Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams
once observed that American religious freedom simply means the other
religions can basically do anything that isn't already forbidden to
protestants. That's probably the germ of this note. You see, I'm an
atheist and an anti-theist, the latter of which means that I believe
that religion is a bad thing for humanity. I also believe that Che
Guevara shirts are a bad thing for humanity, but I don't want to ban
either one. That being said, we need some ground rules and I think I've
boiled down the ground rules to two that should cover any conflict
modern moderate religion and secular people might have in the future.
Whether the religious among you will find my rules acceptable or not is
up each of you, but please understand that what I'm trying to achieve
here is something that's fair to both sides and allows for long-term
coexistence without major conflict. What I'd like to see, someday, is
for each individual human being to decide on their own whether or not
anything supernatural is likely enough to believe in and for all of them
to reach the conclusion that such is not the case. For that to happen,
nobody can be coerced in any fashion into leaving their faith or being
forced to doubt it. Neither of my rules will cause a single person to
need to abandon their faith, but, depending on how it shakes out, they
make make certain religions untenable. If a religion can be made
untenable by the rules I have come up with, I put to you that it is not
the sort of religion that can exist in an increasingly pluralistic
society without some immoral and irrational practices. Some of you will
object to these rules, I suspect, and at least some of those objections
will be based upon the fact that you consider religious freedom to be an
absolute one. However, like all individual freedoms, a balance of
rights and interests must be in place to allow for coexistence.
Religious freedom can and does come into conflict with the individual
rights of those that are not part of the religion. Plenty of believers
and their institutions of worship do not conflict in this way, and I
think you'll find that, if they don't, they will find themselves quite
unscathed by my rules. Without further ado, the rules are: 1). Religions
are free to engage in any activity so long as it would be legal were
they secular. 2). A uniform standard of what can result in the loss of
custodial rights must be decided upon and religious parents must adhere
to it to precisely the same degree as if they were not religious.
Further explanation is needed, and I will expand on these rules
presently.
The first rule is easy enough to understand with some helpful examples. Circumcision is a religious ritual for Jews and it is a perfectly legal medical procedure performed on the vast majority of newborns in the United States. A mohel performing a circumcision with his mouth and sucking out the blood is legal for certain American Jewish sects, but is child molestation (among other things) for a secular person. In order for the first rule to be in compliance, secular doctors would have to be allowed to perform a circumcision in this manner as well, but they are not. Good reasons, among them cases on record of infants contracting venereal diseases in this way, exist for not sucking on the bleeding penis of a baby boy and religious freedom ends where the rights of a newborn to not have a germ-ridden mouth suck on his open pudenda wound begin. Certain religions use incense as part of their religious rituals and secular people can use incense to make their homes smell better. Some Native American tribes are allowed to use peyote in their religious rituals but peyote is illegal for secular people. In order for the first rule to be in compliance, peyote would have to be illegal for all to use or legal for all to use. As you've probably gathered, there's a pattern here. Disallowing something because it is religious, praying to the east, for example, is a violation of religious freedom, but religious freedom does not extend to something becoming legal that would otherwise be illegal. Right now, I can wear a yarmulke with some Catholic priest robes while saying the protestant version of the Lord's Prayer and kneeling on a Muslim prayer mat before a statue of Buddha in my Mormon magic underpants and that's all completely legal for both me and the various religions that contain those disparate elements. Many religious people probably don't even understand that some of what they're talking about when they talk about religious freedom is actually special privilege extended to religion. All religions deserve is equal protection under the law, because that's all anyone deserves. If you feel differently then you're just Napoleon in the Animal Farm explaining that some animals are more equal than others.
We go into deep waters with rule two. Determining when parents lose custodial rights is difficult. In fact, it's probably the most difficult question we'll ever face as human beings. Of course, never isn't an option. If the parents are on meth, knocking the kid from room to room, molesting the kid, et cetera, you take the kid away. That much is fairly uncontroversial. What is controversial is where the line is drawn. Some atheists think that raising a kid religious is grounds to lose custodial rights in and of itself. Well, that is, at best, unhelpful, and, at worst, barking mad. So I've established that one cannot give all parents license to keep their children no matter what and one cannot also take away all children being raised religious. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a middle ground to determine. Filling children's heads with nonsense cannot be grounds for losing custodial rights in and of itself, because secular parents do this all the time too. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, are the classic examples, but we've also got American tall tales, certain founding father myths (the cherry tree thing never made any sense anyway, along with being completely false), and the myth of the stork. Where does one draw the line? Here's where it gets dicey because, while that almost sounds like a rhetorical question, it isn't one and we urgently need to come up with an answer. Is there really that much of a difference between telling a child they or someone they love very much is hellbound to the point of giving them nightmares and telling a child that they'll be sent to a basement akin Josef Fritzl's if they don't behave? Many who grew up being terrorized by visions of hell and have escaped a life trapped in such religious terror know just how abusive it can be. Take the case of the Amish, who can stop their children's education at eighth grade, give no scientific education, and give radically divergent schooling based upon gender. Opinions may differ on whether or not this is abusive, but what is clear is that these people are allowed to educate their children in a manner unavailable to anyone without religious reasons and that cannot stand. Now, that may not mean that the Amish have to stop doing what they're doing. What they are doing would have to become available to secular people as well for it to continue, however. If the law of the United States says that secular people educating their children in such a manner would be harmful enough to cause them to lose custodial rights, then such would be the case for Amish children as well. Only the granting of special religious privileges, distinct from religious freedom, allows them to do as they do. Amish children are not equal before the law and they must be if we are to be a nation of laws instead of a nation of men.
Little doubt in my mind exists that what I just wrote will be controversial. How controversial, I don't know. Before anyone gets angry though, ask yourself how good you feel about defending your right to do something for which I would be arrested. Remember, the law is backed up by force. If I were to do things some religions are allowed to do anytime they like, eventually a person with a gun would come to my home and shoot me until I was dead if that's what it took to stop me from breaking the law. The same government would look at a religion doing that and dare not even speak ill of it because it is a part of a religion. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, I'm not sure what it will take. Religious freedom nothing, we're talking about religion being above the law and we need to fix that. I said in the beginning that I think religion is a bad thing for humanity, and I stand by that, but that doesn't mean for a second that I will take it away from you. Go to church, go out to lunch afterwards, praise Jesus (or whatever deity) every second you draw breath and can put ink to paper. Raise your children in the various festivals and ceremonies that dotted your own childhood with wonderful memories, many of which I share. Rejoice at new life, bless the union of two people who love each other, and grieve to your deity when those about whom you care pass. Excellent. What I can't abide, and what I will not tolerate, is the thought that, in the name of the freedom you have to enjoy your religion in the ways that you do, there's children out their with fundamentalist bootheels on their necks. Gay kids, kids locked in closets until the devil's out of them, girls circumcised with hot stones, girls dead from honor killings, and on and on. Believe me, I want to protect your religious freedom, but you have to help me protect my freedom and the freedom of those who follow other faiths. Ground rules will be required as we move into a more tolerant and pluralistic age. Please don't think I want to take down Nativity scenes, pull apart some poor kid's hands while he's praying in school, or put a cross in urine, but you have to be prepared to put limits on religious freedom because that freedom is power that cannot be absolute. We know what absolute power does.
-Frank
The first rule is easy enough to understand with some helpful examples. Circumcision is a religious ritual for Jews and it is a perfectly legal medical procedure performed on the vast majority of newborns in the United States. A mohel performing a circumcision with his mouth and sucking out the blood is legal for certain American Jewish sects, but is child molestation (among other things) for a secular person. In order for the first rule to be in compliance, secular doctors would have to be allowed to perform a circumcision in this manner as well, but they are not. Good reasons, among them cases on record of infants contracting venereal diseases in this way, exist for not sucking on the bleeding penis of a baby boy and religious freedom ends where the rights of a newborn to not have a germ-ridden mouth suck on his open pudenda wound begin. Certain religions use incense as part of their religious rituals and secular people can use incense to make their homes smell better. Some Native American tribes are allowed to use peyote in their religious rituals but peyote is illegal for secular people. In order for the first rule to be in compliance, peyote would have to be illegal for all to use or legal for all to use. As you've probably gathered, there's a pattern here. Disallowing something because it is religious, praying to the east, for example, is a violation of religious freedom, but religious freedom does not extend to something becoming legal that would otherwise be illegal. Right now, I can wear a yarmulke with some Catholic priest robes while saying the protestant version of the Lord's Prayer and kneeling on a Muslim prayer mat before a statue of Buddha in my Mormon magic underpants and that's all completely legal for both me and the various religions that contain those disparate elements. Many religious people probably don't even understand that some of what they're talking about when they talk about religious freedom is actually special privilege extended to religion. All religions deserve is equal protection under the law, because that's all anyone deserves. If you feel differently then you're just Napoleon in the Animal Farm explaining that some animals are more equal than others.
We go into deep waters with rule two. Determining when parents lose custodial rights is difficult. In fact, it's probably the most difficult question we'll ever face as human beings. Of course, never isn't an option. If the parents are on meth, knocking the kid from room to room, molesting the kid, et cetera, you take the kid away. That much is fairly uncontroversial. What is controversial is where the line is drawn. Some atheists think that raising a kid religious is grounds to lose custodial rights in and of itself. Well, that is, at best, unhelpful, and, at worst, barking mad. So I've established that one cannot give all parents license to keep their children no matter what and one cannot also take away all children being raised religious. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a middle ground to determine. Filling children's heads with nonsense cannot be grounds for losing custodial rights in and of itself, because secular parents do this all the time too. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman, are the classic examples, but we've also got American tall tales, certain founding father myths (the cherry tree thing never made any sense anyway, along with being completely false), and the myth of the stork. Where does one draw the line? Here's where it gets dicey because, while that almost sounds like a rhetorical question, it isn't one and we urgently need to come up with an answer. Is there really that much of a difference between telling a child they or someone they love very much is hellbound to the point of giving them nightmares and telling a child that they'll be sent to a basement akin Josef Fritzl's if they don't behave? Many who grew up being terrorized by visions of hell and have escaped a life trapped in such religious terror know just how abusive it can be. Take the case of the Amish, who can stop their children's education at eighth grade, give no scientific education, and give radically divergent schooling based upon gender. Opinions may differ on whether or not this is abusive, but what is clear is that these people are allowed to educate their children in a manner unavailable to anyone without religious reasons and that cannot stand. Now, that may not mean that the Amish have to stop doing what they're doing. What they are doing would have to become available to secular people as well for it to continue, however. If the law of the United States says that secular people educating their children in such a manner would be harmful enough to cause them to lose custodial rights, then such would be the case for Amish children as well. Only the granting of special religious privileges, distinct from religious freedom, allows them to do as they do. Amish children are not equal before the law and they must be if we are to be a nation of laws instead of a nation of men.
Little doubt in my mind exists that what I just wrote will be controversial. How controversial, I don't know. Before anyone gets angry though, ask yourself how good you feel about defending your right to do something for which I would be arrested. Remember, the law is backed up by force. If I were to do things some religions are allowed to do anytime they like, eventually a person with a gun would come to my home and shoot me until I was dead if that's what it took to stop me from breaking the law. The same government would look at a religion doing that and dare not even speak ill of it because it is a part of a religion. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, I'm not sure what it will take. Religious freedom nothing, we're talking about religion being above the law and we need to fix that. I said in the beginning that I think religion is a bad thing for humanity, and I stand by that, but that doesn't mean for a second that I will take it away from you. Go to church, go out to lunch afterwards, praise Jesus (or whatever deity) every second you draw breath and can put ink to paper. Raise your children in the various festivals and ceremonies that dotted your own childhood with wonderful memories, many of which I share. Rejoice at new life, bless the union of two people who love each other, and grieve to your deity when those about whom you care pass. Excellent. What I can't abide, and what I will not tolerate, is the thought that, in the name of the freedom you have to enjoy your religion in the ways that you do, there's children out their with fundamentalist bootheels on their necks. Gay kids, kids locked in closets until the devil's out of them, girls circumcised with hot stones, girls dead from honor killings, and on and on. Believe me, I want to protect your religious freedom, but you have to help me protect my freedom and the freedom of those who follow other faiths. Ground rules will be required as we move into a more tolerant and pluralistic age. Please don't think I want to take down Nativity scenes, pull apart some poor kid's hands while he's praying in school, or put a cross in urine, but you have to be prepared to put limits on religious freedom because that freedom is power that cannot be absolute. We know what absolute power does.
-Frank
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