I feel I should say, however, without getting into deeper discussion here or launching a separate one, that it wasn’t my belief that the other poster was “lying” or my intention to make such an accusation. My belief was that his interpretation of the philosophy in question was rather extreme and would not likely find mainstream support – a matter of questionable interpretation rather than of misrepresented fact. But there were indeed more courteous ways of saying the same thing.
That strikes me as a facile and not useful argument. Of course all belief systems are based on axioms, but to take my earlier example as a case in point, Kant tried to develop a moral philosophy based on irreducible truths that we can surely all agree on, such as the fact that human beings are self-directed sentient beings in possession of free will and should be respected as such.
Possibly. But a logically derived, secular moral philosophy is not what we have now. The majority in the past has produced societies in which slavery, oppression, and institutionalized discrimination were the norm. We’ve shed the worst of that but we can do much better. A large-scale system of values and laws derived from irreducible first principles would undoubtedly not be perfect and we wouldn’t all agree on all aspects of it, but it would surely be better than one that elevated groundless superstition to the same level as a logically derived moral philosophy, or even worse, granted said superstitions preferences and exemptions.
Ah, but in promoting “the right to be left alone” as some kind of axiomatic first principle you’ve just fallen victim to your own aforementioned pitfall – and it’s not even close to being an irreducibly basic one, it’s more like a minimal-government libertarian one that many would disagree with. The problem being that your presumed right to be left alone may interfere with my basic rights to peace, justice, or freedom from pain and suffering. For instance if you were an employer with various outlandish religious beliefs wishing to be left alone to impose them on all your employees and everyone else within your sphere of influence.
You are the one who foolishly declared secular morality was “rational” not me.
Some forms are some aren’t. The same is true with of course secular ideologies.
The followers of Eugenics were the top scientists and intellectuals of their time and included the President of every single Ivy League university in the early 20th Century.
Without meaning to tarnish belief in global climate change, more scientists and intellectuals in the early 20th Century believed in Eugenics than now believe in Global Climate Change(or at least man-made global climate change).
You’ll notice how many of the boards resident scientific racists* insist they’re the rational ones and those who don’t believe in the intellectual inferiority of “negroids” are being irrational.
So yeah, there are plenty of forms of “secular morality” and plenty of “secular philosophies” that are not rational.
I’m making no insinuations, I merely pointed out the logical extent of your OP. You have claimed that you think anti-discrimination laws should apply to religious beliefs and that people should be allowed to refuse to hire Muslims, Catholics, or Jews just as they’re allowed to refuse to hire Star Trek fans, fans of Lord of the Rings or people who believe in things like the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, or alien abduction.
Frankly, such a belief is the logical outgrowth of insisting that religious beliefs should not be given greater protections than non-religious beliefs.
Well, then based on that same logic you should feel that it should be perfectly legal to refuse to serve Jews, Catholics, or Muslims since pizzerias can refuse to cater to say comic book conventions or the local J.R. Tolkien fan club.
Perhaps, you should rethink your whole idea that there should be no such religious freedom if you think it should be illegal to refuse to serve Jews even though it’s perfectly legal to refuse to serve people who think aliens rape ranchers and impregnate their cows.
Moreover, you seem to have completely ignored that your “no religious freedom” idea would mean that businesses could feel free to discriminate against atheists and agnostics when it comes both to employment as well as serving them.
I have a hunch that if the US ever did adopt your idea that the number of atheists who’d wind up taking it in the shorts would greatly outnumber the number of Christians who would.
It is not set up by God, just humans’ idea of what they think God would want. there is nothing taught. stated. thought, or written that was not from a human beings Idea of what God does or allows. Belief is human based , so one is believing in a Human not a God.
(emphasis mine)
I don’t really know where you’re going with this point that you’ve made several times now, which seems to be that scientists got something wrong once and therefore religious dogma and logical moral philosophies are exactly equivalent.
First of all science and morality are orthogonal – they are completely unrelated. The products of science are tools that can be used for good or for evil according to moral philosophies that have nothing to do with the tools themselves. You say in the early 20th century a lot of people “believed in” eugenics. What does that mean? That they believed some of the practices actually work? Some of them do. What those people didn’t do, as many others throughout history failed to do, was weigh those practices against the kinds of reason-based moral values that I and others are advocating we should have. Reason-based morality isn’t cold science devoid of empathy or respect for human rights and autonomy as you seem to be implying – those things are its very essence.
Secondly, on this matter of implied equivalence, can you cite examples of where a rationally based secular moral framework like the Categorical Imperative caused social strife and harm? Because let me tell you, there would be no problem at all coming up with thousands of examples of where religions caused wars, social conflicts, killings, crusades, and catastrophes throughout history. In fact it’s kind of central to most religious scriptures one way or another to incite the killing of those who don’t buy into it, either those of competing faiths or those without faith.
On a final note I’m skeptical of the part of your claim that I bolded. Do you have a cite for that?
Whatever anyone else may have said, “no religious freedom” is not my argument or proposal. I’m fine with religious freedom. I’m not fine with religion competing with secular law, and even less fine when religion wins. People can believe whatever they like but it’s their actions with regard to others that I’m concerned about. Businesses would not “feel free to discriminate against atheists and agnostics” because discrimination on the basis of religious belief or lack thereof would not be permissible. By the same token, neither employers nor employees could refuse to obey the law by citing religious beliefs. To my mind, a pure religious exemption with no other grounds is logically exactly like allowing someone to say “I exempt myself from having to obey this law because I’m insane.”
Most modern scholars are universal in their preference for my philosophical rationales over that imposter Kant. Anyway, I reject the notion, on a practical level, that irreducible truths exist, except as subjective axioms. That includes the one you offer here, though I happen to agree with it. I personally believe there are irreducible truths created by God, but I don’t offer them as social policy for that reason alone. Again, that’s where I think your argument jumps the rails. When examined more closely, it’s simply one more “we know what’s best, as opposed to your claptrap” position, as easily rejected as any other on its own merits–unless one happens to share your sensibilities. (I’m sure we do on many things, BTW.)
I don’t think it elevates religious belief to anything other than what it is (when genuine)–i.e., a sincere belief we’d like to be left alone to exercise. I agree that there are limits, and if the government has a compelling interest–say, vaccinations for terrible diseases–then religious freedom is not boundless. I’d likewise agree that something purely religious–e.g., following it or not impacts only the person making the choice–has no place in public policy. Feel free to eat meat on Fridays in Lent or to marry a person of your own gender. These fall into the rather large category of “none of my business.”
No, I personally hold it axiomatic (<– see? I do it, too) that true rights are all some form of the right to be left alone. Any “right” that requires the accommodation of someone else is not a right, self-evidently to me, though it may well be good social policy and one of many such instances where free men have to accept that no right (mine, to be free to ignore your need) is unlimited. True rights in conflict require resolution, to be sure. Does my right to play my guitar at 3:00 AM trump your right to get a good night’s sleep? Probably not.
I apply the “desert island” test in determining true rights: any real right could be violated on a desert island with only two people on it. The right to express your thoughts? Yep. The right to practice your religion? Yep again. The right to medical care? Uh, no. If it’s a right, it can be violated. Who on the desert island is violating your right to “free” contraception? To a certain level of education? Etc., etc.?
For me, all just social policy should be founded on a deep respect for all free men to make their own way and to be left alone. That isn’t always possible, but we should run contrary to that notion with great reluctance, and only when it serves a compelling need in the least violative way possible. You are free to reject my religious beliefs as nonsense. You should not be free to force me to accept a social policy that imposes on my beliefs unnecessarily, in an overbearing way when alternatives exist that could accomplish the same goal.
Good, because the idea that it’s the existence of a sincere belief, and not the existence of objective evidence to back that belief, that the state should concern itself with, is pretty darn important, on multiple levels.
I’m not a lawyer, but it’s my understanding that rational basis is a very low threshold. In this article on morality as a government interest, the author identifies numerous occasions in which upholding moral standards was sufficient to pass. There you have a scenario: attending church breeds good morals, therefore a law requiring it is rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Without the protections you oppose, that’s a very real possibility.
Should the state then concern itself with protecting the delusional beliefs of the clinically insane, such as paranoid schizophrenics? If not, why not, when those beliefs are evidently sincere and not mere pretensions?
That might be an argument if there was strong and persuasive evidence that attending church did, in fact, breed good morals – evidence that was so overwhelming that it could be judged to override the secular freedoms that such a mandate would violate. There is no such evidence – indeed there might even be evidence for the opposite. Not only that, but we are reluctant to impose even so minor an intrusion and valuable a mandate as mandatory voting. Those things have nothing to do with religious freedom – they are expressions of secular freedoms, in opposition to religions which often do, in fact, require church attendance because… well, because they say so. Conversely, we do recognize the value to society of education and knowledge, thus public education is mandatory up to a certain age.
The problem with the OP’s proposal remains a basic one: it is all very well to propose a world in which freedoms based on religion are denied, and in which laws are based purely on rational interests; however, this is not how laws are actually made, and historically, proposals to “secularize” society tend to result simply in a tyranny of the majority over unpopular religious minorities. Typically, the targets are purely symbolic (like forcing Sikhs to not wear turbans, or Muslims to not wear headscarves) - in the name of social homogenity.
Given that this is exactly what conceptualizing “religious freedoms” were originally designed to prevent, this isn’t exactly a surprising result.
In summary, while it may be a worthwhile goal on its own merits, given how society is currently composed, and how laws are actually made in a democracy, it is likely that any proposal to strip away religious freedoms will do more harm than good; that it will not actually result in greater rationality, but in more targeting of unpopular minorities.
That’s an interesting argument that touches on some issues that have already been mentioned, namely that exactly what you describe has been happening in France and, to a lesser extent, in the province of Quebec, and of course in many other places. France has banned certain religious apparel and Quebec tried (but failed) to ban the wearing of religious symbols by public workers, via a law that was cleverly worded in such a way that it would still have allowed the Christian symbols favored by French Roman Catholics. So it’s an argument worth exploring.
Herewith my exploration: I don’t believe this is a valid argument for religious freedom because it reflects a larger problem of intolerance and marginalization of minorities in those societies. If you strictly enforce religious freedoms, sure, minorities will be able to wear all kinds of funky symbols and do religious things but they will still be discriminated against in such societies – they would still be marginalized and stigmatized in society and have their cultural traditions treated with disdain.
For example, one of the reasons for the riots that have occurred in France in recent years is that African minorities have been marginalized from mainstream society, relegated to their own ghettos for the most part, discriminated against and generally shunned. Quebec has mostly escaped those problems because of some degree of influence from the Canadian culture of inclusion, but it’s still been far less welcoming to minorities than the rest of Canada, and this is reflected not just in the disdain with which Muslim minorities have been treated, but much more generally across the board – for example, the draconian suppression of the English language that’s become so extreme that it sometimes takes on comical proportions. Religious freedoms cannot fix any of those problems because they aren’t issues of religion. Some of these issues require stronger constitutional or statutory secular anti-discrimination protections, others can be achieved only through cultural changes over time.
In other words, religious freedoms address all the wrong problems: they allow the expression of baseless superstitious convictions and hokey symbols, while doing nothing at all about the broader problems of discrimination against minorities in the real issues of life. Or to put it another way, the suppression of religious rights is always a symptom of a larger, more basic, and more important problem of discrimination.
Many conservative religious folk say all the time that being gay is a choice, and therefore it’s okay to discriminate against them, because they can just stop being gay.
Well, sure, no-one would argue that protecting religious freedoms is a panacea that will (or has) prevented minorities from being discriminated against in society generally.
But that isn’t the issue.
What is the issue, is whether stripping away religious-based freedoms would be a net benefit to society.
Put it this way: you clearly are of the opinion that religious symbolism is meaningless: you describe them as “the expression of baseless superstitious convictions and hokey symbols”. Fair enough. So you assign a very low value to that form of expression - as is your right.
Similarly, the majority of the population - who believes in “the expression of baseless superstitious convictions and hokey symbols”, but only if they are their convictions and symbols - is likely to place a very low (or even negative) value on the convictions and symbols of minorities.
However, religious people often place a high value on such symbols (and not only religious people: the motivaton may be as much, or more, cultural and ethnic as it is religious). Given that allowing the expression of such things arguably has some social cost, what should society do?
Your solution, I assume, would be to disallow all such expressions, where they have any cost. That would be a good solution, assuming that it could be enacted equitably. Alyternatively, one could protect religious freedims for everyone.
However, enacting a program disalowing religious freedoms equitably is very unlikely in a democracy. In a democracy, the majority is very unlikely to vote that their own beloved convictions and symbols be disallowed, if they carry a (minor) cost. They are much more likely to disallow the convictions and symbols of the minority. In addition, even assuming completely values-neutral legislation is passed, actual implementation is very likely to favour the majority.
Given this reality, it makes more sense to protect religious freedoms generally, than to outlaw them generally.
I think cultural and ethnic as well as religious dress and symbolism should be reasonably protected under non-discrimination laws as long as they’re not in conflict with other laws or other regulations such as workplace dress standards or safety standards. The problem is that as soon as the grounds for defending some nutty practice becomes “religious belief” it’s suddenly elevated to a whole new level where it’s expected to prevail over rationally based laws. And offering exemptions on that basis alone serves only religious purposes and nothing else.
Religious beliefs are not evidence based. I asked earlier whether, if objective evidence was not to be a determinant for legal rights to exercise a belief in violation of prevailing law, then “should the state then concern itself with protecting the delusional beliefs of the clinically insane, such as paranoid schizophrenics?” The logical parallel seems compelling.
If I were to try to defend the religious protections argument, I would argue that an individual’s personal belief doesn’t carry any weight either; the law typically requires that a person be a bona fide member of an established religion that espouses the belief in question. But I then reject that argument on the basis that it makes no difference if one person has some lunatic belief versus ten thousand of them institutionalizing that belief. A rational secular society has no business pandering to any of it.
I say these things not as someone who is anti-religion because I’m not – I’m actually pretty neutral and a strong traditionalist. I love Christmas! What I’m strongly opposed to is the idea that groundless religious beliefs – most of which were established so long ago that the Dark Ages and fun times like the Inquisition were still a distant future – should have precedence over reason-based laws that exist for the welfare, protection, and security of contemporary society.
The better way is to balance interests. In Canada at least, such interest-balancing is a routine legal exercise: essentially, the courts acknowledge a rights-based interest in the individual exercising a sincere belief in (say) wearing a turban: then it is up to the state to demonstrate a social interest in (say) not wearing a turban under whatever circumstances.
The end result: a Sikh Mountie gets to wear a turban as part of his uniform (one that goes with the uniform, naturally) despite a “law” establishing the Mountie Uniform; OTOH, a Sikh must wear a motorcycle helmet - not a turban - when riding a motorcycle. The reason? There is no significant societal interest in Mounties wearing a specific uniform hat - a Sikh Mountie can do the job (and look just as stylish) wearing a turban (indeed, Sikh soldiers wearing turbans are nothing new in the British Empire). OTOH, the government can demonstrate a strong societal interest in wearing helmets.
This process seems fair, protects both minority and societal interests, and avoids absolutism in either direction. What’s the objection?
No, such definitional games are not compelling - they are the sign of a weak argument.
The law is used to dealing with difficult definitional questions involving motivations.
For example, it is commonly difficult to tell whether killing someone was deliberate premeditated murder (part of the definition of “First Degree” murder) or, OTOH, killing in the heat of the moment (“Second Degree”). The court is unable to look inside the head of a killer and decide what his or her motives were - so they naturally look to all the surrounding circumstances for evidence. No doubt some cases will pose difficult questions for definition - just as some beliefs may not be typically “religious” but more like “random delusions” or “stuff Homer Simpson just made up to get a beer holiday every Tuesday” The law will do what it always does in such cases - namely, invend a bunch of common-law (or, if the legislature gets involved, statutory) tests to divide the wheat from the chaff.
In sum, there will always be a continuum from belief set A (that everyone agrees is a religion) to belief set Z (that Homer Simpson just made up yesterday). The law is used to dealing with situations like this, and will develop tests - that no doubt could be argued about and tweaked - to draw the line. In any event, in the vast majority of cases, there will be no doubt. No-one seriously contends Sikhism is “not a religion”.
On the contrary, a secular society that is a democracy has no choice but to “pander” to all of it - because many (in fact, in the case of the US, the majority) of its citizens are religious, and vote.
The question is, how to best deal with this fact. Left untrammeled, a religious majority would, without question, vote to institute their religion as part of the law. Religious protections for all citizens are a fundamental protection against that.
Well, that looks like an appeal to emotion, which is unlikely to work - religious types will out-emote you every time.
It isn’t a question of one thing “taking precidence” over another. It is a question of how best to order a society made up, in large part, of people who believe in various religions, in a manner that reflects both societal and individual concerns. Part of that reality is that (a) many people belong to minority religions; and (b) many people have invested a great deal of their personal self-identity into affiliation with a religion - even if they don’t believe in the supernatural at all (see, for example, numerous non-theistic liberal Jews).
As I’ve noted, there are two basic ways of dealing with this:
No religious freedoms for anyone - the government to be strictly neutral and not favour any religion - your preference; or
Religious freedoms for everyone, suitably balanced against other interests.
You don’t have to care a whit about religion yourself to see that there are serious drawbacks to the first position - namely, attempts at alleged neutrality on the part of the government (as opposed to individuals asserting their rights) is likely to end up with only a simalcrum of neutrality - in practice, as actual examples have shown, the government (acting in rational self-interest - i.e., getting votes) tends to always favour the majority against minorities.
Mentally ill persons are entitled to the same human rights as anyone else, sure.
The topic is removing that secular freedom from our legal system. Were that to occur, the only protection we’d have from such laws is their political feasibility. In a nation that’s almost three quarters Christian, and with a subset of them being especially politically active and radical, that’s not nearly good enough.
Further, “overwhelming” evidence is not required to pass a rational-basis test, which is what we’d have to rely on in the absence of the free-exercise clause.
Cite? I don’t see any such requirement in the RFRA, for instance.
As I noted to BPC, the bolded portion equates to having no right to the free exercise of religion; a “right” that exists only in the absence of a statute negating it is not a right.
And given that it’s in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and all; and a cornerstone of a liberal, tolerant society; and essential for a pluralistic society of multiple faiths (including non-faiths like atheism) to function, getting rid of it is a profoundly bad idea. We’ve seen what happens when the state is allowed to endorse some religions and hinder others, and it’s an ugly business, full of massacres and oppression.
Lastly, offering exemptions on the basis of religious belief serves human purposes. You’re very attached to the idea that religious beliefs should have no legal protection because they aren’t reason-based or objectively provable. This doesn’t matter. What matters is that people care deeply about religion: practicing theirs, and in some cases, hindering others. That’s why the law must intervene.
That’s the status quo! Religious belief isn’t a magic get-out-of-law-free card. In the face of a narrowly tailored law related to a compelling government interest, the law wins out. Note the lack of murder-cults or a Church of No Speed Limits.
None of those things seem to suggest why religious beliefs, specifically, must be the ones to be protected, though. Why not “beliefs”, or “philosophical positions”? Surely the points you raise here are equally as applicable to someone’s non-religious position as someone else’s religious one?
The reasons are not difficult to seek: these are the views that people feel strongly about as groups, that provide a group identity which, historically, have led to social difficulties when suppressed.
Take for example Sikhs. Sikhism is a religion; it is associated with certain items of dress (such as a turban); it is also, in addition to being attached to certain religious beliefs - a matter of ethnic self-identity. A Sikh will often describe himself as “a Sikh” when asked who he or she is.
There are few other types of beliefs or philosophical positions that have as strong an element of self-identity to them.
I can assure you that my particular, personal philosophical viewpoints are as important to me as those of your average Sikh, or any other religious person. I would often describe myself as an atheist when asked who I am; too, that is a group identity. It’s not an ethnic identity - but then again, neither would Christianity be, and that benefits from religious protection.
So what part of your reasoning doesn’t apply to me? I hope it’s not just that there is no special atheist symbol or garment.
Again, I have no problem with protecting equal freedom of religion. My argument has never been against freedom of religion, but about freedom from the primacy of religion. I don’t buy the argument that this is impossible in a democracy – see my note about Sweden below.
I disagree. Sure it has happened, as have many bad things, but always because of a lack of tolerance which goes hand in hand with insufficient secular protections of meaningful human rights.
That’s not at all what I asked. If you’re going to assert that sincere beliefs must be accommodated under the law without regard for objective evidence, then the delusions of the mentally ill must logically have exactly the same standing as religious beliefs.
In that case RFRA laws are even worse, more regressive, and more Medieval than I had even imagined.
Right, and I somewhat agree. The question is whether freedom of religion – a fine principle – should extend over the line into primacy of religion at all, ever, under any circumstances, and how far over the line we’re willing to take it.
I was trying to think of examples of countries I could use as models and came up with some interesting data. There’s a Wikipedia article on the subject of “Irreligion by country” as measured by the answer “no” to the question “is religion an important part of your daily life?” Here are some selected numbers – the percentage that say religion is NOT important to them:
Kuwait 2%
Democratic Republic of Congo 5%
United States 36%
Canada 61%
Sweden 88%
Does anyone see a trend here? It looks like an inverse correlation between religious primacy and those societal freedoms in which religion likes to meddle.
It reconfirms my faith in the Scandinavian model of social democracy. Here’s an interesting statement from a site that delineates “10 fundamentals of religion in Sweden”:
Christianity and the church may have maintained ritual and cultural importance in Sweden, but this has not prevented the country from becoming one of the world’s most liberal societies. In some areas where religious and social conservatism often prevail, such as the right to abortion, no serious debate exists in Sweden. Living together and having children without being married is also socially acceptable, and recent statistics suggest that more than 40 per cent of first-time parents in Sweden have children before getting married … in 2009 [the Church of Sweden] decided to begin performing same-sex marriage ceremonies as Sweden legalised same-sex marriage in the same year. Since then, 3,273 women and 2,102 men have married a person of the same sex.
It seems that those 88% of godless Swedes have got it right. There is probably more religious freedom in Sweden than just about anywhere else, because there’s more social freedom and tolerance in general. But they do it without trying to enshrine primacy of religion via regressive and repressive Medieval legislation like RFRA. This is what I’m talking about. We can do it, too.
Anyway, I reject the notion, on a practical level, that irreducible truths exist, except as subjective axioms. That includes the one you offer here, though I happen to agree with it. I personally believe there are irreducible truths created by God, but I don’t offer them as social policy for that reason alone. Again, that’s where I think your argument jumps the rails. When examined more closely, it’s simply one more “we know what’s best, as opposed to your claptrap” position, as easily rejected as any other on its own merits–unless one happens to share your sensibilities. (I’m sure we do on many things, BTW.)