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We don't need freedom of religion

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Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#81

Post by pkulak »

Confusion wrote: post #71
pkulak wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's doing the forcing? Is it a job? Is the religious practice safe? Then fine. It's part of the job. Quit if you don't like it. My atheism may prevent me from dressing up as Santa because, maybe, I don't want to lie to kids, or something like that. That doesn't mean that I get to take that job and then sit down amongst the elves at the mall in jeans and a FSM t-shirt while little kids sit on my lap to be told that…

Quit if you don't like it. Many people have that choice only in theory. Secondly, who's to say what is 'safe'? Obligatory communal prayer every morning at school or work could be considered a form of brainwashing. I certainly don't think it's safe for my kid or even myself. I'm too informed on the human psyche to not be afraid of what others could convince me to think or do under the right circumstances. But if even…

School is a special case. That's the government and then there's the first amendment to consider. But we already have bodies that determine what is safe at work (OSHA for example). They've been doing a fine job for years. Nothing changes.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#82

Post by Semiapies »

vacri wrote: post #59
anamax wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is, if you HAD to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you want it to be stunned or not? If you had to kill your pet dog by cutting its throat, would you rather beat it unconscious first? Anything can be black and white if you leave out enough details. And, you can even decide which side is which with your choice of details.

That's a misrepresentation of what he was saying, don't know why you got the upmods. A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns. "beating" something is protracted causation of pain. You're not 'filling in' details that have been left out, you're creating a new situation out of whole cloth.

"A captive-bolt stunner is a quick strike that stuns."

If it's successful, yes. They often aren't; it's not hard to find undercover video of "stunned" animals in clear, loud pain.

Let's take this whole what-if to the extreme:

If I had to be turned into a cow and slaughtered and was given the choice of a random secular slaughterhouse that would use a stunner and a random kosher slaughterhouse, I'd absolutely choose the kosher option. I'd have a better chance of not being injured and mistreated on the way to my death, and I'd have a better chance for a clean, quick, and minimally painful death.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#83

Post by anamax »

Semiapies wrote: post #72
anamax wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they remain straight people unrestricted by the status quo As I implied with my first sentence, some folks making that argument are not straight, so they don't "remain straight". Yes, most folks making that argument are straight, but since most folks are straight.... > Do you have a point? My point is that your gaydar is broken at least wrt this issue.

You're welcome to provide citations of gay individuals arguing against their getting marriage rights on the basis that government needs to get out of marriage.

> You're welcome to provide citations of gay individuals

You cited your personal experience, so you don't get to complain when I do exactly the same thing.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#84

Post by Semiapies »

Semiapies wrote: post #26
slammdunc23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the turban example is perfectly consistent with what the author said. You ask "how would rules such as the uniform rule for the police ever evolve?" The answer is: in much the same way! Under this author's understanding of that example, the rule under scrutiny would be: "Every policeman must wear a uniform cap." The Sikhs, wishing to wear dastaars, would petition the chief of police to be able to wear a dasta…

What the author is trying to imply is closer to, "Come on, people need to wear the right hats on the job. Sikhs can wear dastaars on their own time, let's not exempt them based on 'freedom of religion'."

I suggest a more careful reading of the article by the down-voter.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#85

Post by Semiapies »

anamax wrote: post #83
Semiapies wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to provide citations of gay individuals arguing against their getting marriage rights on the basis that government needs to get out of marriage.

> You're welcome to provide citations of gay individuals You cited your personal experience, so you don't get to complain when I do exactly the same thing.

So when you were claiming my gaydar was "broken", you knew you were lying?

At this point, I simply don't believe that you've met gay people who argued against supporting gay marriage on the basis that we have to get government out of the business of marriage first. It's a highly dubious claim, and you seem less than entirely honest.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#86

Post by Semiapies »

You know, I get the funny feeling that some of my fellow atheists believe that if we got rid of "freedom of religion", it'd only be those crazy religionists who'd be affected or restricted, while we could gloat on the sidelines.

Considering that those of us in the US had to have a Supreme Court case to protect us from being forced to take part in group prayers in school, the far more likely case is that without a protected freedom of religion, the majority merrily pushes around various minorities on a religious basis.

Look at how poorly Muslims poll and how they're demonized by many in the US - and then recall that polls say Americans regard atheists even more negatively.

(And no, Canada is no utopia devoid of religious bullying.)

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#87

Post by vacri »

anamax wrote: post #67
vacri wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is definitely a choice in countries where such subtle nuances of civil rights are being debated as in the main link. Children can and do break with their parents religion as they grow up (and do so /often/), so clearly it's a choice. Sometimes it's a hard choice. But it's still a choice that's frequently made. But if you've got amputated legs, you can't choose to just hop up out of your wheelchair and go for…

> Religion is definitely a choice in countries where such subtle nuances of civil rights are being debated as in the main link. Since honor killings happen in countries such as the UK.... Even if you're going to argue "it's a choice because it's not civil-legal to kill apostates", it's certainly "civil-legal" to shun them.

Shunning is monstrously different to killing. It's silly to even compare them.

Tons of people reject the religion of their parents and are estranged from them for life, while still having a great - and in many cases markedly improved - quality of life.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#88

Post by vacri »

Semiapies wrote: post #79
vacri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the government shouldn't tell you what changes you can't make to your body, or how you provide care for a member of your tribe. Talk to a social worker and see whether or not you still believe that a government should still be able to step in and tell you how to treat a member of your "tribe" I remember reading one social worker's long diatribe about why they burned out and quit. Out of several truly horrible thi…

I'm against the abuse of children and happy to use the government to accomplish that. However, the prevalence of abuse and neglect in the foster care system - complete with cases on that order of horror - makes a very weak case for the idea that external regulation accomplishes any better.

So... a program where near to 100% of input kids are neglected or abused that ends up with a significantly lower proportion of those kids neglected or abused is a "very weak" argument that anything has become "any better"?

If you had a drug that could save 50% of terminally ill patients, would you say "we have a very weak case that this drug saves lives"?

In order for your statement to make sense, the failure rate of foster care would have to approach 100%. Again, talk to an actual social worker about how they see foster care and whether or not they choose to use it. It's an opinion that will most likely come with caveats, but foster care is also a service they use frequently.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#89

Post by Semiapies »

vacri wrote: post #88
Semiapies wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm against the abuse of children and happy to use the government to accomplish that. However, the prevalence of abuse and neglect in the foster care system - complete with cases on that order of horror - makes a very weak case for the idea that external regulation accomplishes any better.

So... a program where near to 100% of input kids are neglected or abused that ends up with a significantly lower proportion of those kids neglected or abused is a "very weak" argument that anything has become "any better"? If you had a drug that could save 50% of terminally ill patients, would you say "we have a very weak case that this drug saves lives"? In order for your statement to make sense, the failure rate of…

"near to 100% of input kids are neglected or abused"

Untrue. Children end up in the foster care system for a variety of reasons, including simple loss of parents or a woman (or teenage girl) knowing she can't care for a child.

"significantly lower proportion of those kids neglected or abused"

The evidence is not as clear on this as you'd like it to be.

To correct your example, if we had a drug that caused strokes or death in a significant percentage of cases, simply saying, "Well, many of the patients we'd give it to would otherwise suffer strokes or death," would be a quick route to an FDA rejection.

Re: We don't need freedom of religion

#90

Post by mingdingo »

ars wrote: post #62
mingdingo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be more humane to cut an animal's throat while it was conscious, or unconscious? That's all I'm asking. If that's considered a gotcha question, then we've probably reached an impasse...

It's more humane if it's conscious because to make an animal unconscious you have to hurt it. I'd rather simply kill it instead of hurt it first, and then kill it. A captive bolt does not always work on the first try, and it doesn't always fully stun either. You can't just increase the power of the bolt or you get brain matter mixed into the meat, raising the risk of mad cow disease. So you have to carefully tune it…

It's not really "hurting" it if you make it deeply unconscious, which is the goal of stunning. Can it be botched? Yes. But just like medicine that sometimes doesn't work, or isn't administered properly, the solution is not to stop using the medicine, but to correct the mistakes made when delivering it.

Consider this: When you use a stunner properly, the animal feels a split second of pain before becoming unconscious. At this point, pretty much every vet would say it can't feel pain.

But if you cut its throat while conscious, it can feel the pain of the wound immediately, and continues to feel it until the brain starts shutting down. This can take minutes. Cutting the throat does not cause immediate unconsciousness, and this is the problem.

Compare a properly stunned animal vs. an animal whose throat has been cut by via sechita, and tell me which one reaches unconsciousness faster. Because that is the animal that endures less pain in death.

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