If I build a lunar colony and start selling homes there, and a bunch of Christian groups come to me and demand I refuse to sell units to gay couples because they don’t want to look at sodomy every time they glance up, should that be respected?
What if Muslim groups demand I evict an artist who turned his moon buggy garage into an art studio and started drawing Muhammad?
What if a Jewish group demanded I forbid pork in my moon base?
What if some very traditionalist Hindus demand that I forbid people of lower castes from living in the holy domain of Chandra?
And what if the Navajo demanded that I send anyone who is sick or injured back to Earth, even if transferring them would be dangerous, to ensure that a dead body never ends up on the moon?
I’m not asking you to respond to each example, I want to understand by what metric you propose we decide which of these demands are reasonable to accommodate, which are fine to hear but unreasonable to meet, and which are offensive?
I’m not “ignoring” it: it’s just that it’s obviously false. Of course the people who are actually putting corpse parts on the moon are imposing on the entire society their belief that it’s okay to put corpse parts on the moon. They can do this mostly unremarked because it so happens that most of the society agrees with that belief.
Yes, correct - I was using the quoted bit of your post as a springboard, but that was directed at @Kimstu. I know very well (and agree with) your position - that every one of those groups should fuck off and let me run my secular moon base however I want.
No, that’s not my argument. My argument is that the particular types of action and constraints on action that people treat as their “religion-neutral” societal default are also ultimately derived from belief systems that are just as fundamentally irrational as Navajo moon myths.
I assume that by “societal default” you mean “derived from Christianity”? In which case I would counter that no, that’s not where my belief system comes from, and I don’t believe it is where @Chronos’ does either. My belief system comes from a conscious and deliberate examination of my held beliefs, both those that came from the tradition of my Jewish upbringing as well as the mainstream Christian derived culture; and not liking what I saw, rejecting much of that moral system.
I don’t understand this argument. “Other belief systems exist!”. Yes, I know. I once held a different belief system than I currently do, and I make an effort to examine my own beliefs on a regular basis.
Does that make me completely rational? Of course not. As a human, that is not an achievable goal.
But it makes your claims - that I am just blindly echoing the mainstream view without even being aware that other options exist - ring hollow, and feel extremely condescending.
How convenient that your personal right of individual property on lunar territory, and the types of control over that property that you are officially entitled to, are just assumed to be, intrinsically, a culturally and religiously neutral default reality.
And it makes it very easy to answer your questions. Apparently you (somehow) personally possess officially recognized property rights on lunar territory, including the right to derive profit from transferring your property rights to part of that property (since otherwise, I assume, some enforcement agency would be interfering with your “selling homes there”).
Therefore, you’re entitled to do whatever you want with your lunar property in accordance with whatever legal authority is recognizing and enforcing your property rights there.
Not difficult. But not really relevant to deciding how societies should best accommodate differing cultural preferences about activities on a moon that isn’t private property.
I’m very confused. Are we debating private property here, or religion?
If you want to say that no one man should own a lunar base, that a system of capitalism that allows this to come about is inherently unjust, and that the workers of my moon base should sieze the means of production and toss me out an airlock, I agree. The idea of someone owning a space station on which thousands of people live is abhorent and dystopian.
But that’s not what we are discussing here. We are discussing whether people should have the right to impose adherence to their religious views on others.
If you want to scratch out each use of the word “my” and replace it with “Me and the other members of the Lunar Worker’s Council,” feel free to. It doesn’t change my point in the least.
All those religious groups are approaching the LWC with the requests outlined above. I repeat my question: by what metrics should the LWC determine which requests are reasonable?
Okay, change it to “The Glorious People’s Socialist Moon Base,” and you still have exactly the same questions about who is allowed to constrain someone else’s actions, and you still have to convince me that “because my God says so,” is a valid reason for stopping me from doing what I’d like to do.
I’m not arguing with any of that; I’m just maintaining that it doesn’t preclude your having, just as everybody else has, default preconceptions and beliefs that are the result of societal acculturation rather than deliberate choice.
If saying that makes me “condescending”, then I’m sorry: I don’t mean to offend you, and will not insist on continuing to reply to you.
And why would you infer from this awareness that allowing anyone to impose their beliefs on others is a good thing? Isn’t the principle that you cannot do this fundamental to protecting minority beliefs from persecution?