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Satanists Cite Hobby Lobby In Campaign For Religious Exemption To Abortion Laws

Luftwaffe said:
#1 Gather a huge amount of people

#2 Show them and discuss about abortion, absolutely no bias allowed, only discuss the procedure and state of the fetus

#3 Ask people afterwards their view on abortion in terms of their morals

#4 Record data from the experiment

#5 Publish data which then can point to whether or not abortion may be seen as ethical or not.

^ Basically the scientific method but I left the hypothesis part out.
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You have an extraordinarily naive view of social science and ethics.
 
Redress said:
Well, no. It actually, assuming it got that far, force SCOTUS to further clarify a murky decision. SCOTUS did bring this on themselves by stating in the original decision that it was quite narrow, then clarifying the next week that it wasn't so narrow, then issued another ruling which contradicted part of the Hobby Lobby ruling. Right now, no one knows for sure just how things really are.

And in an era where congress is thinking of suing the president for doing the same things every other president has done, this is not even close to the stupidest.
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I expect that the Satanist lawsuit will be struck down on the basis that their concerns are contrived. There is no coherent or consistent Satanist tradition that they can point to as the basis of their complaint. In addition, the parts of the law they object to do not require them to do anything; they are not being denied the choice to have an abortion and access to an abortion isn't being hindered. They are simply receiving information in the form of pamphlets and what not. I doubt that any religion would be granted an exception from the law on the basis that they didn't want to be handed a pamphlet.

I suspect that most of the people going bats over the Hobby Lobby ruling haven't bothered to learn anything about the law and haven't read the ruling.
 
tacomancer said:
Satanists Cite Hobby Lobby In Campaign For Religious Exemption To Abortion Laws



Bold added by me

The bold outlines the crux of the suit. Basically the satanic church sees it as an affront when court decisions are made by scientifically unfounded views, which happened by the SCOTUS decision. So their argument is if religion is so sacred that it can be held to a higher standard than actual reality (science), then they seek a ruling as their church believes that science is the supreme font of knowledge.

Its an interesting twist on the SCOTUS decision and I am of two minds. While I would love for there to be fewer regulations that are only there to get around Roe versus Wade, which causes harm to women. I also think the SCOTUS ruling is dangerous at its core for our society and really, we shouldn't be using it to even further positive interests.

On the other hand, between this and the Baphomet statue in Oklahoma, these guys are superb trolls and they are just plain fun to watch people use pro-religious laws for their full extent, hopefully to educate those people who can't understand the first amendment. Its amusing, but still, its sad that the recent SCOTUS decision is creating these kinds of situations and it would have been better if they had ruled another way.
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Roe vs Wade doesnt cause physical harm, though pregnancy might. It does harm natural rights though (dependent on whether you believe in the soul or not). The satanists are wrong though. The HL case was about the right not to be forced by the govt to do something which puts a substantial burden on your right to freely exercise your religion. This would only apply to abortion providers if they were being forced to so something which went against their religion. Are the abortion clinics religious corporations?
 
Luftwaffe said:
Enlighten me.
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Define Bias.
Define Morals.
Define Ethics.
Define Huge.
Define Fetus.
Define the "Experiment."
Has this been done before? Why/Why not?
Who is your intended population? USA? World?
How would you support the generalizability of your results?
How would you demonstrate that the results are valid? Reliable?
There are a host of issues that you'd have to confront before scientific analysis would be possible in the scenario you outlined.
There isn't really enough information present to be able to adequately critique in terms of potential confounds.
 
Paschendale said:
I don't know why people claim that science can't tell us good and evil, or right and wrong. Of course it can. Science is just the study of reality, of facts. Actions and choices create results. Those are facts that can be studied and examined. I don't see why this confuses people.
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Because facts do not in themselves disclose values, which have to be assumed in order to interpret facts as having a moral valence.

I watched a Ted Talk by Sam Harris in which he made a similar claim about religion and its treatment of women. While his claim seemed to be that facts alone gave us a basis for morality, he had to constantly refer to what causes "human flourishing" and "human suffering"--as if it were also a fact that these aren't values, but are rather found in some natural law somewhere.

Now, to be clear, I more or less agree with the values he seemed to advocate (though I can think of some counter-examples). That's not the point, however: the values must be present in order for the rest of the argument to work, and those values are not in the world, but rather, a product of human intention.
 
Yeah, this ruling made me wish for a few moments I had held on to my company. Being a Thelemite, I can think of all kinds of laws I would have been able to simply ignore.
 
Paschendale said:
Sure it does. It can study outcomes and see if the results of abortion are happier, healthier, and wealthier women and families. As it turns out, legal abortion does that. And what better measure of morality than the creation of good for lots of people?

I don't know why people claim that science can't tell us good and evil, or right and wrong. Of course it can. Science is just the study of reality, of facts. Actions and choices create results. Those are facts that can be studied and examined. I don't see why this confuses people.
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Science can't measure good and evil. Those are hypothetical constructs. Hypothetical constructs don't lend themselves to empirical data. Scientists can analyze data and then offer their opinion as to whether it was good or evil, but science itself cannot measure good nor evil.
 
tacomancer said:
Honestly I hope they do. The scotus ****ed up but there's no fixing that so use it for good where you can
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They will just employ the "no true Scottsman" fallacy. Five Catholics control the court. If the Catholic church can get away with the Inquisition, the silent consent of the Holocaust, and pedophile priest coverups, this is nothing.
 
LowDown said:
I expect that the Satanist lawsuit will be struck down on the basis that their concerns are contrived. There is no coherent or consistent Satanist tradition that they can point to as the basis of their complaint. In addition, the parts of the law they object to do not require them to do anything; they are not being denied the choice to have an abortion and access to an abortion isn't being hindered. They are simply receiving information in the form of pamphlets and what not. I doubt that any religion would be granted an exception from the law on the basis that they didn't want to be handed a pamphlet.

I suspect that most of the people going bats over the Hobby Lobby ruling haven't bothered to learn anything about the law and haven't read the ruling.
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Body freedom is a Satanist tradition. Your understanding of their lawsuit is also flawed.
 
CycloneWanderer said:
Define Bias.
Define Morals.
Define Ethics.
Define Huge.
Define Fetus.
Define the "Experiment."
Has this been done before? Why/Why not?
Who is your intended population? USA? World?
How would you support the generalizability of your results?
How would you demonstrate that the results are valid? Reliable?
There are a host of issues that you'd have to confront before scientific analysis would be possible in the scenario you outlined.
There isn't really enough information present to be able to adequately critique in terms of potential confounds.
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Get a definition for all the defines, has this been done before? Most likely no, however would that even matter? Intended population is USA, after all its our laws to be affected that we will vote on, support generalizability due to having such a huge and random population in the experiment/survey (there is no controlled variable for this particular study so I will refer to it as a survey). Results are valid due to such big group, no definitive answer, it will possibly give an answer to the question of the ethics of abortion.

There isn't that much, most of what you posted doesn't really discredit anything I posted.
 
Luftwaffe said:
Get a definition for all the defines, has this been done before? Most likely no, however would that even matter? Intended population is USA, after all its our laws to be affected that we will vote on, support generalizability due to having such a huge and random population in the experiment/survey (there is no controlled variable for this particular study so I will refer to it as a survey). Results are valid due to such big group, no definitive answer, it will possibly give an answer to the question of the ethics of abortion.

There isn't that much, most of what you posted doesn't really discredit anything I posted.
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Your idea is a simple survey with a large sample size. And you think this hasn't been done before? Like I said: naive. Your post discredits you far more effectively than anything I could contribute. You gloss over the "defines," yet defining variables is often one of the most important and challenging aspects of social scienctific research.
 
CycloneWanderer said:
Your idea is a simple survey with a large sample size. And you think this hasn't been done before? Like I said: naive. Your post discredits you far more effectively than anything I could contribute. You gloss over the "defines," yet defining variables is often one of the most important and challenging aspects of social scienctific research.
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For abortion? I'm not sure that has been done before, the point isn't to find the answer though, it's to get as close to it as possible, you can't survey every single person in the world (the U.S is pretty damn big too, it's impossible to survey every single American).

Also yes you can gloss over the defines, get Oxford English Dictionary, that is literally the most definitive dictionary there is for the English language, what it says goes.

Also, you're naive, you don't really need to define moral at all, only ethics. This survey is geared towards the society as a whole not an individual.

That's my idea :applaud Great job discovering my idea which I had made so very clear to everyone!
 
Redress said:
The courts would have a real hard time with that. There are a number of ways the courts could rule against the Satanists in this, most simply in that the state does have a legitimate interest in regulating abortion and that the laws in place are the least obtrusive ways to achieve that interest, but arguing that the Satanists are insincere about something that fits in exactly with their belief system is probably not one of those ways.
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The Hobby Lobby decision discusses the sincerity requirement and past decisions that established it. What law, specifically, are you drawing your "legitimate interest" and "least obtrusive" standards from?

The second sounds like the "least restrictive means" standard set by the RFRA--the one the HHS rule at issue in Hobby Lobby failed to meet. The first sounds like the language of rational basis review--but courts do not apply the rational basis test in abortion cases.

In Casey in 1992, the Court established a new, sort of squishy standard, under which laws restricting abortion before the fetus was viable were constitutional as long as they did not impose an "undue burden" on the mother's right to terminate her pregnancy. This relaxed (a lot) the "strict scrutiny" standard the Court had applied in Roe v. Wade, when it declared abortion to be a fundamental right.

But Casey did not go so far as to apply the very relaxed "rational basis" standard in determining whether abortion laws are constitutional. The Court is no longer willing to claim abortion is a fundamental constitutional right, and under the "undue burden" standard state laws can restrict it pretty sharply without violating the Constitution. The laws requiring women to be given certain information before they receive abortions, which seem to have the Satanists' panties in a bunch, are an example of this.
 
Redress said:
Body freedom is a Satanist tradition. Your understanding of their lawsuit is also flawed.
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If you want a real riot-a-minute, check out the news on their website.

They held a Satanic same-sex marriage ceremony at the gravesite of Fred Plelps' mother about a year ago.

You can't make this garbage up!
 
tacomancer said:
The bold outlines the crux of the suit. Basically the satanic church sees it as an affront when court decisions are made by scientifically unfounded views, which happened by the SCOTUS decision. So their argument is if religion is so sacred that it can be held to a higher standard than actual reality (science), then they seek a ruling as their church believes that science is the supreme font of knowledge.

Its an interesting twist on the SCOTUS decision and I am of two minds. While I would love for there to be fewer regulations that are only there to get around Roe versus Wade, which causes harm to women. I also think the SCOTUS ruling is dangerous at its core for our society and really, we shouldn't be using it to even further positive interests.

On the other hand, between this and the Baphomet statue in Oklahoma, these guys are superb trolls and they are just plain fun to watch people use pro-religious laws for their full extent, hopefully to educate those people who can't understand the first amendment. Its amusing, but still, its sad that the recent SCOTUS decision is creating these kinds of situations and it would have been better if they had ruled another way.
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Where's the law that says law has to be scientifically sound? :shrug:
 
matchlight said:
The Hobby Lobby decision discusses the sincerity requirement and past decisions that established it. What law, specifically, are you drawing your "legitimate interest" and "least obtrusive" standards from?

The second sounds like the "least restrictive means" standard set by the RFRA--the one the HHS rule at issue in Hobby Lobby failed to meet. The first sounds like the language of rational basis review--but courts do not apply the rational basis test in abortion cases.

In Casey in 1992, the Court established a new, sort of squishy standard, under which laws restricting abortion before the fetus was viable were constitutional as long as they did not impose an "undue burden" on the mother's right to terminate her pregnancy. This relaxed (a lot) the "strict scrutiny" standard the Court had applied in Roe v. Wade, when it declared abortion to be a fundamental right.

But Casey did not go so far as to apply the very relaxed "rational basis" standard in determining whether abortion laws are constitutional. The Court is no longer willing to claim abortion is a fundamental constitutional right, and under the "undue burden" standard state laws can restrict it pretty sharply without violating the Constitution. The laws requiring women to be given certain information before they receive abortions, which seem to have the Satanists' panties in a bunch, are an example of this.
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The Hobby Lobby ruling is where I took that from. The reason a level of scrutiny applies(though it is probably not rational basis review) is that religion is at issue. Again, see the Hobby Lobby ruling. Sincerity is not an issue since at issue is a core belief of the religion: TENETS |. As long as it is a religion, you can't get much more sincere than that.
 
radcen said:
Where's the law that says law has to be scientifically sound? :shrug:
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Nowhere but that has nothing to do with the basis if the suit. It's tenets of the religion that refer to science, not the law
 
Redress said:
The Hobby Lobby ruling is where I took that from. The reason a level of scrutiny applies(though it is probably not rational basis review) is that religion is at issue. Again, see the Hobby Lobby ruling. Sincerity is not an issue since at issue is a core belief of the religion: TENETS |. As long as it is a religion, you can't get much more sincere than that.
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You might want to read the decision a little more closely. The Court certainly did not use rational basis review in Hobby Lobby--or apply any other level of scrutiny--for the simple reason that it declined to decide the case on constitutional grounds. Hobby Lobby is not a First Amendment Free Exercise Clause decision, but a decision interpreting a federal law that is, if anything, even more demanding.

The Court held that the HHS rule requiring the contraceptive coverage violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. (Incidentally, the unattributed quote in the original post incorrectly states that the ACA itself imposed this requirement. It does not, as the Court discussed in Hobby Lobby.) Congress enacted the RFRA in reaction to Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 decision in which the Court raised a lot of eyebrows by drastically narrowing its interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause.

The RFRA was meant to restore the broadly protective interpretation of the right to free exercise the Court had developed in several decisions before Smith. It did that with a vengeance, specifying that when government acts in a way that substantially restricts a person's right to free exercise of religion, it has to show not only that its action furthers a compelling government interest, but also that it is the least restrictive means of doing that.

The HHS rule flunked this test, the Court held, because HHS already had a less restrictive means of providing contraceptive coverage, in the form of an accommodation another HHS rule provides for religious nonprofits.
 
Luftwaffe said:
For abortion? I'm not sure that has been done before, the point isn't to find the answer though, it's to get as close to it as possible, you can't survey every single person in the world (the U.S is pretty damn big too, it's impossible to survey every single American).

Also yes you can gloss over the defines, get Oxford English Dictionary, that is literally the most definitive dictionary there is for the English language, what it says goes.

Also, you're naive, you don't really need to define moral at all, only ethics. This survey is geared towards the society as a whole not an individual.

That's my idea :applaud Great job discovering my idea which I had made so very clear to everyone!
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What, exactly, would your survey do that others haven't done before?
 
This is the crux of it. The same tests used in the Hobby Lobby case would be used in a case like if it went to federal courts - which I doubt it ever would. My guess is that its thrown out of any lower court if it even gets to a court.

A) The Satanists would need to show if this was a sincerely held belief and would have to accurately define their belief. It seems to be that they're saying they object to scientific studies in the material mandated. So, is their sincerely held belief that they should not be expose to science they disagree with? Good luck with that. If people don't "believe" in GW science should they be forced to follow regulations or pay taxes that address it? You betcha.

B) If somehow they managed to clear the hurdle stated above, then they would need to show that the way to communicate what was in the mandated material way was not the least restrictive way to provide the material. Here we get into some stickiness because of the word "restrictive". What religious freedom is specifically being "restricted" by being presented with a pamphlet or whatever abortion candidates are given?

Also proscribed in the law is that the restriction of the religious freedom must be "substantial". Plus, as noted by the courts in other cases their is no right to not be offended. As in the case of offensive media, the court would say don't read it or don't watch it.



matchlight said:
To hell with these Satanists--let them go back to polishing the Devil's tail. According to the rule the Supreme Court reiterated in Hobby Lobby, a court could not inquire into whether their beliefs on this subject were plausible or reasonable. But the court could determine if these beliefs were sincere--whether they reflected an honest conviction. And the Satanists would have a devil of a time convincing an American court of that. God would never allow it.
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Redress said:
The courts would have a real hard time with that. There are a number of ways the courts could rule against the Satanists in this, most simply in that the state does have a legitimate interest in regulating abortion and that the laws in place are the least obtrusive ways to achieve that interest, but arguing that the Satanists are insincere about something that fits in exactly with their belief system is probably not one of those ways.
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CycloneWanderer said:
What, exactly, would your survey do that others haven't done before?
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Have you seen a survey about the ethics behind abortion?

It's not a matter of doing what none others have done before it's just a matter of doing what everybody has done before but with just another topic since said topic seems to be part of such a heated debate.

That was the point I was making, and along with that, that said survey could possibly even lead to a solution and end to the debate (by leading to a possibility that most Americans may think abortion is moral/not moral which would then translate into society deeming abortion either ethical or unethical).
 
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