[net.religion.jewish] Stepping on Sacred Cows

samet@sfmag.UUCP (A.I.Samet) (05/24/85)

>       If this country was set up as non-religious and has laws to prevent
>  mixing of church and state, then even if the entire nation is of one religion
>  certain laws should still not be passed. Blue laws should have never been
>  legal. I guess there was a time that people really didn't care too much about
>  the separation of church and state.

	There are some real problems in agreeing on   what  is  religious
	and what values or practices are religious in nature.  In theory,
	any widely held value  system  might  qualify,  even  atheism  or
	separation-of-church-and-stateism.      In     practice,     some
	applications of church-state separation are arbitrary, reflecting
	prevalent  values  and  biases   of society  rather than rigorous
	logic.

	The major religions in America are opposed to murder, theft,  and
	adultery.   Someone  could  conceivably  argue  that laws against
	these  things  stem  from  western  religious  values   (the   10
	commandments).  The  counter  argument  is, of course, that these
	have redeeming social value apart from  their  religious  nature.
	Many would answer this by arguing  that laws against adultery are
	primarily religious. We've seen this type of  debate   concerning
	abortion.   People  once  tended  to  view  it as murder, but the
	climate of opinion changed as people drifted away from  religious
	values.   This  serves  to  illustrate the inherent relativism in
	deciding which practices or values are religious in nature.

	Society seems to apply this law somewhat selectively,   according
	to the climate of social values, its moods and needs.  Consistent
	application of separation of church and state might mean dropping
	xmas  and  new years as national holidays, removing tax writeoffs
	for religious donations, or other consequences which society just
	won't hear of. 

	We shouldn't be  surprised  if  there  are  basic  weaknesses  or
	contradictions in the separation approach. It's not perfect, only
	an attempt to improve over abusive situations  which  existed  in
	Christian   Europe  when  the  Pilgrams  came  here.  It  may  be
	impossible or abusive (as in the case of abortion) to  insist  on
	rigorous  separation.   While  the  overall benefits may outweigh
	the costs, we can still step back and realize that it's not Holy,
	although it may be a sacred cow.

					Yitzchok Samet