This is a long speech, mostly in response to the “Arab Boycott” thread. But that thread is off track enough already.
I think I’ve told this story before. I had a lengthy discussion with a pre-suppositionialist. He felt the scientific community was unfair because it had a bias against using God or any supernatural explanation as an explanation for anything. As an analogy he used an all boys basketball league. He said if an all girl team tried to challenge the boys to a championship they couldn’t compete. By rule, they wouldn’t be allowed to play, the reason being they aren’t good players, but since they aren’t allowed to play, they could never demonstrate if they were good or not.
I tried to explain that what he was describing was Christianity in the Dark Ages, when apostasy carried the death penalty and there was a religion test for leaders. And, ironically, science managed to gain a foothold against that system by providing shelter to those who were persecuted by religion and by publishing reasonable arguments for how physical things work without supernatural explanations and how we can treat each other well without requiring faith statements.
In a way he was right, science and reason is now in the more powerful position and religion must make its case against the rules and premises of that system. This is not a question of choosing one system or one set of premises over another. You have to ask why we find it so natural to ask why and why we don’t accept simple explanations.
Religion makes a claim to truth by claiming that there is something within us that wants to look to the heavens, that feels altruism without being taught, that understands love before we have language. And those things are true, but what defines religion is that it stops there and provides an answer to why we have those feelings. Whether that is a simple answer like “god did it" or a more complex system of chakras and rituals and many headed spirits, there is always a point where “why" remains unanswered. Simply allowing the question to be asked defines where religion ends and science begins.
In the modern scientific west, we are beyond being able to tell children that the answer to “why" is to pray more or to listen to your priest or to just shut up. At least legally we are beyond that. With some effort, people are still isolating their children from alternative possibilities. But it is not an all-boys league anymore. You have to compete on your merits, not simply what you are or who your parents are.
This also means that you can’t review the past and make claims about men, Christians, Greeks or any other groups and claim that the accomplishments of those groups says anything meaningful about the innate abilities of those groups. There are reasons why some groups do better, but those are always cultural and historical reasons.
“But it is not an all-boys league anymore.” But it is sex-segregated, and that ought to be illegal. (And the metaphor carries through… there should be no privileging of religious organizations and ideas… make them play on the same field as everyone else)
“There are reasons why some groups do better, but those are always cultural and historical reasons”. That’s plainly not true. When some groups do better on some measure, all that means is we need to consider cultural and historical reasons, but we don’t just eliminate biological or genetic reasons. Certainly in the case of gender that you started with, biology plays a key role.
"But it is not an all-boys league anymore." But it is sex-segregated, and that ought to be illegal. (And the metaphor carries through... there should be no privileging of religious organizations and ideas... make them play on the same field as everyone else)Agreed. To get the advantages that churches do, they should have some rules. If a 501c3 org is discriminating in how it distributes its funds or hires its board, I can sue. Churches should play be those same rules.
"There are reasons why some groups do better, but those are always cultural and historical reasons". That's plainly not true. When some groups do better on some measure, all that means is we need to consider cultural and historical reasons, but we don't just eliminate biological or genetic reasons. Certainly in the case of gender that you started with, biology plays a key role.I think it goes without saying that men are in general able to build more muscle mass than women. As yet, there are very few arguments about women wanting to play in men's leagues. That might change as more girls begin learning a sport earlier and can compete. I've seen discussion of women wanting to play in men's golf for example. But you make a very general statement here about biology and genetics. How far are you willing to go in defending that? Hopefully not into the area of genetically more intelligent, or some human sub-species that is better at running.