Religious Freedom Versus Freedom Of Speech, the unstopable force meets the immovable Options

[bryden42]

Ok, So I am all up for free speech and whilst not a great fan of religion I also up for anyone believing in whatever they wish but an interesting situation arose for a teacher friend of mine the other week and I thought that I would field it to you guys to discuss.

It goes like this:
Teacher is asked by small girl (who is a Pentacostalist christian)
"how long can someone hold their breath for?"
Teacher (with alarm bells ringing) asks
"Why do you want to know?"
Little girl replies
"last Sunday the pastor was telling us about jonah and the whale, And I was wondering how long jonah could have held his breath for"
Teacher replies
"I think that that story is meant to be allegorical"
Small child gets Irate and says
"No its not our pastor says so, and he said that anyone that saidit was is going to hell"

Now there are a number of things that concern me about this story (Respect for elders and the brainwashing of small children not withstanding) what concerns me here though is the fact that after the outburst the teacher in question left the conversation and walked away, Why? because of fear of losing a job. This leads me to the question where do you draw the line between being able to say what you want despite the religious implications and religion being able to control what is said, for example the Hamas party has recently said that it does not recognise Israel and its right to exist or believe what it does (not an exact quote but deffinately the upshot of).
Of course I don't recognise any religions right to tell me what I can or cannot say or do does this make me an extremist? (of course I have enough respect for others beliefs to live and let live).

Any body else any thoughts?

[Mata]

The problem with that approach is that religion is never about a single person; religion does not address the personal experience, instead it addresses the way that a person relates to others. There are aspects of internal discourse in all religions that I know of, but they all also define the nature of a person by their acts towards others. To put that more clearly, people don't say about a saint 'inside he had a really strong conviction in the divinity of Christ', instead they talk about the person's physical acts in the world. Religions are all based on the way that people interact with society, and this can cause problems.

Religions are like virii: they need to infect and spread to survive. Without conscious will, the meme of a religion propogates and ensures its continued existence. It does this by over-ruling contrary ideas that it encounters. In the example of Christianity, this has happened through the perversion of existing traditions into a Christian framework and bribery, but in Islam it is often through the promise of a strict system of justice (and bribery again). Christianity survives through adaptation to social climates, so the Christianity of Africa is very different to the Christianity of California, which is different to that of Kentucky. Islam appears to go about things a different way: while there are regional differences, there is a single goal (the return of the caliphate, a state ruled by the laws and ideals of Islam). In this way Islam present an appealing unified front to those searching for a strict set of rules, and those rules are taught as being of a higher importance than the laws of government.

Due to the need to spread, religions cannot operate only on the personal level for their continued existence in society: a person that finds God but has no need to convey this to others will not establish a religion. This means that eventually every religion will meet with the problem of governmental-law. In the case of Christianity in the west this was simple: the laws of the land over time came to reflect Christian ideals, but now with Christian ideals and a multicultural society we face the conflict between a Christian-law system and an Islamic set of beliefs that contradict what is legal in the Christian system. Which leads us to the current state of affairs.

This whole 'controversy' about the cartoons annoys me. Flexibility is needed on both sides. Yes, it was culturally insensitive for the cartoonist/newspaper to represent the prophet Mohammed, but followers of the Islamic faith also need to show cultural sensitivity to the environment that they are living in. They are in a western society where the rules follow the (standard) Christian teaching that allows the representation of gods and prohpets. Yes, they may be offended, but they are choosing to live in this world, and they are not going to gain any sympathy by requesting beheadings for a cartoon!

Perhaps I'm being too harsh there: I'm a fan of the 'if you don't like it then try to change it' mentality, but I think that the reactions to the cartoons have been excessive. Yes, it's against Islamic law, but they're not in an Islamic state so those laws have no governance. It's been centuries in the UK since the church could prosecute those that annoyed Christianity, so why should Islamic laws be given any greater respect?

On a pedantic note to Bryden: Taoism is a philosophy, not a religion. Its systems for propogation are similar to those of a religion, but the focus of Taoism is not on worship or deities but internal peace.