jfuh

According to the Supreme court, hate speech is not constitutionally protected free speech.
Yet it seems that all one needs to do is to claim that it is their religion and it gets a green light and get out of jail free card. Even with such a disgusting claim as "Homosexuality is a sin,Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!"

The hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine is quite illegal. But then as long as it's part of your religious belief - no problem get as high as you want to as long as you believe that it enhances your understanding of god the supreme court will protect your use of such a drug.
Yet marijuana which does have scientifically proven medicinal properties of easing pain for patients remains illegal.

Want to censor the press over what it prints? No problem play the hurt religious card over a few cartoons and they won't ever print anything about how violent you are ever again.

So the question begs to be asked, why the privileging double standard?
Actually on second thought seems I've been quite the idiot all these years, instead of professing to anything in the future all I need to do is just claim it's my religious belief and I believe it to be so and I can get away with everything.
Hate speech, substance use and then just play the hurt religious victim card and no one would even report it.
Hell I'd even be exempt from paying income taxes

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The facts and science of the theory of anthropogenic Global warming

Mach

I beleive the problem is this.

The age of enlightenment took us from barbarism, to modern cultures.

However, the drastic change requried and still requires an ongoing compromise. The U.S constitution, had it been soley in the hands of certain founding fathers and didn't need broad appeal, would have been I believe, a lot more unforgiving of religious nonsense. They had to, and still apparently have to, compromise on this, and let the peasants have their religious beliefs and happily deny reality, so that some form of society can be held together. We didn't really have a choice between "a purely reasonable form of government vs what we have", we had a choice between no government, or a compromise government (at least from that perspective we had no other choice).

Compromise always involves giving something up on both sides, and this is precisely the cause of what you see today in your OP. Maybe from here, we can now move forward to the next step that is closer still to purely reasoned, and maybe we'll then see another great leap forward in human prosperity and freedom (as we did with the intial adoptation of reason into our way of life).

The other thing that starts to surface more is th systematic application of reason to ethics. If it continues to be that we can identify reasonably, certain things as broadly ethical and unethical, eventually that means a clash between individual freedom, and ethics. Actualy this goes on non-stop as it is, but it will become a bigger issue the further that reason takes us. For instance, if it's demonstrably true (given XYZ) that guns lead to more crime/deaths, then it will always be a clash between the individual and the ethic and it's probably always going to be a compromise there as well.

In the end, unless humans change themselves physiologically (like gene maniupation), or chemically (like we all take drugs to make us less animalistic), we may not be able to overcome or basic animal brains to embrace reason more fully as a culture. We may need to create AI's who will have no such weakness and who will become our beneavolent benefactors, in that way, we may never become the perfect beings we strive to be, but we may be able to create them and they may rightfully pity us,and take care of us.

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

BillyBob

The only truthful thing you said in your entire post.

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Liberals are all just a bunch of Godless pussys.

Lachean

Sins against a non-existent entity are no trespass at all, Islam is no more a lie than your faith, murder is an unlawful killing (so if its legal, it isn't murder.)

But whatever floats your bronze age boat...

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"Men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality. " - Ayn Rand

galenrox

Wait, just to clarify, is jfuh arguing that the government should punish people for expressing their opinions? That it should be illegal to oppose homosexuality, abortion, and Islam? And how exactly would this be distinct from other examples of the government suppressing political thought as we've seen in any number of military junta's and dictatorships?

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DarkWizard12

Yea it is.

There is more than one definition

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online

2: to slaughter wantonly

Didn't say anyhitng about legality in that definition.

Lachean

Try and bring murder charges on an abortionist and see if anything other than the legal definition is relevant.

DarkWizard12

It is in this case. When a pro-lifer says abortion is murder, you really don;t expect him to literally bring murder charges, do you?

Its this political correctness. Abortion is murder because your taking a life away to the mind of a pro-lifer, whether or not its legal is only relevent in whether there can be charges, it does nothing to change the mind of a pro-lifer.

If the law said to jump off a bridge, does that mean you should? same with abortion.

Lachean

Murder is a legal term for an unlawful killing, if the pro-lifer regards it as a killing then just use the correct term; The use of the word murder is intentional obfuscation, and is overstating the case.

I am not in any way arguing that the law is always right, I am arguing about the nature of calling something illegal when it is not. If abortion were a "murder" then it could not be legal, period.

You need not remind me that they want it to be illegal, and want it to be regarded as murder; but they're counting chickens they've not seen hatch.

jfuh

No not at all, read the OP over again. What I'm saying is why do religions get special treatment for doing the very thing that would land anyone else in prison or other forms of punishment.
Hate speech, illegal drugs, ect.