Religious vs Secular Laws

@TheCobbler,

Quote:

"Thou shalt not murder" is a secular law that has been usurped by religion in order to control the masses.

I think you have this backward. The law of Hammurabi which we have documented by the text itself as a religiously based law, forbids murder.

You have yet to give an example of a secular law that forbids murder.

2 Replies

@maxdancona,

I still want you to respond to your apparent (but very telling) mistake Cobbler in listing "thou shalt not lie" as a secular law.

In what secular society is lying against the law?

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Offense Mandatory sentencing
Manslaughter: Imprisonment for a term of not more than 30 years.
Second Degree Murder: Imprisonment for life or 30–40 years.
First Degree Murder: Life without parole
Capital Murder: Death penalty or life without parole
2 more rows
List of punishments for murder in the United States - Wikipedia, the ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_punishments_for_murder_in_the_United_...Wikipedia

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Very good Cicerone. But, that's from the past 200 years. Hammurabi was a religious law from over 2,000 years ago. Can you get do a little better than 200 years back?

Murder is also an interesting case... because every society allows some forms of killing humans. The people that society allows to be killed changes from culture to culture.

There are killings of people that earlier cultures believed were perfectly acceptable that we would label as murder. And there are killings of people that we believe are perfectly acceptable that other cultures would label as murder.

The definition of murder is far from universal. It is very dependent on the specific culture you happen to have been born into.

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@maxdancona,

Here's some history on legal systems.
http://www.crystalinks.com/greeklaw.html

If I remember correctly, English common law came from Greek law. American law came from English law.

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@cicerone imposter,

Cicerone, why are you posting a website that promotes psychic readings using crystals?

Is is crystal reading secular?

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@maxdancona,

it's about rules and regulations, and why they are necessary. a2k also has them.

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@cicerone imposter,

This thread is about the difference between religious and secular laws. However, no one has been able to define the difference between the two. No one can tell me if the law of Moses is secular or religious law... or how it is different than the law of Hammurabi.

It seems like the difference is this...

Secular laws are laws that a person born in raised in a Western culture in the past 100 years thinks are reasonable. Or, if TheCobbler thinks a law is just in a universal sense, than it is secular. The irony here is that TheCobbler is implying some universal absolute truth that only our culture possesses. This is something that is in itself a religious concept.

Can anyone offer a better definition that would distinguish secular laws from religious ones?

Are Modern Western views of justice really the basis for secularism in law. If not, than what is?

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@maxdancona,

Older than 100 years.

Quote:

Robert Charles Lee, non-practising lawyer, printbroker, financial printer
708 Views · Robert has 840+ answers in Law
The Fairs Act 1204 is still in force in the Republic of Ireland.

Not strictly a statute or legislation in the modern sense but still partially in force today in the UK through various codifications, including the Statute of Westminster 1275 (3 Edw. I):

The right to trial by jury existed since as early as 1164 when it was ordered by the king (either Stephen of Blois or Henry II a.k.a. Henry Curtmantle) -- then without a Parliament -- that (in Modern English):

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Can anyone offer a better definition that would distinguish secular laws from religious ones?

Are Modern Western views of justice really the basis for secularism in law. If not, than what is?

The difficulty lies in what you/we call secular today - in other periods that was seen differently.

The Romans clearily divided their various laws in "code books" different from religious laws ... but all in the name of Iusticia, the goddess of Justice.

In French, laïcité means absence of religious involvement in government affairs. Although it has been tried to get rid of, for instance, the religious calendar, even the most strict revolutionist didn't change the laws completely from day to the other.

I don't think that you just can erasure thousands of year of history and the influence of that history to culture and tradition, even not with secular totalitarianism.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

In my opinion, not only laws have a religious background but anything in daily life.

Numa Pompilius, the "agent of the Gods", gave us days, months, and years. (Actually now, we are even in "Catholic times" > Gregorian calendar.)
Who bothers about that and why not make it secular?

I think that secular in the sense used nowadays in the USA's context has a different meaning in Japan, India, Yemen, an Austrian Alpine village, or the Brazilian rainforest. And different to what it meant (or might have meant, if people had known the term then), one hundred, five hundred or four thousand years ago.

Really interesting is, to research the relation of the Law of the Vatican City State to the religious laws embodied in Canon Law. And then decide, what is secular, what is relgious. Wink

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@TheCobbler,

Quote:

Religious law = "Thou shalt have no other gods before me or I will send you to hell for I am the jealous one and only true god!".
(while every religion makes the same exact claim of their deity, my god is bigger than your god syndrome.)

The 'my God is better than your God' story is repeated often but surprisingly, I see very little of that in reality. Most of the disagreements between religions center around what his laws are, not who's God is real. It's almost like there is an unwritten agreement that there is only one God and denying other religion's God is off limits.

It's when you start claiming multiple Gods that people get upset.

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@Leadfoot,

India has many gods.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

India has many gods.

Are people upset?

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@Leadfoot,

Hinduism explained:

Quote:

This gets to the core of a common misconception about Hinduism. Although there are countless “gods”—whether Shiva or Vishnu or Ganesha or Parvati or Hanuman—they are commonly understood by Hindus to be representations of (the) God, whom or which we cannot fathom. This is why one Hindu can worship Shiva, while another worships Kali or Ganesha. Although each person seems to be worshiping different gods, the person is really only worshiping the one God who is manifest through Shiva or Kali or whomever.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

There ya go. Saved me the trouble of explaining it.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

cicerone imposter wrote:
"India has many gods."

Are people upset?

Most people do think that about Hindus but CI posted why that's not true.

But people unaware of that do often scoff at Hinduism for that. I don't know any religion with multiple Gods that is taken seriously. Some sects of Buddhism have a concept of people becoming 'gods' but they also think people become rocks too.

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secular law = racists are criminals

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@TheCobbler,

TheCobbler wrote:

secular law = racists are criminals

A law that makes racism illegal would be a horrible thing. Is the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution secular? (Because under the first amendment your right to be a racist is protected).

Racism is not against the law in the U.S. (nor should it be).

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Some will become rocks, and others will become jackasses.

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