Mark Koyama: belief

Transcript context

…Say that again. General rules . . . In some sense, that’s perhaps a truism. I’m going to have expand on what that is. Perhaps many people would agree. We’re not the first people to say that rule of law — so general rules, treating people equally before the law, is like the sine qua of a state which allows individuals to flourish. And I call states like that liberal states. What we add to that is, then, the religious story, that religion is at the heart of this rise of liberal states, and it’s at the heart of a rise of the shift from identity rules to general rules. Again, I’m going way over one sentence. I think that’s the bottom line, what we have. I’d also say another contribution we make is distinguishing between states where there’s no persecution, or there’s de facto . . . There’s some bunch of religions, and people are not being burned alive all the time. We distinguish that from the idea of a liberal state, which is committed to pluralism, to free expression, free thought, and a multiplicity of religions. And what’s the single best piece of evidence for that marginal claim?…

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