Christians and Religious Freedom: Your Faith Is Fickle

January 18, 2012 in Authority, Belief, bible, Bullying, Catholic Church, christianity, Education, Human Rights, Law, Philosophy, Pro-Choice, Reason, Religion, Religious Persons, Science

Image via Wikipedia

If there is one fact that has become abundantly clear when it comes to that group of people known as christians. The fact that has become abundantly clear is that when it come to a vast number of christians, their religious faith means absolutely nothing if it is not endorsed and defended by government. This, at least, is how things seem to be when you consider the variety of christians who demand that their morality and worldview be reflected within the laws and customs of this or that country. Why is it these religious persons cannot lead their lives as required by their authorities, without expecting all of society and the world to mirror in law that which they consider proper and prohibit that which they deem to be sinful or evil? Why is it that the only way their personal beliefs can be validated is to have everyone else believe as they do?

The answer, my readers, is that christianity and other religious beliefs are incredibly fickle. These beliefs are fickle because the people who hold them are fickle, insecure and child-like in how they approach one another and the rest of society. Given that I am very unchristian in how I conduct my life and formulate my positions, I will now explain why it is that christians in particular are a group of people united in the fickle nature of their beliefs.

Religious Freedom

One of the issues we hear come up time and again is that the rights of the religious must be respected because they have the freedom to practice their own religion without interference. But this is not the really what is meant by religious freedom: insofar as it does grant individuals the right to be able to practice their respective faiths, it also gives people the right to not be subjected by force to the religious beliefs of others. As much as it protects the right of anyone to have religious beliefs, it also gives people the right to choose to not have religious beliefs, i.e. being an atheist is protected in the same manner that being a christian is protected.

Thus, in a society that is pluralistic, or comprised of individuals with various religious and non-religious beliefs, the right to religious freedom must guarantee that this or that religious group is free to practice their beliefs to the extent that these beliefs do not restrict the religious freedom of others. This means that in such a pluralistic society, christians must be able to celebrate their faith, but they cannot force others to live under the commandments or authority of their faith.

I will now turn to specific examples which demonstrate how so many christians are confused about what their freedom to religion really guarantees them.

Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice

Many christians, not to mention the official position of many different christian faith groups, believe that only those policies which are pro-life should be allowed, while anything labeled as pro-choice needs to be legally prohibited within society. Many christians are actively engaged in trying to have the laws of their society changed such that pro-choice activities, such as abortions, become illegal. One well known example of this attempt by christians to abuse religious freedoms, is the Forty Days of Life initiative – you can click here to read about what Forty Days of Life is as well as my coverage of this event in Ottawa in October of last year.

Participants in Forty Days of Life consider themselves to be keeping vigil and praying and nothing more. In reality they are trying to exert pressure on the abortion clinics as well as the women who are inquiring about or seeking abortion services, such that they can shut these clinics down and stop the women from getting abortions. What they are doing is not simply praying or keeping vigil, but are actually protesting and pushing their beliefs on others in the public realm.

These types of actions, coercing people in very public and often very graphic engagements to change their minds and trying to forcibly close clinics that provide abortion services, cross the religious freedom line. These christians are attempting to control the actions of non-christians by only allowing those institutions and only allowing those laws which they happen to find palatable.

Christians, you are free to not have abortions and to not affiliate yourselves via personal or business interactions with those people and organizations that support a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body. But you cannot bring your laughable religious beliefs to the legal realm and expect the law to embrace the morality erected by people who were nothing shy of xenophobic, close-minded, hateful and willfully ignorant about the world ad what it means to be human.

Proposition 8

The State of California had in the past granted same-sex couples the right to marry, a legal move that actually embraced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights such that each person in that State was allowed to marry any person they choose, regardless of their sex. This didn’t sit well with many christians, including the mormon church, that actively campaigned and spent large amounts of money on ensuring enough people voted in favour of Proposition 8. The result was the ballot passed and same-sex marriage was no longer legal in California.

This is another example of christians ignoring what is meant by religious freedom, and acting to force all people to live as they do in just one more way. It is not enough for these christians who seem to ardently despise non-heterosexual unions to simply not allow them within their congregations or to simply remain steadfast in their religious belief that these types of relationships are morally bankrupt. No sir. These people work tirelessly to ensure the entire world becomes as vanilla, ignorant and full of contempt as they are.

You can read more about Proposition 8 here.

California FAIR Education Act

The intention of the FAIR Education Act is to ensure that individuals of underrepresented groups, including individuals in the LGBTQ community, are recognized via the education curriculum for the contributions they have made to society. It is interesting to note that FAIR also brings classroom instruction in line with nondiscrimination laws for the State. Instead of treating the Act for what it is, an attempt to ensure that all members of society that make positive contributions are acknowledged via the education curriculum, opponents of the Act, who call it a ‘gay history bill’, and believe it is wrong for the State to “…shine a spotlight on this lifestyle…” (see the StopSB48 website).

These opponents to the FAIR Education Act, lead at least in part by Capitol Resource Family Impact and the Capitol Resource Institute, believe that those who are members of the LGBTQ community live lives of sin and that they are not worthy, essentially, of making reference. They sin in the eyes of their fictional deity – which is to say that they sin in the eyes of these christians – and they cannot be tolerated in such official capacities. These christians are not interested in relieving tensions, eliminating interpersonal misunderstandings, or even in just getting along with one another. They have their beliefs, ignorant though they are, that gays and others in the LGBTQ community are bad for acting on their impulses, and that the rest of us should be just as bigoted and ignorant as they are.

Religious freedom does give you the right to believe in foolish things and to act like an asshole in a million different ways, but it does not give you the right to force your beliefs and hatreds on anyone else.

The Vatican

In my second last post titled Pope Ben-the Dick: Charlatan and Hypocrite I went through an address made by the pope to the Vatican Press Corps, in which he reveals just how concerned with manipulating the lives of non-catholics the Vatican is. In this speech the pope tells everyone how he and the Vatican are concerned with religious freedom and other human rights being protected (right down to the religious freedom of each person), but also seek to control how others live by having laws reflect christian (or in this case, catholic) principles. Consider one of the statements made by Ben-the-Dick during that speech:

In a number of countries, on the other hand, a constitutionally recognized right to religious freedom exists, yet the life of religious communities is in fact made difficult and at times even dangerous (cf.Dignitatis Humanae, 15) because the legal or social order is inspired by philosophical and political systems which call for strict control, if not a monopoly, of the state over society. Such inconsistencies must end, so that believers will not find themselves torn between fidelity to God and loyalty to their country. I ask in particular that Catholic communities be everywhere guaranteed full autonomy of organization and the freedom to carry out their mission, in conformity with international norms and standards in this sphere.

According to Ben, the laws must reflect religious principles so that religious persons are not torn between loyalty to State and loyalty to religious authority.

In his annual ‘State of the World’ address, Ben, who talks so much about respecting the human rights of all persons, makes comments such as “Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.” (You can find this speech at Vatican Radio). In other words, if we allow policies to be put in place that give same-sex couple and other LGBTQ individuals the right to marry one another that we risk the future of humanity. The future of humanity! This is a hell of a statement. It goes beyond saying that the roman catholic church does not condone or in anyway like such unions or relationships, to the point of saying that out future will be put in peril by allowing them to happen. Ben-the-Dick wants the whole world to act as he does…

And this is the man who says he endorses human rights for all people.

The Latin Cross of Whiteville, TN

In Whiteville, Tennessee, a number of residents paid to have a Latin Cross, a symbol of the christian faith, to be erected on the town water tower. When an individual, represented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), came forward with a legal complaint based on the Establishment Clause, the town’s mayor chose to react by initially just ignoring the FFRF’s demand that the cross be removed. It wasn’t until being threatened with a law suit that Whitewville Mayor James Bellar took action and promised the cross would be removed, though it angered himself and other residents. You can read more about this here.

Since this time the town has only removed one arm of the cross – which seems to be a way for the overwhelmingly christian town to state that they would rather mutilate their religious iconography than have others tell them they cannot have it on display. Despite the fact that legal disputes regarding the Establishment Clause have repeatedly ended in the religious iconography being removed from public land, the residents of Whiteville acted as though the law was something only applicable to them when it is convenient. Residents, businesses and organizations around the town have responded by displaying crosses on their own properties and attitudes towards non-christians seem to have become very negative.

I was even told by someone from the area that a number of residents have taken to the streets in the pick up trucks, trying to find the person who went to the FFRF.

Rather than treating their town and country as home to christians and non-christians alike, these residents stand convinced that their’s is a land which needs to rule those under its control with christian principles.

Why is it these christians cannot remain content ‘knowing’ that they believe in ‘the truth’?

The Case of Jessica Alhquist

Jessica Ahlquist. Image via s3.amazonaws.com

Jessica Ahlquist is a self-described atheist teen living in Rhode Island who, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, won a legal challenge against her school, Cranston High School West, which had a prayer mural on display. Like the case of the Latin Cross in Whiteville, this also involved a violation of the Establishment Clause. Alhquist won her case, but has since been subjected to bulling, harassment and threats. Recently even State Representative Peter Palumbo has gone on record, calling Alhquist an “evil little thing“, adding further that she is being “coerced by evil people“. Palumbo, a ‘representative’ of the people of the State, not to mention Alhquist’s peers and schoolmates, have ridiculed her publicly for taking legal action to remove a symbol of christian belief from a public institution. (You can read more about Palumbo’s comments here.)

Rather than embracing religious freedom, individuals like Palumbo make it very clear that religious freedom should be applicable only to christians at the end of the day. Apparently it became a little harder for these people to keep their religious faith when they were told this iconography had to be removed.

Religion in the Science Class

Another perennial issue is religion being taught in science classes. Many christians believe in creationism, and for no reason other than the blinders religion has given them, believe that many tenets of the sciences, including that of evolution by natural selection, are bogus. These people will not rest until, at the very least, creationism is taught along side evolution as a plausible theory.

Here is the thing though: there is zero reason for believing that christianity had anything at all right, including this ridiculous concept of creationism. As with many other concepts and beliefs, christians expect others to learn as truth what they admit is nothing but faith, regardless of whether or not the people that would be subject to these teachings are christian, and whether or not they ever found any evidence to justify their pet notions.

As with the examples above, christians seem to be unable to have the beliefs they do unless they are actively engaged in trying to force everybody else in the world to think as they think and behave as they behave.

So much for religious freedom…what does this say about the nature of these christian beliefs?

Conclusion

A vast number of christians seem to be concerned with nothing but subjecting the whole world to their infantile system of belief: they betray their intentions time and again, making it very clear that they believe religious freedom can only exist when they hae the freedom to make the world religious in their own image. But putting aside the issue of religious freedom, what does this incessant need that christians seem to have to dominate everyone with their faith mean?

A person who carefully studies and learns about the world and reality will not deem it necessary to have every other person to believe as they do: this person will experiment and study the world, and are willing to pursue new ideas or challenge conventionally held truths on the strength of the evidence alone: having other people believe as he does will not make the beliefs of this person any more real. With christians, on the other hand, over and above this need they have to control and censure one another, they have a need to try to make the whole world believe as they do, which seems to be more indicative of just how fickle and immature these beliefs are, rather than proof of their validity.