Personally, I think it rude to presume the nature and intensity of someone’s religious convictions, or lack thereof. The entirely secular greeting, sentiment, card, whatsoever does not make such presumptions. It carries whatever sentiment is appropriate without extra baggage, without the risk of being inadvertently rude.
Sometimes, of course, you just have to be rude. But you should conserve your ammo.
In the situation as presented, nobody knows that an explicitly religious card WOULD bring comfort, though–nobody knows whether the boss is a hardcore Catholic true believer or a cultural Catholic who is really atheist. When a card makes the SENDER feel all warm and fuzzy but may not bring any comfort at all to the recipient, or may indeed be offensive to him, why send it?
An atheist (or a person whose personal beliefs were somehow at odds with the highly religious sentiment on that card) might well feel that signing that card was implicitly indicating that they were in agreement with the religious message of the card. Not unlike a certain clerk in Kentucky who felt that she was being asked to implicitly approve of SSM because her signature was on the marriage license. I suspect you have sympathy for Kim Davis’s views, but not the atheist’s view in this circumstance?
Also: Pizzaguy, that was an awesome post.
First of all, you said “it was doctors and nurses who were performing the abortions”. As I’ve pointed out to you already (twice!) no abortions were performed at the hospital that’s the subject of the ACLU v. USCCB case. So you’re wrong about that.
Then you refer to “the bishops who own the hospital”. The hospital is not owned by bishops. None is, as far as I know. So you’re wrong about that.
Third, you seem to think that a hospital has no right to choose to not offer abortions. In fact, the hospital has such a right. If you click on the civil rights ordinance that I just linked to, you’ll see that “any individual or entity” has the right to choose not to “make its facilities available for the performance of any sterilization procedure or abortion if the performance of such procedure or abortion in such facilities is prohibited by the entity on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions”. A hospital is an entity, despite your incorrect insistence that hospitals are only buildings, and the administration of a hospital does indeed have the legal right to decide whether or not abortions will be performed by that hospital. So you’re wrong about that, too.
Christianity has a persecution complex sort of built into it. In the Early church, it was true - persecution came in the form of imprisonment, stonings and lions and all, but nowadays, and especially in the developed world, they have to go looking for it.
“These days” you say? Christianity has been fighting a rearguard action since the Enlightenment.
ITR champion: does a hospital receiving federal funds (e.g., Medicare or Medicaid) have the right to refuse to provide medically-appropriate care because of their religious beliefs?
You seem to be arguing that they do, that for example requiring them to save the life of their current patient (a pregnant woman) at the expense of a future patient (her ectopic fetus, say) is an assault on their Christian values. Is that really your position, or are you tap-dancing around the question?
Do hospitals have the right to withhold emergency care from a patient, when that care is necessary to protect their life and/or long term health?
Well, if providing that care would be contrary to their religious principles, they should take the appropriate action: get different religious principles.
I agree with this, and never said otherwise. Obviously helping the homeless is not an exclusively Christian value. However, if you look at actual people and organizations that are helping the homeless and the hungry, you’ll find that Christians and Christian organizations are overrepresented compared to their proportion in the population. So it’s more than fair to consider that sort of charity to be a Christian value, while not suggesting in any way that it’s a value that others (I consider it to be a personal value as an atheist) can’t also hold.
I addressed it with my allusion to Anatole France. A law can have a secular purpose and still oppose religious values. Again, as I stated above, I’m not claiming that the values it opposes are exclusively religious.
Sure, but we’re not talking about laws against discrimination here. We’re talking about laws against human decency and charity.
There are obviously bigots who think that their hate is a value, and I don’t agree with them. But they are not relevant to the two stories I’m responding to here.
What I think is that you are still trying to avoid the main issue by attempting to divert the discussion towards nitpicking.
Here are the main issues that are relevant to the topic of this thread:
In your opinion, do people have a right to refuse to obey a law if they claim doing so would violate their religious beliefs? Do they have no right to do this? Do they have an absolute right to do this? Or do they have a partial right to do this? If people have a partial right, how should we determine if a person has a right to refuse to obey a specific law due to their religious beliefs?
In your opinion, is a person limited to only limiting their own actions due to their religious beliefs? Or do you feel that a person can use their religious beliefs as the basis to limit another person’s actions? If so, how should we determine if a person can limit somebody else’s actions because they have religious beliefs against those actions?
If Catholics were over-represented in charity work, would the law then be against Catholic values as opposed to Methodist values? If you claim the law opposes the values of one group helping the homeless, then it must be against the values of all groups helping the homeless - unless the legislative debate about the law specifically targets one group with the others getting collateral damage. I think you’re going to have a hard time finding such evidence.
It’s possible. But in the current case it “opposes” such a wide range of both religious and secular values that I think it is a bit strange to say there is a religious component at all. Do laws against murder oppose Aztec values?
There are a 1,000 way, at least, to follow Christian charitable values. If the state bans one of them, but supports the other 999 (for instance through tax deductions) how can we say the state is opposing Christian values as a whole?
While we both support one and not the other, the cases are similar. Not allowing a specific expression of a religious value - while allowing all or most others - can’t be generalized to opposing the more general values. Now a religion or group built totally around discrimination can argue that. If the KKK says that the state opposes their values, they have a point. But not Christians or any other religion.
It’s currently illegal to hold a prayer meeting in the middle of the freeway. Is that law also an attack on Christian values?
That fact that it does.
No.
Yes, no.
Generally yes, but, because “in the way I choose” can mean a lot of things, not necessarily.
Yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
Yes. It doesn’t those laws are just, good or inmutable (Jim Crow)
Per se, no. But they can or a cas-by-case basis.
Some holy books do and yes, in a democracy/republic we get to tell people what they do. Inside your head you can believe as you wish, but when you do, whole 'nuther thing.
Ok.
Ok. Does it also mean separation between your beliefs and others’ lives?
Fills me with indiference.
Well, skipping a couple of cheeseburger and not giving hundreds of millions to rich people for their stadium would help a lot
Re tax breaks: Cancel them for sure, but please, do be sure to run the numbers correctly. Economics has this nasty thing called “unintended consequences”
99% CINO. My WAG for US congress is 10-15% really Christian.
It’s also 99% beholden to special interest and it’s much worse.
Ok, provided you return the favor.
No really. Kind of a crybaby, but not much.
Maybe you personally don’t, but lots of people do.
I don’t go to your house or club either.
We could discuss lots of the incorrect stuff in that paragraph, but that’d be a hijack I want no part in.
Are you the one who defines which are the “bad” ideas?
100% agreed, provided, again, that you return the favor with those covering themselves in the mantle of science and reason for the same kinds of nasty stuff.
There are boundaries, though. You live your life how you want.
Basically yes.
Would you agree on someone selling themself as a slave?
YOUR line, YOUR boundary.
Ok.
Ok, but you suck at foreshadowing.
I’m surprised that you think you’ve solved the abortion issue simply by stating that what you think is right is THE right thing. Especially just after bitching about other people doing the same thing.
Yup, but that means you’re Ok with voluntary slavery, voluntary murder (accepting being killed) or organ selling.
Agreed, but you don’t get to dictate the all must have non-Christian education.
Ok. Alternatives MUST exist.
But, “good faith” and “own honor” are also quite imaginary; I mean, they don’t actually exist.
Mostly not in themselves, but it’s also the classic thing said by people, not you in particular, who will go on until the squash everytihing they deem “not correct” in the name of some other, imaginary, ideal; you know, Gödel.
Mostly yes, but it’s all posturing for saying “abortion is right”.
Force values? No
Force actions? That’s what living in society is all about, well, not all.
Ok.
Which things told where by whom will you be shackled with?
It ain’t.
Mostly yes.
Yes, compromise, yes.
Agreed, but not 0% either.
You seem to want to enforce yours. That paragraph means “I get to do what I think is ok and you get to do what I think is ok.”
Ok.
Where did the whole “consenting adults” go? Where did “not forcing” go to?
So, you’re ok with forcing people just after saying you weren’t.
Such is your right.
So, enforce the law.
Enforce the law.
Ok, provided your own version of the sky cake doesn’t win either.
Apparently it’s not mine because it’s already yours.
Ticket: Yes
Cake: No, but laws may differ. Of course, it’s show your whole “consenting adults” is posturing.
There’s is no lifestyle you find shameful?
You’d always stamp the ticket? It seem that you want to make city officials into robots, just following orders, right? No moral responsibility, right?
All? No.
Maybe actually knowing what you’re talking about might help.
Poor them
Agreed.
So glad that your knowledge of reality is tenous.
Yup, you’ll show us by doing the exact thing.
So good to have all the answers, you have a nice life oh perfect master of knowledge.
I think you could make a very good argument that you can determine the values of people via their actions. Like revealed preferences in economics.
I think you could then say that charitable work was more of a Catholic value than a Methodist one. Doesn’t mean that it’s not a Methodist value.
I think the heart of our disagreement is one of labeling and group association. A group of people who would apply the same label to themselves isn’t going to be composed of cookie-cutter duplicates. There will be variations within the group, and also plenty of people outside the group who might agree with some or most of what the majority of the group agrees with.
But we can still make reasonable claims about values that group has.
If I said “Legalized same-sex marriage is a goal of the Democratic party”, the facts that
would not make my statement incorrect. Political parties (like religions) are messy conglomerations of complicated individuals and ideas and values. But we can still discuss those values as being held by the group.
Possibly, depending on the nature of Aztec human sacrifice. I don’t know much about it. That doesn’t mean I think we shouldn’t have laws against murder, if that’s the conclusion you’re going for.
I think this is a good point, and I would not go nearly as far as saying that the state is opposing Christian values as a whole.
What I said was that the stories about preventing Christians from providing food to the hungry supported the claim, not that it was absolute proof, or the last word on the subject.
I believe what Martin Luther King, Jr., said on the matter:
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
I would further say that in the USA, the Constitution is the supreme law. It says, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free expression thereof”. (And precedent clearly establishes that this applies to all parts of government, not just Congress.) So if Congres infringes on the right of the people to practice their religion freely, it is Congress who is breaking the supreme law of the country; likewise any other branch of government.
I have already mentioned the case of the Schechter brothers. To recap, the FDR Administration passed restrictive laws on businesses that prepared food, which made it impossible for butchers to offer kosher food. This violated the first amendment rights of Jewish butchers, who fought back in court and had FDR’s rules overturned. In this case it was the Roosevelt Administration that was breaking the law; specifically, they were breaking the First Amendment. If you want to whine about people breaking the law, surely politicians who disobey the Constitution should be at the top of your list.
Then a law preventing some sort of charitable work would be an attack on not just Catholic values but also on Methodist values. In the broader sense, it would be an attack on Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic and secular humanist values. And of course the law does not prevent all or even most charity, just one particular expression of it. Since the law treats all group values equally, and does not condemn almost any expression of the value, saying that the law attacks the broader value is quite odd. On one hand the law attacks the value, on the other hand it rewards it. Either the lawmakers are very confused or else the law says that this particular expression has enough adverse consequences to ban.
Irrelevant, since I’m not disputing that it is a group value. Though Christians probably wrote the law.
No, the conclusion is that laws against murder are in no way attacks on Aztec religious practice - because the lawmakers almost certainly never considered this. I doubt the writers of the homeless law ever said “we’ll show those Christians!”
And again they are preventing everyone from providing this food. The religion of the person doing the providing has nothing to do with anything.
To bring it back to Kimmy, sharia law is probably not too fond of SSM either. I have not heard the religious freedomists condemn the decision as an attack on this. Why not? A fundamentalist Muslim is just as forced to issue the license as a fundamentalist Christian. I say that if we hold a demonstration thanking Kim for supporting Sharia law this whole thing would get wound up in no time flat.
Okay, so to summarize: a person is allowed to disobey a law for religious reasons if that law is out of harmony with the moral law, not rooted in eternal law and natural law, and degrades human personality.
I have to say I find some ambiguity in these standards. They seem subjective. I’m guessing things like moral laws, eternal laws, and natural laws aren’t written down anywhere so we can’t compare them to statutory laws and see if there’s a conflict. And I’m also guessing there’s not a scientific instrument that can measure a human personality and tell if it’s being degraded.
So how can we tell if a law is unjust by the standards you’ve offered? You might say a law is just and I might say that same law is unjust. Is each of us allowed to apply our own decision? Or is there some method for determining which of us is right and creating a universal standard?
I presume you are smart enough to understand the difference between a government that forces people to obey laws and rules, and an institution that people are voluntarily taking part in or doing business with. The former limits people’s freedom, while the later does not.
For example, if the government bans certain types of cheese, or certain types of dishwashers, or severely restricts the use of manure on organic farms, then the government is limiting people’s choices, because it means that no one in the country can legally choose to buy/sell/produce the things that the government has banned. But if a Catholic hospital chooses not to offer abortions, or a Jewish butcher chooses not to sell non-kosher meat, or a chain of hobby stores chooses to sell insurance that doesn’t cover birth control, that doesn’t restrict anyone’s choices, because no one is forced to participate in any way. If you don’t like the abortion choices at the local hospital you can go to a different hospital. If you don’t like the meat for sale at a kosher butcher shop, you can go to a different butcher shop.
You implied that by choosing not to offer abortions in a particular hospital, the directors of that hospital were “imposing their choice on other people,” specifically on doctors and nurses within that hospital. You’re wrong, of course. Anyone who works at a hospital and doesn’t like that hospital’s stance on abortion is free to quit their job and seek a new job elsewhere.
Obviously, the directors of any hospital are going to make decisions about what takes place in the hospital and enforce those decisions. To say that the directors can’t limit what takes place in the hospital is absurd, and would lead to consequences that are simultaneously dangerous and farcical. Suppose the directors and Northeast Bob Hospital (NHB) decide that NHB will not offer acupuncture. Can they require that everyone working at NHB abide by this decision? Of course. Doctors have no right to go rogue and offer whatever medical services they feel like. If a doctor at NHB decides that he or she absolutely must offer acupuncture to patients, he or she can seek employment elsewhere.
Is it equally true in terms of consequences? Doctors and nurses are in relatively high demand, and therefore are not as subject to negative consequences. Is that equally true of the janitorial staff? Most places you can’t get unemployment benefits if you quit voluntarily, is there are a special provision for quitting due to religious conviction?
If not, then freedom of conscience is a right that is largely dependent on economic circumstances.