Freedom of Religion

[Erinome]

I think religious freedom is fine, but I also think people should keep that shit to themselves. When people start trying to impose their religious values upon the public at large, in the form of laws and such, I start getting really bitchy about it. Freedom of religion should never mean "You have the freedom to obey the rules of our religion because we are the majority, and we say so."

It should mean that everyone has the right to believe whatever they want, but nobody has the right to discuss it outside of private homes, churches, and other appropriate places/media outlets.

[Epimethean]

And that's when we run smack into the Constitution. How do we define appropriate places without limiting the freedom?

[Doubting Thomas]

We have a right to free speech, but nobody has the right to be heard. We can stand on a street corner preaching or expressing our political views, but you don't have the right to make people stop & listen to you.

[Epimethean]

And that's the beauty of it: Keep on drivin' and the loons on the quadrangle disappear in the rear view.

[houseofcantor]

What needs to be sorted, in my view, is faith. I don't define that term like an atheist, but rather like a mathematician: faith = moral certainty. There is no other certainty; unless one counts the certainty to fail, religiously, when one tries to ascribe a moral paradigm that is not zero-state; a.k.a. local to the identity.

There ya go; the dead religion Gwynnite realizes in a paragraph what live religions cannot realize in a thousand years of Bible study...

[The Grand Nudger]

People should be free to believe whatever they like (and they are), they should not be free to act on those beliefs however they like (and in theory, they aren't..and yet still they do).

A perfect way to illustrate this is that it should not be illegal to be a member of The Church of Christ-Scientist. It should, however, be fairly easy to prosecute parents who willfully neglect their child's medical condition. Religion and faith should not be a shield(against the full weight of the law) for otherwise criminal behavior, and yet it often is.

[Perhaps]

I believe Jefferson says it best when dealing with matters such as these.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it...
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground...
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

[houseofcantor]

I believe Jefferson says it best when dealing with matters such as these.

I don't disagree with Jefferson, I disagree with "best" in terms of the modern context. He was part of the power structure; in my mind he's going on about trees of liberty being bloodthirsty.

[Nebuloso]

I think freedom of religion is very important but what irritates me is people that say they practice freedom of religion then turn around and brainwash their kids at the youngest possible age to think like them and tell them if they don't they will be tortured and burned forever in hell. This has a life long effect on how people think and prohibits free thinking and freedom of religion.

I do encourage freedom of religion but I also really wish people would just stop for 30 secs and from and 100% unbiased, objective standpoint rationally consider what they believe to be true. If they choose to continue believing whatever they believe, as long as it doesn't effect the well being of another human being, the so be it but at least they took a step that seems impossible for some people to take.

[tackattack]

100% unbiased... I thought I was an optimist and an idealist... wow... kudos for that here in the land of skeptics