“Gut feeling” - the thing you express when you’re talking out your ass.
Annoyed, it appears that this thread has evolved into an intricate discussion of US law and the protection of civil liberties, in which Kimtsu seems to be admirably filling the role of fighting ignorance, and SlackerInc seems to be admirably playing the role of SlackerInc — potentially providing a source of education for any lurkers and browsers who stumble into this thread, thereby increasing its value immensely.
I, however, am but a simple man with simple questions.
I am sure you feel that No.2 has been answered already by the article you linked to (a point on which we are not in agreement).
The other questions, however are not answered by the article, and so I would appreciate your response.
Please provide honest answers.
If you feel uncomfortable answering these questions on a public message board, that’s OK.
After all, my initial invitation was for you to ask yourself these questions, so if you can at least do that, I think it will be an exercise of some small value.
I readily admit my views on religion are not nuanced. I don’t believe the topic calls for such nuance. I apply nuance to my analysis of many other subjects, much to the chagrin of many people here.
I don’t think a lack of nuance on religion has anything to do with bein a doofus.
SlackerInc is playing Robin to Kimstu’s Batman. I’m firmly convinced that the real reason that Batman took on a sidekick is so that he could explain the plot of the comic to the slower readers.
:dubious: But omitting the issue of religion entirely in a national constitution because you personally despise religion is rather like somebody deciding not to put a roof on his house because he hates rain.
The thing you’re trying to ignore is an extremely powerful and pervasive phenomenon that has always had a huge influence on the conditions of the world you live in. Choosing to simply disregard it because you think it’s not worthy of your notice is only going to cause shitloads of trouble for you and everybody else.
It’s just a thing people believe without justification, like “everything happens for a reason”, or “you can do anything you set your mind to if you believe in yourself”. It doesn’t deserve a special category.
But if you don’t give religion a special category on which government is officially neutral, how are you going to protect individual freedom of belief/ideology without allowing all sorts of irrational beliefs/ideologies to get officially entangled with government activities? I believe I’ve asked you that a couple of times already in recent posts.
Asked and answered: the same way you protect people’s right to believe in Austrian economics or in the efficacy of “unschooling”. We don’t need, and I don’t want, a special category for religion.
That’s actually not an answer to my question. How do you propose to protect individual freedom of belief/ideology—whether on religious matters or anything else—without allowing all sorts of irrational beliefs/ideologies to get officially entangled with government activities?
The example I gave previously was of school boards trying to impose sectarian beliefs on public school curricula and activities. For instance, suppose a democratically elected majority of school board members, holding constitutionally permitted personal beliefs in favor of creationist doctrine, votes to require schools to teach creationism in science classes. Under the Constitution as it currently exists, they are not allowed to implement this decision because it is easily demonstrated in a court challenge that creationist doctrine forms part of a religious belief system, and the First Amendment clause forbidding government establishment of religion makes it unconstitutional to proselytize for a religious belief system in public schools.
How will you be able to block such actions if you remove from the Constitution all prohibitions against government entanglement with religion?
SlackerInc, I’m getting the very strong impression that you have not a vestige of a clue how to prevent such abuses of freedom of belief without explicitly addressing the concept of religious faith. You keep baselessly reiterating that “we don’t need” to assign a “special category” to religion in the Constitution, while stubbornly ignoring the realistic practical reasons why we do need to.
Your preferred system would block people from teaching creationism but not from teaching Austrian economics, which is also hooey, just like creationism. So maybe the answer is just to do what you need to do in local politics: influence the school board, or run for it yourself.
It’s pretty clear that the reason to have this constitutional protection for religious freedom is not to prevent schools from teaching children nonsense. It’s actually because you believe that people’s own individual brands of nonsense should be their right to believe without being taught a different brand of nonsense. And I don’t give two shits about that.
I think I’ve been unfair to The Slack One here. Now that I’ve thought about his ideal society, I can see how it can benefit me. Let’s say I’m hankering for a nice meal at a great restaurant that’s all the rage lately. I go there and order what I’m told is the best thing they serve. The server presents to me what can only be described as abominable. I demand to see the chef. The chef comes out and tells me I have no appreciation for fine cuisine. I kill him on the spot.
There’s no government to set laws. There aren’t any courts to which I would agree to try me for killing the chef. No problem!
Although I’m no adherent of the Austrian school, it’s ludicrous to claim that its particular level of hooeyness is just like the hooeyness of creationism.
Austrian economics is a heavily flawed model of a very complicated and poorly understood set of social-science phenomena that nonetheless correctly reflects most of their basic facts, such as the existence of markets, supply and demand, etc. Creationism considered as science, on the other hand, is a completely incoherent, non-predictive, thoroughly falsified model of a quite well-understood set of natural science phenomena that gets most of their basic facts totally wrong.
Trying to pretend that the damage done to the cause of education by teaching Austrian economics as economics is in any way comparable to the damage done by teaching creationism as science just emphasizes how totally unworkable your proposed constitutional reform would be.
Exactly as I said: your foolish puritanism about not allowing the Constitution to mention religion would result in more imposition of religious bigotry and obscurantism, not less. And you don’t have a clue what could be done about it except the feeble suggestion of attempting to persuade the bigots and obscurantists pretty please not to.
It’s both (bearing in mind that the category of “individual brands of nonsense” also includes personal faith in the nonexistence of deities or other supernatural entities). Which is why defenders of religious freedom are successful in using this constitutional protection to prevent schools from teaching children nonsense under the name of science.
Yeah, I think I’ll stick with the system that’s actually reasonably effective in defending governmental secularism and freedom of individual belief, rather than your proposed “reform” that essentially says “Let the religious bigots take over, as long as the official foundation of our laws is preserved from the contamination of explicitly mentioning religion”.
In fact, SlackerInc, your argument is so stupid that it makes you sound rather like a not-very-bright fundamentalist pretending to be an atheist for purposes of rhetorical persuasion. “I’ve got it, brethren! We’ll say we despise religion so much that we don’t think the Constitution should even mention religion, thus inspiring the godless heathens to remove constitutional protections for religious freedom and separation of church and state! And then, Commandments in every courtroom, Bibles in every science class, one man and one woman on every marriage license! Glory, glory hallelujah!”
You take me for an anarchist? 
That’s pretty funny, considering that I have a staunchly anarchist friend and he half-jokingly calls me the most “statist” person he knows. I’m for all kinds of “nanny state” stuff like Michael Bloomberg‘s ban on large sodas and Beto’s gun confiscation plan. I would even ideally like to ban the sale of baby formula over the counter without a prescription, although I know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
There are plenty of progressive and very non-anarchistic countries in the West with no equivalent religion clauses in their constitutions, yet they manage to avoid theocracy somehow.
Ah, so you’re a moron in addition to a hypocrite. Color me unsurprised.
Moron? Okay, standard insult, whatever.
Hypocrite, though? About what?
I take it you’re still driving on them thar gubmint roads. I take it police are still patrolling your neighborhood. I take it the local fire department would respond if your home were to be on fire. The list goes on.
What the fuck are you on about? 
Not only am I not an anarchist, I’m not remotely a libertarian and in fact I really despise that philosophy. I am for activist government and high taxes on the rich. Are you confusing me with some other poster or something?
Nope. I’m confusing the content of your posts with the content of your posts.
What the hell?