Re: Belgium

Alan Rixel <alan.rixel@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Allan Adler schrieb:
In Belgium, the state explicitly recognizes 5 religions: (1) Catholicism
(2) Protestantism (3) Judaism (4) Islam (5) Freethinkers. Regarding the
latter, they seem to be represented by the Humanistik Verbond. Apart from
these, I think they have a law outlawing cults. The state pays the "priests"
of these 5 religions as social workers. I don't know what training a
"priest" is required to get in social work. The state has its own social
workers apart from these.

One the one hand this is at least better than the situation in many
other countries where only some churches or even only one receive
fundings. On the other hands recognizing atheism as a religion is
complete nonsense! In relation to religion it could better be described
as absence of religion.

Well, they aren't really calling atheism a religion. I think what they are
doing is explicitly recognizing the Humanistik Verbond as an entity with
which the government can have a certain relationship. I don't know much
about the Humanistik Verbond but, as has been suggested out in the other
thread on George II vs George III, humnanists are interested in the
pursuit of meaning and values without basing either on magical foundations.
Thus, they are interested in something that atheists are not necessarily
interested in.

My Belgian friend who told me about the Humanistik Verbond speaks very good
English but not perfect English, so there could also have been some
mistranslations in his description of this. He called them Freethinkers
but I eventually pinned him down to the Humanistik Verbond. As I mentioned
in the other thread on the Georges, my friend says that they get a lot of
their direction from Freemasons.

I just googled "humanistik verbond" and one of the first links that came
up was:
http://librepenseefrance.ouvaton.org/liens.html
(libre pensee means free thought) which contains the following description:
" La Federation Nationale de la Libre Pensee entretient de nombreuses
relations amicales et fraternelles avec differentes associations laiques,
humanistes, rationalistes, syndicales et maconiques dont voici quelques
sites web."
translated into English as:
"It's possible to find below a lot of humanist, atheist, laicist, rationalist,
trade-unionist associations with which La federation Nationale de la Libre
Pensee is on friendly terms."

Of course, this page is based in France but I don't think that matters.
It has links to groups in other countries including the Humanistik Verbond,
which I should have been spelling Humanistisch Verbond and whose website
is given as
http://www.vrijzinnighumanisme.be/
(I'd guess that vrijzinnig means freethinking)
They also have a link to the following Belgian group:
Centre d'Action Laique de Bruxelles : http://www.ulb.ac.be/cal
(Center for Lay Action in Brussells?)

Also note that the page also explicitly mentions masonic groups, which seems
somewhat consistent with what my friend said.

It appears to me that the situation is this: religions form a
fairly well defined group in most countries and their are various non-religious
groups that have similar problems with regard to religion, even though
those non-religious groups might also have different goals and interests
otherwise. Those goals and interests are sufficiently compatible that
they find it convenient to cooperate. When the government recognizes one
of them or groups them all together for some purposes, that tends to blur
the genuine distinctions that one needs to make among these groups. It
is an error, I think, and a great oversimplification to take that at face
value and to simply say that the government recognizes atheism as a religion.

Anyway, it looks like the various non-religious groups are forced to form
a kind of coalition. This looks very interesting from a number of points
of view.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.

.