Ovavoo wrote:You're making big assumptions. Whose to say what is coherent and rational?? Humans are humans and will always be affected by their own personal prejudices. It may be that someone who is totally irreligious doesn't happen to like people with red hair and would be more inclined to disbelieve them in court. The jury system is supposed to be judgement by your peers and whether you like it or not, there are a lot of people who are religious.
I was a bit tongue in cheek but anyway I’ll have a go...
A person with prejudices can slip through the selection process, although good a judge, legal representation, etc should go some way to sorting this problem, we do not just accept these people exist and let them on to a jury. A person can be thrown off a jury, e.g. for a racist remark while in discussion with other members, but I don’t think they would if they said something like, ‘God is guiding my hand in this judgement’.
Peer judgement can be a great thing, many people put aside their prejudices every day in order to get on in life, but no one person decides the method to be used for that judgement it’s a matter of following the logic to its conclusion and accepting its determination no matter what. This is what a jury is instructed to do, I’m not sure religious folk can be trusted to do this; I don’t think it’s within their nature.
Who’s to say what is coherent and rational? I think that may be a category mistake, it shouts for itself. The difference between knowledge and belief is that to know something to be the case one must have justifiable evidence, to believe something to be the case one needs only mere acceptance. Religious people have a history of mere acceptance, they can have all the condemning evidence there can ever be and they can just fly in the face of it all... unashamedly more often than not.
I think a good thing about being judged by our peers is that they may have personal insight into ‘their likes’ and judge accordantly. But, these judgements should be based in fact and analyzed and concluded within the laws of logic, and not on some mystic whim.
Or something like that....I'm not sure...I could just be being a tw&t and having a go at religion because I don't like it. But I may have a point...