Marianne has a naked breast because it’s an allegory, you cretin

[Elok]

If you tie the enlightment with the renaiscance (and you should) the kickstart kick in the butt came rather from exciled byzantines to venice and florence.
They were not protestants

While I'm quite fond of Byzantium as a rule, not everything begins and ends with the Greeks. Following your logic, we could trace it back to the Turks for conquering, or to the Franks for weakening Byzantium first, or for that guy who screwed up at Manzikert, or . . .

[Bereta_Eder]

Enlightment and the renescance (I know I always screw up that word) marked a return to rationality, a push back of the organized church, a belief that reason should rule.

Religions are sneaky because they tap on the irrational. This can be used and is usually used for nefarious means.

However I think you approach it from the view of a connecting tissue of common values that somehow should influence society decisively etc. It's ok and I doubt that anyone would deny the enormous influence of religion on society as a whole.

I don't understand why we're arguing since the bourkini is (to some) a said religious expression. You *can* wear a big fat two ton wooden cross on the beach in France too...

[Bereta_Eder]

While I'm quite fond of Byzantium as a rule, not everything begins and ends with the Greeks.

It doesn't ?

[Elok]

Religions are sneaky because they tap on the irrational.

As opposed to patriotism, communism, transhumanism, or any other ideology you care to name, all of which are purely logical? The Nazis and the Soviets were both quite secular (there's some evidence that Hitler was planning to purge Christians once the war was won and he could afford the internal struggle). So were Pol Pot, Mao and the Kim family, unless you want to pull Bertrand Russell's lame-ass "well they didn't act like I think atheists should act so I'm going to call them religious anyway" trick. Religion as the root of atrocity simply does not fit with the evidence.

[pchang]

Thankfully, the State will not allow me to go "Aztec" on your ass.

[Berzerker]

So how do you distinguish between the two when a muslim woman can be killed for not wearing one - in a western country to boot!

you quoted the distinction, if she wants to cover up thats her business

and if she might be killed for not covering up how does a ban on covering up help her?

hubby says, cover up if you go to the beach and the mayor says she cant cover up?

[Bereta_Eder]

As opposed to patriotism, communism, transhumanism, or any other ideology you care to name, all of which are purely logical? The Nazis and the Soviets were both quite secular (there's some evidence that Hitler was planning to purge Christians once the war was won and he could afford the internal struggle). So were Pol Pot, Mao and the Kim family, unless you want to pull Bertrand Russell's lame-ass "well they didn't act like I think atheists should act so I'm going to call them religious anyway" trick. Religion as the root of atrocity simply does not fit with the evidence.

Yes!
The communists were very logical. Both them and nazism are children of modernity which is the epitomy of triumph of logic over all else.
Of course nazism led to the tragic occurances of logical beings called nazis cutting open the bellies of pregnant women in occupied lands, so it kind of got a bad name. And the people that carried it.
Nazis were not atheist or religious, they were first, german.

All of humanity is rife with irrationality.

Saying we live in a modern society doesn't automatically make it so.

It means we *strive* for something.

Which leads us to another great product of the enlightment: panhumanism. The belief that every human being has an inherent worth and rights (inluding medical care for example ) simply because he/she is a human being.

Pretty revolutionary.
It's an ideal. You strive for it, doesn't mean you always get it

[Ben Kenobi]

No... we shouldn't stand around and take it. We should go after the terrorists... not innocent Muslims.
Most Muslims are peaceful... just like most Catholics don't rape children.
You can't blame all for the acts of some

Thank you - so we can get rid of the crap that's oppressing women while we're at it too.

[Ben Kenobi]

In our office many women wear appropriate garb for their faith. Not one of them is saying that they they are forced by their husbands or they fear death if they don't. They do it by choice because it's their religious belief. Religious freedom and all that. Something you just can't seem to understand.

Do any of them actually wear a burkha? I have no issue with hijab, etc. I do have issue with the burkha that conceals your face, prevents you from driving, etc.

If a husband does kill his wife for exposing skin, you prosecute them, just like you would if it was a catholic man.
I'm sure killing your wife is still illegal in France.

The problem is that it hasn't been prosecuted, and there have been honor killings.

[rah]

So advocate prosecuting them, Not banning covering up.

[DirtyMartini]

I think the burkhini ban is counterproductive anyway -- The beach is fun. These women have to wear a burkhini to go to the beach. If they can't wear burkhinis then they can't go to the beach and have fun, leaving them with only one thing to do with all the time they wanted to spend frolicking at the beach: kill infidels. Seems shortsighted of the Mayor to me.

Plus, at least if they're wearing bourkinis you can easily tell who deserves to be randomly assaulted when you're frustrated after losing a sand volleyball match.

[Bereta_Eder]

BTW Elok I was having a discussion with a writer (and university professor) about that. He had written a book called the "allure of the irrational" dealing with various aspects where humanity, reason and civility broke down such as nazi germany (I'm sure he'd consider believing in god an irrationality too btw)

He said what he had to say and ended with a loud bang in favor of science and reason. And modernity.

I told him that that's a bit iffy because as we know after WW2 humanity entered the post modern phaze. Science, it would seem, could very well serve the purpose of sending a man to the moon or very effectivly massacre millions of the jewish religion.
Science doesn't fill anything, by itself.

So how, then, I proceeded, do you bypass a need for the metaphysical as something that came back with a vengeance (zodiacs and astrology are such manifestations along with religion (don't hit me)) after science gloriously massacred itself. It proved an empty shell.

He said that the nazis were not modern (which came as a surprise and it's NOT the mainstream consensus) because if they were they'd taken with them the jews and win the war.

Incoherent speech.

Truth is that everything that's pure and good comes from humanism (with its twin brother communism) which incidently have a lot in common with christianity as I understand it

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, that of course depends on how you define modern. The Nazis were not modern in the sense that the Communists were - the Communists are a product of Marx and the triumph of material philosophy over the older philosophies.

The Nazis on the other hand appealed to tribalism among the Germans - to Wagner - essentially they had a modern facet riding on a very old philosophy that was medieval in nature. Which is why it's rather odd to discuss their actual relationship with Christians had more to do with the old pagan/Christian conflict than anything to do with atheism.

You basically have two different modernist errors, one in which embraced modernism sans religion and one in which was a reaction to modernism heading in the other direction.

[Berzerker]

how many women in France have been killed for not wearing a burkhini?

[Elok]

Yes!
The communists were very logical. Both them and nazism are children of modernity which is the epitomy of triumph of logic over all else.
Of course nazism led to the tragic occurances of logical beings called nazis cutting open the bellies of pregnant women in occupied lands, so it kind of got a bad name. And the people that carried it.
Nazis were not atheist or religious, they were first, german.

You either don't know what the Nazis and Commies were like or are using the word "logical" in a very unexpected way. IDK if you've read Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism, but she makes a fairly convincing case that totalitarian governments are distinguished from the merely authoritarian kind by their obsessive interest in following an ideology at the expense of absolutely all other considerations, including self-preservation at times. Hence, say, Pol Pot's insistence on slaughtering absolutely everyone who had any skills other than farming, or even had glasses. Sure, it crippled Cambodia's economy, but his ideal state was totally agrarian, so that was how it went. Likewise Stalin's bizarre insistence on killing or imprisoning huge groups of people on purely arbitrary grounds, or at some points (esp. under Yezhov) selected at random.

Hitler had similar "let's waste ****loads of people for daft reasons" policies. And the policies were ends in themselves; both he and Stalin made it a point that the purges had to continue indefinitely, with new scapegoat groups being found as the old ones were depleted. In a sense, their governments existed to perpetuate the misery, rather than the other way around as is typical of more garden-variety despots. The modern world gave birth to the most singularly hideous and irrational form of government the world has ever seen. Only the Aztecs might have come close prior to the late eighteenth century, when the Terror provided a kind of dress rehearsal for totalitarianism.

Which leads us to another great product of the enlightment: panhumanism. The belief that every human being has an inherent worth and rights (inluding medical care for example ) simply because he/she is a human being.

Pretty revolutionary.
It's an ideal. You strive for it, doesn't mean you always get it

. . . because premodern societies had no notion whatever of charity work, the golden rule, etc.?