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e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | In the UK case this is not all it appears. The Intelligence Services Commissioner is comparatively toothless, and both it and the Interception of Communications Commissioner are immensely understaffed for monitoring all UK intelligence agencies. Some experts such as Professor Peter Sommer have even suggested “I am not ... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | There is no physical risk In terms of physical risk it is almost certainly true that you have nothing to fear from government having loads of information. With the exception perhaps of the Russian FSB and despite the James Bond films intelligence agencies in democracies are not in the habit of bumping people off this ... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Physical risk is not the only risk that people worry about. Denying someone their liberties such as privacy or freedom of expression does not pose a physical risk to them but that act is still wrong and it is still worth worrying about. Citizens have the right to go about their own business without their government spy... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Clearly if no one ever actually looked at any information provided by surveillance then there would be no point in conducting it. Even if it were true that no one looks at any of the data being watched is still an intrusion that affects behaviour. It will affect decisions that are perfectly lawful because there will al... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | There are safeguards to prevent misuse In democracies there are numerous safeguards and levels of oversight to prevent abuse. In the UK for example there is a “strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight”. Agencies are required “to seek authorisation for their operations from a Secretary of State, norm... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | No one will ever actually look at the information If the concern is privacy then there really should be little concern at all because there is safety in numbers. The NSA and other intelligence services don’t have the time or motivation to be tracking down all of our foibles. [1] If the intelligence agencies are watchi... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | The circumstances in the cold war were clearly different to today so this kind of abuse of power would be unlikely to happen. More broadly yes there is the potential for abuse in much the same way that there are people in banks who could steal large quantities of other people’s money. That there is a potential opportun... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Far from threatening democracy the intelligence agencies are using this information to protect democracy from terrorists who wish to overthrow the whole concept of democratic governance. Intelligence agencies are clearly under civilian control and have several layers of oversight to ensure that this kind of misuse does... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Lack of trust The problem is that when it comes to privacy it is not really our personal physical security that we are worried about. Part of the problem is that we value our right to a private life and that we should have control over that to the extent of being able to decide how much information others know about u... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Loss of Privacy It is wrong to state that we only have anything to ‘fear’ if we have done something wrong; a great many people want to keep things private where what they have done is morally perfectly right and justifiable. It is perfectly justified for a married couple to want to keep a video of them having sex priv... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | The use of meta data causes unintentional harm The other possible harm is unintentional. The amount of data involved is huge and too much even for a vast organization like the NSA to actually physically look at. Instead it uses data mining. This is why the NSA wants data that may seem useless to others. The records of... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Abuse of information and power by intelligence agencies Even when the government does not intend harm there are still cases where direct harms can occur as a result of surveillance. The most worrying are where the state abuses the information it holds. Abuse of power and of the information held by government is perhap... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Is it really an invasion of privacy if no one else knows about it even if that information is added to some giant computer database? The information we wish to keep secret remains a secret, in the unlikely event that some analyst reads the information they are never going to broadcast it to others as keeping secrets is... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | A threat to democracy Yes the NSA is unlikely to look at individual’s personal information if the person in question is nobody of interest yet there are people who may be of interest to the state who are essentially innocent of anything except annoying the state. The ability for almost anyone in the intelligence appar... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | Metadata and data-mining are not new they are simply becoming more frequent, and more accurate as a result of more information. In the past there have been other ways of collecting data; tax records, voter registration, reverse telephone directories. [1] At the same time government and the intelligence agencies are not... |
e free speech and privacy politics government digital freedoms privacy | The intelligence agencies are not violating any right to privacy if they are not actually looking at the content of any emails, even less so as they in almost all cases won’t even be looking at the metadata. It is not possible for intelligence agencies to be asking the people before engaging in every surveillance polic... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | This has absolutely nothing to do with censorship – not having net neutrality will not stop users accessing certain sites, just make it slower. Data from some points of origin, especially games and file-sharing programmes slow down the entire network. It’s unfair to other users. |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Risk of a two-tier Internet As things stand there are relatively flat rate services. The concern is that ISP would charge higher rates for full Internet access or act to ensure that their own content arrived seamlessly and smoothly, while that of competitors was delayed or poorer quality or that higher bandwidth appli... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | The idea that there is a virtue in providing things for free takes a somewhat cavalier attitude toward jobs. It is a predicate of this, and many other, arguments that the Internet should be either free or very cheap, but this does little for protecting genuine sources of expertise. Equally the costs incurred by ISPs fo... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Privacy This was the clinching argument in the Dutch example. Labour MP Martijn van Dam, one of the bill’s co-authors said that Dutch ISP KPN was similar to “a postal worker who delivers a letter, looks to see what’s in it and then claims he hasn’t read it. It is simply a basic principle of the Internet that for it to... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | The postal worker analogy is an interesting one. Certainly, the end user wouldn’t want the worker snooping through their mail; however they would expect to pay more for the stamp if they were sending a parcel – the equivalent of sending voice messages or receiving films rather than email and text. It is also not direct... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Threats to Freeware, Shareware and Objectivity There are very real concerns that ISPs have a commercial interest in guiding people away from certain sites – especially when those sites provide services or products for nothing when the ISP or a related company charges for a competing product. File sharing more generall... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | It’s no secret that many companies have had difficulty working out effective models for dealing with the internet. That doesn’t justify simple price-gouging. Neither does it justify an invasion of privacy. It’s the equivalent of a restaurant waiting for customers to order, eat their meal and then set the prices. |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | The reverse also applies. In most countries the costs of basic infrastructure are shared. Taxpayers don’t get a discount if they don’t have kids in education, any more than they would just because they disagreed with a war that their taxes help to pay for. The argument doesn’t make sense. |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Allow ISPs to monitor and remove illegal or unwanted data Many ISPs are responding to user interests when cutting out particular types of data. At the request of the user why shouldn’t they be able to monitor what is delivered to a certain IP address. Most ‘net nanny’ software is not that difficult to get around [i] .... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Realistic costs for users and providers of bandwidth and phones The example of mobile devices is, perhaps the most clear-cut. Manufacturers of mobile devices expect to make their money back and make a profit. They need to do this to pay salaries, invest in the next project and keep their shareholders happy. To do that... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Incentivise ISPs to provide more data capacity If the ISPs were actually making their money on the basis of data provision rather than bandwidth then it’s in their interest to provide it. If they can’t, they don’t make money. If they want to sell more data, they have to provide more bandwidth, otherwise they can’t do... |
e internet freedom digital freedoms access information house supports | Censorship has routinely been presented in terms of ‘protecting public morals’ or ‘defending national security’ or some similar euphemism, with legislation aimed at pornography but catching everything else in its track as simply the most obvious example [i] . It doesn’t change what it is [ii] . In addition to which, th... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | Most suffering and pain can be accounted for by the free will that humans exercise; God made us free and we use that freedom for evil as well as for good. As for illness and disease, it is hard for us to know the mind of God, but it may be that these trials are a necessary part of a world in which free and spiritual hu... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | The problem of suffering The world is full of suffering and pain among innocent people. If God is good and all-powerful then why is this the case? Either God does not exist or he is not worth believing in since he does not care about human suffering. |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | This is an inaccurate caricature of the relationship between science and religion. In fact most of the great scientists of history, such as Descartes, Newton and Einstein, have been religious believers, and the more we learn about the physical world (e.g. the fine balance between the fundamental forces of the universe,... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | The Null Hypothesis With regards to any proposition the only consistent and rational view is to assume that it is not true unless sufficient evidence is put forward to nullify that assumption. The proposition need also be falsifiable, that is to say, there must be some potential fact that could be proven in order to ... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | Religious belief is completely irrational There is no evidence that God exists. Reported miracles, healings etc. are never reliably proved actually to have happened, and in any case everyone’s religious experiences are different and point to the psychological differences between human beings not to any objective divin... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | There is good evidence that God exists and there are good arguments for accepting religious beliefs. The fact that we live in a beautiful, orderly universe in which human beings exist and have special moral and spiritual awareness points clearly to the existence of a divine Creator behind the universe. Billions of peop... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | All beliefs rely upon some form of presupposition as their grounding. The null hypothesis presupposes a natural world – but belief in God presupposes a supernatural world. It is unfair therefore to apply the null hypothesis to religious faith. Moreover, belief in God is a different to belief in an object in the physic... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | Religion may have been the occasion for various social and political wrongs, but it is not the cause. You can be quite sure that if you took away all the world’s religions people would still identify themselves with national and political groups and go to war over territory, political conflict etc. Equally elitism and ... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | The God hypothesis is unnecessary Science provides us with the tools to form a comprehensive view of the Universe which does not include a supernatural being. From Galileo to Darwin to the modern day, scientists have continually uncovered the true natural mechanisms behind the creation and evolution of the universe. T... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | Religions have no true claim to special moral knowledge Religions through the ages, and still today, have been agents of repression, sexism, elitism, homophobia, and - most of all - conflict, war, and racial hatred. The very nature of belief in received wisdom means that it must be, at its core, a conservative and reg... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | This argument is based on a subtle fallacy – the only reason we are here to observe the fact that the Earth is so well suited to support life is that fact that it is so well suited to support life – if the Earth was a barren rock then we would not exist to see it. It shouldn’t be surprising therefore that out of the bi... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | This is just special pleading; firstly there is no reason to consider Godly wisdom as being beyond our capacity to comprehend; and secondly there are discernable flaws in that wisdom as it is presented in a way that humans are supposed to be able to perceive and understand. |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | The Prime Mover The universe follows rules of causality – cause precedes effect. But it cannot be the case that cause and effect regress infinitely into the past – there must be a ‘prime cause’. There is an identifiable point for this – the Universe was formed about 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang, before which... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | The rareness of Life Life requires an extremely fine set of conditions in order to exist. The right distance from the Sun, a magnetic field to deflect solar radiation, the right atmospheric composition and conditions etc. These conditions are extremely rare; indeed only on Earth have we observed that they are just rig... |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | Revealed wisdom Godly wisdom is not the same as human wisdom and cannot be subject to the same criticism. The nature of humanity means that our ability to understand God’s wisdom is fundamentally limited; and thus arguments based on morality or science are irrelevant – what matters is that God has revealed Himself. |
faith religion general house believes belief god irrational | This argument is an attempt to shoehorn God into one of the ever-shrinking gaps in our knowledge of the Universe and should be treated as such – it doesn’t really give reasons why one should believe in God, it throws up conjecture and asks ‘why not’? If everything needs a prime cause, what is the prime cause of God? I... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Evil may be thought of as the absence of good. It is a privation of goodness, just as darkness is the absence of light. God is good and the embodiment of goodness, but humans have been endowed with free will; they can make the choice not to follow the path of good. People have the ability to make both good and bad choi... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | If there is a benevolent deity, then there should not be the kinds of evil observable in the world and He would likely show more interest in His creation than He appears to have done so far: If God, or the gods, were good there would be no evil in the world. Disasters would not kill millions of innocents, disease and ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | entirely natural theories can adequately explain belief in God and the development of religions, so an existent God is superfluous to the understanding of the phenomenon: The reason people believe in God and why religions have formed can be explained perfectly well by natural processes and psychology. Religion is an o... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | The question of God’s existence does matter, not only to those who believe, but to understanding of life and its meaning. If there is a God and He has a plan for humanity and the Universe, then in order to understand the plan and to become an active part in it, one must try to understand in some sense the nature of God... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | It is unreasonable to suggest that God must reveal Himself to humanity, or to make His existence manifestly clear because that would undermine the value of faith. [1] Belief is an important component of all religious teachings because it is what allows the soul to transcend the material world and to commune with the di... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | In reality there are only two theological positions, atheism and theism; agnosticism is nothing but timid atheism: God, like unicorns, has never been shown to exist, and thus it is logical to accept that He, just like unicorns, does not exist. That is why a position like agnosticism makes no sense. There are no agnost... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Entirely natural theories can adequately explain the existence and development of the Universe and all it contains, making God irrelevant to the discussion of reality: Physics and cosmology explain the development and evolution of the Universe and the bodies within it. Chemistry explains the interactions of substances... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Even if atheism was wrong and God did exist His seeming lack of interest and interaction with the Universe as far as humans can perceive means his existence is irrelevant: It seems as if life goes on whether God exists or not. Theologians, philosophers, and laypeople have been fighting both in academia and on the actu... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Science cannot explain everything. People have spoken of the existence of the soul and of God through the ages because reason and logic are sometimes not enough to explain the complexity and depth of the human experience. God is far more than the occupier of the gaps in scientific knowledge. However, the gaps are indic... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | There is no strict dichotomy in theology. It is perfectly reasonable for someone unsure of whether God exists to take up a position of agnosticism, refusing to emphatically accept the existence of God or to deny it. Atheism is a positive claim insofar as it is a statement about the nonexistence of God. The burden of pr... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Not everything about religion can be explained by evolutionary psychology. The existence of the soul and the concept of an ethereal God not directly connected to the processes of the world could not simply come about by way of evolution. Rather, there must be true meaning in these concepts, or they must at least be ind... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Just because God cannot be understood by conventional understandings of physics and logic does not invalidate His existence. In fact, it is unsurprising that trying to discuss the attributes of God would confound human reason. That is why faith is essential to understanding, and why science and reason are limited tools... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | If there were a God there would be irrefutable evidence of His existence and people would feel compelled to belief by the fact of it: Many people do not believe in God, and the ranks of atheists are growing every day, particularly in the developed world. It seems that as human knowledge of the Universe expands and as ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | The nature of God as it is conventionally described is logically contradictory: A creator god is a logical absurdity, as demonstrated by empirical fact and rational reflection. Certainly God cannot exist outside of the Universe, as such a concept is effectively meaningless. In fact, physics explains that when the Univ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | If everything has a cause, then so too must the creator. Trying to place the deity outside of the spatio-temporal realm of the Universe is not a good argument, as nothing can be said meaningfully about what is “outside” the Universe, since we cannot observe or detect it. [1] Furthermore, saying God, or a creator, is un... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | The rational position in the absence of positive evidence about God is not agnosticism, but atheism. While there is always a degree of doubt in every statement, this does not mean that negative claims about an entities existence can never be made. One can rationally state that fairies do not exist, even if there is no ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | The complexity of the universe and of life cannot be explained by atheism: Atheism suggests that the Universe came about by chance and the interaction of natural properties. Yet nature is marked by clear design that atheism cannot explain. The complexity of the human body, of planets, stars, and galaxies, and even of ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. Since the Universe began to exist it must be caused: Every human, every being, every object in the Universe is a finite and contingent being. These all have causes, yet a causal chain cannot be infinitely long. Humans are born, stars form from gases, even the Universe... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | In the absence of positive evidence for the existence of God the rational position is agnosticism, not atheism: In a situation where there is an absence of either positive evidence for a claim or definite negative evidence for it, the natural response is not rejection of the claim, but rather skepticism and admission ... |
y epistemology religion church faith religion general god morality secularism | Atheism does not seek to explain the origin of the Universe, life, etc.; that is what science is for. Atheism is about the existence of God. The atheist position is supported, however, by the fact that there is no evident design in the Universe. People tend to anthropomorphize their environment, trying to assign human-... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | There are, of course, risks in any medical procedure. However circumcision remains astonishingly safe. Furthermore, denying the parents of a child the right to raise that child in accordance with their own beliefs would represent an unacceptable intrusion by the state into its citizens’ private and religious lives. By... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | There is always a risk associated with surgery and taking such a risk for no particular reason is irresponsible A report by the Royal Dutch Medical Association noted that there was not a single medical body in the world that could point, categorically to a medical need for circumcision of infants. It further concluded... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | The precautionary principle is alive and well but risks are inevitable in any procedure. There is no reliable data on fatalities directly related to circumcision. The causes of the 10 million or so neonatal deaths that occur around the world each year are closely linked to the income and educational level of the mothe... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | Cutting off bit of children’s bodies for no apparent reason is simply wrong If this is simply a matter of performing a procedure with no apparent benefit to the patient – in most cases a young child – then it does rather raise the question of “Why”. If the procedure were, say, cutting off a toe or an earlobe then all ... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | Neo-natal circumcision is an operation that has been performed, perhaps, more than any other. It is performed mostly for cultural or religious reasons but there is also a body of evidence that suggest health benefits. There is very little suggestion in any study of any harm to the child. In all sorts of situations soc... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | In any other situation involving minors a precautionary principle would be applied Any risk needs to be justified against some benefit. In the absence of any demonstrable benefit then there is no need to tolerate any risk, particularly in the case of a newborn baby who cannot express his opinion one way or another and... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | It is possible to perform this operation at any time during a person’s life and there is no compelling need to perform it on extremely young children. Doing so violates the child’s right to be free from pain. Indeed the deliberate and unnecessary infliction of pain on a minor in any other circumstance would be consider... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | Parents do not have the right to presume their children’s consent for procedures that are medically unnecessary, as in the case of circumcision. Ultimately this is a choice that has more to do with culture than with medical need. The purported benefits are, at best, questionable and the results are irreversible. The ... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | A practice that is thousands of years old and has not been found to cause harm during that time is unlikely to now Where there compelling evidence from medical science that a process that predates it had some proven harm then there might be good reason to restrict it but that evidence simply isn’t there. What is known... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | Parents have the right to use their best judgment, in the light of medical advice, as to what is in the best interest of their child There is compelling evidence that shortly after birth is the best time to perform this operation and that the rate of complications at this age is generally agreed to be between 0.2 and ... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | There is no proven cause of harm and parents routinely make medical decisions for children to give their consent or otherwise Circumcision is akin, in many ways, to vaccination; a routine and simple procedure with miniscule risks and compelling probable benefits. We acknowledge the right of parents to take these decis... |
w crime policing religion religion general religions house believes male infant | Just because a practice is old doesn’t make it right. In addition to which societies’ attitudes, especially in the West, have changed radically in relationship to how we view both the body and childhood. There is no other area where the physical violation of a child’s body would be tolerated, regardless of how old the... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | It is undeniably true that greater investment in public services would help the poor. It is however, difficult to see how these two things are mutually exclusive. Indeed the results of this measure look set to considerably increase the chances of an education and healthcare for every child. |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | Poor families would be helped far more by investment in education and healthcare This has been an urban and political obsession from the outset. The idea that the hungry and homeless need condoms more than food and shelter is clearly absurd. The poor would be better helped through “accessible education, better hospita... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | It should be remembered that other values within the 1987 constitution include ecological balance and the recognition of the role of women, [i] both of which are advanced by giving women access to birth control. Pork barrel politics is an all too real tradition of Filipino politics, it is hardly unique to this bill. Th... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | The appropriate setting for sexual relations is within marriage, contraception encourages pre-marital sex The population of the Philippines are overwhelmingly Catholic, it seems reasonable to accept that many, if not most, accept the teaching of the Church that safe sex is married sex. Appropriate sexual relations bet... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | It is simply untrue to suggest that Catholic hegemony is one and the same as Filipino values and that the two are – or have ever been – indistinguishably intertwined. Even where popular support for this very bill not sufficient proof, the very fact that the Filipino constitution states quite clearly that there is a div... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | The bill violates the Philippine values of harmony and respect Perhaps the most important values in the Philippines are social harmony and respect for the family. [i] The Reproductive Health bill undermines both. Allowing contraception will take away a psychological barrier that prevents pre-marital or casual sex and ... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | It is difficult to see how the life of anyone is improved by reducing sex to a cheap form of entertainment. Certainly not the unborn children and not the objectified women. Proposition is more than happy for women to take control of their own fertility – indeed we would go further and suggest that their boyfriends and ... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | Opposition have conveniently glossed over one critical issue in this debate – that the RH Bill has significant popular support [i] . It also, as has been demonstrated that a majority of elected representatives support it. In itself these two facts provide evidence that modern Filipinos are sick of the fact that around ... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | There are clear and proven benefits to the health of the Filipino families, especially women Both sides of this debate have spoken about the need to respect the rights and lives of women. It is, however, difficult to see how exactly opponents of the legislation reconcile this with their actions. Decades’ worth of rese... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | Any body of values that claims to respect the rights of the individual must recognise the right of a woman to choose Even the doctrines of the Church accepts that pregnancy is not, in and of itself, a virtue – there is no compulsion to maximise the number of pregnancies; there is simply a disagreement about how they s... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | This is a victory for democracy – a precious Filipino value - clear majorities in both houses and in the wider public support it Opposition have conveniently glossed over one critical issue in this debate – that the RH Bill has significant popular support [i] . It also, as has been demonstrated that a majority of elec... |
church marriage religions society gender family house believes reproductive | It is difficult to see how the life of anyone is improved by reducing sex to a cheap form of entertainment. Certainly not the unborn children and not the objectified women. Proposition is more than happy for women to take control of their own fertility – indeed we would go further and suggest that their boyfriends and ... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Intolerant schools cause more problems for not allowing freedom of religious expression. In a multicultural society, students should be aware of the different religious practices and cultural traditions of their classmates, and be taught to understand and respect these. Without such respect, religious groups with disti... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Muslim women are not the only ones to feel a cultural division over their mode of dress. Most people are affected by the societal norms surrounding them. Fashion trends could be seen in exactly the same light as religious traditions. Banning head coverings is only likely to provoke a more extreme reaction among highly ... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Religious symbols are not seen as oppressive by those who choose to wear them. Many Muslim women view the veil as a means to protect their modesty and privacy. Just as we would not force any women to be seen in public in her underwear if she did not feel comfortable doing so, why should a woman be forced to show her ha... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Even though the wearing of religious symbols could be a part of that specific religions' culture and practice, it must be remembered that Western society and culture brands itself as secular and, therefore, should take precedence over clashes with minority cultural practices. In Britain there has been controversy over ... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Deciding what people can and can’t wear should not be the responsibility of schools. Enforcement may be potentially simple but only at the cost of creating a conflict between schools and their Muslim pupils and staff. |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | It would not be necessary to ban all religious symbols if one was banned. Banning religious symbols that are regarded as dangerous, such as the Kirpan, would be very different from banning crucifixes as the justification would be different.1 And if people start asking for other things to be banned, their cases should b... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | A ban on religious symbols would not be targeting the whole religious group. It would highlight the problems of symbols, such as the veil or Kirpan, within the boundaries of society. At the end of the day, full Muslim veils can be used as a disguise and, therefore, could pose a s a potential problem to the general popu... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | That the state is secular does not diminish the right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the UN charter, that all states have signed up to, and considered by many to be a basic human right.1 Some religions require special diets, others prayer at specific times. Why shouldn't a religious mode of dress receive as muc... |
government religion church religion general secularism house would ban religious | Some argue that religious symbols, particularly those that are clearly seen, are not just for personal benefit. They affect the safety of the society around them. For example, there have been worries about how the Muslim full-veil may be used as a disguise for terrorists and how veils make it harder to ascertain someon... |
marriage society gender family house would ban arranged marriages eu countries | Different systems of matrimony can easily co-exist. Arranged marriages encourage family over individualism, placing emphasis on a more considerate view of relationships that encourages development and patience rather than Hollywood romance. It is however not a rejection of western values to practice arranged marriages.... |
marriage society gender family house would ban arranged marriages eu countries | Integration and the acceptance of Western values are important Arranged marriages have not been a part of the cultures of most European countries for many years now. Part of the reason for this is because ideas about marriage have become more progressive, with people accepting that men and women of any orientation sho... |
marriage society gender family house would ban arranged marriages eu countries | Domestic violence is hardly exclusive to arranged partnerships. Surely focusing exclusively on arranged marriages is missing the point somewhat. Domestic violence, especially against women, pervades many relationships across many European countries. There are just as many arranged marriages that are abuse-free, just as... |
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