On 26-Jan-09 1:19, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 25-Jan-09 22:51, somebody wrote:
>>> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> wrote in message news:497cdd31@news.povray.org...
>>>> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
>>>
>>>>> I disagree. The refusal of jews and muslims to eat pork or obeying
>>>>> Ramadan or sabbath is firmly established in the books. Your point that
>>>>> the books were written by humans may be true but is irrelevant. For 
>>>>> the
>>>>> believers it is *provably* part of their religion.
>>>>> OTOH you have things like women to have to wear hats on sunday when
>>>>> going to church as is the practice in some circles in the Netherlands.
>>>>> This has no basis in the script but rests on an interpretation of 
>>>>> (IIRC)
>>>>> Timothy 2:9-10 (no don't ask me how they do that). The common cultural
>>>>> idea that women have to wear headscarfs or worse also rests on such an
>>>>> interpretation of similar words by Mohamed.
>>>
>>>> It's also written in the "books" that it's just dandy to kill infidels,
>>>> homosexuals... etc. And that headscarves may not be in the books 
>>>> doesn't
>>>> mean Muslims don't feel as strongly about it as pork.
>>
>> If you add 'many' between 'mean' and 'Muslims' you have exactly the 
>> reason why I choose the example.
>>
>>>> Either way, granting
>>>> rights, priviledges and exceptions based on certain view that some 
>>>> people
>>>> wrote or did not write in some books, and inconsistenly at that, at 
>>>> some
>>>> point in history, is a bad, bad idea.
>>>
>>> Also, of course, such a "book based" policy would arbitrarily 
>>> discriminate
>>> against cultures whose traditions are more oral than written. The 
>>> judicial
>>> system should not be in the business of deciding which religions are 
>>> more
>>> legitimate than others, or which parts of a religion (pork) are from 
>>> god,
>>> which parts (headscarves) from man.
>>
>> But they do already. Everytime a woman complains that she is 
>> discriminated against because she has to wear that scarf, the judge 
>> when ruling in her favor effectively rules that a scarf is a religious 
>> and not a cultural phenomenon. I don't think any judge or politician 
>> has enough guts to rule or pass a law recognizing the fact that the 
>> lady in question was lied to and naively believed what she was told.
> 
> Actually, in the US, the basic rule, due to the same establishment 
> clause that protects the rest of us, in theory, "from" them, is that, 
> "If they say its religious, it is, since the courts **may not** make any 
> distinction as to what is and isn't "religious" for any group." The 
> determining factor then becomes if the behavior can be presented as so 
> egregious as to constitute a recognizable threat to someone, and thus 
> not protected, even "if" it is religious, i.e., something like human 
> sacrifice, or what some groups *call* polygamy, when what they are 
> "actually" doing is little better than brainwashing, combined with 
> slavery, and often child molestation. But, its a stupidly fine line, in 
> which, for example, courts have ruled that some old man that got sick 
> could be: a) deprived of retirement pension, b) thrown out of his home, 
> c) fired from his position and d) denied return to his prior position. 
> All of this on the basis that he got really sick for a few months, and
> the "church" decided, as a matter of internal operations, to throw him 
> out in the gutter, rather than wait for him to recover, or pay him 
> retirement. And, this was one of their own priests they did it to. The 
> courts where "forced" by law and precedent, to deny his claims, on the 
> grounds that they could not interfere with internal church matters, 
> despite the fact that if it had been "any other" organization, they 
> could have ordered payment of the retirement, all legal fees, and 
> possibly even penalties for being such assholes.
> 
> Basically, unless its either a) currently seen as some terrible 
> injustice that most of society "thinks" needs to be fought (real or 
> imagined), or b) people are dying, churches can do pretty much any damn 
> thing they like, including things they would also sue other 
> non-religious groups for doing, and win. Makes me sick some days.
> 
I understand the US court point of view. Sort of. I think there are two 
major holes in this theory. 1) what to do if someone claims that 
something is not religious, do you have to believe him too? 2) what to 
do with atheists, can they make up there own religious statements or is 
on the contrary their statement less worthy than of someone that says he 
does believe in god?

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