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

Thorgasm said:
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.
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We can measure harm. We can measure pleasure and pain. We can measure better or worse outcomes. Those are not hypothetical constructs and those are the practical meanings of good and evil. Anything else is just armchair philosophy and we can certainly do better than that. This idea that the big ideas are somehow closed to science is nonsense. There's nothing mysterious about kindness, love, or hate. All of them can be measured and understood. Any effect they have on our lives and our existence can be measured. There is nothing closed off to the scientific method. Or at least no evidence of anything.

Cannot is an assertion. Please provide evidence to back up this assertion.

ashurbanipal said:
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.
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It is merely an assertion that there are some kind of values beyond our experiences. Or values are based on our physical reality. They are not transcendent. Nothing apparently is. If you have some kind of evidence that suffering and flourishing, or some similar model, are bad indicators of good and evil, please share them.
 
TobyOne said:
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.
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They do not have to show anything about scientific studies since that is a separate part of their beliefs, much as Hobby Lobby did not have to weigh in on their opinion regarding the Flood. All they have to show is that the sincerely believe "One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone", which should be pretty trivial. That is not the big question with the case.
 
matchlight said:
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.
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I did not claim the courts used Rational Basis review. You might want to read my posts a little closer and argue about what I actually did say.
 
Paschendale said:
We can measure harm. We can measure pleasure and pain. We can measure better or worse outcomes.
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Harm according to whom? Better or worse outcomes according to whom? Surely you're not saying that good and evil are equivalent to pleasure and pain...

I realize the above was not addressed to me, but it seemed relevant.

Paschendale said:
It is merely an assertion that there are some kind of values beyond our experiences.
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I'm not sure I follow you. Beyond our experiences? When did I say anything about that?

Paschendale said:
Or values are based on our physical reality.
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"Based on" and "in" are two different propositions. "In" has a relatively restricted and clear range of meanings. "Based on" has a very broad range of meanings that aren't so clear. My point, simply, was the values are not in physical facts. They have to be imposed by human mental activity. That such activity can (let us say) take into account physical data doesn't imply (at all) that such activity is itself physical.

Paschendale said:
They are not transcendent. Nothing apparently is.
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I'm not sure what this means, but if you mean that values do not transcend physical facts, then I disagree.

Paschendale said:
If you have some kind of evidence that suffering and flourishing, or some similar model, are bad indicators of good and evil, please share them.
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We suffer quite a bit to undergo a course of training. We suffer to attain some end. I suffered rather a lot getting my Ph.D. But it was good.

Conversely, there are plenty of people who flourish because of our prosperity whose attitudes are deleterious to not only human society as a whole, but in fact to all life on the planet. See, for instance, any of the recent stories on "coal rolling." I think their flourishing is bad.

But such examples should be unecessary. The words "suffering" and "flourishing" already imply value judgments. I call having to claw my way through Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding a kind of suffering. But that's my judgment, not a physical fact about reading Locke.
 
The statements "We can measure harm," "We can measure pleasure and pain," and "We can measure better or worse outcomes" are only your assertions. So is the statement the "those are not hypothetical constructs." So is the statement that "there is nothing closed off to the scientific method." So is the statement that "there's nothing mysterious about kindness, love, or hate." So is the statement that "cannot is just an assertion." So is the statement that "it is merely an assertion that there are some kind of values beyond our experiences."

Where is your evidence for any of those statements? I'll tell you: You have none, because they are not facts. They are only your opinions on issues that are by nature not amenable to scientific proof. You might as well claim it's a fact that your view on the beauty of marigolds is the correct one, that any others are false, and that you can prove it.

Dismissing opinions on this subject that you don't like as "mere assertions" and calling on people who expressed them to back them up is a convenient substitute for reasoned argument, and anyone can do exactly the same to your opinions on it. Your opinions don't become unquestionable facts just because you say they are.

Next you'll be asserting that these Satanists would win their abortion case, and demanding that anyone who thinks otherwise prove they would not.
 
Yes I agree. I was just trying to figure out what their belief actually is. They say one of their beliefs is that they respect science over religion but that doesn't explain their objection to the mandated materials. They also say they don't believe the studies in the materials. Well, are they not scientific studies? A more accurate description is that they're religious beliefs are against science they disagree with but for science they believe it.



Redress said:
They do not have to show anything about scientific studies since that is a separate part of their beliefs, much as Hobby Lobby did not have to weigh in on their opinion regarding the Flood. All they have to show is that the sincerely believe "One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone", which should be pretty trivial. That is not the big question with the case.
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Redress said:
I did not claim the courts used Rational Basis review. You might want to read my posts a little closer and argue about what I actually did say.
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Okay by me. Here is what you actually did say:

"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."

It would have been pretty silly to suggest that by speculating that what the Court applied was "probably not rational basis review," you were claiming it did apply RBR. And nowhere did I suggest that. Instead, I pointed out that what it applied not only was probably not RBR, it was certainly not--for the simple reason that in Hobby Lobby the Court didn't apply constitutional scrutiny of any kind. So your statement that "a level of scrutiny" applied in Hobby Lobby is flatly incorrect.

Levels of scrutiny--i.e. "rational basis review," "strict scrutiny," or "intermediate scrutiny"--refer to tests the Court applies only when reviewing laws under the Due Process Clauses or the Equal Protection Clause. In due process and equal protection challenges to laws that restrict fundamental rights, the Court applies strict scrutiny--and it considers all First Amendment rights fundamental.

So if the Court in Hobby Lobby had been deciding whether the HHS regulation violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the regulation would have had to pass the Court's strict scrutiny test. But that wasn't the case. Instead, the Court held that the regulation violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, a federal statute :

"The contraceptive mandate, as applied to closely held corporations, violates RFRA. Our decision on that statutory question makes it unnecessary to reach the First Amendment claim raised by Conestoga and the Hahns." 573 U.S. at 49.
 
matchlight said:
Okay by me. Here is what you actually did say:

"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."

It would have been pretty silly to suggest that by speculating that what the Court applied was "probably not rational basis review," you were claiming it did apply RBR. And nowhere did I suggest that. Instead, I pointed out that what it applied not only was probably not RBR, it was certainly not--for the simple reason that in Hobby Lobby the Court didn't apply constitutional scrutiny of any kind. So your statement that "a level of scrutiny" applied in Hobby Lobby is flatly incorrect.

Levels of scrutiny--i.e. "rational basis review," "strict scrutiny," or "intermediate scrutiny"--refer to tests the Court applies only when reviewing laws under the Due Process Clauses or the Equal Protection Clause. In due process and equal protection challenges to laws that restrict fundamental rights, the Court applies strict scrutiny--and it considers all First Amendment rights fundamental.

So if the Court in Hobby Lobby had been deciding whether the HHS regulation violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the regulation would have had to pass the Court's strict scrutiny test. But that wasn't the case. Instead, the Court held that the regulation violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, a federal statute :

"The contraceptive mandate, as applied to closely held corporations, violates RFRA. Our decision on that statutory question makes it unnecessary to reach the First Amendment claim raised by Conestoga and the Hahns." 573 U.S. at 49.
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Once again, I did not say the court applied Rational Basis Review. You are drawing that out of your imagination.
 
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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Formulating the hypothesis is the science. You are doing statistics.

Also, a poll isn't an experiment. You aren't manipulating any variables.
 
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Also, this is the DUMBEST lawsuit ever for two reasons:

1) The law requires the clinic provide the information, it doesn't require the Satantist to take the information.

2) They are claiming that "science" is their religion and then objecting to something they haven't even read. They are idiots.
 
Redress said:
Once again, I did not say the court applied Rational Basis Review. You are drawing that out of your imagination.
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I'm not drawing anything from anyplace. No need to reiterate--once again--that you did not say the Hobby Lobby Court applied rational basis review. Anyone can read what I just wrote and see that I acknowledged that, very clearly. And yet you did claim some "level of scrutiny" applied in Hobby Lobby. Please explain to us, then, just what that level of scrutiny was, and why the Court applied it.
 
Thorgasm said:
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.
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Oh its a Catholic conspiracy is it??? Go on.
 
Paschendale said:
We can measure harm. We can measure pleasure and pain. We can measure better or worse outcomes. Those are not hypothetical constructs and those are the practical meanings of good and evil. Anything else is just armchair philosophy and we can certainly do better than that. This idea that the big ideas are somehow closed to science is nonsense. There's nothing mysterious about kindness, love, or hate. All of them can be measured and understood. Any effect they have on our lives and our existence can be measured. There is nothing closed off to the scientific method. Or at least no evidence of anything.

Cannot is an assertion. Please provide evidence to back up this assertion.
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I made the assertion about good and evil. You are now bringing up other hypothetical constructs. Better, worse, pleasure, and pain, are also subjective. If you believe these are measurable scientifically, please tell me what units of measure for each are. Polling people's opinions doesn't mean you are actually measuring these constructs. It means that you are finding out what a group's general opinion on something is. It is not objective. There is no control measurement to use as a baseline.

l
 
SMTA said:
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!
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Seems fitting as Phelps is clearly an offspring of satan.
 
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