# Freedoms Based on Religion Should Not Exist **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 17, 2015, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899 "2015-04-17T10:27:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/101 "2015-04-17T22:32:20Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Do you think we should demand a rational basis for every law? I think that’s a great idea. Let’s start with the tax code, all 4,000,000+ words of it. I want to hear a secular, rational, decent justification for every single word. If Congress can’t provide such a justification then out it goes. Then let’s move on to Obamacare, all 1,800 pages of the law plus [tens of thousands of pages of regulations.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/how-many-pages-of-regulations-for-obamacare/2013/05/14/61eec914-bcf9-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_blog.html) If Obama can’t provide a secular justification for everything on every page, out it goes. After that we can move on to the millions of other regulations that the government imposes on us, throwing out anything that has no rational justification. I think that’s exactly what the OP is intending. But that doesn’t imply “out it goes” for the entire law. Only “out this part goes” for the parts that don’t have a secular justification. Most of the Tax Code and The ACA would remain, and only those parts dealing with religious exemptions would be expunged. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/102 "2015-04-18T00:38:58Z")
I demanded “compelling interest” for every law, but I’ll take “rational basis” as a good starting point. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/103 "2015-04-18T00:44:05Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I get that you and **BPC** are mainly talking about the second type - laws passed for the common welfare that are claimed to interfere with the exercise of a small portion of the public’s religion, such as the Hobby Lobby case - but hearing those cases out is a small price to pay for religious freedom, and not having to put up with [this sort of thing.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abington_School_District_v._Schempp) I put up with having the King James Bible read to me just fine. It was in a Philadelphia public elementary school where the student population was virtually 100 percent Jewish. This was a experience in learning about the dominant American culture, not an effect to convert us. If that Unitarian fanatic from Philadelphia’s Abington suburb hadn’t forced our teachers to stop reading us from the Elizabethan Bible, when I was age 7 or so, I would have been much better prepared for Shakespeare once in high school. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/104 "2015-04-18T02:17:47Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’ll take Sweden, please. They’re not to fond of Middle Eastern immigrants and I find the idea of a country which jails people for libel nuts, so I’ll pass. Beyond that, I thought you wanted to live in a “secular country”. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/105 "2015-04-18T02:20:52Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > More accurately, “freedoms established on the basis of religion should not exist”. Or, to put it another way: if you want to do X, what your religion has to say about X should have absolutely no bearing. If it’s illegal to do X, your religion demanding it of you should not matter. If it is mandatory to do Y, your religion forbidding it should not matter. > > Why do we grant this freedom, anyways? Why do we consider a person’s baseless beliefs to be worthy of such protection? In the Hobby Lobby case, for example. In what universe is it rational to say, “Sure, the law says X, but your invisible friend says not X, so you’re exempt from the law”? Why is this even a thing? Why are we explicitly privileging these sorts of faith-based statuses? > > Your religious beliefs should have exactly zero bearing on your legal status. You are free to believe what you want to believe, but the moment you expect those beliefs to have any effect on anything, you should be ready to justify them. And religious people who base their beliefs on faith cannot. This feels like it should be a “DUH” moment, but for some reason it’s enshrined into the US constitution _wrong_. So then since it’s perfectly legal to refuse to hire or automactically fire anyone you find out believes in things like alien abductions doesn’t that mean that you feel that we should be able to fire or refuse fire Jews, Catholics, and Muslims? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/106 "2015-04-18T03:58:29Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I put up with having the King James Bible read to me just fine. It was in a Philadelphia public elementary school where the student population was virtually 100 percent Jewish. This was a experience in learning about the dominant American culture, not an effect to convert us. If that Unitarian fanatic from Philadelphia’s Abington suburb hadn’t forced our teachers to stop reading us from the Elizabethan Bible, when I was age 7 or so, I would have been much better prepared for Shakespeare once in high school. I’m sorry you were less well prepared for Shakespeare than you otherwise would have been. That’s not quite worth trading separation of church and state for, though, at least IMHO. If you don’t believe that that’s a principle worth upholding, then we have nothing to say to each other on the matter. The fanatics are those in the governments of the four states who passed mandatory Bible-reading laws, not the brave souls who helped put a stop to it. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/107 "2015-04-18T04:02:17Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I’m sorry you were less well prepared for Shakespeare than you otherwise would have been. That’s not quite worth trading separation of church and state for, though, at least IMHO. If you don’t believe that that’s a principle worth upholding, then we have nothing to say to each other on the matter. > > The fanatics are those in the governments of the four states who passed mandatory Bible-reading laws, not the brave souls who helped put a stop to it. You do realize there are a large number of people on this message board who believe that there are countries can mandate religious education and still be “secular” aren’t you? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/108 "2015-04-18T04:08:09Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > you mean i cant stone my neighbor to death for adultery?!?!?! Uh…oh…:eek: ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/109 "2015-04-18T04:19:36Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think that’s exactly what the OP is intending. But that doesn’t imply “out it goes” for the entire law. Only “out this part goes” for the parts that don’t have a secular justification. Most of the Tax Code and The ACA would remain, and only those parts dealing with religious exemptions would be expunged. You have great faith in the rationality of the Tax Code. Me, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![lew\_cody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e274bd/32.png) [@lew\_cody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lew_cody)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/110 "2015-04-18T05:02:53Z")
Rather than saying that freedoms based on religion shouldn’t exist, I would phrase the issue differently: religious beliefs cannot make one _exempt_ from obeying the law. If one seeks an exemption, there has to be a non-religious basis. Under a plan like this, Christian Science parents cannot refuse medical treatment for an ill child. Amish parents cannot refuse their children access to at least some high school. Religious beliefs could not be cited in defense of severe corporal punishment or declining to be vaccinated. (This would also throw out religious beliefs as a criterion for conscienscious objection, but I oppose conscription anyway.) To me, religious freedom signifies the right to belong/believe and the right not to do either. The right to engage in specific religious practices should be weighed against whether said practices violate the rights of others. Withholding a child from secondary school (or from medical treatment/vaccines) in the name of upholding religion and culture can have very negative long-term consequences. All of my examples, I guess, have to do with protecting children from the most undesirable parts of their parents’ beliefs. But my system would also erase any exemptions for discrimination, not providing birth control, etc. Granted, in this scheme a state could pass abusive laws simply to harass an unpopular religion and then take away any legal defense that religion has. But there would have to be some compelling interest to outlaw a given practice; for example, there’s no secular defense for door-to-door evangelizing, but there also seems no reason to ban it across the board. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/111 "2015-04-18T11:49:17Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Ok. How? If there’s no strict-scrutiny, no suspect classifications (for religion, in this case), all you get is rational basis review. Yeah, is that not good enough? See, if we’re not checking to see that our laws actually make any sense, then something is wrong. > [@](#): > > You seriously want the government to be in the business of vetting the truth of religious claims? When those claims are demanding the representation of law, then yes! You need to have a rational basis for your laws. > [@](#): > > Further, would you ask the same of, say, conscientious objectors to military service? “PROVE that it’s wrong to take human life in war, or it’s jail for you!” I’m against the draft, so this is kind of a moot point, but if pressured, I _could_ make a very strong rational case that it is morally wrong for me to kill someone else without their consent. That’s the neat thing about secular morality - it’s actually based on reason. > [@Bone](#): > > Your mistake is that there need be justification for a law at all. There doesn’t - only a sufficient number of votes. Yeah, and this bugs the crap out of me. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > **BPC** seems to be going further than that, and decrying the concept of the First Amendment’s free-exercise rights, but I’ll wait for clarification from him on that point. If my argument negates the free-exercise clause, it means I haven’t thought it through very well. People should be free to exercise their religious beliefs, so long as those beliefs do not conflict with any legal doctrine. Similarly, legal doctrine should be based on _rationality_ - to take an example I read elsewhere in the thread, if a religion wants to wear black armbands, banning black armbands “just for the hell of it” is not okay. But if a religion wants to take a substance which is banned on rational grounds, such as heroin (whether or not the prohibition of the substance is _actually_ rational is another story), then they’re just shit out of luck. > [@](#): > > I would like to note that I am an atheist, with no particular fondness for religion. However, as a religious minority, I recognize that my best chance at being left alone is for the law to protect religious minorities, which means protecting religious practice. If there were no such protections, the result wouldn’t be a secular wonderland, but instead a Christian state. Yeah, my issue here is mainly the secular basis for laws, and removing religious exemptions. I’m not entirely sure how that would backfire onto secularism. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Do you think we should demand a rational basis for every law? I think that’s a great idea. Let’s start with the tax code, all 4,000,000+ words of it. I want to hear a secular, rational, decent justification for every single word. If Congress can’t provide such a justification then out it goes. Then let’s move on to Obamacare, all 1,800 pages of the law plus [tens of thousands of pages of regulations.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/how-many-pages-of-regulations-for-obamacare/2013/05/14/61eec914-bcf9-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_blog.html) If Obama can’t provide a secular justification for everything on every page, out it goes. After that we can move on to the millions of other regulations that the government imposes on us, throwing out anything that has no rational justification. I think the vast majority of the tax code can be rationally justified. So can Obamacare. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > So then since it’s perfectly legal to refuse to hire or automactically fire anyone you find out believes in things like alien abductions doesn’t that mean that you feel that we should be able to fire or refuse fire Jews, Catholics, and Muslims? If you believe crazy things, I’d rather not have to hire you. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/112 "2015-04-18T13:16:49Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > If you believe crazy things, I’d rather not have to hire you. Ok, since you feel that businesses should be free to refuse to hire people with religions they don’t like, how about serving them. Since you feel people should be allowed to have as part of job applications “No Jews need apply” how about signs saying “No Jews or dogs served here”? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/113 "2015-04-18T13:19:48Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s the neat thing about secular morality - it’s actually based on reason. True, Nazism, Eugenics and Marxist-Leninism were all completely rational. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/114 "2015-04-18T13:21:22Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > True, Nazism, Eugenics and Marxist-Leninism were all completely rational. Not equivalent. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/115 "2015-04-18T13:57:33Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Not equivalent. Complain to Budget. He’s the one who claimed secular morality was “rational”. I would say that such a belief would suggest having a rather sheltered life. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/116 "2015-04-18T17:45:08Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Thing is, religious discrimination _does_ exist and _is_ harmful, and religious freedoms do need to be protected. That’s one of the basic civil liberties you speak of. What would you think if I said that racial and gender discrimination were wrong, but that it was ok to outlaw same-sex intercourse? Or to keep people born in the U.S. to foreign-born parents from becoming citizens? Or that people who earn less than $1 million per year shouldn’t be able to vote? Free exercise of religion is no less important than any of those examples; I don’t want to question your liberal cred, but it seems like a real oversight. Maybe. I don’t deny that religions and their believers have frequently been persecuted, most often by other religions, sometimes by authoritarian despots. I also believe that religions can be valuable social institutions, a value that can at least in theory be separated from superstitious claptrap. But my basic thesis is that those aspects of religious practice that are worth defending can be defended on the basis of secular civil liberties. Those aspects that cannot be so defended I maintain are in the category of aforementioned superstitious claptrap. For instance I may dislike the idea of someone building a synagogue or a mosque down the street, but we have freedom of assembly and if the property is zoned for a public community center then they are free to do so. OTOH, if someone wants to discriminate against gays because God personally told him they are evil, via voices in his head, or thinks that a blood transfusion for their sick child would introduce the spirit of the Devil, then this is not worthy of protection. > [@lew\_cody](#): > > Rather than saying that freedoms based on religion shouldn’t exist, I would phrase the issue differently: religious beliefs cannot make one _exempt_ from obeying the law. If one seeks an exemption, there has to be a non-religious basis. > > … The right to engage in specific religious practices should be weighed against whether said practices violate the rights of others … That and the rest of post #110 is well written and articulates my point exactly. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/117 "2015-04-18T18:00:59Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > True, Nazism, Eugenics and Marxist-Leninism were all completely rational. That’s an absurdly narrow view of what “rational” means. It means a lot more in this context than simply some crackpot having an alleged “reason” for his actions. A motorist might shoot a fellow driver “because he cut me off”, or kill his neighbor’s kids “because they were noisy”, but that doesn’t make those things rational. Rationality in this context has to be consistent with morality, and morality can be defined not just in secular terms, but in philosophically objective terms, as in Kantian ethics. It makes far more sense to base laws on such rational grounding than, for instance, to ban the meat of animals with cloven hooves, or ban mowing the lawn on Sunday because that’s working on the Sabbath, or to fly jet airliners into buildings because the residents are infidels. Rationality is not only a sound basis for law, it’s the _ **only** _ basis for law. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/118 "2015-04-18T18:19:31Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > At one point, you could find [two Catholic churches in the entire Soviet Union.](http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/anti.html) One religion suppressing another is more common, but it’s not unheard of for churches to be closed due to state antitheism. To be fair, there were never that many Catholic churches in the Soviet Union, or in most of the countries that became part of the Soviet Union. That was never really Catholic territory. Eastern Orthodoxy, in various forms, was the dominant form of Christianity. The Soviet Union did tolerate the Orthodox Church, to a point. I’m hardly claiming, however, that that Soviet Union didn’t take a dim view of religion in general, or that it didn’t suppress the church (to varying degrees in different periods). ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/119 "2015-04-18T18:22:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The problem will be when two individuals want to do something and their desires can’t be reconciled. > > Al owns a bakery and sells cakes. Bob wants to buy a cake from Al. But Al doesn’t want to sell a cake to Bob. > > You can’t say “Each of you can do what you want as long as you don’t interfere with what the other wants to do.” Society has to decide whose right to do what he wants takes precedence over the other’s. It’s not quite that simple in your example, because Bob’s “right” requires an affirmative contribution on Al’s part. It’s not a simple non-interference with Al. A more apt example would be my right to have guests at my home and play loud music versus your right to go to sleep without being disrupted. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899/120 "2015-04-18T18:36:21Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That’s an absurdly narrow view of what “rational” means. It means a lot more in this context than simply some crackpot having an alleged “reason” for his actions. A motorist might shoot a fellow driver “because he cut me off”, or kill his neighbor’s kids “because they were noisy”, but that doesn’t make those things rational. Rationality in this context has to be consistent with morality, and morality can be defined not just in secular terms, but in philosophically objective terms, as in Kantian ethics. It makes far more sense to base laws on such rational grounding than, for instance, to ban the meat of animals with cloven hooves, or ban mowing the lawn on Sunday because that’s working on the Sabbath, or to fly jet airliners into buildings because the residents are infidels. Rationality is not only a sound basis for law, it’s the _ **only** _ basis for law. I think you misunderstood me. I wasn’t saying they were “rational” though all claimed to be and all insisted they were scientifically proven. I was critiquing BPC’s claim that “secular reasons” were inherently rational. They’re not. Some are, some aren’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freedoms-based-on-religion-should-not-exist/717899.md?page=7)