Pasta Quest: DMV. Esoteric Edition.

MrPudding

Mark Hamill wrote: »

By how many people?

Well, one really. The guy in court.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Did a judge just declare that a religious belief cannot be, by definition, based on information?

No, this case was not about a religious belief, it was about a philosphical outlook or belief andwhat he is saying is that, the philosphical belief, can't be based on information alone. For example, according to Stuff, this is the best TV in the world:

http://www.stuff.tv/panasonic/panasonic-tx-p55vt65b/review

I might have the opinion that they are correct. I might even believe, in the normal day to day meaning of the word, that it is correct, but that does not mean it is a philosphical belief worthy of protection. If I get into an argument with my boss and he tells me I am full of sh1t that the latest Sony is better, I can't go to a tribunal and acuse him of disrespecting my beliefs.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Did he define "weighty and substantial aspect of human life"? Surely if someone believes that their god is telling them to do something, then that thing, no matter how inane it may looks to others, becomes a "weighty and substantial aspect of human life".

Indeed, but remember this case was not about a religion, per se. It was about a man's beliefs in environmental matters.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Did he define those levels? It can be easily argued that all religions fail cogency and coherence, and seriousness and importance fail for the same reason as "weighty and substantial aspect of human life" fails.

Quite so, but this is not a test for religion, it is a test for non-religious, or at least non-classically religious philosphical beliefs.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Again, it can be easily argued that all religions fail the second and third requirements here, and therefore fail the first.

True, but irrelevent, as I have said, this was not a test for religion.

That is the interesting thing about this case. The guy was trying to argue that his views and opinions on the environment deserved the same protections as anyone's religious beliefs. His view on ecological matters influenced, completely, how he lived his life.

When a right is being extended like this the courts tend to try to formualte a test. Do they always get it right? No. Is this test likely to change and develop? Most certainly. The judge had a legal problem and he came up with a solution. An interesting case, if you like that sort of thing.

MrP

MrPudding

Absoluvely wrote: »

Bang on.

An employer's sex or race is not relevant to whether <their firing of an employee due to the employee's sex or race> should be illegal.

The employee's sex or race isn't either. If it is provable that the employer's firing of an employee was sexually or racially motivated, the sex or race in the case is irrelevant.

How can the employee's sex or race be irrelevent when discussing if they were sacked for sexual or racial reasons? How can you prove that the sacking was racially or sexually motivated without discussing the race or sex of the victim?

Women have more protections in law, partiuclarly in employment. These protections are specific to women. Are you saying that we should not have these laws?

Absoluvely wrote: »

I want one set of laws that applies to everyone, regardless of sex, race, and religion. It's very simple. You can still have higher taxation for higher earners (an example of discerning on relevant grounds), but things like sex, race and religion should not be grounds for giving people different laws and rights.

OK, but then why are you arguing that muslim women should be allowed to wear the burqa in countries where there are laws which make it illegal to cover one's face in public?

MrP

MrPudding

Absoluvely wrote: »

If gender quotas are supposed to be some kind of reparations, that's even worse. But still irrelevant.

Meh, like I said, I don't have my mind fully made up on this. I experienced this type of thing first hand in Northern Ireland where equality legislation was biased intentionally to address long standing bias in the workplace.

I don't think it is enough to simply dismiss this type of thing as irrelevant.

MrP

stimpson

Peregrinus wrote: »

Oh, it's easy to see that pastafarianism is not regarded as a religion. I'm surprised at you asking me to demonstrate it; could you not work it out for yourself?

We don't have to look very far for some pointers. Just have a browse around the "Atheism and Agnosticism" board, and see the contrast between the way the denizens here talk about pastafarianism on the one hand, and various religions on the other. It's quite obvious that they regard it as an entirely different class of a thing. They generally speak favourably of it, they're amused by it, they frequently identify with it in a light-hearted way, and clearly consider that identifying with pastafarianism in no way comprises their identiy as atheists, agnostics or non-religious people. This is not how they speak about religion. Does that not arouse your suspicions at all?

There's abundant evidence that pastafarianism is a parody, and widely regarded as such; you're sitting in it. By contrast, there's not a shred of evidence that it's regarded as a religion. Even in A&A, the home of evidence-based belief, even in this very thread, even those people who insist that it should be regarded as a religion make no attempt to adduce evidence that it is. They just assert that it's a religion, and then insist that a court would have to accept their assertion, because nobody can prove it wrong. But "you can't prove it wrong, so it must be so!" is not a good argument for the existence of God - and it isn't - and it's no better here.

That's pretty poor evidence. The views if some people on a forum? I thought you'd do better than that.

Surely the only evidence possible for religion is that someone asserts that it is so. If religions had to produce proof then things could get quite interesting. All it requires, in my mind, is that at least one person holds it as a sincere belief.

MrPudding

stimpson wrote: »

That's pretty poor evidence. The views if some people on a forum? I thought you'd do better than that.

Surely the only evidence possible for religion is that someone asserts that it is so. If religions had to produce proof then things could get quite interesting. All it requires, in my mind, is that at least one person holds it as a sincere belief.

I think you are missing the point. The court is not looking for evidence that the religion is true, it is looking for evidence that people believe it to be true and the person standing before it genuinely believes it. There is a subtle but very important difference.

A court will not try to establish if a religion is true, necessarily. If you take an example that was recently in the news, the women that wanted to wear a cross at work. The court look at her beliefs in great detail. How her religion informed her life, all aspects of it. There were witnesses from her church etc. They also looked at other christians to try to establish how important wearing a cross was, was it a fundamental requirement of christianity...

In the case I mentioned above, the guy with the eco beliefs, they looked at evidence of how he lived his life. Stuff like if he recycled and rode a bike to work.

Were a pastafarian case to go to court we could expect the courts to required equally detailed evidence of how pastafarianism informed, or not, the person's life. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that threads like this could be presented as evidence, evidence comes in many forms.

MrP

Absoluvely

MrPudding wrote: »

How can the employee's sex or race be irrelevent when discussing if they were sacked for sexual or racial reasons? How can you prove that the sacking was racially or sexually motivated without discussing the race or sex of the victim?

I am not saying that in a racism case, it is vital that the victim's race is kept secret.
You can tell that it should be illegal for a person to be fired on the basis of their race, without knowing that person's race.
I've no idea how motivations are proved. It's not really important to me.
If you just want an example, then if an employer said something like "I'm firing you because of your race" or "we already have enough people of your race working for us", that would be a good one.

Women have more protections in law, partiuclarly in employment. These protections are specific to women. Are you saying that we should not have these laws?

Yes - or they should be changed so they're not specific to women. Sex isn't a good criterion for deciding whether or not to apply a law or right to a person.
Even when it comes to pregnancy & employment, there is no reason to specify that a law or right only applies to women or men, other than to discriminate.

OK, but then why are you arguing that muslim women should be allowed to wear the burqa in countries where there are laws which make it illegal to cover one's face in public?

You've got the wrong guy, MrP.

Meh, like I said, I don't have my mind fully made up on this. I experienced this type of thing first hand in Northern Ireland where equality legislation was biased intentionally to address long standing bias in the workplace.

I don't think it is enough to simply dismiss this type of thing as irrelevant.

The motivations behind implementing political "gender quotas" are not relevant to whether or not headdress entitlements in driving license photos should vary depending on religious belief.

Peregrinus

Absoluvely wrote: »

I am not saying that in a racism case, it is vital that the victim's race is kept secret.
You can tell that it should be illegal for a person to be fired on the basis of their race, without knowing that person's race.
I've no idea how motivations are proved. It's not really important to me.

It should be. What you're looking for is a law which prevents discrimination based on race, but which operates without reference to race. That looks like a contradiction in terms to me.

If Mr X has been fired, and the question arises as to whether he has been illegally fired because he is black, it's going to be impossible to prove that he was without showing that he is, in fact, black. The court does have to be satisified that he is black before it can be satisified that he was fired for being black.

Normally this isn't a big issue, of course; Mr X is present in court and can be observed to be black. But suppose Mr X turned up in court, alleging that he had been fired for being Chinese, and it was perfectly obvious to all in court that he was not Chinese. Would you expect the court to overlook this? Because that seems to me to be what you are demanding.

TheChizler

Are you saying that the law shouldn't mention specific religions or race? Eg 'you can't fire someone because of race' instead of 'you can't fire someone cause they're black', and specifics can be nailed down in court?

gizmo555

Peregrinus wrote: »

But suppose Mr X turned up in court, alleging that he had been fired for being Chinese, and it was perfectly obvious to all in court that he was not Chinese.

How would it be obvious? Racial appearance and nationality are very far from being 100% correlated.

For example, I always enjoyed the way Teresa Heinz, US Secretary of State John Kerry's wife, would wind up people who were overly sensitive about such issues. She's the Mozambique-born daughter of Portuguese parents and likes to describe herself - with complete accuracy - as "African-American". Would this be likewise "obvious" to a court?

Peregrinus

TheChizler wrote: »

Are you saying that the law shouldn't mention specific religions or race? Eg 'you can't fire someone because of race' instead of 'you can't fire someone cause they're black', and specifics can be nailed down in court?

I'm suggesting that the law should forbid discrimination on the grounds of race (religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, marital status . . . ).

I'm pointing out that you can't enforce that law if the courts are not willing to investigate, and make findings about, someone's race (religion,sex, sexual orientation . . .).

Peregrinus

gizmo555 wrote: »

How would it be obvious? Racial appearance and nationality are very far from being 100% correlated.

For example, I always enjoyed the way Teresa Heinz, US Secretary of State John Kerry's wife, would wind up people who were overly sensitive about such issues. She's the Mozambique-born daughter of Portuguese parents and likes to describe herself - with complete accuracy - as "African-American". Would this be likewise "obvious" to a court?

But Mr X is not claiming that he's of Chinese nationality - he may well have Irish nationality only. He's claiming that he is ethnically Chinese, and that this is the reason why he has been fired. And he can't succeed in that claim unless the court is willing to find that he is ethnically Chinese. And they won't be able to find that if, as some posters have said, courts are or should be forbidden from making findings about people's race.

As for the Teresa Heinz example, two points:

First, I didn't say that it was always easy to assign someone to a racial or ethnic category; just that it often is. It sometimes isn't.

Secondly, racial or ethnic categories are defined by human culture. And some of our definitions are pretty arbitrary. For example, the genes that control skin colour are no more signficant that then genes that control eye colour, yet socially and culturally we attach enormous importance to skin colour and treat it as a marker of "race", and virtually none to eye colour.

Plus, our labels for race are a bit arbitrary too. "White" people are not actually white, you'll have noticed, and "black" people are not black. The label "African American" has been coined in the US, not to describe people who were born in America but have an ancestral link to someone born in Africa - that's the entire population, if you want to go back far enough - but to a culturally-defined group who have a shared ancestral experience of being the descendants of black Africans, and mostly of black Africans who were brought to the Americas as slaves, and who have as a community been treated as slaves or the descendants of slaves. Teresa Heinz is not a member of that group.

(Mind you, you can have members of that group whose membership is not immediately apparent - people whose skin tone is light enough that they can, in the American parlance, "pass". So your general point, that "race" is not always superficially visible, is correct. But I never suggested otherwise.)

TheChizler

I don't think it was said that courts shouldn't make specific findings, but that laws shouldn't.

Peregrinus

stimpson wrote: »

That's pretty poor evidence. The views if some people on a forum? I thought you'd do better than that.

As I’ve said before, I’m not trying to prove anything here. The onus of proof will be on the person who takes the case. That won’t be me.

All I’m doing is pointing out that he has a problem - a problem that can be seen immediately by anybody with their eyes open. I pick the A&A forum not because it provides conclusive proof, but because we’re sitting right in it; we don’t have to look any further for evidence of the problem. And the problem is that pastafarianism is a parody of religion. Every single manifestation of pastafarianism that I have seen points to it being this, and we can see that all around us in this very thread. I haven’t looked any further than this thread but, if I did, I doubt that I would find anything different. Feel free to look further yourself, if you seriously hope to find what you need to find.

stimpson wrote: »

Surely the only evidence possible for religion is that someone asserts that it is so.

Not at all. Religion is a social phenomenon. Whether a social phenomenon exists is a matter of fact; it can be tested against the evidence and a decision can be made. The courts are experienced at doing this.

For example, in the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a future society characterised by, among other things, a religion centred on Henry Ford. He describes various rituals, various beliefs, and how the religion affects the way people live, organise their communities and understand the world. He doesn’t, as far as I recall, give the religion a name, but let’s call it “Fordism”.

Is Fordism a real religion? No, it’s an imagined religion, a fictional religion.

Does it become a real religion if “someone asserts that it is so”? Clearly not. We can test the truth of the assertion, and we would test it by looking for the communities of people who share the beliefs and engage in the rituals of Fordism, and who live, organise their communities and understand the world as Fordists are said to.

So, is pastafarianism a real religion? No, it’s a parody of religion, intentionally constructed to make a point about the difference between simulation and actuality. The whole point of pastafarianism is that it’s not a religion; that's how parody works.

Does it become a real religion if “someone asserts that it is so”? Clearly not. We can test the truth of the assertion in the way just outlined - by looking for the reality of the pastafarian community.

A few people wearing colanders in licence applications or at parades or demonstrations is not going to cut it. The wearing of colanders in these circumstances is entirely consistent with the view that pastafarianism is still what it started out as; an intentional parody of religion. It does nothing whatsoever to refute that view, which is what our applicant is going to have to do if he is to have any chance of succeeding on his unwisely-chosen grounds.

Hotblack Desiato

MrPudding wrote: »

You are, of course, correct to say that people are constrained in how they manifest their religion in public, but this does not mean they have no right to manifest it in public.

I didn't say that. What I said was they should be bound by the law in the same way everyone else is.

I agree that conscription is a pretty large intrusion, but the fact remains that countries that do maintain conscription do often have exceptions for the religious. I would suggest that it would also be appropriate for such exceptions to be granted for those that object for other, equally valid, non-religious reasons.

Which is what I said...

It may not be possible for Peregrinus, or anyone else for that matter, to satisfactorily demonstrate, to you, that the religious deserve special treatment, or special dispensations in certain areas. I am an atheist and anti-theist, but I still accept that there should be certain exceptions made for the religious in certain areas. I believe that these exceptions should end when they interfere with another's superior right, but I would not advocate the removal of the exceptions completely.

Which ones, and why?

I am not sure of the number of Sikhs that tale advantage of this exception, but I can't imagine there are huge numbers.

It is tiny but that's really not the point - the law is still discriminatory.

Well this is simply not the case. Law cannot be applied the same to everyone, law is a fairly blunt instrument as it is, but if each law was to apply to each person equally we would not be living in a very happy place.

Religion is a basis for making exceptions, as is sexuality, race, pregnancy etc.

The point of equality is to apply the law as equally as possible. E.g. give gay couples the same marriage and adoption rights as straight couples. For many years we were told this simply was not possible. It's rather ironic that religions are at the forefront of denying rights to others while seeking special treatment for themselves.

Peregrinus

ninja900 wrote: »

The point of equality is to apply the law as equally as possible. E.g. give gay couples the same marriage and adoption rights as straight couples. For many years we were told this simply was not possible. It's rather ironic that religions are at the forefront of denying rights to others while seeking special treatment for themselves.

Actually, gay marriage is a useful illustration of the inadequacies of the approach you suggest.

The current law, formally, does not discriminate at all. The same rule applies to everybody. You may marry someone of the opposite sex to your own; you may not marry someone of the same sex as your own. That applies equally to men, women, gays, straights, beleivers, unbelievers, the able-bodied, the disabled . . . No discrimination there, no sir!

But of course there is discrimination in how the law affects people. The restriction on marrying someone of the same sex doesn’t affect me profoundly, because the person I wanted to marry was of the opposite sex. But it affects a gay man or woman very profoundly indeed. Although this law applies the same rule to absolutely everyone, it is nevertheless discriminatory because it fails to take account of the fact that different people are differently situated, and therefore a uniform law will affect them differently.

Now, in the case of gay marriage it’s easy to frame a uniform law which doesn’t have this discriminatory effect; everyone can be allowed to marry someone of either sex. And I’m sure you and I would agree that that is what the law ought to say.

But its not necessarily true that every law which is non-discriminatory in its language but discriminatory in its operation can be so easily remedied. For example, suppose we have a law which forbids discrimination on the grounds of disability status by businesses dealing with the public. On the face of it, it’s a non-discriminatory law; a business must treat all members of the public identically, regardless of disability status.

But, of course, that law would prevent business from providing parking spaces reserved for disabled customers, since that clearly involves discriminating between those who have a disability and those who do not, and providing a service – reserved, priority parking spaces – to one group which is denied to the other . At the same time we know that the unavailability of parking spaces impacts the disabled much more severely than the able-bodied, so we include an exception in the law to permit (or even require) business owners to have a certain proportion of dedicated disabled parking spaces. That law discriminates on its face; it needs to, in order to deal with the reality that different people are different situated.

In other words, I can’t accept your suggested principle that all laws must apply uniformly to all people. Uniform laws can work in a discriminatory fashion, and it may not be possible to eliminate that discriminatory effect while keeping the law uniform.

And even where it’s possible, it may not be the optimal solution. Consider the licensing laws again. It would be possible to legislate that everyone requires a licence to serve alcohol to the public, but that would impact on Christian churches in a way that it would not impact on others; it would be discriminatory in its effect. It would also be possible to legislate that nobody requires a licence to serve alcohol to the public; that would be non-discriminatory both in its form and in its effect, but it would be contrary to the public interest in a number of other ways, which I’m sure I don’t need to detail. Pretty much every country that has approached this problem has come up with the same solution; the law generally requires licences to serve alcohol to the public, but provides a number of exceptions, one of which addresses the situation of Christian congregations.

Again, your approach would not allow this. And this example shows that your approach is too blunt, and this is the reason why it has not found any acceptance in the western liberal tradition. Sometimes the law, if it is to be just, has to take explicit account of the fact that different people are differently situated, and to make different provision for them, and a rule which prevents this is neither wise nor just nor politically acceptable.

enda1

Soooooooo........

Anywho. Any news OP. This thread seems to have turned into a legal spaghetti soup somehow.

Peregrinus

enda1 wrote: »

Soooooooo........

Anywho. Any news OP. This thread seems to have turned into a legal spaghetti soup somehow.

Last we heard from UDP, on 2 December he sent a notification of action under the Equal Status Acts to the licensing people. They have up to a month to reply. Presumably, they haven't replied yet.

After a month (or earlier, if he gets a reply and it's unsatisfactory) UDP can lodge a claim with the Equality Tribunal. He doesn't have to lodge immediately; he has up to six months from the date the discrimination occurred. If he gets a reply, he will probably take some time to consider that, and take account of it in framing his claim, so he won't necessarily be rushing to lodge his claim at the earliest possible date.

Once he lodges his claim, UDP has to await the decision of the Director of the Equality Tribunal as to how to proceed. The Director can suggest mediation to UDP and the Licensing Authority, but mediation only goes ahead if they both agree.

If the problem isn't resolved by mediation, the Director appoints an officer to investigate. The officer issues a determination, which is legally binding (but can be appealed to the Circuit Court.) UDP will be hoping for a determination which directs the licensing authority to let him use a colander photograph.

The Director does have power to dismiss a claim (without investigation or mediation) if he's of opinion that it has been made in bad faith, or is
frivolous, vexatious or misconceived or relates to a trivial matter, or if the complainant simply fails to progress it (i.e. by not taking part in the investigation).

Apart from the one month the licensing authority has to reply to UDP's initial notification, there's no fixed time limit for this. It depends partly on the Equality Authority's caseload, but more on how the mediation/investigation progresses.

norrie rugger

MrPudding wrote: »

I am not aware of any Irish cases but in the UK, as I mentioned in previous posts, the courts have interpreted religious belief to mean genuinely held religious belief.

That said, in an employment case, the name of which eludes me, religious belief was extended to included a genuinely held philosophical belief. The case involved a guy that did not want to travel for business because he had very stronly held ecological beliefs and felt that air travel was damaging.

The court probed his belief and found it to be genuinely held and was therefore protected as would a religious belief.

Perhaps pastafarianism could be argued along such lines...

MrP

Not what I meant.

Is the wording "religious Reason" or "religious Belief"?

If "Reason" then there does not need to be belief.

Absoluvely

Peregrinus wrote: »

Actually, gay marriage is a useful illustration of the inadequacies of the approach you suggest.

The current law, formally, does not discriminate at all. The same rule applies to everybody. You may marry someone of the opposite sex to your own; you may not marry someone of the same sex as your own. That applies equally to men, women, gays, straights, beleivers, unbelievers, the able-bodied, the disabled . . . No discrimination there, no sir!

You've got it all wrong. It is sexist.
The current marriage laws discriminate against both men and women.

Men aren't eligible to marry men, whereas women are.
Women aren't eligible to marry women, whereas men are.
Men and women quite clearly have different legal rights here.

It is analagous to the racist marriage laws previously in the US.
Black people weren't eligible to marry white people, whereas white people were.
White people weren't eligible to marry black people, whereas black people were.
It was clearly racist.

There, it was heteroracial marriages that were banned; here, it's homosexual marriages that are banned.
The basis on which they are banned here is by sex, not sexuality. Homosexuals aren't being directly discriminated against.
And to be pedantic, it's not even the actual sex of the person that matters, it's the assigned sex at birth.

Any law that needs to separate society into men and women, or blacks and whites, in order to be implemented is sexist or racist. This is the point I was trying to make earlier.

If you simply remove the sexist Capacity to marry requirement, which specificies the sexual combination that can be married, then it will no longer require a marriage applicant's sex to be known, and will therefore no longer be sexist. This is what I meant earlier.

This idea is relevant to driving license photo headdress because the current laws need to know your religion before being able to tell you what headdress you're entitled to wear. This is what is wrong.

Capacity to marry
To be legally entitled to marry, both of you must fulfil all of the following requirements at the time the marriage takes place. Both parties must:

• Be over 18 years of age or have a Court Exemption Order if this is not the case.
• Have given the Registrar three months notification of the marriage (or have a Court Exemption Order if this is not the case) and have been issued by the Registrar with a Marriage Registration Form.
• Be either single, widowed, divorced, a former civil partner of a civil partnership that ended through death or dissolution, or have had a civil annulment of a marriage or civil partnership or a valid foreign divorce or dissolution.
  
• Be of opposite sexes - for legal purposes, a person's gender is deemed to be the one he/she had at birth, even if he/she subsequently had medical procedures to alter his/her gender.
• Have the mental capacity to understand the nature of marriage
• Not be related by blood or marriage to a degree that prohibits you in law from marrying each other. If you are related to your proposed spouse by blood or by marriage, you should contact a solicitor to ensure that you do not fall within the prohibited degree of relationship. (See "Further information" below on prohibited degrees.
• If either party doesn't fulfil even one of the above requirements, any subsequent marriage ceremony is legally void.

MythicalMadMan

Just read what started out to be a great thread but has been massively derailed from what I see...

If you want to argue all these points Ad nauseam would ye not just start a new thread?

Mark Hamill

MrPudding wrote: »

True, but irrelevent, as I have said, this was not a test for religion.

That is the interesting thing about this case. The guy was trying to argue that his views and opinions on the environment deserved the same protections as anyone's religious beliefs. His view on ecological matters influenced, completely, how he lived his life.

When a right is being extended like this the courts tend to try to formualte a test. Do they always get it right? No. Is this test likely to change and develop? Most certainly. The judge had a legal problem and he came up with a solution. An interesting case, if you like that sort of thing.

MrP

Your description here makes it sound like it was a test to see if a philosophical belief should be afforded the same legal "status" as a religious belief? Would the criteria of this test not therefore be criteria that religious beliefs are presumed to already have (eg cogency, weight aspects etc.)?
If the criteria of the test do not reflect on the courts views of religious beliefs, then how does the test answer the guys claim that his philosophical view should be treated equal to religious beliefs?

Raminahobbin

MythicalMadMan wrote: »

Just read what started out to be a great thread but has been massively derailed from what I see...

If you want to argue all these points Ad nauseam would ye not just start a new thread?

Agreed- I'm following the thread cos I know i'll forget about it otherwise, and I really want to see how this progresses, but it's frustrating getting notified about all this shite I don't care about.

Peregrinus

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Your description here makes it sound like it was a test to see if a philosophical belief should be afforded the same legal "status" as a religious belief? Would the criteria of this test not therefore be criteria that religious beliefs are presumed to already have (eg cogency, weight aspects etc.)?

Actually, no.

The applicant in this case, Nicholson, was claiming that his dismissal was a breach of the UK’s Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. As the title suggests these regulations provided explicit protection to both relgion and belief. Specifically:

. . . a person (“A”) discriminates against another person (“B”) if . . . on grounds of religion or belief, A treats B less favourably than he treats or would treat other persons.

And the phrase “belief” was defined in the regulations:

”Belief” means any religious or philosophical belief.

Which raises the question; what is a “philosophical belief” that is protected by the regulations?

When the regulations were first passed, in 2003, they had afforded protection to “any religion, religious belief or similar philosophical belief”, but they were amended in 2007, and it was the amended regulations which applied to Nicholson’s case. The amendment was made, apparently, because of a view that at least some non-religious people would object to the implications that their views were only worthy of protection to the extent that they were “similar” to religion; religion was being treated as a kind of gold standard. Hence the new wording which independently protects (a) religion, (b) religious belief and (c) philosophical belief.

(Why the distinction between “religion” and “religious belief”? Because, I think, while Christianity is founded on faith, which is a belief, not all religions are so founded, and they wanted to avoid any implication that religions are only protected to the extent that they resemble Christianity; they didn’t want Christianity as a gold standard for other religions any more than they wanted religion as a gold standard for philosophical beliefs. But I don’t think that’s relevant here.)

Right. So what Nicholson had to show to succeed was that his position on climate change was a “philosophical belief”. And his employer said no, this is a scientific belief. And that opened up the question of, well, what exactly are the boundaries of the class of “philosophical beliefs” protected by the regulations? And, given the history of the way this legislation was amended, the one thing we can say right off is that the boundary is not “must be similar to a religious belief”, because the legislation had been amended to drop that very requirement.

That does leave open the question, though, what are the proper criteria to apply? Courts normally try to answer questions like this by looking at decisions in previous cases involving the same or similar legislation, and trying to identify some unifying thread which is implicit or, preferably, explicit in the decisions, and then applying the same principles in the case before them.

In this case, however, the regulations that Nicholson was relying on were enacted by the UK in order to implement EU Directive 200/78/EC, which requires member states to legislate to combat discrimination on the grounds of [among other things] "religion or belief”. And the Directive in turn mentions the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. And this means that the court could usefully consider not only previous decisions in relation to the UK regulations, but also previous decisions in relation to the Directive and the Convention to cast light on exactly what “philosophical beliefs” enjoyed protection.

And there were some relevant cases, notably McClintock: a refusal to by an official to deal with adoptions to same-sex partners because of an opinion that they could not be shown to be in the interests of children was not based on a protected philosophical belief. It was in McClintock’s case that the court suggested the test (or, at any rate, a test) for whether beliefs were protected philosophical beliefs should be “whether they have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance and are worthy of respect in a democratic society”. In Eweida, the court suggested that, whether the belief was religious or philosophical, it could be “intentionally personal and subjective”, and still be protected; it didn’t have to be widely shared, and it didn’t have to be objectively evidenced.

And so forth, through various other cases, until in Nicholson the court came up with the set of tests which Mr P has already quoted.

In Nicholson, as I have said, the employer argued that beliefs about anthropogenic climate change were scientific beliefs, and were no more philosophical than beliefs about the law of gravity or the speed of sound. But the court found that Mr Nicholson’s position was more than simply an acceptance of the evidence in support of anthropogenic climate change; it also embraced value judgments about the catastrophic consequences of this, moral judgments about our duty to respond, and moral judgments about how we should live and how we should organise our societies, and moral judgments about our obligations to future generations. And these are clearly not scientific matters.

SteelyDanJalapeno

Echoing other posters, what was a great thread is under threat from the constant back and forth legal d*ck swinging contest here.

Peregrinus

TiltedBrain wrote: »

Echoing other posters, what was a great thread is under threat from the constant back and forth legal d*ck swinging contest here.

Guys, if you want to know how UDP's application turns out, without caring about why it turns out that way, you don't need to read this thread. All you need do is PM him and ask him if he will let you know once he has a result.

That's not likely to be for many weeks or months. In the meantime his application has raised interesting issues, and interested people are going to discuss them because, well, discussion is what happens on discussion boards. All of the topics being discussed are directly relevant to the OP.

SteelyDanJalapeno

Peregrinus wrote: »

Guys, if you want to know how UDP's application turns out, without caring about why it turns out that way, all you need do is PM him and ask him if he will let you know once he has a result.

That's not likely to be for many weeks or months. In the meantime his application has raised interesting issues, and interested people are going to discuss them because, well, discussion is what happens on discussion boards. All of the topics being discussed are directly relevant to the OP.

Can also block those posters and still follow the thread.

MythicalMadMan

Peregrinus wrote: »

Guys, if you want to know how UDP's application turns out, without caring about why it turns out that way, you don't need to read this thread. All you need do is PM him and ask him if he will let you know once he has a result.

That's not likely to be for many weeks or months. In the meantime his application has raised interesting issues, and interested people are going to discuss them because, well, discussion is what happens on discussion boards. All of the topics being discussed are directly relevant to the OP.

No we don't care about the why if we did we would have started a thread in the legal discussions forum...

Some of the discussion is slightly interesting but again needs it own thread in the right forum..

I've now derailed twice myself but last thing we want is ye debate and the many others who don't think its relevant...

Hopefully a mod might clear it all up..

Turtwig

Well this mod loves theses esoteric type discussions. So, that's probably a hint that I need to split the thread.
Will think about it.

Cabaal

Jernal wrote: »

Well this mod loves theses esoteric type discussions. So, that's probably a hint that I need to split the thread.
Will think about it.

I started the thread and really its gotten derailed in a big way at this stage with alot of nonsense back n forth, I'd like the thread to very much stay on topic and not turn into this silly tit for tat

Peregrinus

Cabaal wrote: »

I started the thread and really its gotten derailed in a big way at this stage with alot of nonsense back n forth, I'd like the thread to very much stay on topic and not turn into this silly tit for tat

Well, from the OP, the topic, surely, is whether pastafarians have a legal right to wear colanders in their driving licence photographs in Ireland?