where everyone lives with no obligations but lots of right sounds offensive to my moral intuition. At what point in this conversation are you going to allow that a community can ethically violate the rights of an individual if it is in the communal interest?

How do you differentiate "a good idea" where government coercion is ethical from a situation where a "good idea" does not warrant such coercion?

I grant that you setup a bit of a battle between rights bearer A and rights bearer B, but that hardly sounds in anything but individualistic strife (competing rights).

I reckon what philosophy can teach fairly well is imagination and communication. — Hermeticus

I found the more philosophy I learned, the less well I could communicate with people. In part because I started being explicitly aware of assumptions and contexts that may or may not be shared. In other ways because I simply stopped talking about "ordinary" things the way that other people did.

By way of silly story, in the middle of my first logic class and coming to terms with the truth values of connectors, I thought it reasonable to say things like, "If you don' acquit my client, you will die" because it was a true statement. Formulations like this (of whatever level of sophistication) impede ordinary speaking and make it very hard to remember what someone might mean if they don't think like you do.