Oh how I wish -- devoutly -- fervently -- CONSTANTLY -- that Charlie Hebdo was anything more than a cultural outlier in France and in the rest of Europe. That would be wonderful. A dream come true, in fact.
Alas, that publication was almost unique in its resolve to satirize Islam and to publish depictions of its founder.
Sorry, that's just not true. We've seen numerous countries targeted specifically because they openly criticise and even mock Islam - and I'm glad that despite those attacks, the tradition continues. Whether we look at the more low-key, everyday examples (I've got three magazines/newspapers sitting on my desk that contain such criticisms, all published this week) or the more headline grabbing ones like the murder of Theo Van Gogh or the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that preceded the Charlie Hebdo attack by a decade, the image you're trying to paint as true simply isn't reality. Things aren't perfect,
And it strikes me as folly to dismiss as sheer coincidence the fact that increased political correctness always follows increased secularism. In fact I can think of no country anywhere where the first phenomenon has not accompanied the second.
So the trend is unmistakable: More secularism = more political correctness (and please show me one example that contravenes this).
All you've attempted to do is show a correlation - so what? Just because shark attacks increase as ice cream sales go up, doesn't mean ice cream causes shark attacks. Political correctness is an attempt to manage pluralistic societies, with diverse groups with different norms and values. There isn't a specific link to secularisation.
At best you've managed to show that as time has passed Europe has become more secular and introduced more politically correct ideals. Global temperatures have increased too. Perhaps secularism is to blame there as well.
And if we take it as read that increased political correctness leads inevitably to disaster
Increased
from and
to what? You're going to need to be a lot less vague if this is going to be a credible point.
(see the Rotherham scandal in your own country, and of course the increased Islamization of the continent)
The Rotherham scandal was an horrific example of multiple agencies failing to deal with a problem incase they were labelled racist. Sure, it relates to political correctness. You've still not shown how that has anything to do with secularism. As for Islamisation, that's a term with a specific meaning and involves the establishment of Islamic social and political systems. That's not happening in Europe, and if it did it would run counter to secularism not alongside it.
it follows algebraically that more secularization is a thing to be avoided.
I've already covered why your assumptions in the lead up this over-simplified bit of algebra are faulty, but it strikes me as odd you don't realise the equations that could be constructed to suggest less Christianity (or religion in general)is better for society.
reply
share
dbreckman-130-794160
8 years ago
Of course it's true that correlation does not equal causation, but to turn a blind eye to a pattern that has replicated itself time and time again strikes me as being both absurd and borderline disingenuous.
It's the difference between possibility and likelihood. Quick example: Let's say Bill wore a certain argyle scarf to work on 6 different days last year -- and only those days -- and he also visited a certain specific pizza parlor when his shift was over on those same 6 days -- and only those days...
...is it not reasonable to assume that his decisions to wear that scarf and visit that restaurant might plausibly be related? Even if we don't know how?
Of course, Bill's choosing the same accessory and the same cuisine on the same specific days may just be a coincidence. That possibility (at least mathematically) does exist.
But isn't it more likely that the close and repeated correspondence between those two events is not coincidental?
reply
share