I know what all the words mean. I’m interested in indirectly pointing out the utter stupidity of both extremes, religion and pure (as I named it) atheism. Leaving no room for the possibility that you’re wrong is extraordinarily dangerous. Stalin’s Russia saw millions killed. So have religous wars. Leaving plenty of room for being wrong makes that sort of thing less likely, I would guess. Wouldn’t anyone, who has time to reflect?
The link above from the EEOC clearly states the case, my emphasis added:
So in the case of employment law it is very clear and the interpretation doesn’t appear to rely on calling atheism a religion.
I would like to see the corresponding rules in regards to other aspects of the law where one’s religious beliefs could come into play, such as housing, medical care, etc.
Except atheists are not a protected class. Religious belief is a protected class. Atheism isn’t a religion, but it is a religious belief–the belief that religion is incorrect.
If we make a rule that you can’t fire someone because of their religion, then Mormons aren’t protected because they’re Mormons, Catholics aren’t protected because they’re Catholics, atheists aren’t protected because they’re atheists. Similarly, if we make a rule that you can’t fire someone because of their race, that doesn’t make “black” a protected class, it makes “race” a protected class. The same law that protects a black guy from getting fired by his racist boss who doesn’t like black guys protects a white guy from getting fired by his racist boss who doesn’t like white guys.
One term for what you call “pure atheism” is “positive atheism” or even just “strong atheism.”
Go and do that somewhere else, please.
Why?
Because this is a discussion about whether laws against religious discrimination include atheists, not whether atheism is or is not a sensible idea. Mormons are protected against discrimination, that doesn’t make Mormonism sensible or nonsensible.
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The EEOC document linked seems to limit those rules to “employers with at least 15 employees”
This is no hijack, and I can prove it. But whatever.
That was my original doubt. To call atheism the belief that religion is incorrect is problematic from many directions. That’s not the normal definition of atheism; people have rejected it here in this thread. And it’s close to the slur that some believers put on atheists - that they just have a variety of belief, of faith, that is equivalent to a religion.
The question I’d still like somebody to address is whether atheism has a positive definition in law - saying what it is as opposed to a negative definition like the one linked to in Title VII.
Sure, but in the context of discrimination, it’s not about the properties of the discriminated person, it’s about the treatment and the motive for that treatment (for example, religious discrimination also includes unfair treatment on the basis that someone mistakenly thinks you are a member of some religion).
Yes, it does, but that has nothing to do with religion or atheists. That is true for most forms of discrimination under employment law. Also true for health care benefits and other similar requirements under federal law.
Actually, I’m an atheist, and I lack the belief that I can know whether a deity exists; for one thing, I don’t take my existence on faith, but merely as a convenient supposition which can be refuted by evidence that I am, perhaps, a computer program. An agnostic believes that we cannot know whether a deity exists, which is a faith claim.
The reason for this is that the district court is a trial court and therefore the primary fact-finder. They make their decision based on a set of facts particular to one circumstance. You can’t say for sure whether any other situation is going to be exactly the same as the one that was tried previously. Appeals courts rule on matters of law (at least in general, I’m not sure but I think they always remand cases back to district court for more fact-finding if such is needed), and as such are much more straightforward as to whether they apply in other cases.
I only have knowledge of the legal system in terms of tax cases, and as such offer a basic example that non-cosmetic medical expenses are deductible, and there was a tax case about whether gender reassignment surgery was deductible. The court ruled that everything except the breast enhancement procedures were deductible due to the records indicating that the client clearly was unhappy with their gender and suffered psychological problems due to it, but was happy with their breast size after just undergoing hormone replacement therapy. In a different case, the person transitioning to female may not feel as though they are truly a female without getting breast enhancement, and a court may rule that such a procedure would be tax deductible in their case since the facts are different even though the procedure is the same.