Should the U.S. government tell a specific religion what they can teach?

tacomancer said:

The line is murky. If people say you can't let you kid die by praying for him instead of getting help, then those folks will very much see their beliefs being called into question.

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It's not murky. You can't let your kids die in such a way, although you can believe that you should.

MildSteel said:

It's not murky. You can't let your kids die in such a way, although you can believe that you should.

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People tend to take these things personally.

tacomancer said:

People tend to take these things personally.

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That is true. In an ideal world people would be free to practice religion without any restraints. But in that idealized world, religion would not be abused as it is by people who think they understand religious principles, but do not.

MildSteel said:

That is true. In an ideal world people would be free to practice religion without any restraints. But in that idealized world, religion would not be abused as it is by people who think they understand religious principles, but do not.

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That does not address my point that people will see it as an attack on their beliefs.

tacomancer said:

That does not address my point that people will see it as an attack on their beliefs.

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I thought I addressed it. You can believe anything you want, but you cannot do anything you want. What did I miss?

MildSteel said:

I thought I addressed it. You can believe anything you want, but you cannot do anything you want. What did I miss?

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That there isn't always a clear line between those two statements.

tacomancer said:

That there isn't always a clear line between those two statements.

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I think it is clear for the most part. And even if it is not, you don't target a specific religion and say you cannot believe this. You focus on behavior. You say that no one is allowed to behave in this way, no just the members of a specific religion.

MildSteel said:

I think it is clear for the most part. And even if it is not, you don't target a specific religion and say you cannot believe this. You focus on behavior. You say that no one is allowed to behave in this way, no just the members of a specific religion.

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If a specific religion is advocating a policy, then yes, its appropriate to target that religion on virtue of its unacceptable teaching. In other words, if you are a christian scientist and you let your kid die, its perfectly acceptable to say that you are being stupid and then to arrest you for neglect.

tacomancer said:

If a specific religion is advocating a policy, then yes, its appropriate to target that religion on virtue of its unacceptable teaching.

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So in other words the government can tell people what to believe. If that is the case, there is no such thing as freedom of religion.

tacomancer said:

In other words, if you are a christian scientist and you let your kid die, its perfectly acceptable to say that you are being stupid and then to arrest you for neglect.

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It is not acceptable for the government to have a law or an official policy that says that a Christian scientist is stupid for believing something. That is totally bogus.

Actually that's the same type of backwards crap that people like ISIS do. If you don't believe what I believe, I will punish you. It's a bunch of self righteous BS.

MildSteel said:

So in other words the government can tell people what to believe. If that is the case, there is no such thing as freedom of religion.



It is not acceptable for the government to have a law or an official policy that says that a Christian scientist is stupid for believing something. That is totally bogus.

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If said belief is directly responsible for causing an unnecessary death, yes, I believe the cries of "religious freedom to neglect my child" should fall on deaf ears, whether from other individuals or government. The kids right to life or not be unnecessarily harmed exceeds the parent's religious freedoms.

If you think that's how ISIS sees the world, you should review islamist philosophy. It has nothing to do with my view except on the most superficial of levels.

Hamster Buddha said:

You can argue that Monte, but that doesn't change that when the majority of people, especially black people, in this country see the Dixie Flag, they don't think of the slavery and the years of oppression that were carried out under it's banner. Besides, if you really don't believe me that it wasn't about slavery, then you need look no further than the Confederate Constitution which forced every state to sign to allow the heinous institution to exist.

But back to the topic at hand, if the Hijab or the Burqa was just something isolated to Afghanistan, or that the Arab World was a bastion of equality and women empowerment, then this wouldn't be an issue. But no one can deny the level of oppression that occurs in many of these countries where women are required by laws to wear them.



If the west were never going to change then I would agree with you, I'd be fine with allowing the Muslim women to insult every single women forced to wear it, to defame all those and who are oppressed in the ME to wear it. But the problem is that there is a war of ideas that is coming to Europe, much faster than anyone could of predicted even a few years ago. And the west can either choose to stand up for what we believe in, or allow the Muslims to change it all when western Europe is dominated by Muslims who have emigrated from the that black hole.

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That, I will decidedly not argue with you about. And I'm sorry that you interpreted my statement to be a support of the Dixie Flag. I detest the thing, am embarrassed when I see the hick displaying it in the back window of his pick-up. And, I know damn well it's associated with slavery and suffering to black Americans, which is reason enough to burn every last one of them, and find a different approach to advocating the notion of states rights.

tacomancer said:

If a specific religion is advocating a policy, then yes, its appropriate to target that religion on virtue of its unacceptable teaching. In other words, if you are a christian scientist and you let your kid die, its perfectly acceptable to say that you are being stupid and then to arrest you for neglect.

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If I may jump in here just a bit, I will agree with you that good functioning societies have to have some level of parameters that the collective draw to say, hey that's a bit far. America began with them set pretty far out, and there have been times when they have been drawn in and times when they've been pushed back out. One thing is certain, there will always be a tug of war between a people and its governors, and due diligence requires that people recognise that and the increased responsibility that comes with increased freedoms. Of the doctrines that a denomination such as the Seventh Day Adventists, which holds a thousand different doctrines (number admittedly pulled from my ass) that may have this one or two doctrines, that they wish not to vaccinate there children, or allow them to receive a life saving blood transfusion, it seems reasonable to me that society, leaving alone the 998 others, would say no, you won't be allowed to do that, without being accused of telling people what to do. But it will always be a struggle, and folk will always have differing views on where those boundaries should lay. But another certainty, we would never want to live in a society where either its citizens stopped fighting for liberty, or its governors stopped pushing back on it. Ones tyranny and ones anarchy, neither of which has any appeal.

Montecresto said:

If I may jump in here just a bit, I will agree with you that good functioning societies have to have some level of parameters that the collective draw to say, hey that's a bit far. America began with them set pretty far out, and there have been times when they have been drawn in and times when they've been pushed back out. One thing is certain, there will always be a tug of war between a people and its governors, and due diligence requires that people recognise that and the increased responsibility that comes with increased freedoms. Of the doctrines that a denomination such as the Seventh Day Adventists, which holds a thousand different doctrines (number admittedly pulled from my ass) that may have this one or two doctrines, that they wish not to vaccinate there children, or allow them to receive a life saving blood transfusion, it seems reasonable to me that society, leaving alone the 998 others, would say no, you won't be allowed to do that, without being accused of telling people what to do. But it will always be a struggle, and folk will always have differing views on where those boundaries should lay. But another certainty, we would never want to live in a society where either its citizens stopped fighting for liberty, or its governors stopped pushing back on it. Ones tyranny and ones anarchy, neither of which has any appeal.

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I see it as a function of rights in this example. A kid has a right to life and that right is stronger than the parents right to freedom of religion by virtue of a kid having a lower capacity to take care of themselves. This sort of concept is very much built into our culture. If the parents are unwilling or unable to secure the rights of their children (which they have a duty to by having the child in the first place as a biological necessity of being a primate) then society is very much right to step in and remove the harm of that bad parenting.

If the parents are just doing stupid things to harm themselves (like they are snake handlers), then its probably ok so long as the kids have a place to live once the parents kill themselves.

tacomancer said:

If said belief is directly responsible for causing an unnecessary death, yes, I believe the cries of "religious freedom to neglect my child" should fall on deaf ears, whether from other individuals or government.

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You do that by targeting the behavior of individuals and groups, not by the government issuing a religious edict that says this specific religion must eradicate a teaching from it's ideology, otherwise the government will destroy the religion. It is totally unnecessary to protect children and is an idea born from the type of self righteous indignation that is displayed by religious fanatics.

tacomancer said:

The kids right to life or not be unnecessarily harmed exceeds the parent's religious freedoms.

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Although that is true, it is simply unnecessary to single out a religion and say that a concept cannot be part of it's ideology. First of all, to do that, the government will have to be in the business of interpreting religious texts, something that it is not qualified to do. Why? Because religious texts can deal with subject matter that is beyond empirical sense perception, and as such cannot be comprehended by mundane people such as all of us, without proper guidance. But even if you don't believe that at all, anybody who has ever thought about it will admit that our capacity to understand things is limited. Since that is the case, we should not try to restrict what people can believe. It has been tried in the past with dismal results that restricted the expansion of knowledge for many generations.

tacomancer said:

If you think that's how ISIS sees the world, you should review islamist philosophy. It has nothing to do with my view except on the most superficial of levels.

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What you said was

If a specific religion is advocating a policy, then yes, its appropriate to target that religion on virtue of its unacceptable teaching.

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Yep, that's just the type of thing that ISIS does. If your religion does not agree with my beliefs then I will attack and destroy it because it is dangerous to mankind. It is a barbaric notion that self righteous fanatics put into practice.

MildSteel said:

There is indeed a war of ideas. One idea is that the government should now be able to tell people what they can believe. That idea needs to be shot down with great force.

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This is where we have to decide as a society if we're going to be part of a theocracy that protects religions who choose to disregard the laws of the land, or if we are going to continue to champion human rights and state emphatically that no individual has the right to oppress another. That's what part of being a secular nation is all about.

Hamster Buddha said:

This is where we have to decide as a society if we're going to be part of a theocracy that protects religions who choose to disregard the laws of the land, or if we are going to continue to champion human rights and state emphatically that no individual has the right to oppress another. That's what part of being a secular nation is all about.

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I think that once the government gets into the business of deciding what is legitimate religious doctrine then it is a theocracy. I guess we could create a new department called the Department of Religion and a Secretary of Religion who is tasked with deciding what is acceptable religious doctrine and what is not. Of course the Secretary meeting the approval of people like the Koch brothers and the Wall Street gang assures that his decision will reflect bona fide religious principles.

MildSteel said:

You do that by targeting the behavior of individuals and groups, not by the government issuing a religious edict that says this specific religion must eradicate a teaching from it's ideology, otherwise the government will destroy the religion. It is totally unnecessary to protect children and is an idea born from the type of self righteous indignation that is displayed by religious fanatics.



Although that is true, it is simply unnecessary to single out a religion and say that a concept cannot be part of it's ideology. First of all, to do that, the government will have to be in the business of interpreting religious texts, something that it is not qualified to do. Why? Because religious texts can deal with subject matter that is beyond empirical sense perception, and as such cannot be comprehended by mundane people such as all of us, without proper guidance. But even if you don't believe that at all, anybody who has ever thought about it will admit that our capacity to understand things is limited. Since that is the case, we should not try to restrict what people can believe. It has been tried in the past with dismal results that restricted the expansion of knowledge for many generations.



What you said was



Yep, that's just the type of thing that ISIS does. If your religion does not agree with my beliefs then I will attack and destroy it because it is dangerous to mankind. It is a barbaric notion that self righteous fanatics put into practice.

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Again you are using a very superficial comparison. Like saying oxygen is bad because communists breathe oxygen. If a policy is bad its because it is, not because some hated ideology practices it. If Isis does this, then maybe its one of the few things they get right.

Anyway, my point stands, if a religion is causing harm such as I described then its ok for society to stop them. In the specific examples of christian scientists neglecting their children then yes its perfectly fine to send people to jail for neglecting their children. What they believe in that case is wrong since needless death has occurred.