I'm confused on what your position is, is it that seemingly no belief could be considered religious or that seemly any belief could be considered religious? Your posts seem very inconsistent, at times relying on the former, at times the later. It makes any form of coherent response pretty difficult.

For the record, I think neither is true. There are a certain beliefs (or lack thereof, perhaps) that an atheist might hold that fall into the category of "religious" and others that don't. My beliefs about where the president was born is clearly not religious. My beliefs on a supernatural creator of the universe, clearly religious. Where exactly the line is draft is debatable - that is what at canon is for - but I see no evidence to conclude that the courts are getting this grossly wrong, or interpreting this grossly differently for athiests as for religious people.


I feel like I keep asking this, can you give your most egregious examples where atheists are getting advantages that religious groups are not?

I think the problem in this debate is that we are sort of working against a historical asymmetry. Because of religious dominance in american society throughout history, we have a litany of cases where the government has been restricted from this or that religious enterprise but since we haven't had atheists printing "there is no god" on our money the way we have "in god we trust", there isn't the same breadth of canon interpreting these kind of government involvement in atheism as unconstitutional by the first amendment. Most cases involving atheism are about extending the body of protections for religious people to athiests as well, as in the prison group case. But this seems like an odd reason to conclude athiests have the advantage here. Since atheism has been interpreted as a religion for first amendment purposes, presumably call the never happened historically hypotheticals where governments mandate all sorts of atheist teaching in schools and make us declare our athiesm before sessions of the House etc type examples would all be ruled unconstitutional. Maybe they even are already, I don't know. But unless we have clear examples where people are legally doing something obvious and egregious as atheists they couldn't do as religious people i think your claim here is pretty moot.



Yes, yes, I'm very aware that hobby lobby was an RFRA case not a first amendment one. Ironically, it is the only case I have a physical copy of as I happened to be in washington and toured the supreme court around that time and they gave me a copy of decision. But this law increases the level of scrutiny to be applied to alleged violations of the first amendment. The first amendment doesn't vanish when talking about this, nor does the legal canon that has repeatedly established that for first amendment purposes atheism is considered as a religion just vanish.

Maybe it becomes clearer when you view atheism not as a religion per se but as a viewpoint/conviction/opinion/stance with regard to religion. Freedom of religion is not supposed to protect religions and religious people but any person's conviction regarding religion. That very obviously includes atheism/atheists.

I don't think this is consistent with the case law that has already been provided. A conviction "regarding" religion does not seem to fit the description, as it stands as more of a meta-position.

But assuming your idea is valid: Are convictions about contraceptives a view about religion? Do you think an atheist would win a case similar the Hobby Lobby case except on the basis of atheism?

No, I don't see how a conviction about contraceptives can be rooted in atheism. On the flipside an atheist employee of Hobby Lobby has a better case arguing that her medical care/life should not be influenced by the religious convictions of her employer.

You don't understand how ill-defined terms can apparently lead to multiple conclusions? The whole point is that defining atheism as a religion potentially changes the landscape of what questions and issues are or are not of a religious nature.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/06...o_3087251.html

I don't object to "Darwin Day" (as a day to celebrate a scientist). But under the framework presented, challenges to religious thought would be barred in the same way that advocating for religious thought is barred. Wouldn't you agree?

You won't see much in the legal canon yet as these are things that are "new" territory. But you will find that explicit challenges to religious perspective are currently acceptable in places where explicit statements that support religious perspectives are not.

So to be clear, you think that by not ruling anything on the first amendment argument that something has happened with regards to the first amendment?

The way this is phrased, the flipside is a losing argument. You do not have a right to not have your life influenced by religion. That's obviously far too broad of a principle.

Freedom of religion like any other liberty includes the negative, in this case freedom from religion. Now it becomes a matter of clashing liberty rights. Does the freedom of religion of the employer outweigh the freedom of(=from) religion of the employee?

Okay? I'm totally lost on what your point is. At different points in your posts you have come to dramatically different views and at the time didn't make note of any shred of tension between these "multiple conclusions". So what - exactly - is your criticism? From what I can tell, "religion" and "religious belief" have NOT been slippery sloped into either extreme in the legal canon. It is not the case that anything or nothing is taken as a religious belief, and that this is the case for both athiests and religious people. Neither of your "conclusions" seem valid.



This is your great example of the advantage of athiests? Not a court case at all, but a situation where an intelligent design group - who HAS their pseudoscientific mumbojumbo in that science museum - is complaining that an athiest group who was hosting an event at the museum and can invite whom they choose may or may not have incorrectly labelled the museum as a sponser when the museum ought not have been sponser. And then the event ended up being cancelled anyways, and never got close to making it into a court case? And you found out about this from a piece on the misleading website run by SHOCKER that very same intelligent design group that has been aggressively targeting this particular museum. This is a pretty weak example.

From what I can tell, the main thrust ITT is that you think there is a problem that athiests are being giving protections as religious people, but the government isn't being restricted from supporting athiest views the way they are religious views. It doesn't seem to be the case that you can give any persuasive examples where this actually manifesting as a significant problem in the real world that need court action, nor can you give persuasive examples where the courts are ruling on these issues, and supporting this asymmetry. Nor do we have any reason to think that in the future the court is going to rule in this way; indeed, from everything we have seen the supreme court has repeated ruled that atheism is a religion for first amendment purposes and thus presumably even if the government DID want to impose a say declaration of not believing in god as a litmus test to be a notary (see this landmark case) it would be prevented on the same basis. I just don't see anything important in your posts except for a sort of "what if in the future the supreme court was totally inconsistent and didn't follow the same logic they have restricting religious influence in a hypothetical world where the government was dominated by athiests wanting to impose their will".



What are you talking about? The bolded is exactly accurate. RFRA is a law that demands strict scrutiny (a legal standard) on questions of whether the first amendment has been violated by a government actions. Hobby Lobby was about that RFRA applies to "closely held corporations". If you think I am saying something wrong, be very explicit about what it is.

I am antitheist and by extension my opinion of the likes of the ever-pedantic, never-insightful, always-desperate religious apologist Aaron W is...

HA

Your brand of nihilism, with which I am well-acquainted from reading SMP to the extent that I have, would be disease-ish if not for atheism. I therefore wonder what you cling to in order to assert your non-clinging

"Make no law respecting an establishment of religion" seems to be more geared towards the negative. I would think the athiest employee's case would be much stronger case, although that the controlling factor is actually the current interpretation of the Court.

I've heard people say things like this, but it's not at all clear to me that this is actually meaningful. There is no right that guarantees religion can't have an impact on you.

Let's take something like the right to vote. Do I have a right that guarantees that other people's votes can't have an impact on me? It seems pretty nonsensical to even frame it that way, so I don't think your claim above makes any sense as a general principle.

The question doesn't really make sense, and I'm doubtful you'll find any case law that attempts to frame rights in this way. I could be wrong, as there's a lot of case law out there, but to my best understanding of the law, this isn't how the law actually works.

Are you an idiot or just pretending to be? I'm not "criticizing" anything!

As far as I can tell, the law does *NOT* actually treat theists and atheists the same. We *DO* have these legal categories of "religion" in which "atheism" can fit if we narrow our concept to a particular application of the law, and we continue to have the asymmetry of "church" and state.

Interestingly, in your response to me you managed to not quote this part. I initially took it as tacit acceptance and understanding, but this recent post really makes it look like willful misrepresentation.

It's an actual example of your hypothetical consideration. It has not gone through the legal system because it's not actually part of our actual legal structure to take atheism to be like a religion in every meaningful way. And that's the thing that you wanted to assert and the thing that I'm exploring. Atheists seem to have access to things (money for speaking, a government sponsored platform) that theists don't have access to. If you think that atheists and theists ought to be treated the same, then this would be a problem.

No. I never claimed it was an actual problem. I'll let you try to find a place in which I assert that it's an actual problem. Go for it. The only way you can make such a conclusion is if you're a moron.

My only affirmative claims are that I think it's hypocritical to want atheism to not be a religion but to want to seek religious protection and that the distinction creates a tension between legal and social constructs. And it seemed that I was given a precise demonstration of the latter on a silver platter:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3791314.html

This is exactly the tension I'm presenting, stated in absolute clarity by an atheist.

Here's where the rabbit trail started:

I raised a particular challenge to your claim:

And then I challenged you on attempting to use that quote from the case law as having any meaning whatsoever with regards to the statement I'm raising.

To which you admitted that there was no first amendment ruling. But yet you wanted to insist that the case had first amendment implications that somehow relate back to your claim.

But it's not about the RFRA. It's not about "increasing scrutiny." The fact of the matter (and it seems Louis Cyphre agrees with me) is that there are some beliefs such as those with regards to contraception that are religious beliefs for actual religions but are not beliefs for "atheism as a religion (as defined for first amendment purposes)."

If anything, this only continues to highlight the fact that atheists and theists simply are *NOT* treated the same in reality, and that your claim that that they should be must *NECESSARILY* be in the realm of the hypothetical and hence we should *NOT* expect rulings in the actual legal canon to be providing much guidance.

As is standard policy, I stop reading your posts when you feel the need to lower yourself to such insults. Of course, given how you have spent years following around someone who never reads your posts, this is unlikely to faze you. Maybe one of these days you will manage to get through a conversation without stooping to these lows, but I doubt it.

Considering I actually went to law school I am convinced I have a better understanding of the law than you do.

Then you should easily be able to find case law that says this. Freedom of and freedom from cannot both be fully granted for every liberty.

I have not studied US law but the principles governing liberty rights in Western democracies are well established and very similar. It's actually quite typical that "freedom of" clashes with "freedom from". I cannot stop your free speech, you cannot force me to listen to it. I cannot stop your religious practices, you cannot force me to take part in it.
As with every liberty right my rights stop where yours begin. If there is a conflict then there will have to be a decision which one outweighs the other in the particular circumstances.

Here is a quick overview from Wikipedia.

I'll put is simply like this: I've never heard of an argument advancing on the premise that "freedom of" religion is "freedom from" religion. In every case that I can think of, there is always some other right being asserted as the one that creates the conflict, not the freedom of/freedom from dichotomy.

And the wikipedia link doesn't seem to enlighten your position at all. The examples presented are contrary rights that are in conflict with each other, not the same right asserted in two different ways (of/from).

Agree with them or not.... www.ffrf.org (freedom from religion foundation) has about a thousand pending cases continuously. Based on my understanding and the explanations on their website, it would appear that the vast majority of them are not about "other rights". Basically, the majority of their work is similar to having a religious item (picture of Jesus, ten commandments) removed from a public building.

The bolded is an artifact of the separation of church and state, not anything having to do with freedom of religion = freedom from religion.

I'm doubtful that any of their cases are advancing on the premise of the of/from dichotomy. If someone wants to identify something specific to review, I'll be happy to go through the exercise. I'm completely willing to be proven wrong on this one.

"We" refers (obviously) to the FFRF, who do not behave like a 'church' in the way that a secular humanist group could be considered to do. Hence, not a church. I don't think it was meant any more broadly than that.

That particular issue was about the unfairness of a tax benefit (available to leaders of religious groups) as a burden on the local general public, not that it wasn't also available to "atheist" groups. If the FFRF were consistent, they would also campaign against a local secular humanist chaplain receiving that same benefit, again because it is an unfair benefit that burdens the local general public who end up supporting said chaplain.

It doesn't need to be any more broad than that. They aren't a church. They aren't ministers. Those labels don't fit who they are. That's the conflict between the social and the legal.

The way they choose to label themselves is different from the way that the government intends to label them. That's the conflict.

I do not deny that there is a protest element to this. But that does not negate the plain facts of what they've stated about their position. "We are not a church" probably means "we are not a church." They are claiming not to fit the categories that the government has established.

I guess I'm not really following this thread very well. Are you suggesting their declaration of not being a church is based on them holding the position that 'atheism is not a religion', as opposed to the notion that their business/function is of the not-remotely-a-church variety?

There are many, many Christian organizations that aren't churches whose leadership does not qualify for the parsonage exemption. So they can hold "Christianity is a religion" and still not qualify for the exemption because the activities that they are doing are not sufficiently church-like to qualify.

If atheism is not a religion, then it makes very little sense that an atheist organization could ever qualify for the exemption. That's because "church" (under most sane concepts of church) is a word that invokes a religious concept of some sort (also synagogue, mosque, temple...). But since the organization *does* qualify as being a church-like entity, it seems that it necessitates the declaration that atheism is a religion.

To put it into a simple list of implications:

Atheist organization is deemed church-like ---> Atheism is a religion
Atheism is not a religion ---> Atheist organization is not deemed church-like

BUT

Atheism is a religion --/--> Atheist organization is deemed church-like
Atheist organization is not deemed church-like --/--> Atheism is not a religion

that's not an implication

atheistic religions exist

that doesn't make atheism a religion

for an atheist organization to be church-like requires it to be about more than just atheism