When pirate costumes for prisoners are outlawed, only outlaws…
…wait, that doesn’t work at all.
Their mistake was going at it as a start-up religion rather than a schism of an existing religion.
Well according to the OP’s article:
You don’t get several tattoos if it isn’t serious.
But it has to specifically be a serious religious belief. You can express serious beliefs of a non-religious nature via tattoos also.
This actually speaks better of the (self-proclaimed) Pastafarians than it does of Scientologists.
There are times in life when we have to resort to common sense.
So if he actually believed this crazy stuff it would be protected?
I find the proposition that the beliefs of crazy people are entitled to greater protection than those of sane people somewhat disquieting.
Really? Tell me; what percentage of them don’t believe in God? Ten? Fifty?
I don’t know what the number it, either, but it isn’t a hundred percent. I am personally acquainted with people who truly, honestly believe in God. No shitting around. To them, God is an actual, real being. There are a lot of those people, actually. While I am quite certain many people in church have a thin veneer of belief, or maybe even less, a lot of people have real belief. So if we must accommodate that to get along as a society, so be it.
Nobody believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is for me to question that belief for the simple reason that it’s fucking stupid, and it’s SUPPOSED to be stupid, that’s the point. I know nobody really believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster because nobody does. It’s a joke, not a religion; was meant to be a joke, not a religion; and is regarded as a joke, not a religion, by every single asshole with a colander on his head. You know it as well as I.
I believe in logic and freedom and the scientific method and that it’s hard to prove a negative and all that too, but there are times when a reasonably intelligent person has to make sure that their mind isn’t so open their brain falls out. Nobody is really a Pastafarian.
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So if he actually believed this crazy stuff it would be protected?
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Believing things that are not true does not make someone crazy. To my mind the central tenets of faith of Christianity are self-evidently preposterous, but hundreds of millions of people absolutely do believe it. Unless we are defining “Crazy” so broadly as to take away all its meaning, I doubt most of the world is crazy.
Religion is a very strange element of civic space in that it is, technically, an entirely voluntary decision to follow religious rules, and yet in many respects we treat it with the same deference as we do involuntary aspects of a person’s identity, such as race or gender. That results in some friction, to be honest, in determining where reasonable accommodation begins and ends. It would be cool to me, an atheist, to say “to hell with religion” and deny any protection or special treatment of any sort. But, realistically, that just is not something society will accept at this stage in history. Religion is not something many of its adherents feel they have a choice about and it is very deeply rooted in people’s identities. So I concede that some allowances must be made, even if I think the whole premise of any given religion is, frankly, silly. So by all means let Muslim prisoners have their meals after sundown during Ramadan or let Christians take Good Friday off or let Sikhs wear turbans instead of Mountie hats. Whatever. It takes all kinds, after all.
But to my mind we are clearly way beyond the point of reasonable accommodation when we ascribe the same allowances to something that is not a religion at all, but is a parody of religion, and it is an insult to the intelligence of anyone smarter than a flea to pretend the Flying Spaghetti Monster is anything but a parody.
The problem with that is that Common Sense is often neither common nor sensible.
I get that judges sometimes have to apply their own common sense in cases where things are not cut and dried, but if someone says that X is their religion, why should they not believed?, I can see someone taking the tenets of Pastafarianism seriously and wanting to mold his life around them, to me is not crazier than any other religion and far better than most.
For example The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts
If, in the estimation of the judge, they’re lying. It is perfectly within the duties of a judge to ascertain the trustworthiness of a witness. There’s no rule that says if someone says X, the judge has to assume it’s true.
Anyone with a lick of common sense, when told the biblical story of Noah and his ark, would laugh.
ETA: goes double for Xenu, also the Mormon planet.
Of curse, but in matters of religion, where it’s factually impossible to know if he’s lying or not, I would recommend giving them the benefit of the doubt, if aren’t asking for something too irrational.
This could be solved by simply allowing people certain “liberties” without asking them to believe in some religion. Determine what can be reasonably asked by prisoners and give it to them if they ask for it, independently of their religion or lack of it.
To avoid lots of different frivolous request you could tie the granting of a given perk to a minimum number of people requesting it.
All I know is this. Since I learned about the goddess Anoia from Pratchett? Once in a while I rattle a drawer and I haven’t had one problem since.
Exactly. They should make religious adjustments for everyone who wants one, or for no one. No middle ground.
Speaking as somebody who’s been on the other side of this issue, we generally have a sensible reason for establishing the procedure as well.
For example, every man who enters the New York prison system has a picture taken of his face for identification purposes. Then if they have a beard and/or moustache, we require them to shave it off and we take a picture of their clean shaven face. The reason for this is so we have identification pictures of what they look like with and without facial hair. I think most people would concede that’s a reasonable security procedure.
But some people have religious beliefs that prohibit them from shaving their facial hair. Some prisoners have won exemptions from shaving based on their religious beliefs. Does that mean we should allow any prisoner who simply wishes not to shave out of personal preference the same exemption?
Incidentally, humanism was recognized as a religion in Federal Prisons. They are permitted to celebrate Darwin Day and hold study groups for example.
http://www.kgw.com/news/fed-prisons-recognize-humanism-as-religion-after-ore-lawsuit/67211753
You sound like a vermicelli kind of guy.
Shouldn’t be a problem if these celebrations and study groups fit into the prison routine … I agree that wearing a pirate suit doesn’t fit … it can be outlawed without affecting the right to believe.
is there a difference between personal preference and belief? shaving is quite temporary and it all grows back. it’s not like you’re asking them to cut off an ear or something.
Really, how deeply can a court delve into a prisoner’s religious “sincerity” while dodging what seems to me to be the elephant in the room (the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, if the petitioner had been so determined to follow the rules of his professed religion he wouldn’t be in prison in the first place)?
Says who? In this country, people get arrested for toy guns, fishing equipment, or letting your kid walk down the street. Those don’t violate the rules of any religion I know of.