Cammy's Law

Cammy's Law states:

As any Redbrick discussion about religion or religion and science grows longer, the probability of a comparison to relativism approaches one.

Relativism

"Relativism" as described here refers, not to any pragmatic approaching to value-judgements and beliefs, but to the concept that beliefs or morality are purely relative to the individual and so are essentially made-up.

Religion, religious beliefs and religion and science crop up often enough on the Redbrick newsgroups. There are two general camps, the Null Mafia and the God Brigade.

The Null Mafia

"The Null Mafia" (so named by the opposing camp) believe that the only value to be found is in science, or more exactly empirical evidence, as this can be and is validated. The null in Null Mafia refers to the null hypothesis.

The Null Mafia argue that "religion is nonsense" because its beliefs are "made up". They cannot be validated as this is pre-mandated as a requirement of "Faith". Therefore all religious beliefs are relative. Unlike Science.

The God Brigade

"The God Brigade" (so named by the opposing camp) believe there is value in religion and/or religious or non-empirical based beliefs and values.

The God Brigade argue that an empirical approach to morality equally leads to a relative value structure because morality cannot be empirically measured. While Religion, for the most part, has years of morale "evolution" behind it and while it might be outdated it has numerous built in limits and checks.

It should be noted that this case of Cammy's law is equivalent to an invocation of Godwin's Law.

History

In March 2006, Cammy, a user on Redbrick, had started to grow tired of every time there was a discussion with some relation to Religion and it would digress into Science versus Religion and how non-empirical based beliefs were equal to the "evil" of relativism. The discussion appeared again on the redbrick.occult board but this time about morality and Cammy noted as a mock point that while Religious beliefs were painted as relative, equally were Scientism morale values. Hence the law was born.

In part, the law was invented to encourage open discussion on religious and spiritual beliefs rather than a continuous digression to Science versus Religion. Redbrick being a Computer Network society contains a large number of students and graduates with technical and science based degrees and so there is a prevalent atheist and agnostic feeling while those who hold alternative beliefs are often expected to defend them.