When contesting a law though, you have to have standing, and one way to have standing is if your religious rights are being violated. If you are harmed by a law against funny hats but you don’t have a right to wear the hat, then there’s no basis for review of the law.
I was simply using his name as a stand-in for people hostile to religion. In a future where most people are non-observant or completely atheist, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for the majority to attempt to stamp out unsightly religious practices.
I don’t see that as a problem, but in the interests of not hijacking the thread (my fault, not yours), I’ll stipulate that reasonable minds can disagree.
This is why you can’t find a church anywhere in Denmark, Sweden or Iceland.
At one point, you could find two Catholic churches in the entire Soviet Union. One religion suppressing another is more common, but it’s not unheard of for churches to be closed due to state antitheism.
There is a difference between an explicitly atheist state and a secular state.
ok
Demanding some sort of justification for said law?
An actual reason. “We shouldn’t have to do X because God forbids it, also here’s proof of that”. Or “We shouldn’t have to do X because actual reasons X, Y, and Z.”
If we can’t demand some sort of rational justification for a law (which would be kind of important), then nothing. I’m not going to shed any tears about this, though.
I’ve long believed that a prime reason religious belief and practice remains so strong in the US is that it is one of the last remaining areas in which one can legally discriminate. And we Americans LOVE to discriminate!
I’ve also wished that the freedom of religion were more generally interpreted as a freedom FROM religion as well.
Practice pretty much whatever beliefs you want in your homes and churches. Do so in public as well so long as you do not infringe on someone else’s rights or some legitimate government interest. But if you choose to follow a religion that you feel requires some discriminatory practice, well, maybe you just don’t get to conduct certain kinds of business.
Sure, it would be nice if government and laws had rational bases, but we are not a rational species.
Oh, sure. But adaher scenario was religion being banned in “a future where most people are non-observant or completely atheist”; that certainly could happen. It probably won’t, and if it doesn’t it probably won’t be a Western democracy, but he wasn’t talkin’ nonsense.
Ok. How? If there’s no strict-scrutiny, no suspect classifications (for religion, in this case), all you get is rational basis review.
You seriously want the government to be in the business of vetting the truth of religious claims? The mind boggles. This is how you get state religions and persecution of minorities, by giving the state the power to crush unpopular beliefs and practices.
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!”
Nobody here has said otherwise nor does the law allow that.
Any non tyrannical government wants to give its citizens as much freedom as possible. Freedom of religion is one of the most important freedoms because religion gives life meaning and purpose. Thus laws need to recognize that freedom. If the government wants to ban peyote it can, but if one person’s religion freedom is harmed by that banned they are harmed. Giving that person a religious exemption allows government to achieve its goals without infringing on rights of the person. That is what separates a good government from tyranny, respect for the rights of its citizens.
I think the OP is onto something. It’s not like there is any history of societies or states discriminating on the basis of religion, so what are religious people afraid of?
Because at the time when the Constitution was written, the bloodiest war in all of history (insofar as they knew) was the set of religious wars in the mid-1600s, only just out of living memory, and the 1500s were also full of things like the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the reign of Bloody Mary. They made the somewhat simplistic assumption that wars about religion were JUST about religion, and that they could prevent similar horrors with the protection of freedom of religion.
That went on to become an important cultural value for most Americans. Look at the debate over the Second Amendment: the entire Bill of Rights has become a sacred text, like the Bible itself, and cannot be amended lest it make bald eagles cry. (Like the $20 mentioned in the Seventh Amendment, which as far as I know has not been adjusted for inflation.)
Actually, the fact that many immigrant to The American Colonies were escaping religious persecution in Europe was probably more important. Although, right after the time of the founding of the US, some of the individual states were doing exactly that, if not on so grand a scale. Keep in mind that the 1st Amendment was not incorporated (that is, applied to the states) until the 20th century.
Some folk might feel that religion gives life the delusion of meaning and purpose. Drugs might provide some folk similar sensations. And it seems some white supremacists and the ISIS folk aren’t exactly lacking in terms of meaning and purpose.
That doesn’t mean it is “a good thing” for government to encourage or enable folk to engage in such practices. Hell, you want to live your life stoned, believe in the supernatural, fail to seek medical treatment, or espouse prejudice, I’m pretty happy to allow each individual to live their lives and fuck themselves up however they want. But I’m not as comfortable in saying govenment/society ought to support such practices.
Obviously, I’m not a big fan of religion, and I’m not sure why otherwise apparently intelligent folk are, but it certainly is the case. For some reason I find myself thinking of the old question of why religious believers are viewed/portrayed differently and more legitimately than other believers in the supernatural - say alien abductees…
Your second point is indisputable. I’m not as sure about the first one. That was true for some of the groups who came to New England, and it looms large in our post-Civil War narrative of our own history, where we devalue the role of Southern states like Virigina in favor of Union states like Massachusetts. I mean, sure, escaping persecution was a factor, but I think the knowledge of the wars and bloodshed from Luther to the then-present were more of a factor. It’s all speculation as far as I know; I’m not aware that any of the Founding Guys wrote about their motivations directly.
I remember when i converted to gayism.
Slippery slopes?
The point of having religious freedoms was always to prevent a tyranny of the majority, not to give some special status to religion.
Originally, this majority was of course also religious one. The notion was to prevent the majority (who esposed religion A) from oppressing the minority (who esposed religions B, C or D).
This sort of oppression was, of course, very common, and it is always tempting for a majority - to impose its beliefs on others by government fiat.
Now, it may be the case that in some future world the majority in the US will be atheist. Seems unlikely in the near future. I’m not convinced, though, that stripping away the protections designed to prevent tyranny of the majority is a very good idea - particularly before atheists become a majority. One is tempted to speculate that what one would get is not a world in which laws were justified on the basis of reason alone, but rather a good old fashioned tyranny of the (Christian) majority over a host of minorities - Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, and (yes) atheists.
Remember the actual reason for the “freedom of religion” legislation in the US - it was not to allow fundies to refuse to serve gays. It was to allow Native Americans to worship in the Native American Church using peyote in their rituals. In short, it was firmly in the camp of “preventing a tyranny of the majority”, not ‘beacuse Americans love to discriminate’.