Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Among examples of rules not widely shared among non-Christians that are enforced in present-day western countries, off the top of my head I can think of the ban on selling alcohol on Good Friday in Ireland

One could hardly come up with a worse example of a Christian-only prohibition. Alcohol is religiously forbidden to Moslems, and in some Moslem countries, legally forbidden on every day of the year, not just the selling of it, but the drinking. The punishment is flogging, or death for persistent offenders.

ETA: Ah, you said Western countries, which currently excludes all the Moslem states. But the Moslem populations of the West still have the religious prohibition.

"Prohibits alcohol on Good Friday" means "specifically prohibits alcohol on Good Friday". Prohibiting it as a subset of a generic prohibition on all alcohol doesn't count.

0gjm10y

Why's that relevant? The point (unless I'm misunderstanding badly) is that the ban is there because some Christians wanted it to be, that the great majority of the non-Christian population would likely prefer it not to be there, and that this is therefore an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians. The fact that a small fraction of the non-Christian population might be happy enough for the rule to be there is irrelevant. If there were a law requiring everyone to go to church on Sundays there would probably be as large a fraction of the non-Christian population in favour; it would still (obviously, no?) be an example of a Christian rule being enforced on people who are not Christians.

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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