Yeah, but, see, I don’t care. My interest here is that the government shouldn’t be basing legislation on someone’s religious beliefs.
Well, the issue is when you assume that consistency of a framework with its own culturally specific axioms is the only thing that needs to be considered or acknowledged.
Like, it’s very hard to explain non-Euclidean geometry to somebody who’s absolutely convinced that the parallel postulate must be true, because look, all of Euclidean geometry is consistent with it!
? Aren’t most controversies like that? One party objects to the action of another. It seems pretty rare that two parties are each simultaneously and equally taking an action that the other one objects to.
Huh? How can you say that that asymmetry “doesn’t depend on any cultural privilege”? Obviously, your assignment of “tolerant” and “intolerant” in that scenario is based on the fact that you have by default privileged the view that the sacred locale should be shared. Without that underlying default assumption, I cannot tell which of those two particular religious superstitions should prevail.
…and as I said: thats kinda unavoidable. Especially in the United States. Everything, from abortion to marriage, is effectively a “public votes on acceptable religious observances.”
And that isn’t changing. America is indoctrinated. Religion drives everything. It’s an essential, fundamental part of the American identity. And the domination of the Supreme Court and the lack-of-ability to do anything about it means that as bad as everything is right now, its going to get so-much-worse.
Which is why I find the amount of energy expended on this, a minor blip in the grand scale of things, a largely empty gesture that was always doomed to fail, so puzzling. Your country is about to be overrun by religious zealots. Letting the Navajo Nation speak for a few minutes isn’t going to harm anyone. This isn’t some great principled issue. Its a sideshow.
Sure, but they are then adjudicated based on an assessment of whether one party really is objectively harming the other.
Here the claimed harms is not objectively real, it is a subjective mental state deriving from superstition, and the fact that one party is being “harmed” derives only from the fact that their superstition is less tolerant than the other. If you are going to give this kind of “harm” the same consideration as objective harm, then the less tolerant belief system always wins.
Let’s hope so.
Well, except it already is. The US government defaults to assuming that putting cremains on the moon is okay—and regulates moon mission authorization accordingly—because mainstream white Christian culture is okay with putting cremains in (legally accessed) natural spaces. And the US government inherits its cultural assumptions from mainstream white Christian culture.
Which, y’know, in terms of historical reality is to some degree unavoidable. But let’s not be naive enough to imagine that it’s only “the other side” that is expecting “special treatment” for its superstition preferences here. It’s just that the superstition preferences of mainstream culture are to a large extent pre-baked into the system.
What are you talking about?
Not a single person said that the Navajo should not be allowed to speak about this.
Believe me, I am well aware of the rising tide of theocracy in the US. Which is why it needs to be opposed at literally every level. US law is heavily precedent-based, and any legal exception made on the basis of religious belief can and will be ruthlessly exploited by the larger Christian Dominionist movement.
That’s not remotely an issue. I’m aware that my moral framework is culturally influenced. I’m aware that there are other moral frameworks out there. My value system is still the best value system I could find, to the extent that I’m able to make moral and ethical determinations. Neither of these are things that I need to be explicitly explained to me, and it’s kind of insulting that you assumed I do.
The US government is defaulting - perhaps for one of the last times in American history - to the position that what sort of religious observances are acceptable is not the fucking government’s business.
Where do you get this? The article says the opposite:
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is responsible for licensing all private space launches in the US. But by law, the office only has oversight in matters involving “the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”
“The Federal Aviation Administration’s role is statutorily limited to ensuring space flights do not pose a safety or national security threat to the United States,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told CNN.
If there’s no safety or security issue, it’s not the FAA’s problem. As it should be.
…but what are you really opposed to here? That the Navajo Nation managed to have a meeting with the White House?
This is barely a story. You’ve framed this about religion. But for me, as an indigenous person, it’s about indigenous voices being heard. Let them have their say.
We all know that the government were never going to do anything about it. They were never going to stop a multi-million dollar project like this over the concerns of Native Americans. They’ve never really had a voice. That wasn’t going to start now. They deserve at least that much.
LOL.
That shipped sailed long ago. This was never going to change that. Granting Navajo an audience, listening to what they had to say, is the very least the White House could do.
You’re quite right that the commercial payload providers legally have a free hand to choose their launch payloads, subject to safety concerns, and that the federal government doesn’t regulate (AFAICT) the disposal of cremains. The fact that the federal government doesn’t restrict the disposal of cremains is kind of my point: it defaults to acceptable because mainstream Christian culture was okay with it. (Compare, for example, the history of federal regulation of things that mainstream Christian culture has been less okay with, such as pornography and nudity. Alcohol too, but that involves potential direct physical harm in ways that the others don’t.)
Despite, apparently, previously making a promise to take such concerns into consideration:
To be fair, I don’t know how binding such a statement on the part of a NASA director of public affairs may be >25 years later, nor to what extent Commercial Space Act legislation would even allow payload decisions to be guided by such consultation. But there seems to be no doubt that NASA in 1998 thought this was an act that warranted an apology.
I’m opposed to the government making legislative decisions based on religious belief. I feel like I’ve been pretty explicit about that.
No, I’m opposed to the idea that the government should base legislation on religious belief.
For me, as a queer person who actually lives in America, its about the government not legislating what sort of religious observances are acceptable.
Listen to them? Sure. Just so long as they don’t actually do what they want, at least on this issue, because it’s absolutely vital that the government not base legislation on religious belief.
Or, you could just take it at face value, which is that there’s no restriction unless there’s a safety or security issue. Unless you know of a payload that was denied because it didn’t conform to mainstream Christian values.
Yes, yes, we still have other laws on the books that are undoubtedly Christian in origin. Most get knocked down as soon as they face the courts. Don’t ask me to defend those. They have nothing to do with the case at hand here.
This wasn’t a NASA launch. They paid for the bulk of it, but there were other payloads, and NASA was not involved with the human remains payloads. Even aside from it being 25 years later, it isn’t the same situation as before.
What does “let them have their say” mean here? Because of who they are pretend that what they are saying has merit, when you don’t believe it does? That’s more than a little patronizing.
And I wonder to what extent Buu Nygren has let his own people have their say. You seem to be taking it for granted that he’s speaking for the whole Navajo Nation here, but I’m extremely skeptical that most Navajo could give a shit about tiny capsules of bone on the Moon. Maybe they’d prefer that the voice of their nation be heard about issues more substantial and pressing than traditional superstitions.
…well they didn’t here.
Well they didn’t here.
But you don’t have any objection to listening to what Navajo have to say?
Merely listening to Navajo has no impact on that at all.
And thats all that happened here.
I mean, of course it’s vital.
But it’s already game over. You’ve lost. It’s done. And it’s been done for longer than I’ve been on this planet. This one, single, utterly insignificant thing isn’t going to make one iota of difference.
It’s probably something that happens all of the time, it’s just that news agencies decided this time to turn it into something more than it isn’t. Lets not pretend that religious lobby groups and corporations aren’t lobbying the White House all of the time. Its just that this time it was an indigenous group, and for the media, they are low hanging fruit.
“Let them have their say” literally means what it says. They spoke out. The White House chose to listen. End of story.
This entire thread is predicated on this particular point. The thread title. The article cited in the OP. Most of the arguments in this thread. I’m as sceptical as you are that this is something that deserved any news coverage at all, let alone a Great Debate.
The literal meaning is an imperative, hence my question about what you think should have happened that didn’t. Nothing then I guess.
Sounds like one key question is whether the very act of “letting someone have their say” inherently promises a nonzero chance (not obligation, chance) of taking action based on what is said to you.
If you believe that all religious and spiritual beliefs, regardless of popularity, source, or tradition, is nonsense, then I can see how you might get to believing just the invitation constitutes a willingness to act based on the other’s beliefs. I’m just not sure it’s anything more than an intellectual exercise, based on the reality we have.
My objection is purely to the content of their request, which is, in my view, an unethical demand that the government enforce their religious views. I have no objection to the Navajo Nation exercising their right of free speech, or their right to petition their elected representative.
It’s vital, but it’s also hopeless?
Pick a lane.
…an unethical “demand”?
Who decided that? When did we, as society, impose ethical limits on what marginalised groups could ask for?
And that’s all that happened here. There is nothing unethical about the Navajo Nation exercising their right of free speech. There is nothing unethical about petitioning their elected representative.
In America?
Yeah, I think it’s pretty much hopeless.
And I’m rapidly running out of hope for the rest of the world at the moment, to be quite frank.
It’s vital that people don’t stop fighting, though. And part of that is picking the right battles. And this really isn’t a battle that needs to be fought. “Stop marginalised folk asking for things unethically” really wouldn’t be on my list of top ten list of things to stop the rise of fascism.
What I’d like is for indigenous peoples of the world to stop being treated like shit, for people to stop stealing their land, for people to stop killing them.
But I’ll settle for small victories right now. And having the decency of granting them an audience doesn’t seem to be the worst thing in the world.