Harvard accommates Gym Hours for Muslim Women

Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote:

AN, the heat was not turned off as an accommodation to Christians specifically. Wasn't it just a holiday?

Secondly, would you be OK with parts of the food service offering no Coke or coffee from 8-10 because LDSers don't like it -- or would you simply say, "Hey, if you don't like coffee, don't order any."?

Can the Baptists insist on no co-ed dorms?

Can the Catholics insist on no condoms available at the health service centers?

It's a very bad precedent; the consequences and downside are neither immediate or catasrophic, but the die is cast.

It was a Christian holiday. It's no big deal to me; I don't mind having holidays, even if they were created to accommodate ancient superstitions, rites, and myths. But there are all kinds of laws and practices in the U.S. that arose out of a desire to accommodate Christian mores; they're so entrenched in our society that they're barely noticeable to most people in this country.

In my earlier post, I made a distinction between religious and cultural accommodations. Putting aside Constitutional and statutory constraints that may effectively require certain religious accommodations (even on "private" property or within "private" institutions), my personal preference is to allow for reasonable accommodations of cultural differences without having to pretend to take religious beliefs seriously. To me, it's a matter of civility within a multicultural society. In other words, it's just good manners, not reflecting some view that anyone's beliefs, no matter how stupid or idiosyncratic, deserve respect.

Your examples are simply a series of hypothetical accommodations that both of us would reject as unreasonable in a multicultural institution such as Harvard University. I'm a vegetarian, for reasons that have to do with how I choose to relate to other creatures, but I would not demand that Harvard University suspend its practice of serving cooked animal flesh to students and staff who prefer to eat it. If the vast majority of students and staff were vegetarians, perhaps we would exercise our power to ban accommodations for meat eaters, but I think that we should be cautious in accepting a tyranny of the majority in most matters, whether the majority happens to be carnivorous, vegetarian, atheist, Muslim, Christian, or foot fetishistic.

These are, inevitably, matters of line-drawing. It seems naive to think that they can be resolved by application of general principles. If the Muslim women of Harvard wanted a University gym to exclude men every day from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., I might tell them to go to hell. But that doesn't preclude less intrusive accommodations.

wow. you are wound tighter than a rodeo bull.

[quote]uh huh wrote:

It is not stupid, it is faith. Faith is important to people, I guess just not you. I assume you trust in science. That's fine, I do too. Faith is separate from science, therefor it is held to a different standard. Think of it like this: You cannot see God, but that does not prove he is not there. It only proves you cannot see him. In my opinion we are finite minds trying to comprehend the infinite. {/quote]

Trust in science? Not stupid but faith? I don't know what any of this means. I trust in science as a means for knowing the world as it is the only means that has produced results while religion has been pointedly obscurantist every step of the way - actively receding in the face of empirical evidence. Has any other means of knowing produced results? Science is not a body of knowledge or a dogma - it is a PROCESS and a process designed to guard against our wishful self-delusions. The findings of science are only proved wrong BY MORE SCIENCE. Never proved wrong by religion. Does religion even have a methodlogy, a body of knowledge or anything similar to what science works with? Is there a peer review process? Are their techniques by which we can avoid self-delusion in theological proclamations?

Faith is believing in things for which there is no evidence. Why should this be held to a different standard when it makes empirical claims and practical demands on society. The logic of your "we cannot see God" syllogism there would be glaringly expoised if you substituted any quantity for God. What else do you reckon exists when there is no evidence for it? You would have not bassis for believing such a thing if you didn't have very specific beliefs about holy books, revelation and other mess.

Just because believing false things is important to people seems to me no reason to kowtow to it in the publc sphere. The only smart thing you said is that Harvard, being private, can do what they want. I just think it is a mistake for an institution of learning to govern itslef according to the dictates of any faith.

Mtn Dew, you have a peculiar definition of freedom if all it amounts to is that nobody has a gun to your head.

Wow Brian, you have one hell of an ax to grind.

Says you, jackass.

Brian wrote:

Mtn Dew, you have a peculiar definition of freedom if all it amounts to is that nobody has a gun to your head.

It's called libertarianism. It's a pretty simple philosophy and doesn't have the huge contradictions that most people's personal philosophies have.

Yes, if these women want such an archaic and segregated society, to the point that they cannot function healthily outside of it, then what are they doing going to school in the US?

"Science is not a body of knowledge or a dogma - it is a PROCESS and a process designed to guard against our wishful self-delusions."

Yea, your own self-delusions included. You parade science around like it's your own damn invention, and as if it's a savior of mankind. Give me a break.

I am out of college, so I am familiar with libertarianism and its simplistic notions of freedom. Not saying it isn't the best we can do, but just saying I am smart enough to know that my upper middle class ass is making "choices" with a different set of determinants than other people are. if you think everyone in life is free to make the same choices, you need to take a walk outside.

Libertarianism doesn't say all people are able to make the same choices in life. When you say, "free" you need to explain what that is and how one person is free to do something that someone else isn't.

I would suggest reading a bit more about it. Many people seem to think they know what libertarianism is, but they usually have a few misconceptions - like libertarianism is libertinism, libertarianism assumes people know whats best for themselves, or that libertarians believe people are their own little islands and that people don't have to interact. All of those are incorrect.

Dancing Days wrote:

Yes, if these women want such an archaic and segregated society, to the point that they cannot function healthily outside of it, then what are they doing going to school in the US?

I'm going way out on a limb here, but maybe because many of them are US citizens . . .

I wonder if they'll allow transvestites, lesbians, and hermaphrodites into the gym during those hours, or is it only muslim women?

I'm sure lesbian muslims don't exist either, so its not a problem of course.

Dancing Days wrote:

Yes, if these women want such an archaic and segregated society, to the point that they cannot function healthily outside of it, then what are they doing going to school in the US?

Citizen Runner wrote:

I'm going way out on a limb here, but maybe because many of them are US citizens . . .

And?????