HomerJay wrote:Seth wrote:HomerJay wrote:Seth wrote:HomerJay wrote:Free exercise of religion is bullshit, the sooner it's abandoned, the better.
Your opinion is noted, and I have no problem with people ABANDONING religion if they choose to do so freely, but what we're experiencing right now is not the free abandoning of religion, it's attempts to SUPPRESS religion in society.
No, you misunderstand, it is the notion of Freedom of Religion that is bullshit and it is this notion that should be abandoned.
Your (gross minority) opinion is noted. Eighty percent of the population of the planet disagrees with you however.
Made up stats, huh? Wrong here as you were earlier in your response to the OP, there are many secular movements within the religious community, this is perhaps easier to see in Europe where the arguments about Established religion are more explicit.
So? Secularism in government and religion are not mutually exclusive. The fact remains that eighty percent of the population of the planet adheres to some sort of religious belief, and I'd argue that even the vast majority of atheists are also practicing the Atheist religion.
Seth wrote:No-one is trying to supress religion, merely to kick it out of the public sphere, back into men's heads, when it belongs.
Er, that IS suppression of religion, most explicitly. People have every right to express their religion publicly, and the worst and most heinous abuses of human rights have occurred during attempts to suppress the public expression of religion and impose secularism. Between Stalin and Mao, nearly 100 million people were murdered most brutally by secularists and atheists in an attempt to suppress religion in the public sphere. Interestingly, one of the first things to reemerge after the fall of secular communist tyranny was religion.
More BS Seth, people have no right to express their religion publically.
Sure they do. It's right there in the Constitution. More importantly, it's right there in actual human behavior. People assert the right to express their religion publicly and defend it against those who would suppress it.
Freedom of Religious Expression only makes sense in the context of one religion trying to supress another (as has historically been the case),
Or the context of secularist attempting to suppress all religion. So what?
once we have established that no religion will be able to harass another we don't need Freedom of Religious Expression.
But we still have the Atheists to harass people of religion, so the right still applies.
If you think we do, you need to what is different about Religious Expression compared to any other form of Expression.
I need to what? Show? Well, what's different about religion is that it serves a very central and important place in the lives of believers and history shows us that great evil results when such beliefs are suppressed by other religions or by Atheists. Religion is not so much different as it is a special sub-set of freedom of expression generally that society recognizes as important enough to require special mention and attention. In part this is because religious practice is not always merely speech or expression and often includes specific actions and places of worship that are requirements of religious practice that require protection in the law. For example, certain American Indian religions require the use of Peyote, which is a controlled substance. Without an express right to "freedom of religion," which includes in it's ambit protection of the substances needed to properly practice the religion, a mere right to free expression would not properly protect religious practice.
And then you need to show why this difference is sufficiently important to warranty a Freedom of Expression specifically related to Religion.
Done. But to add a bit more, it's important because society says its important.
Good luck with that.
Otherwise, we all enjoy Freedom of Expression, with attendent time and place restrictions and subject to an equal assessment of legality.
One could theoretically stretch the meaning of the term "expression" to include all forms of religious practice, but that would leave us with potential unintended consequences in other areas, whereas by explicitly protecting both religious expression and religious practice, as well as religious objects, substances and locations, society holds that protection of religion is indeed more important, and more comprehensively protected, than simple freedom of speech or expression.
It's a deliberate choice that society has made to provide additional protections for free exercise (not just expression) of religion, and society has every right to do so, even if you disagree.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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