Anonymous #1 7w

A lot of religious people DO wanna force their beliefs on people through the law, but acting like only Islam has a theocracy problem is where I think people show off bigotry more than a devotion to secularism.

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

Tbf that’s everyone then, plenty of irreligious yet ideologically charged people want to push their beliefs on others too. And then there’s the normal subset of people across lines throughout humanity that just wants peace and relative live let live

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

and they unintentionally want people to adopt their religious moral and legal codes, they think bc their the most right and righteous that people should be thankful for it eventually. All religions do that😭 it’s crazy that Christians think that it’s different for them, Islamic nations think it, Jewish nations think it, buddhistic nations think it, back in the day so did pagan cultures and so on and so on

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Anonymous #1 7w

Yeah but religious people tend to have a built-in premise for legal moralism that secularists do not. The strongest secular philosophical argument for legal moralism is what I wrote my first ever philosophy paper arguing against, and I aced that shit. 12 pages of “Here’s Why Lord Patrick Devlin Is a Moron” lmao

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

I think these books would very much be up your alley given what you’ve said

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

I would just say that the fundamental premise regarding secularism/legal moralism/state power that you mentioned inherently relies on a false notions imo. I think the idea that secularists lack a built in premise for legal moralism overlooks what the secular actually is. It’s not a neutral, passive space whr ppl just live and let live once religious doctrine is removed. The modern secular state is an active, coercive project that itself participates in enforcing morality through law

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

It monopolizes the authority to define what some rational morality is versus irrational fanaticism. So say if a secular state enforces laws abt property rights, bodily autonomy, public decency, family structures, or national defense, it actually engages in legal moralism itself! It routinely penalizes practices that violate its underlying commitments to liberal individualism & the capitalist order, where it just rebrands said moral enforcement as public safety/rarionalism/human rights

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Anonymous #1 7w

Well when I refer to Legal Moralism I mean the justification of coercive action which relies solely on morality. There’s overlap between morality and other stronger justifications for the coercive force of law. Like, murder is immoral, but it’s not illegal because it’s immoral, it’s illegal because of the Harm Principle of legal philosophy. I know the state is a coercive agent which lends itself easily to moralism, I just find secular legal moralism to be much harder to justify.

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

Secular legal moralists absolutely exist, I didn’t deny that they exist. They just fall apart under questioning. And they don’t have that divine premise to lean back on when they get in a corner. They might get what they want from the state, which I think is bad, but they are philosophically incredibly weak.

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

Relying on the Harm Principle to separate harm from morality is one of the things these books cover well imo. Defining what constitutes actionable "harm" is a moral decision made by state authority (not a neutral/empirical calculation). The secular state decides that restricting economic transactions, property rights, or individual autonomy constitutes "harm," while simultaneously treating systemic secular harms (like market dispossessions or state surveillance) as natural functions of gov

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

I think saying that secular legal moralists don't have that divine premise to lean back on misses how secular power replaces divine sanction with its own transcendent & unquestionable axioms. Modern secular statecraft relies on secularized metaphysical premises with concepts like "human rights/progress/national sovereignty/the autonomous individual." When cornered, the secular state doesn’t fall apart under questioning at all, it actually leans into said dogmas as though they’re non-neogotiable

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

Absolute and self-evident truisms just as authoritative as divine revelation. I also think that if we treat secular moralism as philosophically weak or some random bad outcome we’re actually misconstruing how power works in the system, which in reality is through institutions. The secular liberal state doesn’t need a divine text bc it holds sovereign authority to define what is "rational," "objective," and "public good." If we frame religious moralism as grounded in dogma we actually have the

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

Same issue with how the modern secular state weaponizes its own unquestioned dogmas to enforce compliance through law. I’m kinda just condensing some serious ground that gets covered in those texts for what I’m trying to communicate across on here, so I’d rly rec you Check them out bc it changed the way I thought abt this

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Anonymous cheese_of_the_world_unite 7w

To clarify: I’m not actually necessarily against liberal secular modernity, simply pointing out its internal inconsistency regarding points leveled at religions and reasoning for its existence. I think Islam is fairly compatible in certain capacities with the liberal framework, arguably moreso than much of Christianity historically. It even has its own comparatively secular frameworks alongside relative coexistence of ppl groups via millet systems, in all the diversity that comes with humanity

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