Response to William Trial

William asked, "When it comes to subject of religion, should an individual segregate their personal beliefs (Religious) from ethical and legal decisions?". First, I believe that it is impossible to separate personal beliefs from legal decisions and policy making. All laws are reflections of a society's values and morals. If your morals stem fro religious beliefs, than you will feel that your morals are just as valid as anybody else's. Second, I don't see anything wrong with basing political and legal opinions on religious beliefs. Since all beliefs are subjective, it shouldn't really matter where your morals stem from. Whether they have been shaped by personal experiences, empirical information, religion, or anything else, all beliefs are equally valid. Since we live in a democracy, our laws are supposed to reflect the values our society as a whole can agree upon. If the majority of our society has religious beliefs that impact their political views, then our laws should reflect that.

A Common Ground?

In class on Wednesday we decided that, although Clark's "pragmatic empiricism" is not a neutral ground for naturalists and supernaturalists, it is a common ground, because everybody has access to "this-world" empirical facts. However, I would have to disagree that everybody has equal access to this kind of knowledge. Not everybody is privileged enough to receive a quality education- or any education at all. We are forced to rely on people- parents, teachers, scientists, etc- to give us information. We trust them to give us empirical facts, but we don't have the same access to this information as they do.

Question: How can we even the playing field for people who don't have direct access to empirical knowledge?