Should Anti-Discrimination Laws Apply to Religious Entities?

[El-Amin Caliphate]

Why? It's an animal. It lacks a train of thought. It is unable to recognize it's own identity.

Depends on the animal you're talking about.

[Kowani]

An ethical kosher operation and the ways in which the Aztecs sacrificed animals have about as much in common as lava has with penicillin.

Yes, but the former is still a ritualized killing of an animal.

Only one avoids excessive pain, however. As for kosher methods, I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that Aztec sacrifices weren’t for the end goal of eating the animal.

Ah, yes, opposing needless pain makes you a mass-murdering fanatic now. How much training did you have to go through in order to win your Olympic Gold Medal in Logical Leaps?

I didn't call you a mass-murdering fanatic. I was being a bit acerbic, but the point was that citing the pain of animals as the reason for abolishing a particular practice doesn't make a lot of sense. The meat and dairy products you consume are made wholly possible by an industrial apparatus that causes far more pain than a single chicken or cat ritualistically sacrificed on special occasions.

That is the thing you miss-needless pain. The agricultural industry, while far from perfect, does not inflict pain for pain’s sake. It would be inefficient, and as previously noted, counterproductive.

Ineffeciency and instability, mostly.

Destroying institutions and traditions creates a lot more instability than retaining them in most cases. Revolutionaries rationalize this destruction with the promise of a better future, but they seldom deny that the revolution itself is violent, destabilizing, and hellish.

Since we started this by talking about the Aztecs, I remind you that the Spanish didn’t even do most of the siege of Tenochtitlan, but rather the other native civilizations they dominated. Some traditions are not worth saving. I won’t deny that the interchange period would be not good to live in, however, the end goal is worth it.

Also, a fundamental opposition to religion.

Sounds like a philosophical complaint more than anything.

I believe my stance on this is well-known, so I’m not going to do it again.

If we destroyed every religious institution and tradition tomorrow, what do you believe would happen in places where nothing remains to fill the vacuum?

If you live in an area where the only positive thing is the religion, you’re screwed anyway.

How much culture and thought would be extinguished from the world?

Don’t care.

I'd argue we'd lose as much as was lost when the pagans fell out of their ascendant position.

Disagree. The pre-Christian pagans were contributing much to things like science, mathematics, and philosophy. The religions of today do not.

You’re overstating it. The Aztecs could only hold on through constant warfare and human sacrifice. The civilization was not some innocent lamb burnt upon a pyre, but rather a blot upon human history.

The order that preceded the Spaniards was still an order, as peculiar and violent as it may seem to us. War was ritualized under Aztec hegemony and served to bolster the prevailing order. Every civilization is a blot in one way or another.

War was ritualized? So that’s why everyone else struck back against the Aztecs as soon as possible? Order is of no value on its own. Rather, it must fulfill a purpose. The Aztec society had its own terrible, terrible laws, such as capital punishment for non-nobles drinking chocolate, or the death penalty for losing a ball game, or the death penalty for...I’m starting to see a recurring pattern here.

Citation needed.

You can look at examples of the disintegration of institutions and traditions throughout history if you like. The results are generally the same. Something is always lost and somebody always loses out.

I’m going to posit two theories. The first being that the loss of traditions is not a very large deal if undertaken in peacetime and there’s not a complete crisis beforehand, (a la Bronze Age Collapse.) If you look at all the major losses of traditions throughout history, the ones that went really bad (Fall of Rome, Decimation of the Aztecs, French Revolution, etc) there has always been a foreign power involved, and there’s always been a war. Nobody likes change when it’s pushed on them from the outside. However-if it comes from the inside, there will be resistance, as somebody will always lose, but very few mass revolts. Take Aten and monotheism. Yes, the second he died they went right back to polytheism, but that’s because it wasn’t enforced beyond his death. However, the important part is this-the imposition of monotheism did not cause a major societal breakdown.

The second theory being that people are generally better off without those traditions. However, if the changes came with large amounts of death (Such as the colonization of the Americas, that may not necessarily hold true.)

[Fahran]

We need to kill animals to eat.

No, we don't. Millions of people eat just fine without killing animals. If the pain of non-sapient beings is an intrinsic moral wrong, then you have an absolute moral obligation not to consume organisms with complex nervous systems.

The more fear the animals feel, the more adrenaline spoils the meat.

Hence why many forms of ritual sacrifice attempt to minimize the alarm and pain experienced by animals. Even those that do not, however, serve a religious and social purpose. The question is whether you prioritize the suffering of a non-sapient being over a community's way of life and to what extent you do this.

Painlessly killing the animals is the ONLY virtue here. Killing animals with or without Prayer is irrelevant. Killing animals with or without Incense is irrelevant. Killing animals with or without Songs is irrelevant.

I'm not a hedonist in ethical terms, so that argument isn't one that I necessarily accept at face value.

I don't care what a bunch of religious fanatics think. If you are killing animals because some outdated religion says so you are an asshole plain and simple.

Such a perspective is fine, providing you're not in the minority. "I don't care what x group thinks" isn't exactly a good way to open a conversation that seeks tolerance and understanding though.

[Fahran]

Only one avoids excessive pain, however. As for kosher methods, I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that Aztec sacrifices weren’t for the end goal of eating the animal.

I couldn't tell you. My textbooks on the subject were more attentive to the human victims of such sacrifices and to the devastation wrought on the empire by the Spaniards.

That is the thing you miss-needless pain. The agricultural industry, while far from perfect, does not inflict pain for pain’s sake. It would be inefficient, and as previously noted, counterproductive.

Ritualistic sacrifices aren't intended to inflict pain for the sake of pain in most instances. They're intended to appease or gain the favor of deities. This is done because the lives of such animals possess some intrinsic value while not being human lives. You cannot offer something as a gift or sacrifice if it lacks value to you. Additionally, many cultures make a ritual feast out of sacrificed animals, which makes sense given how valuable meat historically was.

Since we started this by talking about the Aztecs, I remind you that the Spanish didn’t even do most of the siege of Tenochtitlan, but rather the other native civilizations they dominated. Some traditions are not worth saving. I won’t deny that the interchange period would be not good to live in, however, the end goal is worth it.

I directly benefited from the Spanish Conquests, so I'm not really in a good place to object to them. That said, the destruction of their civilization must have seemed like an apocalypse to the Aztecs. In the span of a few decades, everything they knew was gone. It's not really a fate I'd wish on anyone.

If you live in an area where the only positive thing is the religion, you’re screwed anyway.

It's never quite that simple. Different social institutions influence and lean on one another, even when we don't realize it. One example, speaking from personal experience, is that most atheists in the United States implicitly react to and argue against Christian theism or belief systems rooted in and inspired by it, to such an extent that the same arguments often aren't applicable to Judaism and Islam.

Don’t care.

Calm down, St. Cyril of Alexandria.

Disagree. The pre-Christian pagans were contributing much to things like science, mathematics, and philosophy. The religions of today do not.

Christians have contributed a lot to science, art, philosophy, and literature in the past two centuries alone, so much so that we owe more of our culture to medieval Christendom than to classical antiquity. From Mendel to Chesterton, Christian influence is everywhere.

War was ritualized?

Yes, the Flower Wars were definitely ritualistic in nature.

So that’s why everyone else struck back against the Aztecs as soon as possible?

The oppressed lash out against their oppressors when the opportunity presents itself. That's not really surprising.

Order is of no value on its own. Rather, it must fulfill a purpose. The Aztec society had its own terrible, terrible laws, such as capital punishment for non-nobles drinking chocolate, or the death penalty for losing a ball game, or the death penalty for...I’m starting to see a recurring pattern here.

Basing society around an ideological purpose often has dire consequences as evidenced by the Almohad Dynasty of al-Andalus and the tumults of the French Revolution. I'm not really arguing that I would have preserved Aztec society, but, rather, that it's destruction created a slew of problems that wouldn't have existed if organic reforms had occurred.

The second theory being that people are generally better off without those traditions. However, if the changes came with large amounts of death (Such as the colonization of the Americas, that may not necessarily hold true.)

You can't really just do away traditions willy-nilly. Generally, when they change, it's the result of some calamitous event or some deliberate and often violent rejection of them. I think the reason for this is that people who are content with their lives will not desire change unless you can prove that existing social mores actively harm them.